The AI Is Still Bad?

[Arcaian]

It already has all of that. It's still really bad.

It really doesn't have all the bonuses it used to, the AI get no free cities when they used to get 2. That's an absurdly large change in how much 'cheating' the AI does.

There's clearly work to be done, but it also seems a very substantial improvement over the last 2 civ games' AI. I wonder what the cause of the inconsistencies are in the AI - I've seen many reports of people just barely holding on to their cities in the Modern era as they try to finish a victory project, and many reports of the AI utterly failing to expand or develop at all. You'd expect it'd be difficulty level, but it doesn't seem to be that. It bodes well, in my opinion - if the inconsistencies are cleaned up and it works at the current good standard for everyone, I think that'll be a really solid increase in AI capabilities from recent civ games. Hell, I've even seen a competently-executed invasion from the old world to the distant lands to attack the player's colonies there. I don't recall naval invasions working well even in the much older civ games that had more competent military AI!

 

[Uberfrog]

I’m having a bit of a headache in my game - Sovereign difficulty.

Both Franklin and Charlemagne declared war early in the Exploration era (I think because I took cities off Franklin during the Antiquity crisis, and they had enough military power built up compared to me). They took their city back, and defended ok. Nothing earth-shattering but certainly not a walk in the park for me.

They are also keeping up with science enough to have Tier 2 units like crossbows, men-at-arms and knights before I do, so my tercios are having a hard time keeping up. Admittedly I haven’t really figured out science in this game yet, so am lagging a little.

So I would say it’s certainly not seeming worse than Civ 5 or 6 at present. The AI is able to build and use units. Haven’t seen them pack or unpack on a commander though.

 

[evonannoredars]

Previous game on third highest difficulty, AI really didn't settle much throughout exploration (well below their limits), and had some really incompetent attacks.
Current game, second highest difficulty, I'm really struggling militarily. Fighting a war against a machiavelli and charlemagne alliance, and they're being quite a threat. I don't know how much of their movements have been intentional, but it's definitely felt like there's some strategy in how they've been responding to me, and that's all that's important for me in the end. I even had a sneak surprise attack at the opposite end of my empire from where the warfare was happening.
Although there have been some noticeable failings, they don't know how to use commanders effectively and love simply wandering around the place with all their units when not at war. I wish they'd fortify and stay put when they don't have anything else to do.

 

[TheGrayFox]

The ai is competent and throws waves of units at you. ive lost prized commanders to it.i suggest you play it at deity/online and tell me its bad i dare you. to win your going to need a frontline army of twenty four units and a replenish train coming in behind them to get a miltary victory. i lost the first three and finally won the fourth. you gotta love the legions when there tanked.
firaxis made a great game.

I don’t have the game so I’m not going to weigh in on AI but I will say telling us that we need to jack the AI to deity, where the AI receive a bunch of unfair advantages including a literal bonus to combat to experience “good ai” isn’t comforting

 

[AriochIV]

After playing a couple of games, my impression that the AI is pretty decent. It does some specific wacky things, but in general it is surprisingly competent at most tasks. It's certainly much better than Civ5 or Civ6 was on release.

 

[Kwami]

After playing a couple of games, my impression that the AI is pretty decent. It does some specific wacky things, but in general it is surprisingly competent at most tasks. It's certainly much better than Civ5 or Civ6 was on release.

That's not my experience at all. I haven't seen the AI do anything competent in the two games that I've played so far.

 

[Cruor]

The ai is competent and throws waves of units at you. ive lost prized commanders to it.i suggest you play it at deity/online and tell me its bad i dare you. to win your going to need a frontline army of twenty four units and a replenish train coming in behind them to get a miltary victory. i lost the first three and finally won the fourth. you gotta love the legions when there tanked.
firaxis made a great game.

It CHEATS on Deity, it isn't competent. On Deity, it gets a flat +8 combat strength, over the player. On top of that, it gets far more influence, so it can "support its self" in a war more than you can. Therefore, you were fighting units that were at a minimum +8 combat power over yours, and Likely +10,11. That isn't competence. That is flat out cheating the likes we have never seen before in Civ. AI always cheated, but not on THAT level. I honestly despair if you think that is good gameplay. In Civ 4, a swordsman is a swordsman. Even on Diety, if your swordsman has combat bonuses, it will kill the AI every time. The AI can just made 2 swordsman for every 1 you can make. In Civ 7, they can make more troops, but also get an INSANE combat bonus which is just 100% over the top cheating. Calling that "competent" and a "great game" is... yikes. And I can beat it. Just lead them to a navigable river, kill them all as they splash around in the water, then the AI will give you some free cities.

 

[Cruor]

Not an expert (yet). But its unfair to expect AI to outmaneuver human player ever in 4X games like civ. With infinite time to think about all the possible outcomes and acting so that you wont make any unfavourable decisions, when possible, AI cannot never do it better. And should not. AI needs quantity instead and with 1upt that will never happen.

I think this game does it about the same as V and VI. It doesnt feel good when you get familiar with it, sure. Still it has that exciting feeling when you get declared suddenly.

Its an videogame like any other. Its for fun and wasting time. Multiplayer aside.

So yeah. AI is still bad. But its not a bad thing. Videogames have certain life span. When you master the game, it does not give you challenge in the end. But there are always millions of ways to make it harder by limiting yourself or roleplaying or what ever.

100% disagree. The AI is bad, and that is bad. Yes, a human will beat any AI eventually. Of course. The difference is, EU4/Stellaris took me a while to figure out (which is fun) and Civ 7 I crushed my first game on Emperor. EU4/Stellaris can still give me a rough game, because the AI can actually use it's army, it doesn't sit idle in a river and let me snipe it. AI was beating me on yields because I didn't know what I was doing, but their army management was so incompetent I beat them. Giving the AI flat combat bonuses is EXTREMELY lazy and lame. The yield bonuses are fine, I don't mind being outnumbers but I do mind flat combat bonuses, that is strait cheating if my bowman can't beat their bowman "just because"

Yes it is a videogame, yes a human will figure it out, yes there is a point where you just master the game. But, the AI could be a lot better, and this was a lazy effort. That is what upsets me. Civ 4 was a lot better on release. Also, IMO, they MADE the games, so we should actually be able to compare fully patched/xpaced civs to a new Civ. Why take steps back? It should only be steps forward. The people saying the AI is competent just have very low standards, sorry, but that is it. I hold these people to higher standards. They earn a paycheck, we shouldn't need modders to fix their game. Modders should be adding niche things, NOT fixing the game to be more playable, which is what they are all doing right now.

 

[StargazingDog]

That's not my experience at all. I haven't seen the AI do anything competent in the two games that I've played so far.

Conversely, the AI in my games is spot on. I am baffled when I see comments like DOES THE AI EVEN BUILD SETTLEMENTS, when I am in mid-antiquity having Napoleon with five and Pachacuti with six while I am fending off Napoleon from taking out my fourth settlement. THE AI DOESNT KNOW HOW TO USE LEADERS when every single war I fight is against an AI army with a leader. THE AI DOESNT EXPAND when the islands are littered with AI settlements.

It's as though people are playing an entirely different game.

 

[pietro1990]

I’m having a bit of a headache in my game - Sovereign difficulty.

Both Franklin and Charlemagne declared war early in the Exploration era (I think because I took cities off Franklin during the Antiquity crisis, and they had enough military power built up compared to me). They took their city back, and defended ok. Nothing earth-shattering but certainly not a walk in the park for me.

They are also keeping up with science enough to have Tier 2 units like crossbows, men-at-arms and knights before I do, so my tercios are having a hard time keeping up. Admittedly I haven’t really figured out science in this game yet, so am lagging a little.

So I would say it’s certainly not seeming worse than Civ 5 or 6 at present. The AI is able to build and use units. Haven’t seen them pack or unpack on a commander though.

Agree AI is actually capable of defending itself. and teching up the splitting of era's helps. the problem i have is the randomness with denoucning and declaring war

 

[Cruor]

Conversely, the AI in my games is spot on. I am baffled when I see comments like DOES THE AI EVEN BUILD SETTLEMENTS, when I am in mid-antiquity having Napoleon with five and Pachacuti with six while I am fending off Napoleon from taking out my fourth settlement. THE AI DOESNT KNOW HOW TO USE LEADERS when every single war I fight is against an AI army with a leader. THE AI DOESNT EXPAND when the islands are littered with AI settlements.

It's as though people are playing an entirely different game.

Not trying to be mean, just factual. The different element is you in your game and us in our game. The game is the same. Maybe you aren't playing efficiently if the AI is challenging you?
- "AI not building settlements": I can't speak for others, but I was specific in my assessment: The AI does not expand much in the ANCIENT era. It DOES put cities on worthless little islands in the mid exploration age. But who cares if they don't even take their own continent? Good land with good resources was just left open and they were below cap. By the mid of the modern age the land is pretty much all taken - but too late. I am already too far ahead.
- "AI doesn't know how to use leaders" As I said, the AI will make a leader, and not defend it well. I will kill the leader, then they will send units without a commander. Or the commander will be sitting out in the open alone. It needs to be coded to ALWAYS be with a unit. preferably 4. It also does not defend it's settlers. This is absolute FACT, backed by multiple people and settlers now have combat strength so it "makes sense" to the dumb AI to not escort them. Forget me, independent people pick their settlers off. I watched it happen.
- "AI Doesn't Expand" It doesn't expand EARLY which is the issue. (yes, it has settlement cap room) There is some code (I'm assuming here) the makes it want to use 3+ cities on island cities, so it has a chance of treasure fleets. The thing is, going over cap by 1 or 2 is just fine and worth it, also the cap goes up... so its ok to cap filling the land on your main continent, you will get more cap to get that treasure fleet city. Also, you said it yourself: The ISLANDS are littered with cities. Those are useless cities. I want them building cities on the mainland or at least the large islands so they can make armies and send them at me. There should be coding for them only to take 1,2,3,4 hex islands ONLY as a last resort, not as a high prio.

 

[Ornen]

Conversely, the AI in my games is spot on. I am baffled when I see comments like DOES THE AI EVEN BUILD SETTLEMENTS, when I am in mid-antiquity having Napoleon with five and Pachacuti with six while I am fending off Napoleon from taking out my fourth settlement. THE AI DOESNT KNOW HOW TO USE LEADERS when every single war I fight is against an AI army with a leader. THE AI DOESNT EXPAND when the islands are littered with AI settlements.

It's as though people are playing an entirely different game.

it is as though I am playing an entirely different game (this is start of Exploration on Immortal difficulty)

 

[Krikkit1]

Yep or just denouncing you for no reason and then i look at the tooltip and there is zero negative modifiers they just denouce you at random

They denounce you because they want negative modifiers.

 

[Taefin]

Stellaris can still give me a rough game, because the AI can actually use it's army, it doesn't sit idle in a river and let me snipe it.

Early game, Stellaris has settings that can challenge a semi-experienced player, similar to how civ6 could with giving bonus settlers and warriors. However, the AI there doesn’t use its navy particularly effectively, dividing into multiple locations, making it incredibly susceptible to divide conquer. I find I have to give that AI a growing bonus of 1% per year to all ship stats including fire rate for it to stay challenging (something like 5-10x normal strength by endgame). It’s just that the economy is complex enough that human (and AI without bonuses) struggle to research and field a navy. I haven’t seen the AI do anything more sophisticated than what Civ7 does, it’s just that enemy fleets moving randomly toward your capital are pretty dangerous as long as their biggest fleet’s power exceeds yours. And I guess they won’t make a suicide jump some of the time. (I love Stellaris btw!)

As you can tell, I am perfectly fine with “CHEATS”, but what I am optimistic about for civ7 is that SOME people are seeing decent AI behavior. There must be some combination of settings that hit a sweet spot where the AI does parts of the game well (maybe not all at once). I see “cheats” as tunable parameters that can be used to access possibly sweet spots where the AI avoids crippling pitfalls while not overwhelming me the player every time.

Currently Immortal/deity are not hitting that. I suspect the problem is the AI might need a crazy combat bonus against IP. I’m seeing AI lose early settlements to armies of 5+ IP units.

Other problems are addressable but situational (parking units in navigable rivers, exposing commanders). Getting the AI to play a complex game well enough that it engages all mechanisms most of the time (albeit not enough to challenge an experienced player) seems like a reasonable place to be at launch. If FXS had time to fine tune emergent behaviors like this by launch, where sizable effort might not even discover the solution, and thus delay launch, it would probably mean their AI team was too large

 

[Cruor]

it is as though I am playing an entirely different game (this is start of Exploration on Immortal difficulty)

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Yup. Thats about what my game looks like. AI is ahead of my for most of Ancient because they just get huge bonuses but as soon as I have a few cities thats it. They are saving all their cities for little 1 tile islands. I would KILL for Old Worlds forced settlement locations in Civ. 1UPT = worst idea ever, forced settlement locations might be the best idea ever.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Not an expert (yet). But its unfair to expect AI to outmaneuver human player ever in 4X games like civ. With infinite time to think about all the possible outcomes and acting so that you wont make any unfavourable decisions, when possible, AI cannot never do it better. And should not. AI needs quantity instead and with 1upt that will never happen.

Outmaneuver is a pretty high bar on the scale with the other end being "makes directly bad moves" and yes, outside games like chess, a "perfect" AI isn't available. However, what is possible is an AI offering a challenge without getting tons of boni by just being able to play the game - and that even without simplifying the games rules. My prime example is here Old World. No, the AI isn't impossible to beat here either, it gets boni on the higher levels as well and a human can even beat it there. The big difference is just: It will mop the floor with you even on the fair level, if you make more than a few errors. It has a sense of how strong it is and seeks to pick the fight were and when it has chances to win. It does it by scouting the battlefield. It can retreat tactically where necessary and even lure you into traps. Again, you can beat it. I currently playing a game where I have gotten the both the numerical and technological upperhand vs. one of the AI civs (writing that, as I easily could come in trouble if another would take the opportunity and attack me. Luckily, I haven't activated the ruthless AI setting or something, so the others will respect the excellent relations) and even here it show what I means: The AI recognizes that it can't save the border city. So it withdraw units instead of sending them one-by-one into death and let me just take the city...and then offered peace, with the concession to me to get that city. I refused, as I have the clear feeling that I will win this time. But is has to be given credit here to how the AI acts both on the tactical and strategic level - it does even the best in a fairly hopeless situation.

BTW, a formal hint to how good the AI is naturally and to what extend it depends on "cheating" might be number of difficulty levels and even more the location of the fair level. The more the fair level is towards the lower end of the scale and the more levels you have with increasing AI bonis, the worse the situation is probably - it is an indicator for that levels with AI penalties aren't really needed, as the fair level already poses little challenge even for an inexperienced player. To my knowlegde, the "fair lvl" for Civ7 is the 2nd lowest...is that correct? That wouldn't be a good sign, neither in comparison with older civ titles nor with other 4X games (OW for example has nine levels, with the the fair one sitting right in the middle!)

 

[stealth_nsk]

It CHEATS on Deity, it isn't competent. On Deity, it gets a flat +8 combat strength, over the player. On top of that, it gets far more influence, so it can "support its self" in a war more than you can. Therefore, you were fighting units that were at a minimum +8 combat power over yours, and Likely +10,11. That isn't competence. That is flat out cheating the likes we have never seen before in Civ. AI always cheated, but not on THAT level. I honestly despair if you think that is good gameplay. In Civ 4, a swordsman is a swordsman. Even on Diety, if your swordsman has combat bonuses, it will kill the AI every time. The AI can just made 2 swordsman for every 1 you can make. In Civ 7, they can make more troops, but also get an INSANE combat bonus which is just 100% over the top cheating. Calling that "competent" and a "great game" is... yikes. And I can beat it. Just lead them to a navigable river, kill them all as they splash around in the water, then the AI will give you some free cities.

AI is not a player, it's game mechanics, it can't cheat. For gameplay the only thing what matter is challenge and AI provides challenge just fine.

You wish to have multiplayer-like experience in single player is not uncommon, but with 1UpT tactical aspect it's just impossible with modern computers

BTW, Civ4 "cheated" even more, but without 1UpT it may appear to you like less "cheating". But technically, AI which produces twice as many units in stack of doom setup, is the same as AI having strength bonus in 1UpT.

 

[Arcaian]

My prime example is here Old World. No, the AI isn't impossible to beat here either, it gets boni on the higher levels as well and a human can even beat it there. The big difference is just: It will mop the floor with you even on the fair level, if you make more than a few errors. It has a sense of how strong it is and seeks to pick the fight were and when it has chances to win. It does it by scouting the battlefield. It can retreat tactically where necessary and even lure you into traps.

It's such a big advantage of the orders system - it's so much easier to make the AI think about these sorts of things when the movement can be done in a couple of turns, instead of a dozen. If you didn't have the orders, the movement system in old world would be so frustrating, but that amount of movement is so good for the AI

 

[King Jason]

Strong A.I. is obviously not a priority of the civilization franchise: it's not a game designed for the strategy gamer.

The only reason it has the "crown" of the 4x genre is because it got their "first" and became popular.

As strategy game, though - where thinking about what you do might actually matter, it's severely lacking, and I'd say it's been that way for more than a decade.

It's like looking for Twilight Imperium but playing Settlers of Catan.

 

[Melkus]

Strong A.I. is obviously not a priority of the civilization franchise: it's not a game designed for the strategy gamer.

True (though less so when Soren Johnson himself was at the helm for Civ4), but you need a competent AI for roleplaying and narrative too.

And the AIs used to have more different motivations and goals in early Civs, you dreaded to meet Montezuma because he was going to be a major annoyance every time. He wouldn't know when to stop. It wasn't optimal play by any stretch, but it provided more character and immersion than the Civ6 agendas (which were intended to direct the AIs to certain behaviours and enemies, but it never really worked out that way).
You need a strong AI foundation first to do these game style variations.