Is AI really brain dead?

[slowcar]

My first game was/is on Emperor with Tomyris. Currently at Turn 118, conqured 3 of 4 AIs and recently lost my first unit. I still fight with horsemen and her horse-archer UU - could build muskets and the like, but against an AI fielding chariots?
In the beginning i planned to overwhelm the AI by just spamming my cheap units, but they never even managed to kill a single one and decided to shuffle their units instead.

The aztecs have a few dozen Eagle Warriors which give him about double the military score, seems like this metric is quite off, too.

I really hope i'll enjoy the worldbuilding part more and am probably going to move to MP.

 

[AIL]

companies today especially the bigger ones unfortunately seem to be all about business first and foremost and lack the dedicated gamer perspective or repeatedly fail to satisfy high expectations for innovation and progress, with few exceptions

As a gamer I just want a game to be as good as it possibly can be, so I can enjoy playing it over many years.
That's what I did with Pandora. After and while making the AI a worthy opponent, I accumulated 800 hours on it on steam and probably another 2000 from my dev-version.

Companies, on the other hand, depend on sales and it's much more profitable to churn out new games rather than improving the ones that already exist. It might be even counter-productive for them to improve their old games too much as this will lower the sales for new ones.

There are different examples... "League of Legends" for instance.
Why is the game still so popular? Because it was constantly improved over years!
Their business-model is completely different. They only have that one game and get their money from the game being popular. So they do everything to make and keep it as popular as possible.

 

[LDiCesare]

1UPT is what actually happens in real armies. It would be possible to simulate that, including marching orders and so on. You have to avoid carpeting the map with units, however.

 

[JtW]

1UPT is what actually happens in real armies. It would be possible to simulate that, including marching orders and so on. You have to avoid carpeting the map with units, however.

Yeah, but not if the tile is a hundred miles across. Which is the scale we have in Civ.

 

[rrrwww]

ai in battle is terrible. this game is another perfect example of why and how technology doesnt necessarily improve anything, it just changes ****

 

[Sascha77]

Yeah, but not if the tile is a hundred miles across. Which is the scale we have in Civ.

I think trying to justify either 1UPT or stacks-of-doom-mechanics by bringing in the real world is a pointless exercise. Unless we're talking about a map that has tiles representing the minimum space required for one human being to stand on, you can always cite "scale" as an argument and/or justification for either mechanic.

At the end of the day, 1UPT vs stacks-of-doom is a gameplay- and design-choice. It doesn't have anything to do with "realism", IMO.

Personally, the apparent inability of the AI to cope with 1UPT would be enough for me to think long and hard about bringing back Civ IV's way of handling units/tiles. Even though the AI in Civ V isn't insultingly inept, it hardly ever poses a threat to halfway decent players such as myself. In Civ IV, AI attacking with stacks of doom could be a real problem and quite scary. In V, I've never seen a truly scary situation in war with the AI. They just don't seem capable of exploiting the war-/siege-mechanics of that game and unless they're hugely advanced in military tech, I can beat them back and decimate their superior numbers in a few turns without breaking a sweat.


S.

 

[JtW]

Not sure I agree, @Sascha77. I remember my first impression when I played Civ 5 on an Earth map. Archers shooting over the English Channel completely broke my immersion.

EDIT: there is hope for the AI. In a recent war, they actually pillaged two of my improvements and (gasp) attacked a unit!

 

[jekke]

This is a sad, sad thread. I did not buy the game; but watched a LP yesterday, two AI declared war at turn ~30, conquered a city with far superior units than the human player had (knights and swordsmen vs archers) and just stopped there, although the capitol was totally in reach. That was Deity, btw. Deity.
I guess there were similar examples listed in this thread.

And to those who say it is impossible to have a good AI with 1 UPT, you have almost convinced me - except for when I open a list of the strongest chess engines I see that they are like 500 points above the top humans. And there are no bonuses like faster production times.

 

[Sascha77]

And to those who say it is impossible to have a good AI with 1 UPT, you have almost convinced me - except for when I open a list of the strongest chess engines I see that they are like 500 points above the top humans. And there are no bonuses like faster production times.

I was thinking about that too (the chess thing), but you gotta remember that chess has much stricter rules, far less variables to take into account and can basically be mastered by brute force computing power.

Civ has more going on than just combat ... 2 tech trees, exploration, founding, managing and improving cities, religion, etc.

And even if we ignore all that and only compare the pure combat aspect in Civ to chess... does chess have tiles that influence your units' movement or the way they take damage? Does chess have ranged units or the ability to heal or pillage? Does chess have coastlines, navies and airforces?

Plus the rules of chess have been unchanged since well before anyone ever wrote a chess AI. So programmers don't have to adjust their AI to new rules governing movement/combat/whatever.

I'm not trying to defend Civ VI's horrible AI here, mind you... just trying to point out that the comparison between the Civ AI and an AI meant to play chess might be borderline "apples v oranges"-territory.

S.

 

[jekke]

I was thinking about that too (the chess thing), but you gotta remember that chess has much stricter rules, far less variables to take into account and can basically be mastered by brute force computing power.

Civ has more going on than just combat ... 2 tech trees, exploration, founding, managing and improving cities, religion, etc.

And even if we ignore all that and only compare the pure combat aspect in Civ to chess... does chess have tiles that influence your units' movement or the way they take damage? Does chess have ranged units or the ability to heal or pillage? Does chess have coastlines, navies and airforces?

Plus the rules of chess have been unchanged since well before anyone ever wrote a chess AI. So programmers don't have to adjust their AI to new rules governing movement/combat/whatever.

I'm not trying to defend Civ VI's horrible AI here, mind you... just trying to point out that the comparison between the Civ AI and an AI meant to play chess might be borderline "apples v oranges"-territory.

S.

Of course, this is correct, although it is the combat we are talking about and it is because of the combat we say that the AI is "braindead", not managing and tech progress.
Anyway, I see your point and I agree to the most of it. However, all this stuff like coasts, navies, pillaging, zones of control etc... all this is the real reason (at least in part) for the AI to be stupid, not the 1 UPT per se. I even think 1UPT is in a way good for AI because it caps the number of legal moves to calculate: if you have 30 units in a stack, each of them can move in any direction and it's a nightmare.

 

[Sascha77]

I even think 1UPT is in a way good for AI because it caps the number of legal moves to calculate: if you have 30 units in a stack, each of them can move in any direction and it's a nightmare.

Since I don't know a whole lot about programming, I can't really make assumptions here.

However: It's not just combat that the AI sucks at. I haven't seen much combat in my games so far and I still think the AI is dumb as fugg. Things like settling right on my borders, thereby creating the very conditions that will make them hate me is one thing. AI players offering me insane amounts of money for the most basic stuff (like deals offered by "neutral" players where they offer mutual open borders plus 8 GPT) and of course their tendencies to build a gazillion units which they then needlessly shuffle around in foreign territory are just as bad as their inability to wage a decent war.

And again from my completely amateur perspective, I can only wonder why the devs have chosen to produce a game with an AI that obviously can't handle the rule-set of said game. Like I said in other threads: I'd rather get punished for my mistakes by an AI steamrolling me with stacks of doom than them behaving like lobotomized chimps. That's why I almost never went for conquest-victories in Civ V either.. because those didn't feel like I accomplished anything but more like beating up a five-year-old who has his hands tied behind his back ..

S.

 

[kornelm1978]

The game has the same problem as CIV V. One unit per tile. It is ridicoulus for me becasue of 2 reasons:

1. AI will never be competent in waging war. The number of tiles is limited when attacking, there are mountatins, rivers, forests and now even clifs and the will never be AI to keep somheow pace with the player. Making 3 or 5 unists per tile would make AI to attack you more "efficiently". Even landings on island would be more vialbe for AI. The buffs which AI receives are tremendous and it still looses.They will not improve that singnificantly as they couldn't with CIV 5.

2. Not less important. This is strategy game and you should not be bothered mainly with moving your units (there should be more interesting things to do during war). It is not realistic and not interesting to have wars which take few eras. Moreover, before you reach city your units may be obsolete already. I am really tired with shuffling units of mine (and especially AIs).Wouldn't it be better to have more wars, but quicker ones (more realistic as well)? Take one city quickly and you may loose it quickly again. Pillage quickly the other civ when you cannot conquer city. Wouldn't that be more fun than rolling through whole world with 30 units?

The solution which comes to my mind is Amry unit (apart from single units which will still exist), which constis of i.e. 3 units. In firs eras it could be:

- combined amry - archer, swordsman, pikeman (depanding on you tech level in each area) - ovearall good for everything (easy to use by AI), especially sieges
- foot army - 3 swordmans -
- cavarly army - 3 horseriders - used to support and pillaging (easy to do by AI, hard to cath, hard to kill)
- no armies for archers and catapults, just single unit (those units should be uses just to support not as strong army, realistic and easier to teach AI this)

The above (combined with obviusly changed sieges rules) would make wars quicker than 500 years, more interesting and realistic. More wars! Quicker Wars!!!

Note. With that there sould be obviously changes in other mechanics, diplomacy, sieges, warmongering (by the way it's to severe to be called warmonger when just declaring the war, it should be based more on number of wars you declared recently, cities capture etc.)

 

[truetom]

Teddy asked me for a joint war against Harald, then denounced me as a warmonger (as did everybody else). It's a clever move, really. I'm the big bad guy, everbody hate me. Or is it a stupid move, as he's still at war with Harald.

 

[RedRover57]

I haven't read this entire thread, so excuse me if this has already been mentioned. In my games so far (Immortal and Deity difficulty) the AI only seems to make warriors in the early game and horsemen in the mid game, with few other scattered unit types. They send dozens of warriors at you in the early game but all you need for defense are walls and a few archers. In the mid game they send dozens of horsemen in a scatterbrained and unfocused attack, which are a joke by that time when you have 50 str cities, encampments and crossbows/muskets (or better) to defend. They run all over your 8 city empire in groups of 2-3 and just get slaughtered. That is if they even have room to move around your empire with all of the AI religious units just randomly doing nothing in your territory except blocking tiles (these silly missionaries and apostles just run back and forth across your land like a confused flock of pigeons, not even bothering to convert any cities). It's a sorry state of affairs that's for sure. I like the Sean Bean narration and the music though, but that's just not going to keep me wanting to play.

 

[Sascha77]

ROFLLOL!!!111ONEELEVEN

Oh well.. I just had war declared on me by Gorgo. Island Map, me playing as Japan again.

She discovered my Civ in one turn with a trireme, invited me to share info on our capitals, then the very next turn she declared war on me. I had a warrior, two archers and two triremes at this point (turn 90 or so). For a few turns nothing much happened. I built ancient walls in the two cities that didn't have them, then built another archer, a quadrieme and another trireme (one of my triremes was too far away to join the war and on the other side of the map). About 10 - 15 turns after her DOW, her first units show up. Roughly 6 or 7 horsemen, one slinger, one swordsman, one cat.. all of them embarked (she's on a different island than me). No ships whatsoever. Next she simply sits there with her embarked units, letting me damage her stuff with my tiny navy at will (embarked units are a lot tougher than they were in Civ V, BTW). The units that did get closer to my shores were decimated by my two archers, my city and (by then) a crossbowman. She didn't even attempt to land any of her troops near my coastal town... just sat there in the water, letting me take potshots at her stuff at will. After she lost about 4 or 5 horseman, her slinger, her swordsman and her cat, she finally agreed to a peace-treaty. None of her units ever even set foot on my island, even though she had a ton of stuff in position to disembark and lay siege to my city. She also definitely had at least one trireme which never showed up once the fighting started.

*sigh*


EDIT: Oh, and BTW.. when Gorgo declared on me, I first got her DOW-animation and then I saw myself declare war on me (as Japan, I got Hojo's DOW-animation right after Gorgo's).


S.

 

[Ozisl]

I've had an enemy completely surround my capital with horsemen (literally, on every side), one or two attacked, then they just started cycling around it like a merry-go-round for a while before giving up and declaring peace. It can't even remember it is at war.

 

[cutelilduck]

Yea that's the kind of stuff that adjusting priorities and desires aren't going to fix. The fact that the AI can't mount a logical attack after Classical tech is an extremely disheartening experience. I've always enjoyed Civ in single player but this might be the straw that pushes me to multiplayer. Sooo good job Firaxis you got me into MP because of your inability to try once at AI?? In like 4 months when I'm not totally busy and have 6 straight hours to spare I already get my strategy fix from board game night.

I just don't understand how hard it is to choose 2-4 tiles that are legal bombard tiles, plant ranged there and melee around, and fortify/attack nearby until victory or defeat. I can already visualize the rudimentary code in my head. Once the units near their target, they can entire an isolated logic block that ignores other needs of the civ (like defense or exploration or whatever garbage that screws them up)

 

[RedRover57]

Here is a good sample screenshot of the "mid-game" horseman spam on Immortal difficulty:

It turns out this was only about half of their horseman army and I easily defeated them with my few units as they scattered haphazardly through my territory without directly attacking any cities. It also shows the silly missionaries and apostles running around - I've seen packs of dozens roaming around together at times. Even 10 turns later they had not even managed to convert my capital.

 

[Ghostdeini]

ROFLLOL!!!111ONEELEVEN


EDIT: Oh, and BTW.. when Gorgo declared on me, I first got her DOW-animation and then I saw myself declare war on me (as Japan, I got Hojo's DOW-animation right after Gorgo's).


S.

Did you win with a culture victory? If you still can, you should; it's one of the available achievements:

Selfie
Win a regular game with a Culture victory with your leader in the game as your opponent as well

 

[Andre1986]

Lot's of bugs, I don't understand how these were not caught, surely the testers played for hours and hours before they released the game.

What happened to the days of not releasing until it was perfect?

It has a lot of potential and I do love most of it, but the bugs mean I've stopped playing as it's now too predictable and annoying seeing 10-15 archers and warriors clogging up the map in the 18th century, Is there any news on when the first patch will be?