[GS] Limiting to single victory condition

[rgp151]

I was thinking that maybe part of the problem for the AI is that with all of the victory conditions, the AI is just too unfocused, so I tried limiting the victory condition to a single type. I did two games, 1 Domination and 1 Science. It didn't really seem to help, which seemed surprising. On domination, other than a single early surprise war, none of the civs seemed to make any effort at conquest or focused on building military. On the science one, again, civs were building wonders that were irrelevant to science victory and some were still spamming religion or theater squares, etc.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I tried limiting the victory condition to a single type. I did two games, 1 Domination and 1 Science. It didn't really seem to help, which seemed surprising.

The AI doesn't look at whether or not victory conditions are on. Turning them off just weakens them as they may pursue something that is not available, as you found.

 

[rgp151]

The AI doesn't look at whether or not victory conditions are on. Turning them off just weakens them as they may pursue something that is not available, as you found.

Yeah, wow. That seems like a huge and obvious oversight. I mean if anything could be done to improve the AI, that seems like it would be a very easy fix.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

That seems like a huge and obvious oversight.

Not really, the AI should be concentrating on it's Empire not winning which is a concept it shouldn't be worrying about.

 

[rgp151]

Not really, the AI should be concentrating on it's Empire not winning which is a concept it shouldn't be worrying about.

That doesn't make any sense

 

[Leyrann]

Yeah, wow. That seems like a huge and obvious oversight. I mean if anything could be done to improve the AI, that seems like it would be a very easy fix.

I would like to refer to my signature. If the AI is playing to win, people complain that it's too gamey. If it's roleplaying, people complain it's dumb. There is no winning for Firaxis. Either you're complaining that the AI pursues victory conditions that are turned off, or someone else complains that the AI values tourism at zero if culture victory is disabled.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I would like to refer to my signature. If the AI is playing to win, people complain that it's too gamey. If it's roleplaying, people complain it's dumb. There is no winning for Firaxis. Either you're complaining that the AI pursues victory conditions that are turned off, or someone else complains that the AI values tourism at zero if culture victory is disabled.

This seems very black and white

The AI in Civ6 simultaneously fails at both to be honest, and it’s the worst AI of all the Civs I played a lot.

You can easily have the AI ignore victory conditions that are turned off, there is at least on AI mod that does exactly that

Personally I find the best challenge the AI gives me is when I play the Basic Game rules, Legendary Starts, Diety, Online Speed, 150 turn limits, plentiful resource, the number of civs and CS’s at max and everything but Score turned off.

This minimizes most of the AI weaknesses except that it cannot wage war

 

[Leyrann]

This seems very black and white

The AI in Civ6 simultaneously fails at both to be honest, and it’s the worst AI of all the Civs I played a lot.

You can easily have the AI ignore victory conditions that are turned off, there is at least on AI mod that does exactly that

Personally I find the best challenge the AI gives me is when I play the Basic Game rules, Legendary Starts, Diety, Online Speed, 150 turn limits, plentiful resource, the number of civs and CS’s at max and everything but Score turned off.

This minimizes most of the AI weaknesses except that it cannot wage war

And you very much prefer an AI that gives you the hardest challenge possible. I'm not faulting you for that, in fact that's also my personal preference. However, there are plenty of people who have a different view. Someone will always be dissatisfied. Me, personally, I'd really want to see more time devoted to the AI in general so that it's just better, but I'm not going to express a strong opinion on whether it should roleplay or go for the win because I recognize that's something that cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, unless maybe there's some sort of toggle where people can turn on or off whether the AI actively pursues a victory condition throughout the game.

 

[aieeegrunt]

And you very much prefer an AI that gives you the hardest challenge possible. I'm not faulting you for that, in fact that's also my personal preference. However, there are plenty of people who have a different view. Someone will always be dissatisfied. Me, personally, I'd really want to see more time devoted to the AI in general so that it's just better, but I'm not going to express a strong opinion on whether it should roleplay or go for the win because I recognize that's something that cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, unless maybe there's some sort of toggle where people can turn on or off whether the AI actively pursues a victory condition throughout the game.

Difficulty levels exist for this exact reason.

The biggest shortcoming of this AI is it cannot wage war very well, and the two biggest reasons for that is stacking and city strikes

 

[Leyrann]

Difficulty levels exist for this exact reason.

The biggest shortcoming of this AI is it cannot wage war very well, and the two biggest reasons for that is stacking and city strikes

I do agree it would be preferable if difficulty levels altered the strategies the AI used, rather than giving them bonuses, with the AI just being able to match the player on even footing on Deity, but sadly that's just not the world we live in.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I do agree it would be preferable if difficulty levels altered the strategies the AI used, rather than giving them bonuses, with the AI just being able to match the player on even footing on Deity, but sadly that's just not the world we live in.

We should be able to get a LOT closer than Civ6 did. Previous titles I couldn’t just build walls and encampments in a few key cities and basically not have to build an army

Previous titles put up a much better fight at much lower difficulties. Diety is the new Prince

Getting rid of city strikes and 1UPT would be a good start

 

[Noble Zarkon]

We should be able to get a LOT closer than Civ6 did. Previous titles I couldn’t just build walls and encampments in a few key cities and basically not have to build an army

If you knew what you were doing in Civ IV you didn't even need that! The way diplomacy worked you could guarantee your own safety pretty easily depending on your opponents.

Previous titles put up a much better fight at much lower difficulties. Diety is the new Prince

Totally disagree, I find Civ VI generally harder than the earlier versions.

Getting rid of city strikes

This is one of the best changes they have made!! In older versions you could send a lone warrior to capture a city early on, you just can't do that now which makes the game much harder.

Difficulty levels exist for this exact reason.

Difficulty levels are about making the game more challenging, it still remains that the AI shouldn't know it is playing a game nor be aware of victory conditions - it should be building it's Empire as best in can based on it's own strengths and weaknesses and the terrain around it. IMO the AI are there to provide background and flavour. It totally wrecks the immersion when they become aware they are playing a game.

 

[Leyrann]

Difficulty levels are about making the game more challenging, it still remains that the AI shouldn't know it is playing a game nor be aware of victory conditions - it should be building it's Empire as best in can based on it's own strengths and weaknesses and the terrain around it. IMO the AI are there to provide background and flavour. It totally wrecks the immersion when they become aware they are playing a game.

And here we have the other viewpoint!

 

[rgp151]

Difficulty levels are about making the game more challenging, it still remains that the AI shouldn't know it is playing a game nor be aware of victory conditions - it should be building it's Empire as best in can based on it's own strengths and weaknesses and the terrain around it. IMO the AI are there to provide background and flavour. It totally wrecks the immersion when they become aware they are playing a game.

I couldn't disagree more. I don't know of any other 4X game with that philosophy either. If you are the only one that knows its playing a game and is driving for victory then there is zero challenge. That turns the game into SimCity. Why even have victory conditions at all?

 

[aieeegrunt]

I couldn't disagree more. I don't know of any other 4X game with that philosophy either. If you are the only one that knows its playing a game and is driving for victory then there is zero challenge. That turns the game into SimCity. Why even have victory conditions at all?

A BIG part of the problem with Civ6 is that (unless Civ5 was worse, I didn’t play it much) Civ6 has a ton of Overpowered Munchkin Exploit nonsense that is often the complete opposite of “normal” 4X themes

Look at Era Score. Optimum play often involves things like deliberatly delaying scoring points till after the arbitrary era change if you have already hit the Golden Age threshold. At that point you are actually hurting yourself scoring more points. I’ve done ridiculous nonsense like swapping production on wonders or stopping a ship about to complete the circumvallation so as to not “waste” era points

How do you code an AI to do that reliably?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

That turns the game into SimCity. Why even have victory conditions at all?

Because otherwise it's Sim City with no defined end in sight

 

[Rg339]

Difficulty levels exist for this exact reason.

The biggest shortcoming of this AI is it cannot wage war very well, and the two biggest reasons for that is stacking and city strikes

The AI 100% cannot handle walls. It cannot take enemy cities by storm quickly enough. Once walls go up, it takes 1 city, and the attrition rates it suffers during capture makes it completely unable to continue to make gains in the war.

I don’t understand how the strength of walls was never really addressed. I have always felt that it is the #1 determinant in the AI’s failures.

In thousands of games, I have seen one AI that managed to capture 4 capitals. That’s it, just 4. And that’s the run away first place.

The player in civ6 never gets the experience of fighting against Rome. The actual Rome. A big behemoth state that outnumbers you horribly, which covers multiple continents, and controls 1/3 of the world’s entire population. You never get that because once the walls go up, that’s it, AI’s done. It’s the worst thing about civ6, which I otherwise enjoy very much.

Rant concluded

 

[aieeegrunt]

The AI 100% cannot handle walls. It cannot take enemy cities by storm quickly enough. Once walls go up, it takes 1 city, and the attrition rates it suffers during capture makes it completely unable to continue to make gains in the war.

I don’t understand how the strength of walls was never really addressed. I have always felt that it is the #1 determinant in the AI’s failures.

In thousands of games, I have seen one AI that managed to capture 4 capitals. That’s it, just 4. And that’s the run away first place.

The player in civ6 never gets the experience of fighting against Rome. The actual Rome. A big behemoth state that outnumbers you horribly, which covers multiple continents, and controls 1/3 of the world’s entire population. You never get that because once the walls go up, that’s it, AI’s done. It’s the worst thing about civ6, which I otherwise enjoy very much.

Rant concluded

Ya it’s one of my house rules that I don’t build walls for this reason

I had one game as Gaul where I built Walls, Oppidum and Encampments in my border amd coastal cities, had exactly one of the strongest melee and ranged units, and had no reason to build a military. The overlapping strikes vaporized any invaders and I basically Next Turned till whatever victory bucket filled

One hilariously cruel trick is to let them invade and then teleport that one Great Engineer who does what I assume is earthbending and magically builds walls in their faces. Then there is the frantic scramble where you city strike them to death as 1UPT and low movement allowance makes a retreat impossible.

This brings me to my next point where a city that is under siege and in the red health somehow builds a wall and is back to full health. As well as being a garbage mechanic it also has zero basis in reality; a city with no walls in red health means my troops have almost completely overrun it. How are they building walls? Earthbending?

 

[Abaxial]

I made a few tests with observed games and it seems that the one victory condition the AI *can* manage is Diplomatic Victory. What other victory types have you seen the AI achieve?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

What other victory types have you seen the AI achieve?

Space and Culture are the most common.