Still don't get AI reasoning

[Ryoga]

"Better" is a relative term here. The AI is competitive on higher level because of huge bonuses. Several on these bonuses are directly related to military. IIRC it has 50% unit cost, 50% unit maintenance and 50% upgrade cost. It doesn't need to "focus" on military to have these bonuses. And it tends to build huge armies late game without using them, or at best attacking other AI that aren't even close to winning the game

If it almost never declares war it won't have any advantage over the human player with these bonuses. And it doesn't matter how inefficiently it moves the units around, you'll be forced to have some military units that will slow down your pursuit for victory somewhat.

The AI gets bonuses in almost every department except for unit strength.
All the bonuses you have mentioned actually translate into an economic bonus, which means the AI ends up having more gold to spend.

It therefore makes little sense to claim that they need to wage war to make use of their bonuses, when they are actually even more useful to win a diplomatic victory (which is actually economic), cultural (which relies a lot on wonders, which they can build fast with their better production) and scientific (where they get a lot of bonuses as well).

But right now the AI is roleplaying too much, and playing to win too little.

I couldn't disagree more with this.
If the AI was actually reloplaying it would act like a leader of a nation would and not like someone who is conscious to be playing a game.

Everything the AI does suggests that they are doing the latter. In the real world there isn't such thing as a "winner", you don't become hostile to a nation just because they are successful, on the contrary you ally with them.

But there's no chance to make solid alliances in civ V because they act like players and there is simply no advantage in being allied with anyone since everyone is de facto a rival since turn 1.

 

[Haggbart]

The AI gets bonuses in almost every department except for unit strength.
All the bonuses you have mentioned actually translate into an economic bonus, which means the AI ends up having more gold to spend.

It therefore makes little sense to claim that they need to wage war to make use of their bonuses, when they are actually even more useful to win a diplomatic victory (which is actually economic), cultural (which relies a lot on wonders, which they can build fast with their better production) and scientific (where they get a lot of bonuses as well).



I couldn't disagree more with this.
If the AI was actually reloplaying it would act like a leader of a nation would and not like someone who is conscious to be playing a game.

Everything the AI does suggests that they are doing the latter. In the real world there isn't such thing as a "winner", you don't become hostile to a nation just because they are successful, on the contrary you ally with them.

But there's no chance to make solid alliances in civ V because they act like players and there is simply no advantage in being allied with anyone since everyone is de facto a rival since turn 1.

But the thing is, they are not efficient on diplomatic or science victories. They are not very efficient in war either, but my point was that the human player on deity will usually go wholeheartedly for a given victory type. The AI does not. Perhaps it should, but it does not. And within that framework, since the AI is a "jack of all trades" because it plays badly and has huge bonuses, the easiest thing to change is to increase the risk of DOW late game. So that the human player can not count on being left in peace. IF, hypothetically, the AI went 100% for a given victory condition, I've would've agreed with you.


What I meant by roleplaying was playing their character traits in the game. You know for sure that certain AI will always backstab you, while many AI personalities are so stable it's boring. The AI does NOT play like a human player, who would 100% of the time DOW when someone was about to win the game.

I don't think we've been playing the same game, because the CiV I've played have had countless games on deity where my neighbours have provided very "solid alliances" in the way that they just sit there and let me win even when they are not close, or have a vastly bigger army than me. In other words: they roleplay their peacefull and stable in-game traits.