Is Civ 6 Tactical AI the worst in the series?

[8housesofelixir]

I think ranged city attack vs siege units is ok, it may also represent daring sorties. Bring in more forces to cycle and expect some casualties.
What is truly baffling though that a besieged city can still work the tiles occupied by enemy troops. Civ 6 is the first game in this franchise to allow that and to this day I am not sure if this was done by design (on what reasons?) or by some giant oversight which goes on too long already. I mean, before you could at least starve down the besieged city a bit. Now, even if you pillage, it still gets some production and food.

I assume this is the result of some weird coding/weird interaction of mechanisms. If their is an enemy unit standing on a district or a half-built wonder, you cannot build anything in the district/finish the wonder, and all the ongoing builds in the production queue will be put on a halt.

But tiles and tile improvements don't seem to follow this rule. It's like you and your emery is fighting a gentlemen's war which forbid any kind of disturbances among the civilian population - which sort of explains why razing a city will cause a massive grievances penalty, as it definitely breaks the gentlemen's rules.

 

[Victoria]

a besieged city can still work the tiles occupied by enemy troops. ....on what reasons?

Rulesets are rarely elegant when they get complicated and often there are sacrifices made, especially when you stretch time between 2 dimensions like in civ.
In this case, just run through your head what happens to a walled city when you remove all of its food. I guess the argument is they have that 'worked food' stored. What you have is 2 separate games playing on a single map, a strategic one and a tactical one and they run on different timelines. The surrounding and starving a city was not done over 10 years, there are compromises being made to fit it on one map and still make it feel in some ways OK. At least thats how I can rationalise it.

 

[Sostratus]

I think ranged city attack vs siege units is ok, it may also represent daring sorties. Bring in more forces to cycle and expect some casualties.

The core problem of siege vs city ranged attacks is that unlike say, an RTS, or other 4X games, the city attack does not require the defender to actually have a garrison to use it.

In civ5, ranged units defending from a ranged strike would use their higher Ranged Strength when defending. This is no longer the case in civ6, where ranged units use the melee strength in all cases of defense.
Catapults, domreys, and bombards all have a melee strength 12 points below their ranged strength; they are quite fragile to a direct strike.

Because of this, city walls, which sport essentially an 85% melee resist and (accounting for the inherent ranged -17 vs districts) 75% ranged resist, are only vulnerable to siege units. But city ranged strike can counter siege units. This is not good.
Siege units are easily countered by having units of your own and attacking the catapults directly, but they are too easily countered by ranged strikes. Especially given how expensive siege units are, and the fact that the Ai will focus fire siege, performance in sieges will be much better for the AI if siege units are less vulnerable to ranged strikes.

 

[Victoria]

if siege units are less vulnerable to ranged strikes.

They are, you just are not using them right. draw their fire, it's not rocketry

 

[Sostratus]

They are, you just are not using them right. draw their fire, it's not rocketry

1. Losing siege units to enemy counter battery fire is not an issue for the Sostratus Tactical Droid
2. It’s an enormous issue for the inferior Firaxis Tactical Droid
3. It bothers me on a fundamental design level, which is practically morally intolerable

At least the AI sometimes makes catapults, but they are just so squishy for their high cost.
I would much prefer a city combat dynamic where a horde of lads with pointy objects could just beat down an undefended city with pure peasant power, and siege units really only need to be brought in to handle heavily fortified (read: substantial investment) cities.

Then, at least, the AI could pursue a strategy of “slam a ton of units at the problem” and it would be marginally dangerous even for humans.

 

[oSiyeza]

It seems like there still aren't clear rules in the coding for what happens when an Aerodrome is attacked an occupied.

It seems anything related with moddern war, is something FXS has not tested or or does not care for. We can add that to the list:
- Carrier promotions do not work (Carriers are still required to attack directly to promote, when carriers are not attack units)
- Infantry requiring oil for maintenance
- AI not able to use carriers
- AI not using AA
- AI barely using planes
- AI not using moddern navy classes correctly
- AI not using Nuclear Strikes properly
- AI not going to war after renaissance
- Glitches Conquering Air district

In terms of humans rather than AI, I don't really agree. If all that's needed is one catapult to take out my walled city

think ranged city attack vs siege units is ok, it may also represent daring sorties. Bring in more forces to cycle and expect some casualties.

Catapults should not be able to take cities by itself, bombard or siege units should not be able to enter unoccupied cities, should be very vulnerable to other units and should require more than one turn to take a wall down (as they do now, but with this change city defense could also be increased so more turns are needed). But a catapult should be able to damage the walls of a city if the city is ungarrisoned.

In the current state of the game, an unprotected city can destroy a bombard military unit of the same age in two turns, before the unit has time to make any damage. That is stupid.

I am realizing players here are too defensive lately, as if everything is an all of nothing issue. There is middle ground between a siege weapon being useless against an unprotected city, and a siege weapon being able to take a city by itself.

Obvioulsy both extremes are wrong, but we are on one of those extremes now, and as a result, the AI cannot take cities, even with a carpet of catapults. This has been an issue they have not been able to solve for 4 years without changing the city defense system. Which means it is time to balance the city defense system. And when people suggest balancing this extreme situation, they dont mean: lets make it ridicilously unbalanced in the other direction.

What is truly baffling though that a besieged city can still work the tiles occupied by enemy troops. Civ 6 is the first game in this franchise to allow that and to this day I am not sure if this was done by design (on what reasons?) or by some giant oversight which goes on too long already. I mean, before you could at least starve down the besieged city a bit. Now, even if you pillage, it still gets some production and food.

With this I cannot agree more.

 

[Sostratus]

- Infantry requiring oil for maintenance

Late game resource usage drives me nuts. It was quite bolted on without regard for what was underneath.
But I think in the files there are hints that the Aussie Digger unit was at some point, built with niter. the incredible oil usage on every unit is crippling for the AI

 

[oSiyeza]

Late game resource usage drives me nuts. It was quite bolted on without regard for what was underneath.
But I think in the files there are hints that the Aussie Digger unit was at some point, built with niter. the incredible oil usage on every unit is crippling for the AI

I have been at times when oil was nowhere near my lands, so I could not make infantry, obviously I can go wild and settle a city in the middle of nowhere to get it (something the AI will not do), but it was mindblowing how stupid the situation was... Infantry... the most basic military unit in the moddern world... Only had a simmilar disgust feeling with the apocalyse mode when the global warming triggered a comet strike and made all climate disasters dissapear.

This is not lack of testing. This is rushing through the door the first idea they come with, thinking they can get out with anything and fans do not deserve quality as long as they keep paying. Honestly, there are some things in the game that feel very close to being a scam.

 

[Bibor]

Battering rams and siege towers halving city attack damage would go a long way toward making the tactial aspect better

 

[Linklite]

In the current state of the game, an unprotected city can destroy a bombard military unit of the same age in two turns, before the unit has time to make any damage. That is stupid.

In terms of game mechanics, it is not. I'm finding that if I build 3 siege units, cities can't do much against them except in exceptional circumstances, usually mountains restricting approaches. I don't really want it much easier, and in some ways it would be nice if things were harder, although I'd be happier with an AI that switched focus to unit production in war and made it more difficult that way.

I am realizing players here are too defensive lately, as if everything is an all of nothing issue.

I merely remarked that I disagreed with your complaint/solution, and why. You're the one using ad hominem, there is one person getting defensive, and it's not me.

There is middle ground between a siege weapon being useless against an unprotected city, and a siege weapon being able to take a city by itself.

Sure, and we're there now. Siege weapons are not useless, I use them virtually all the time, others complain that the game is too easy because the AI doesn't use them or not effectively when it does.m, so it clearly isn't useless. As we both agree, they aren't capable of taking [walled] cities solo either. We're in that middle ground now, you just want to make Domination easier - I don't.

Obvioulsy both extremes are wrong, but we are on one of those extremes now, and as a result, the AI cannot take cities, even with a carpet of catapults.

It's not that walls>>>>siege. It's that it takes 3 siege to relatively consistently take on walls, which the AI can't cope with manoeuvring into position correctly. You're suggesting ramping up the power of catapults so the AI can do it with one, which the AI can cope with, but I don't like how easy that will make capturing cities for me. Granted, as I mentioned, there are two periods where walls outrace siege, but I'm not convinced that having those gaps where I'm forced to cool my heels is a bad thing.

Alternative solutions:

1. Ramp up the AI so it can cope with using siege effectively. This is the optimum solution, but also I recognise would be very hard to implement.
2. Give AI a boost when using siege against walls. It could even be tied to difficulty, so those who are sensitive about losing cities could still have that protection.

This has been an issue they have not been able to solve for 4 years without changing the city defense system. Which means it is time to balance the city defense system. And when people suggest balancing this extreme situation, they dont mean: lets make it ridicilously unbalanced in the other direction.
Except, to quote you:

"Cities should not be more dangerous to catapults than catapults to cities."

Which I interpret to mean that you want a siege unit to be more powerful than walls. If that's not what you intend, then you need to be clearer in what you say. At the very least, you do want to tip the balance away from walls to catapults, which I disagree with.

[/QUOTE]

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Sure, and we're there now. Siege weapons are not useless, I use them virtually all the time, others complain that the game is too easy because the AI doesn't use them or not effectively when it does.m, so it clearly isn't useless. As we both agree, they aren't capable of taking [walled] cities solo either. We're in that middle ground now, you just want to make Domination easier - I don't.

[/QUOTE]

I disagree with that one.
I think walled cities, especially in that gap between the first ancient walls and Flight should be toned down (essentially the whole middle game).
The AI clearly isn't capable of handling it, and personally I dislike being slowed down so hard in domination in the middle game if the AI happens to have walls and high combat strength cities. This feels artificial, and also causes a meta that bores me when going domination, where I have to race as fast as I can to kill off a neighbour or two before walls are up, and then spending the middle game mostly peacefully while only having what can be described as "some skirmishes" near our borders.

I also dislike that the pace is like night and day once I get flight (and bombers especially), as the game just becomes a giant mop-up fiesta once I get bombers and tanks.
I don't really need GDR's at that point, but GDR's also just speed up the pace which is already far too fast post-Flight.
Civ 5 had this paced a whole lot better, where the domination game was a lot more smooth even once you had bombers (the AI also built air units, which helped them).
(Civ 5 of course had it's own problems, like the massive negative happiness bonuses screwing the player over once the cities were captured).

 

[oSiyeza]

I merely remarked that I disagreed with your complaint/solution, and why. You're the one using ad hominem, there is one person getting defensive, and it's not me.

It was a general comment, not directed towards you, but pointing out that we should not dismiss opinions by responding to extreme versions of the arguments that were not made by the proponent.

If you think city defense is perfectly balanced, fair enough. And If you dislike that I qualified your position as defensive, I take it back and I apologize, I did not intend to ofend.

However, afirming that taking a walled city with a catapult was a solution nobody propossed, and therefore pointing to the inherent Black-and-White and Strawman fallacies commited is not an ad-hominem.

You cannot respond to being called on a logical fallacy by accusing the person that exposed your argument of attacking you.

Please, lets try all to adress the arguments.