Post-patch gameplay experience - AI

[Magil]

It's funny, because in Civ V the AI would frequently suicide its units over and over again into a deathtrap of ranged units. In VI, they give the AI even more boosts and free stuff, and took the lesson to heart... a little too much. Now the AI has an enormous military advantage and steadfastly refuses to utilize it in any fashion that could be considered competent. It is incredibly timid. Seriously, if it has 5x the military force it can afford to take some costly attacks!

Really strange how 1UPT warfare is turning out.

 

[Banners]

Yes, even with the patch the AI is useless. In my current game, everyone considers me a Warmonger (for the justifiable capture of a small city hundreds of years ago) but no-one attacks. The Denouncements auto-renew, and I am universally hated, but even though my Capital is defended by a lone Pikeman, and even though I am leading in Science, I just keep plodding on and no-one attacks.

 

[dexters]

Shuffling is not the problem it's knowing when to attack and how long to sustain an attack. Suiciding units isn't really the solution either

As a general rule AI will shuffle to seige your cities so they can't heal before going in for the kill. Preventing the seiges happenning will often prevent the direct attack from happening

It's a bit too predictable and easy to exploit but when the AI pulls it off your city is toast.

I lost my 2nd city early on in my recent immortal game to this so the AI certainly knows how to take cities

As the game is apparently logging our games I'm hopeful they can gleam something from those logs and perhaps make the AI less predictable

Increasing pillage flavour is my recommendation as it will force players to defend more tiles and open gaps for seiges to happen. Already see an improvement after patch and all they did on the battle AI front is improve AIs handling of units that can't move and shoot in the same turn. Nothing on general battle AI yet.

 

[Mathias Rex]

Mostly AI still doesn't upgrade units, but my recent deity game, Gorgo has swordsman at turn 40, and infantry in 1300 AD. I can't even scratch her infantry with my crossbowman and swordsman.

 

[Mathias Rex]

Mostly AI still doesn't upgrade units, but my recent deity game, Gorgo has swordsman at turn 40, and infantry in 1300 AD. I can't even scratch her infantry with my crossbowman and swordsman.

I checked, she got the infantry from a Great General.

 

[Marvinlegend]

I actually lost a city to a Deity AI after the Patch. But it was a city I have taken from then in a war before that.
(I retook the city two rounds later and annexd the AI shortly after that, but the AI was actually quick enough to get the city before I could rearrange my troops)

 

[RealHuhn]

I checked, she got the infantry from a Great General.

Man, you got my hopes up for a second. But I couldn't really believe it anyway haha.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sure, but we paid good money a month ago, this is not beta. I can accept bugs, imbalances and glitches but the single player game is, for me at least, not worth playing atm.

This is beta.* The AI, UI, balance, and bugs will be OK in ~3-4 years (after the final patch of the second expansion.)

*just not officially

 

[RealHuhn]

I think most stuff could be solved when the AI actually starts to upgrade units.

In general, it's good that the AI is afraid to lose too many troops in an attack. But this problem can back fire when they attack with outdated units because city strength looks too strong for them probably.
Believe it or not but the AI even does a few things better than in CIV5, for example ranged units can actually walk and shoot on the same turn. Revolutionary, I know, but still an important step in the right direction.

 

[Mathias Rex]

Man, you got my hopes up for a second. But I couldn't really believe it anyway haha.

To tell the true it was a smart move from the AI to get this great general with patronage. This was the only way she can avoid her city being captured by me. And the swordsman upgrade was real at about turn 40.

 

[Magil]

Shuffling is not the problem it's knowing when to attack and how long to sustain an attack. Suiciding units isn't really the solution either

As a general rule AI will shuffle to seige your cities so they can't heal before going in for the kill. Preventing the seiges happenning will often prevent the direct attack from happening

It's a bit too predictable and easy to exploit but when the AI pulls it off your city is toast.

I lost my 2nd city early on in my recent immortal game to this so the AI certainly knows how to take cities

As the game is apparently logging our games I'm hopeful they can gleam something from those logs and perhaps make the AI less predictable

Increasing pillage flavour is my recommendation as it will force players to defend more tiles and open gaps for seiges to happen. Already see an improvement after patch and all they did on the battle AI front is improve AIs handling of units that can't move and shoot in the same turn. Nothing on general battle AI yet.

I actually lost a city to a Deity AI after the Patch. But it was a city I have taken from then in a war before that.
(I retook the city two rounds later and annexd the AI shortly after that, but the AI was actually quick enough to get the city before I could rearrange my troops)

Sometimes the AI will attack and take cities, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule. It could certainly afford to be more aggressive, considering its massive military bonus.

 

[Tech Osen]

Maybe the AI is just afraid of the warmonger penalty.

 

[dexters]

Sometimes the AI will attack and take cities, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule. It could certainly afford to be more aggressive, considering its massive military bonus.

There has been no combat AI improvements yet in the last patch except improving AI handling of catapult style bombard units. So it's too early to tell what they plan to do here to make the AI more competitive

Since you quoted my whole post - I'll reiterate my view that agressiveness and suiciding some units may be a small part of the solution but is not the solution. So I doubt passively Increasing unit agressiveness is going to fix much except give the illusion the AI is attacking better.

I pointed out in my post why the AI takes its time to attack - because it wants to lay seige to cities to keep it from healing, and are much more conservative with its units, often retreating damaged umits to heal right away instead of pillaging and healing by standing their ground to force human players to commit resources and forces. Both these preferences is easy for a human player to exploit.

The solution is to add some variability to ai decision making and maybe increase preference to start the attack before the seige is complete more often.

 

[Magil]

Since you quoted my whole post - I'll reiterate my view that agressiveness and suiciding some units may be a small part of the solution but is not the solution. So I doubt passively Increasing unit agressiveness is going to fix much except give the illusion the AI is attacking better.

I pointed out in my post why the AI takes its time to attack - because it wants to lay seige to cities to keep it from healing, and are much more conservative with its units, often retreating damaged umits to heal right away instead of pillaging and healing by standing their ground to force human players to commit resources and forces. Both these preferences is easy for a human player to exploit.

I'm aware of the AI tries to siege cities. With that said, I have seen the AI completely surround a city and not attack it if its units are damaged, it's blatantly obvious with city-state sieges. This seems to happen at least as often as they actually taking the city. That's to say nothing of the inherent tactical flaws in delaying attacking a city that can bombard you to set up a siege, without tactics to accommodate that (such as pillaging).

 

[idjit]

I've lost plenty of cities and my capital on occasion to the deity AI (mostly by underestimating the deity AI because of this shuffling)

Had a game where the deity AI was doing its dumb warrior shuffle around my capital. I figured whatever, bip, bip, bip til they sue.

Then out of nowhere in just a turn or two my entire capital was surrounded by knights on every tile with a battering ram (!). Lost my cap the next turn.

From my experience it (mostly) looks like there are two types of wars the deity AI likes to engage in - the senseless wars (I do this cuz I can to annoy you and disrupt your progress) maybe to test your military.

And then the wars that are clearly there to wipe you off the map. If the deity AI decides it wants you dead there is certainly nothing stopping it from doing so. I think this shuffling we are all seeing is the deity AI actually throttling itself from just making deity completely unplayable.

 

[Montezuma's Revenge]

Hmm, I just lost my first game to the AI in Civ VI. Was playing on Emperor difficulty, China, Pangea huge map. Frickin' Aztecs beat me to the space race by 1 turn (my spy need 3 more turns to disable his space port and he was not in nuke range ). So yeah, at least they're able to follow a victory condition post-patch. I started right in the middle of the map and I think my big mistake in this game was trying to be peaceful and turtle up behind a yuuuuge beatiful wall. I ended up being almost in a constant state of war, the AI was always ahead of me in tech and yes they did upgrade their units. They had AT corps while I was still running around with crossbows and musket men. France bugged out at one point, they declared a joint war with Gandhi against me and didn't do anything, probably because we had Pedro inbetween us. They refused any kind of peace for 150+ turns which really took a toll on my amenities. I eventually had to go to war and take out Pedro to get to Catherine. As soon as I started attacking her city she peaced out for her second biggest city. When I warred against Sumeria to stop his space program he had Mech Infantry, Modern Armor and Machine Guns and I didn't see any out-of-date unit, so I would assume he upgraded them.

So I at least think the AI has improved with the science victory, because when I played pre-patch they could be way ahead of me in science and culture and not really do anything until i caught up

 

[IMACIVFAN]

It's funny, because in Civ V the AI would frequently suicide its units over and over again into a deathtrap of ranged units. In VI, they give the AI even more boosts and free stuff, and took the lesson to heart... a little too much. Now the AI has an enormous military advantage and steadfastly refuses to utilize it in any fashion that could be considered competent. It is incredibly timid. Seriously, if it has 5x the military force it can afford to take some costly attacks!

Really strange how 1UPT warfare is turning out.

I see it from another angle. The AI may appear to give up their units. But has it ever crossed your mind that they do that for the difficulty you 've engaged into?

For one time, I see England marched onto a CS with a huge army in early game before Medieval Age.

 

[IMACIVFAN]

Yes, even with the patch the AI is useless. In my current game, everyone considers me a Warmonger (for the justifiable capture of a small city hundreds of years ago) but no-one attacks. The Denouncements auto-renew, and I am universally hated, but even though my Capital is defended by a lone Pikeman, and even though I am leading in Science, I just keep plodding on and no-one attacks.

The AI may at times, like in CIV 5, working towards another type of VICTORY apart from the Domination type, I recall a few games in CIV 5 gave me that.

However, CIV 6 does occasionally points me to nowhere to aim for a victory, or more precisely, I don't know which victory I am heading for apart from a domination. I think it is because I need more time to get to know the new game.