Is it true that the AI is not smart?

[Austin1990]

I haven't played the game yet. I wait until I get a gaming pc
I see from time to time that players complain about the AI.
They say that it is not smart enough.
If it's true, then what are some examples for the issues that the AI has?

 

[Vandlys]

I haven't played the game yet. I wait until I get a gaming pc
I see from time to time that players complain about the AI.
They say that it is not smart enough.
If it's true, then what are some examples for the issues that the AI has?

There are many threads here discussing the AI. I'm sure you can find a myriad of examples in there

 

[Austin1990]

There are many threads here discussing the AI. I'm sure you can find a myriad of examples in there

I did see threads discussing it, but I did not get the impression that there are any serious issues with the AI. What I really want to know; is it interesting to play against the AI? Is it challenging?

 

[AntSou]

That's an impossible question. It's entirely dependent on your background as a player, including familiarity with 4x games and specifically with the Civilization series.

There's also threads of players both here and on reddit who struggle with the game even on easier difficulties.

 

[Austin1990]

That's an impossible question. It's entirely dependent on your background as a player, including familiarity with 4x games and specifically with the Civilization series.

There's also threads of players both here and on reddit who struggle with the game even on easier difficulties.

I understand. Thanks.

 

[DeckerdJames]

The AI is pretty challenging overall and on higher difficulty settings it is very quick because of its bonuses. I don’t know how deep the computer can plan. It might be more on the reactive side. I think the shape of an AI civilization is influenced by what it is programmed to like. The units are sometimes capable of good tactical moves but it doesn’t have complicated military strategy. It can also tend to try to reinforce a failed attack.

Civ is a 4x game and the military strategy game is only a part of that. The peaceful path to victory is the cheapest path and the AI tends to favor that long term approach. Building and maintaining a military is done only out of necessity usually or short term goals. Why have a huge military that costs money if you don’t plan to use it? There resides some room for improvement. Civ 7 could make some civilizations capable of amassing a military that could conceivably conquer the whole world (or capturing the capitals) with more than a simple snowball strategy. They could attack all over the world simultaneously in the late game and choose alliances that make sense, with an aim to either eventually betray their allies or to have chosen them in such a way that they will be the likely victor in an alternative victory condition when their enemies are defeated.

 

[vorlon_mi]

@Austin1990 , welcome to CivFanatics!

The Civ6 AI will build cities, conduct research, and pursue one of the victory conditions. Certain leaders love to found religions and try to spread them around, including to you. Although I play at a lower-mid difficulty level, the AI do receive additional bonuses at the higher difficulty levels. What does that mean? An AI player starts the game with more military units than the human player, sometimes with an additional settler to found an additional new city right away. The AI love to build world wonders and they collect great works to attract tourists (Cultural Victory).

On the other hand, many players here have criticized how the AI players move their military units and how effectively they could threaten the human player with their military might. If you're a player who enjoys the simulated warfare -- one of the "x's" in a 4X game is "exterminate" -- then you might conclude that the AI is not smart.

 

[newtociv6]

Not exterminate, but expanding means victory of all types.

Neighbor settling near me? Settle closer and buy all the plots.
Neighbor doing science projects? Kill it before completion.
Neighbor built tons of theaters? Capture them to get 300% boost of cultural output.
Neighbor spreading religion while I have no faith point? Go to war and condemn them all.
Everyone hate me? Exterminate them one by one since they wouldn't form joint war against me.

... and so on.

In every victory conditions, expansion and killing competitors are the quickest, guaranteed ways of victory. And AI is not doing that.

If I have 100 cities while others have 10, I'm guaranteed to win no matter how horsehockey my cities are built.

 

[DeckerdJames]

I wouldn't be opposed to Civ 7's AI being more difficult at higher levels of difficulty than Civ 6's AI. For example, a Civ 7 deity AI would be very good at defending itself with a military. Maybe, unbeatable without a a much larger or more advanced army, or with the help of allies. Many such AI leaders might also be smart enough to wage an aggressive war very well, but they don't do it because it is not the kind of leader they are. Other leaders might be very good at fighting aggressive wars on foreign territories and they are prone to do it. So you can expect them to do it in most circumstances.

Civ 6 isn't quite at that level, I think. I think it wants to be that way, but it can't do it well enough. If I am in the game with Alexander the Great, I should not be surprised to see alliances that favor his ability to conquer. Hopefully, Civ 7 AI will improve that. I think the world conquering type leader AI should always become a global threat if they can manage to do it, and usually require an alliance to defeat (unless you are real good, of course).

 

[newtociv6]

If they wouldn't change to complete domination kind of AI, I think improved defense alliance is the only way, so that small civilizations would team up to defend against larger ones, human or other AIs. Diplomacy in 6 is just annoyances and there is no cooperation at any level.

 

[DeckerdJames]

If they wouldn't change to complete domination kind of AI, I think improved defense alliance is the only way, so that small civilizations would team up to defend against larger ones, human or other AIs. Diplomacy in 6 is just annoyances and there is no cooperation at any level.

I think the AI diplomacy system would be improved if it were to have a memory that reaches back to the first turn they meet or hear about you. They track news about your civilization and understand your reputation. There might be ways to reset relations, but they don't forget the past.

 

[Disgustipated]

When it comes to combat they are definitely not smart. Some of that may have been purposely made that way as to not make things too difficult for the player. Imagine if the AI were smart enough to always place archers in their cities and never move them, it would be very difficult to conquer any AI cities with the city bombardment mechanic the way it is (as you can tell, I'm not the biggest fan of this mechanic). As for the peaceful side of things, they do okay, certainly not smart, but their bonuses help them stay at a decent tech level.

 

[Callonia]

The AI is dumb. Last civ game I played is Civ beyond earth and i gave up hope on firaxis developers of being competent enough.

Lets for starter, AI don't know how to move and shoot with ranged units in same turn.

I don't know the state of AI in civ6 but I suspect its exactly the same with tiny adjustments to ai programming to take account of new civs.

Even then, in Civ5 the indonesia AI is complete blank,it doesn't know how to expand to islands to take advantage of three unique luxuries that it has access to.

I expect the same of civ7 AI to be completely braindead and I won't be buying it. After all, why pay fifty dollars for no improvement in AI whatsoever. They've had decades to make their AI more competent so I could have more entertaining wars not shooting fishes in a barrel.

So I strongly advise you to not get your hopes up. Civ games is just really just..... an mediocre building race game. Build your granary and library, etc as fast as you can and you're done.

 

[Urlance Woolsbane]

I haven't played the game yet. I wait until I get a gaming pc
I see from time to time that players complain about the AI.
They say that it is not smart enough.
If it's true, then what are some examples for the issues that the AI has?

As others have said, warfare is where the AIs' flaws are most glaringly evident. It can't mount an effective offense, being bizarrely passive much of the time, and failing to bring sufficient siege weapons when it isn't, nor does it know how to prioritize enemy units for attacks: It ofttimes ignores a siege-weapon threatening one of its cities in favor of some other, less immediately dangerous target. It also, in my experience, tends to maintain lots of obsolete units, instead of disbanding or upgrading them, and suffice it to say that it doesn't know how to run a wartime economy.

There are many other defects in the AI, as evidenced by the extreme difficulty most computer-players have in maintaining developmental parity with human players at any difficulty below Emperor, but I think Civ VI would be improved immeasurably if being invaded was a real and persistent danger, as it is in Civs III and IV and Old World

 

[Hull tyyp]

OP sayd he doesn't even have the game yet. So an analogy is in order.

Imagine a typical first person shooter. A well designed AI at higher difficulties would try to flank you, cooperate by using suppressive fire, use grenades, flashbangs and other advanced tactics to defeat you. A poorly designed AI at higher difficulties would just have the best gun and a ton of health requiring you to put a full clip of assault rifle rounds into him before he goes down.

Unfortunately civ 6 AI is the equivalent of the latter. That being said, it doesn't mean the AI is not challenging.

 

[Linklite]

The AI is ok.

By that, I mean it can play fairly well. It can provide a challenge for players who are new or are fairly casual about playing the game.

One problem is that it is pretty mechanical in its decisions, so once you nail down the right strategy...it becomes fairly easy to handle. You know how to scare it off, how to economically cripple it, abuse the decision tree etc. It becomes hard not to do so.

Another is that it is a single AI with some flavour tweaks. It doesn't really pursue its civilisation strengths beyond what its agenda instructs it to do...the Vikings don't viking, doing raids etc, so they don't get to take advantage of Harold's and Norway's strengths.

Thirdly, the AI hasn't been modified (or at least, not much) to deal with the new mechanics introduced to the game...so the more content you get, the more leverage you have as a player to beat the AI with.

Lastly is a player problem. There is a culture of constant restarts until you get a start that suits your civ and is quite beneficial to you. That really stacks the deck against the AI that doesn't get the same veto on starts that punish them (not to mention the inherent bonus you get for choosing beneficial starts to you). That's all well and good, and I'm not criticising people here...but you have to bear in mind that it will, by the very nature of the behaviour, make thing it much harder for the AI to present a challenge.

The AI is ok. It'll present a challenge when you first start, particularly if you stick with vanilla. Just bear in mind that it is fighting with one arm behind its back and be aware of your own behaviour that takes advantage of this. It won't stand up to competitive attitudes where you're trying your best to beat, though - its for more casual more roleplay-style gameplay.

NB: There was a science bug that absolutely crippled the AI that was in the game for a couple of years and has only recently been fixed. As a result, there are a lot of complaints on the internet that are no longer valid because the AI doesn't have that problem anymore.

 

[Henri Christophe]

The AI is pretty stupid, they never protect their range units, who is weaker.
With a bit of strategy you can always manover the AI and destroy them, even if they are more advanced.

But this game still hard on deity, because the AI have so many advantageous in early game.

 

[tedhebert]

What really makes me want to weep is when the AI focuses on shooting my encampments instead of units or city

 

[pokiehl]

The AI is dumb. Last civ game I played is Civ beyond earth and i gave up hope on firaxis developers of being competent enough.

As frustrated as all of us can be with certain aspects of these games, I think resorting to personal insults regarding the developers (eg, calling them incompetent) is inappropriate and unwarranted.

Lets for starter, AI don't know how to move and shoot with ranged units in same turn.

I don't know the state of AI in civ6 but I suspect its exactly the same with tiny adjustments to ai programming to take account of new civs.

Civ 5/Civ BE and Civ 6 are entirely different games. The move + shoot bug is in the Civ 5 engine games. Civ 6 never had this problem.

If you haven't actually played this game I think it doesn't make sense to make assumptions about the AI.

 

[robbyextreme]

The AI is dumb. Last civ game I played is Civ beyond earth and i gave up hope on firaxis developers of being competent enough.

Lets for starter, AI don't know how to move and shoot with ranged units in same turn.

I don't know the state of AI in civ6 but I suspect its exactly the same with tiny adjustments to ai programming to take account of new civs.

Even then, in Civ5 the indonesia AI is complete blank,it doesn't know how to expand to islands to take advantage of three unique luxuries that it has access to.

I expect the same of civ7 AI to be completely braindead and I won't be buying it. After all, why pay fifty dollars for no improvement in AI whatsoever. They've had decades to make their AI more competent so I could have more entertaining wars not shooting fishes in a barrel.

So I strongly advise you to not get your hopes up. Civ games is just really just..... an mediocre building race game. Build your granary and library, etc as fast as you can and you're done.

Harsh but true, I routinely come back to Civ4, Civ5, and Civ6 and after a few days of playing I'm fed up with the AI. I already know once I start snowballing the AI will not beat me, they don't punish anything I do or take advantage of anything they have, the game is just a building simulator.