Is AI bonus too small?

[Lily_Lancer]

In Civ6 we all know that Deity AI gets bonused by 80% in production and gold, 32% plus free eurekas in science and culture, and +4 in combat. They also gets free settlers in their first few cities.

However, is that relatively too small?
In Civ5, Deity AIs' cost of purchasing or producing things, or food cost to increase population, is reduced to 50% and additional 5% discount per era. They also get free happiness(like the housing/amenity in Civ6) So the actual production bonus is 100%~200%. They also get 80% discount on upgrading units so their units will not be as outdated as those in Civ6.

In Civ4, Deity AI not only gets that production bonus, but also tech cost is about 50% of human player's.

It is clear that the designers focus little on AIs, so we can assume that the level of Civ6 AI being as good as , if not worse than that in Civ5 or Civ4.

But why do designers design to cut off AI bonuses so severely? Civ6 is designed to be a good game, I know it is much more balanced in MP than Civ4 or Civ5.

However, is the AI bonus too small that make Civ6 standard speed PVE games dull and uninteresting?

I'm really looking forward to a higher level of AI bonus, for example, give Deity AI 150% on gold and production, 80% gold & resource discount on upgrade and 50% bonus on science and culture. Also we shall add free housing and amenity and loyalty for AI cities.
Can this match the level of difficulty and make the standard PVE games as interesting as Civ4 or Civ5?

 

[Victoria]

Interesting question.
Up until lately I would have said yes. Perhaps now they are concentrating on the AI more because it is becoming more challenging but with everything changes have to be made in stages or things can break.
You are right on paper in my view but we need to consider that they have not finished.

I am finding deity fun now. Last night I had an English quad in a lake with a walled city and 2 barbarian cross bows and 3 swords destroyed my city. I had enough money to buy one xbow and had a choice of placing it there or against Norway who had been sending a stream of longships against me when on the same turn as the barbs 6 longships turned up. I lost my lake city and was pleased because it taught me more than one lesson.

Once we have drained an AI’s money reserves and destroyed their army they are easy, yes. But so is a human. It is just getting to that stage is harder now. Especially when you play with a weaker early military civ.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Interesting question.
Up until lately I would have said yes. Perhaps now they are concentrating on the AI more because it is becoming more challenging but with everything changes have to be made in stages or things can break.
You are right on paper in my view but we need to consider that they have not finished.

I am finding deity fun now. Last night I had an English quad in a lake with a walled city and 2 barbarian cross bows and 3 swords destroyed my city. I had enough money to buy one xbow and had a choice of placing it there or against Norway who had been sending a stream of longships against me when on the same turn as the barbs 6 longships turned up. I lost my lake city and was pleased because it taught me more than one lesson.

Once we have drained an AI’s money reserves and destroyed their army they are easy, yes. But so is a human. It is just getting to that stage is harder now. Especially when you play with a weaker early military civ.

That map must be under the "crazy barb" setting.

I take the timing when the Sahara barbs being destroyed by Gradient dust storms, then I just put some soldiers to guard it. You know, barbarian camps never appear on a plot that you have sight.

Yes barbarians are strong but this make the game more terrible since AIs do not even perform as good as barbarians.

 

[montalaar]

bonus is by far too big. that was always wrong way to increase diffictulty - either by inflating enemies hitpoints or flat damage in fps or in case of civ, by inflating bonuses. only thing one can achieve by further inflating bonuses are even more diminish valid strategies.(what about flat out idiotic city placement of AI for example? how about allow AI settle on luxes and other tricks of human players do to settle in best spots possible?) AI strategy is what needs to be improved, not just sprinkling more gold dust on them. that way, in the end, there will be one and only one way to win games. players will find it, but will it by any fun to play same card every time even more than now?

 

[kb27787]

I would say cut their ridiculous bonuses on wonder production and boost their bonuses on unit production. Increasing the combat bonus to +10, but removing the negative first impressions modifier would help to make war harder and diplomacy more important.
Give palace guard +20 combat strength to nerf domination victory and prevent civs from being eliminated in the ancient era unless they are at a huge disadvantage (attacker has to surround the capital and plink away with archers for several turns).

In BNW you tried to avoid war unless you had a huge advantage since the deity AI spams carpets of units like no tomorrow. Killing whole civs with just warriors and archers was not a thing back then and should not be now.

 

[Sostratus]

Things were very different in 5, where a city that was terrain + pops + buildings = any other city with loosely the same terrain and pops. Now we have districts, and humans are way better at dealing with placement than the AI. I suppose this also extends to things like farm adjacency but really the human is able to produce a better empire which allows them to rapidly catch up. Economically a hidden district adjacency boost could work.
The starting units are an attempt to push that catch up point out, but it still can come fast for some players.
They also need to code in some policy builds for the AI because their policy card choices are trash. Iirc they mostly pick +Amenity and housing cards. They aren’t using rationalism etc.Just sit and think how much free power your empire gets from being able to load up in Econ cards, when they all take monarchy and slot civil prestige or whatever.
Really though they could just skip district bonus and code the AI to keep pumping out units during war (perhaps conditioned on if one of their cities is occupied or threatened or something so things don’t get out of hand.) Then people would feel the pain.

 

[Beaver79]

Civ V would have been much easier if you could take enemy cities or pump out settlers with no consequences. Or go wide without getting a religion.

The only thing I remember about Civ 4 is that the AI would show up on your doorstep with a huge stack of units and could take your cities.

In 6 you can take enemy cities and settler spam with impunity. Also completely ignore religion. Outside of an initial AI rush they can't take your cities. I don't think giving them slightly higher bonuses would solve any of those problems.

 

[Victoria]

Outside of an initial AI rush they can't take your cities.

Well I would consider myself at least an average player and I have lost cities to the AI since the last patch.

 

[bbbt]

I think they should remove the plus 1 amenity per city and turn it into a 'bonus' (for the player or the AI depending on level) instead.

 

[leandrombraz]

I think they should remove the extra settler on deity, since that can benefit the player by giving him more cities to conquer, that when the player don't steal the settler directly. It's a bonus that is annoying for the player if he is trying to be peaceful and can work against the AI if the player is being aggressive.The way difficulty scale in Civ VI end up affecting early game way more than the rest of the match, so you have an extremely limited early game, where you're forced into specific strategies, and as the game progresses the AI's bonuses gets less and less effective. I think they should increase the yield bonuses per era, to help the AI keep up as the player gets stronger. Start with what deity have now and increase from there. They could also help the AI based on how much the AI is behind on tech. If the AI is on the same level as you, combat difficulty stays the same. If you start to get stronger than the AI technologically, the AI gets more combat strength and maybe a unit production bonus.

 

[Alexadamz]

I don't like the extra civilian units the AI gets at higher difficulties, it is just lame excuse for the crap AI. It would be better if a flat bonus for science, culture, gold, production, faith, food - all yields - was just added every Era - and more scalable the higher the difficulty. That would make early game more evenned out, but still more favorable for the AI, and the rest of the game more competitive.

If the AI is on the same level as you, combat difficulty stays the same. If you start to get stronger than the AI technologically, the AI gets more combat strength and maybe a unit production bonus.

This a good idea indeed. Better than the flat bonus for combat all the time. They could couple both bonuses for higher challanges.

 

[Depravo]

Any support for a difficulty level that rises over the course of the game? Start on Emperor, move up to Immortal in the Middle Ages and Deity in the Industrial for example?

I never liked how on higher difficulties you spend the first couple of eras unable to do anything but scrabble towards that inflection point you have a secure base of about half a dozen cities, the core of a good army and can turn the tables on the AI.

Typically, I'll spend the ancient and classical in last place or near to it. When I start to float above this level, I know that in a few dozen turns I'll be #1 and stay there for the rest of the game. More of a challenge would be welcome, even using the blunt instrument of Civ 6 difficulty levels.

 

[Sostratus]

I don't like the extra civilian units the AI gets at higher difficulties, it is just lame excuse for the crap AI. It would be better if a flat bonus for science, culture, gold, production, faith, food - all yields - was just added every Era - and more scalable the higher the difficulty. That would make early game more evenned out, but still more favorable for the AI, and the rest of the game more competitive.



This a good idea indeed. Better than the flat bonus for combat all the time. They could couple both bonuses for higher challanges.

People post a talk one of the firaxis people gave on AI years ago (was it Sid?) where he says that players only get mad at AI “cheating” when they directly see it. This is really ringing true here with various comments on the settlers. Without the posse of extra starting units, the bonuses needed to make the AI consistently get in a strong start would be egregiously high.
They already get +80% and even with an extra settler, players can peacefully overtake their empires by mid game. Being able to have 2 production queues right away means they will get cities 3-5 up a lot faster than with just one City. You’d run the risk of unintentionally making the game unwinnable if the AI decides to do certain things but a cakewalk if they do something different.

It’s not a perfect comparison, but Stellaris has a choice between fixed and scaling difficulty bonuses for the AI; the scaling bonus makes them pathetically weak at all stages of the game (because it starts lower) even though they have superior bonuses for much of the game. Which is really just underscoring how crucial a strong early game is for the AI.

If any kind of scaling made sense, it would be one that ramps down instead.

(Although I still think greater strides for difficulty would be made simply programming the AI to copy meta behavior like campus spam, slot rationalism, etc.)

 

[acluewithout]

I don't like the extra civilian units the AI gets at higher difficulties...

I think it's fine up to Immortal. One extra Settler is quite balanced as are having additional units. I only find it silly at Diety - three Settlers is a bit nuts. But I guess Diety is sort of meant to be "nuts", so maybe that's okay.

What I think the AI needs is some free units etc. later in the game or in particular situations, including some free unique units in some situations (particularly where the AI would otherwise have to hard build the units). The AI could also use a leg up with resources, because it really struggles to upgrade Warriors most games.

I also agree with @Sostratus about the AI's use of policy cards.

 

[Ownsya]

Whenever the player dow's the AI, AI gets an infusion of gold? Could be variable according to era, or according to player's military might. Although, this could end up being exploited by the player through trade deals if the AI doesn't quickly use it on military units. Maybe if after peace, the AI still has that extra gold, it gets removed again but not leaving the AI with gold less than what they had before the war. A war chest.

AI gets free +x per turn of any strategic resource they can see?

 

[leandrombraz]

They could give the AI the ability to chop automatically when they place a district on a tile that have a feature, which is something I assume the AI never do.

 

[Sostratus]

I think it's fine up to Immortal. One extra Settler is quite balanced as are having additional units. I only find it silly at Diety - three Settlers is a bit nuts. But I guess Diety is sort of meant to be "nuts"...

I also agree with @Sostratus about the AI's use of policy cards.

I think some people might be losing sight of deity- it’s supposed to be unfair. In Civ4, the description for Immortal was “Only the best players will beat this difficulty.” Deity’s was “Muahaha, good luck sucker!”

Anyways, people would do well to think of the difference between facing AI generic civ and AI Sumeria, Greece, or Korea. The AI isn’t actually that good at planning their districts, but the fact that Korea is told to spam seowons all day and Greece deploys acropolis everywhere leads to them becoming tech monsters. There’s no reason the AI couldn’t just be told to engage in actions that we now know, 3 years later, are near optimal. Imagine if every deity civ spammed campus+theater. They might not need so many bonuses then...

Warfare would be halfway solved if they just kept building units. I don’t know what prevents it, but fixing that will make them extremely scary, if the above change in district focus doesn’t make them all too strong to begin with.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

20 years long the same discussion in civ
Man i hope they soon get to self learning AI so that they will have to tone it down to prevent it from being unbeatable without any bonusses

 

[Zuizgond]

Instead of increasing AI bonus, they should work on making it smarter...

But we all know it will never be done by Firaxis.

 

[ezzlar]

The AI bonuses only determines how hard or how long it will be before you catch up to the AI. Once you have done that, you win. The AI is unable to catch up once you have passed. One of the few ways of tackling this is by having civs start at different spawn dates. The alternative would be that the AI could catch up on you...