So they still haven't fixed the AI with regard to war.

[Takfloyd]

(This was posted as a reply to a different thread and moved here)

It's still completely braindead at combat and can't take a city. In fact, it can't even take an unwalled, undefended city from a human player two eras behind it in tech. It's that bad. Its units will just aimlessly walk around in your territory and get constantly distracted when they could easily have taken your city if they just attacked it.

It has, however, gotten a bit better at empire management and diplomacy... but only a little bit. It's still horrifically easy to abuse for trade deals and endless friendship declarations.

Oh, and it has finally been taught how to use air units now. It only took two expansions. Sadly, you'll likely already have won the game by the time they start building any, even on Deity.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

It would seem that modern AI's could be trained to do Civ combat very easily. Likely to the point where it would crush or at least frustrate human players.

I remember I stopped playing chess on my Apple IIe when it would beat me every time. Thoughts?

Chess is 6 types of units, 32 in quantity, on a 8x8 plain field that could fit in the corner of unimportant continent in Civ. The units are always the same, no promotions, no upgrades, no economy to research, produce, and maintain them. Even their interactions are basic, he-who-attacks-kills-without-exhaustion, leaving movement as the only differentiator. Chess is 1UPT, while stacking includes all 1UPT moves, and then deeper and deeper layers of possibilities and risks.

No AI in the current decade will be able to threaten a top Civ player on equal footing. Maybe we'll see one in 2020-2030, more likely not. Don't confuse the masses of Civ6 deity players, or the hasty timer MP games, with what top players will be bringing to the table if there were an actual worthy challenge.

Question to people in this thread... How would you feel if the AI completely smashed you in war without any cheating?

When I was a kid playing Civ I, the AI could beat me even at the levels I had bonuses. I didn't care because I loved the game. When I play, there's no past or future, no victory or defeat. There's only the turn, and I'm playing the perfect one.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

(This was posted as a reply to a different thread and moved here)

It's still completely braindead at combat and can't take a city. In fact, it can't even take an unwalled, undefended city from a human player two eras behind it in tech. It's that bad. Its units will just aimlessly walk around in your territory and get constantly distracted when they could easily have taken your city if they just attacked it.

It has, however, gotten a bit better at empire management and diplomacy... but only a little bit. It's still horrifically easy to abuse for trade deals and endless friendship declarations.

Oh, and it has finally been taught how to use air units now. It only took two expansions. Sadly, you'll likely already have won the game by the time they start building any, even on Deity.

Argh. I've been waiting since 2010 for Civ to have a decent AI. This 1 upt was the worst decision ever.

 

[Aristos]

Argh. I've been waiting since 2010 for Civ to have a decent AI. This 1 upt was the worst decision ever.

You are probably right. Fortunately, the free market still works in some areas, and the main ideologue is paying the price.

 

[John.B.C]

You're right, they haven't. I upped the difficulty again for my second game because I just steamrolled the entire map with Hungary in the previous one, despite having played at a higher difficulty than I used to...[] Maybe it's time to uninstall Civ VI for a while and try IV or V with Vox Populi...

Don't play Vox populi, it will be too much for your nervous system! The tactical AI in vox populi has become so incredibly good that I get goosebumbs thinking about it. Here's a few quotes from the two latest releases:

I don't get nearly as much time to play VP these days, but I was able to start a game in this version and I have to chime in and say that it's absolutely night and day with the AI now between 1-29 and the 12-18 version I was playing before. I thought the tactical AI was good then, but now it truly feels like playing against another human in a multiplayer game. In my current game I started as the Huns with France, Inca, and Zulu as my continental neighbors. I raided France early for their worker units so I could focus my production on military units (and Stonehenge since I was able to found my capital on Marble), and they furiously fought back to recapture their workers. I ended up losing my Pathfinder in the process due to a clever flanking attack from France's own Pathfinder.

Then not much later the Zulu showed up at my doorstep with an invasion army of 4 warriors and 2 archers (with two fresh spearmen and two more archers joining them 5-6 turns later). I only had warriors to defend myself with since I was rushing Military Tactics for Tarkhan (playing with 3/4UC mod) and then Horse Archers, and I had to hold off the invasion for 4 turns before I could pop out my first Tarkhan. Unfortunately the Zulu swarmed to my only improved source of horses and I lost 2 warriors trying to defend it. Sure enough the Zulu pillaged the horses 1 turn before I could spawn my Tarkhan and I had to wait til my (slave) workers finished improving a second source of horses that I luckily had control of. Once I was able to produce that first Tarkhan the conflict turned into an offensive war as I was able to capture both of the Zulu archers and then in turn start killing/capturing the first four warriors they sent just in time for their second wave to arrive with spearmen, more archers, and a chariot archer. The Zulu DID manage to retreat one of their warriors behind my lines and hid them for a few turns before they came back and tried to pillage my improved tiles while my forces were otherwise occupied. I've never seen the AI do that before! In the end I managed to capture and convert 3 archers, 1 spearman, the chariot archer, and a few warrior units before I got a white peace. Considering that I hadn't researched Trapping or Bronze Working this was a huge boost to my military, and I'm sure the Zulu are going to be extremely happy to see their own forces at their borders once the peace treaty expires.

The AI tactical decision making these days is very strong. On deity, my only really consistent strategy for conquering is naval. Otherwise, they can stop me just like I would stop me. They're even executing naval invasions!

Am I the only one seeing AI found super fast? 140th turn on Epic (roughly 95 on normal) all religions were gone. Like, completely. I had goddess of beauty, stonerhedge, pyramids and some other ancient wonder and the holy mountain of +6 Faith and I FAILED to found. Geyserbo what have you done

AI's very aggressive, too. They attack like crazy, and they're even more efficient. They also pillage way more efficiently. Well done.

In my current game I just watched Genghis rape one of Arabia's cities along my border. Yeah. Definitely more efficient.

I will say, the AI is no longer bashful about pillaging sea tiles. Hot damn, I'm getting torn up in the water right now!

I seem to recall some users saying it was 'impossible' for the AI to ever pillage well. Pie on their faces! Pie on all of you! Sweet glorious pillager's pie! Mwaha.

I won't stop until all of your cities burn.

G

Just reporting. The early game is more dynamic. I (Ethiopia) started in a jungle, with Oda at the southwest, Maria northwest and Harun at the north. It is a little cramped our continent, so we all took Tradition except Harun that went Progress. None took Authority (maybe it should have been me).
Well, Japan dowed me very early. I can't blame Oda, since I placed one city very close to his capital. Defending in the jungle against warriors is quite easy. Once Japan withdraw, he settled too near to Portugal, which caused Maria to attack him and take that city. A bunch of turns later, Arabia attacked Portugal and took two cities for him and liberated the Japanese city. I guess I have to be friends with Maria now. All this before medieval.

Since the AI was teached to defend better last year, I hadn't seen such dynamism in a game.

Yeah, I got the feeling atleast the early game is like playing now one difficulty higher. Starting near Greece is kinda screwing now. Ive seen conquered cities before turn 80 too.

Yeah, I thought Gazebo said some time back, that the AI had become almost "as good as it gets", sort of... Well... Apparently not! I'm really amazed by how good it has become; I couldn't see it coming in my wildest fantasies.

This is the reason I'll probably never be able to play Civ 6 again. ​

 

[rbricker99]

Agree with the quotes above. I think a sufficiently powerful AI playing Civ 6 against itself over and over again could make combat very challenging. I assume you would start with simply combat and work up to the resource management, but reading and watching some of the things that the AI's playing Go or Starcraft do makes me think it's here today if we want it.

 

[ThunderLizard2]

Just played a CIV IV BTS game on Monarch and got crushed. The AI in CIV IV is so far ahead of V and VI.

 

[Zinowolf]

Just played a CIV IV BTS game on Monarch and got crushed. The AI in CIV IV is so far ahead of V and VI.

That's insane :|

 

[Unconquered Sun]

That's insane :|

Not at all. My initial assessment of Civ6 vanilla Deity was approximately as difficult as CIV:Monarch. The two expansions hardly made it more difficult.

 

[Zinowolf]

Not at all. My initial assessment of Civ6 vanilla Deity was approximately as difficult as CIV:Monarch. The two expansions hardly made it more difficult.

I was agreeing with you. Its crazy that a 20 year old game is more sophisticated than a modern one.

 

[tab]

This is extremely disappointing. I stopped playing after a 100 turn game in Civ 6 rise and fall. The AI in RF was not only stupid but also annoying as hell. I mean even if my city is surrounded by AI, it would still prefer to being bombarded by the city every turn than to attack the city. After this pathetic display I uninstalled the game.

To be clear: I am not talking about human intellect level AI, just a human mimicking AI would be sufficient for this game (eg Vox Populi). I love this game and Im only writing this so that AI situation may be improved. You might love this game for its other features but Im specifically talking about AI. Ive played the game on emperor and am not one of those diety level players

I was hopeful when the developers said in one of their streams that there is something for everyone in GS including AI improvement. But after reading what people have to say about GS I cant even gather the strength to start another game of GS.

This is truly sad. This is a game which i love and have loved since CIV III. Why are you hell bent on destroying this game? I can barely stomach the CLASH OF CLANS styled art but the AI is what is killing the game for me. To all the people saying play multiplayer if you dont like the AI, I dont have any friends playing this game and I dont have the time to play online with other people.

To me and a lot of people here strong AI was the only real attraction in CIV 6. How hard is it to program at least a logical AI. If you got a city surrounded: do kamikaze attack and capture the city to prevent bombardment. The enemy is making cavalry, make anti cav, bombardment units to counter melee, anti air for air unit. How hard is to program a BASIC ROCK, PAPER, SCISSOR AI. Even after 2 expansions the game is garbage. The science and diplomatic victory seem so hollow. If I see an AI about to achieve science victory I would rather destroy each and everyone of my units in kamikaze attacks than to let that happen. So why cant the AI be programmed to do that.

I dont even want to start on air unit and naval unit bugs. Ill only say this With 4 bombardment air units and naval units you can take any coastal city in 5 turns max. Air and Naval Fleets is a concept completely alien to CIV 6 AI.

I cant help but feel extremely bitter and depressed with the direction CIV series is going. It seems that CIV games are now being directed towards a much younger clash of clans and battle royale players instead of hardcore CIV players. The pricing structure also indicates a shift toward EA modeled micro transactions format with each DLC offering little content for extremely high prices ($30 for GS is too high in my opinion). I still bought the game just so you know and all the new features including environmental effects, scenarios, leaders etc pale in comparison to the pathetic AI behind the game and is definitely not worth $30.

I am quite sure they are intentionally not improving the AI as they might want to release an AI focused DLC in the future. This is evident from the fact that both of the 2 DLCs have no real improvements in the AI sector. I would still buy that DLC in a heartbeat despite the fact that it would truly be despicable act on part of firaxis for leaving the game unfinished and myself for buying the dlc which should be part of the game to begin with.

And also to all the people saying that would you enjoy being smashed by the AI and quoting examples of Chess engines; I would much rather be smashed to smithereens by the AI and start another game to get smashed again than having to play with this type of AI. The enjoyment in games does not comes from beating the games alone but knowing that the game could be "OVER" and you might have lost. Its about getting back up and rolling again and again (dark souls ^^) and get to the end. I remember a game in CIV 4 in which every city in my continent was nuked my fleet was overpowered by sub spam by gandi and every tile was destroyed. Indian fleet was at my doorstep and army had already landed on my shores. 50 turns later I was capturing Delhi.

The AI in games like CIV 6 can never overcome human intellect but it must pose serious threat for the game to enjoyable and in the current iteration of CIV the game is far from enjoyable.

 

[LuckyAC]

Chess is 6 types of units, 32 in quantity, on a 8x8 plain field that could fit in the corner of unimportant continent in Civ. The units are always the same, no promotions, no upgrades, no economy to research, produce, and maintain them. Even their interactions are basic, he-who-attacks-kills-without-exhaustion, leaving movement as the only differentiator. Chess is 1UPT, while stacking includes all 1UPT moves, and then deeper and deeper layers of possibilities and risks.

No AI in the current decade will be able to threaten a top Civ player on equal footing. Maybe we'll see one in 2020-2030, more likely not. Don't confuse the masses of Civ6 deity players, or the hasty timer MP games, with what top players will be bringing to the table if there were an actual worthy challenge.



When I was a kid playing Civ I, the AI could beat me even at the levels I had bonuses. I didn't care because I loved the game. When I play, there's no past or future, no victory or defeat. There's only the turn, and I'm playing the perfect one.

I thinkk you are underestimating deep learning - the whole point is to to able to simplify apparently complex problems to the essential elements by approximation. The main difficulty for a Civ Ai is just that Civ runs so slowly that it would be hard to train (and that it's not an interesting enough problem to devote resources to).

 

[bitula]

Civ 6 tactical AI seems quite decent in the early game. On Deity I’ve seen it make almost perfect decisions when occupying cities. It seems that the problem is not with the AI code in general, but balancing issues concerning the whole game, the environment the AI interacts with. When given a sufficient army size which is not split between several invasion fronts (joint war etc.) the AI seems to perform well (at least on land). As a conclusion, I believe simple tweaks in xml and scripts can make a significant difference. Tweaks in DLL source can make huge difference. Thing is, when the AI is outnumbered it doesn’t matter whether it attacks or just moves aimlessly cause neither of these would be perceivably better, so this is not a valid case for making conclusions. And yes, given sufficient time and priority to it, it is not that hard (as some imagine) to make a decent AI for a complex game like CIV. It’s just time consuming. (Very time consuming…).

 

[Arilian]

It seems like they afraid to make the game more difficult

At least, when someone would assign design resources to the AI, someone from management throw them out of the window....DO YOU THINK PLAYERS WANT TO LOOSE? THEY WANT TO FEEL LIKE TO BE A STRATEGIC GENIUS! Well I that would be nice to feeling, but it would imply that the enemy is not completely hopeless.

To be honest, the beginning is deity can be difficult for me (but also enjoyable because of this), and sometime I loose some games because I try to build a wonder or over extend cities, but after the medieval era, it is completely hopeless for the AI

 

[manarod]

The real problem in civ5 and 6 is that you can win without losing units. It's all about tatics, while in civ4 was more about the strategic aspect (the creation of units). In civ4 you must loose units to win and you constant need to build more, in civ6 you can have the same units you build in the ancient era! in civ4 the ai wins because of numbers, it could be an horrible tactician but the numbers of unit are more important. In civ6 the player can destroy any number of ai units because tactics is all that matter. Keep in mind, in civ4 even on marathon you can build units in 1 turn in a superspecializied city, in civ6 the cost of a tanks is so high that even loose one is a tragedy. that's why civ4 seems better, is the warfare system that's better

 

[Arilian]

You can build a tank in 3 turn quite easily in civ 6, but you are right mostly - you don't need to build it you can have that war chariot promoted from the ancient era.
In my last game I was able to buy tank for 270 golds (one military city state and democracy does this) while earning 2000gpt, so only the oil was the hindering factor, but I still used my old very well promoted tanks to fighting as new tanks would only waste oil.
Indeed 1 UP is the biggest problem here.

Do you think CIV would not be civ anymore with Many unit per title and there would be a tactical battle screen when a fight occurs? It was done in many 4x games, and I usually liked it.

 

[isau]

The real problem in civ5 and 6 is that you can win without losing units. It's all about tatics, while in civ4 was more about the strategic aspect (the creation of units). In civ4 you must loose units to win and you constant need to build more, in civ6 you can have the same units you build in the ancient era! in civ4 the ai wins because of numbers, it could be an horrible tactician but the numbers of unit are more important. In civ6 the player can destroy any number of ai units because tactics is all that matter. Keep in mind, in civ4 even on marathon you can build units in 1 turn in a superspecializied city, in civ6 the cost of a tanks is so high that even loose one is a tragedy. that's why civ4 seems better, is the warfare system that's better

Basically this. Or more specifically, what is broken in Civ 5 and Civ 6 is there is no cost associated with healing. If healing cost Production, balance would be achievable even with the 1 unit per tile rules.

If you had to expend resources to heal your units, players would work much harder to avoid costly conflicts.

 

[Bradypus]

Basically this. Or more specifically, what is broken in Civ 5 and Civ 6 is there is no cost associated with healing. If healing cost Production, balance would be achievable even with the 1 unit per tile rules.

If you had to expend resources to heal your units, players would work much harder to avoid costly conflicts.

What I disliked the most about civ 4 and 3 is the stacking of units. There is no tactics involved. The bigger pile beats the smaller pile. I just remember seeing cavalry piles and whenever one unit got damaged, it would hide behind the others. So ultimately the larger pile just won every time. In CIV 5 and 6 you have to take into consideration positioning so much more.

But I agree that healing poses an issue at times. Like positioning yourself on a farm just so you can pillage it back up to full health if need be, or saving a promotion for an instant heal. In that regard expending resources to heal is interesting. Or at least change how promotions work either by requiring full health prior to promotion or just removing or reducing the health gained. Also gaining health from pillaging shouldn't be a thing.

 

[manarod]

Yes, free healing is a problem. there is only a threshold: the complete destruction of an unit. The human player knows how to avoid it and to have a cost free war. War should be first a strategic cost and only a small part of tactic

 

[bonafide11]

I was agreeing with you. Its crazy that a 20 year old game is more sophisticated than a modern one.

Not really. Civ IV was not "more sophisticated", it's much simpler, so it's easier to program the AI. And this is from someone who loved Civ IV more than any version of the game, I've played 2000+ hours of it.