My Yearly "Is the AI Any Good Yet" Thread

[Peng Qi]

Every year I come back to this forum which I once loved so much to ask if the Civ 6 AI is any good yet. The last time I played it was utterly incapable of even remotely handling itself in any aspect of the game whatsoever. It did not know how to move units, plan cities, conduct diplomacy, or do really much of anything. The day I put down this game was the day I watched an AI move in to attack a city state and then, instead of using its units to attack it, it just repeatedly embarked and disembarked them in a nearby lake until they were all dead. I tried some AI mods after that and, while they helped, it wasn't enough to make me feel challenged. Even with the mods, it kind of felt like the Civ V vanilla AI level of intelligent, which isn't enough either.

So: Is it any good yet? Are there any mods available that make it any good yet? I want it to be slightly smarter than Civ V's default AI before I'm willing to pick it up again. So is it anywhere near that?

 

[Mockingbird]

IMO it is fine, Attacks with aircraft, I’ve had land unit landings in force come across the ocean and the AI regularly puts up a good fight. Been playing on emperor of late and only play on the iPad for the convenience these days. I also have a bunch on mods installed that I’ve listed in the iPad forum.

 

[kaspergm]

Short answer is no. The game is programmed so the computer-players can get a semi-functional game out of it, but any actually "intelligence" in its actions is completely absent. It will mindlessly plot down cities with exactly the minimum distance between them (which may or may not be a wise move, but is not based on any actual evaluation of where is optimal to settle), it will mindlessly build wonders like Petra or Chichen Itza on the only of their respective tiles in a city (and it without fail puts the lake-wonder-whose-name-I-can't-remember in either 1-hex lakes or in the end of a lake instead of maximizing water tiles around it), it uses horrible policy cards and religions, etc. etc. It's programmed to build a lot of units and will sometimes even succeed at conquering cities, but it's always only by blindly throwing units against the city until they are either all dead or the city is conquered. They do not understand that if you have melee and ranged/siege units around a city, it should have the melee units fortify until the walls are destroyed, instead they will suicide all their melee units first, and then have all the ranged units sitting back unable to conquer the city. They are less prone to suiciding themselves by embarking than they used to, but that's as far as tactical advancements go.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

We discussed it and, while the AI still have some issues, it seems that it knows very well how to defend itself at last, and the districts placement is not as chaotic as before (for wonders, OTOH, they continue to spam Petra or CHichen if one desert/jungle cities).

 

[Bactrian]

It's noticeably improved, but if AI important to you then I think you'll still be disappointed. Mostly it's still overall pretty passive and fails to properly improve its territory and build up cities. While AI civs are better at warring, barbarians are still a much greater threat. In any case, it's almost always beneficial to go to war as the player because of how well you can do.

 

[bbbt]

It's better but not 'good'. It can be a threat early game, but less so late game. It's not particularly good at beelining and winning.

I wouldn't say (unmodded) V was particularly good either. I'd say it's on par if that's your yardstick.

 

[AriochIV]

Late game, the AI still has a tendency to build lots of Aerodromes and Spaceports, and not use any of them.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Late game, the AI still has a tendency to build lots of Aerodromes and Spaceports, and not use any of them.

In my games, mainly Spaceports - Aerodromes are still rather a rarity, though they seem have seen a slight increase recently.

 

[Solver]

My memory of the Civ5 AI is different, I think the Civ6 AI was well ahead of Civ5 comparing the games on release. The Civ5 AI was fundamentally incapable of playing the game, you could conquer 2-3 neighbours with 3 units, and you could defend against an AI invasion with 1 unit.

The Civ6 AI, in any case, keeps improving. Most recently, with the NFP updates, it's gotten better at defending, and can at least perform a naval invasion versus a poorly-defended area. It still struggles in two key areas.

One is attacking walled cities. It gets worse the longer the games on. Early on, the AI will probably have a Catapult or two and use it. But later, they don't build enough siege, and the walls get stronger. They never have enough siege to take Renaissance walls or Urban Defenses down, so wars between AI civs devolve into slogs where they kill each other's units, but territory rarely very changes hand.

The other is making use of their land. I don't mean things like optimizing district placement for better adjacency bonuses, but rather more basic tile improvements. It's common for the AI to have unimproved resource tiles near its core cities going into the second half of the game, and they'll be very slow at repairing pillaged improvements - over the course of a typical game, the AI will miss out on a lot of yields due to this.

 

[Abaxial]

I am getting the impression that city states have significantly better AI than empires, perhaps because they have less to worry about.

 

[Peng Qi]

Dang. Sounds like it's still basically not worth playing. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever have another 4X game that's worth playing. I might even go back to Civ 4 in desperation at this point.

 

[Bactrian]

I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever have another 4X game that's worth playing.

I'm cautiously hopeful for Humankind even though I largely bounced off Endless Legends.

 

[oedali]

Tactical AI has improved a lot from vanilla but strategic AI is still very lacking. Does not pursue victory, doesn't try to win, just "hangs out". Usually too easy to friend and stayed allied/friends with the entire game.

All that said I still enjoy playing the game, it's just a different kind of game now so gotta set expectations real

I have tried AI mods but they have their own flaws. Eg Real Stategy tries to fix the strategic short comings but I have tried it multiple times and what ends up happening is AI goes for early religion a lot less often and makes RV too easy

 

[AriochIV]

It's definitely playable, but the AI won't knock your socks off. But if you're expecting that, I don't know of ANY current 4X titles that will impress you with their AI.

I'm cautiously hopeful for Humankind even though I largely bounced off Endless Legends.

I've found Amplitude's AI to be especially poor (as their games seem to be built around multiplayer), so that hope may be a faint one, if you're talking about impressive AI.

 

[Pfeffersack]

It's definitely playable, but the AI won't knock your socks off. But if you're expecting that, I don't know of ANY current 4X titles that will impress you with their AI.

Pandora: First Contact and Warhammer 40k Gladius - Relics of War have a pretty good AI both on strategic and tactical level - it already gives me decent challenge on the difficulty without any AI boni. However, the scope of this games in narrower and more (Pandora) or almost solely (Wh 40k Gladius) focussed on combat. Pandora has the basic "civil" civ stuff like city buildings, tech and diplomacy, but overall this features are less complex and complicated (which probably helps the AI), while in Gladius city building is essentitally base building to crank out units.

 

[Solver]

I am getting the impression that city states have significantly better AI than empires, perhaps because they have less to worry about.

It's not really better AI, but city-states appear competent because they are so limited. They cannot build too many districts because of pop limits, they will have improved their tiles because its only takes 3 Builders for the longest time, and they're not allowed to build Settlers or Wonders. So they will get a Trader early, a district corresponding to their type, but mostly they will just build units, which makes them look strong. Moreover, they will build more ranged units because those don't require resources, which makes city-states quite decent at defending themselves.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Moreover, they will build more ranged units because those don't require resources, which makes city-states quite decent at defending themselves.

CSs don't require resources to build any units.

 

[Solver]

Right, that's definitely correct, I forgot. I see them with Musketmen and no Niter all the time. They do seem not to have cavalry though, at least in my experience, going for the cheaper units.

 

[Bactrian]

I've found Amplitude's AI to be especially poor (as their games seem to be built around multiplayer), so that hope may be a faint one, if you're talking about impressive AI.

I meant it in a more general sense of "another 4X game that's worth playing," but in any case I haven't played much of the Endless games so you're probably right.

 

[Brutus2]

It's definitely playable, but the AI won't knock your socks off. But if you're expecting that, I don't know of ANY current 4X titles that will impress you with their AI.

I have to agree. I'm not saying devs shouldn't invest in making the AI the best it can be and of course any AI improvements would be very welcome but to expect some human level AI opponent is so unrealistic. No game has AI that will be challenging to any competent human player. If you want challenging opponents play multiplayer. Civ IV does not have better AI, the "stacks of doom" were just so simplistic and boring that it doesn't require much thought for AI or human player. Civ6 is a very fun single player experience and a very challenging multiplayer experience, just like other 4x strategy games.