The AI may have finally become "too good" for me

S

Stalker0

Baller Magnus
Joined
Dec 31, 2005
Messages
10,856
Currently in a long draw out war as Spain with several other entities, and I think it may be time to put up my Emperor hat.

The AI has become so good that I now longer can save all my units, it finds every weak spot, and I keep losing units every turn.

Its not that I can't win, but it now feels like immortal/diety used to...the amount of time, care, and attention I have to dedicate to warfare is much greater than it once was...and its now greater than my "give a damn" threshold.

So next game I'm going back to King...and I hope that the builder side is still competitive enough that I enjoy it...I may have to find some difficulty in the middle for me.

So its a true triumph of the tactical AI....I am waving the white flag, you got me!
 
As someone who only goes for domination style games..., I'm having a similar experience King is a bit too easy for me, but Emperor is a slog. I can get a small tech advantage and even takeout 1 or 2 ais but i end up getting bogged down in the grind and just want to start over lol.
I don't know much about how the ai is smarter tactically; I've just noticed they they are much better at spamming units. Trying to attack civs like the Iroquois or anyone with Defender of the faith is rough even if you have better units. Terrain of course can make it worse but yes warfare has a cost.
 
Not playing domination but going wide enough to be at war frequently, I can confirm how well the AI fights. But it's not just that. It's also small human touches like the stealing of a CS just before declaring war, as well as tried and true AI moves like DoW'ing whenever they see an advantage, or settling every possible spot when you no longer can, so that eventually they can attack you from just about anywhere.

That mindblowing recent post on AI motivation really shows how well designed they are.

What's my counter? Hey, Gazebo! Why don't you lower some of the handicaps?
 
AI is pretty good now, yes. But I think now AI don't build as many mount units as it used to, which makes range and siege units much more viable. Now ~70% of my army are archers and it's working pretty good. Positioning is also a big factor, that's for sure.
 
Thinking about it more, I feel that where the AI has the most improvement lately is in city defense. For example, if I am on a defensive footing, I can hold off the AI just fine. But once I push my army forward I find the AI uses similar techniques that I would deploy, and just systematically snipes off unit after unit. If I don't push, I can hold, but then the wars begin to last for a long time.

And just to counter the "no mounts" theory, I can say that as of this moment, Sweden has 9 lancers and 2 cruisers in their army around my cities....so they seem to like them just fine:)
 
Stalker0 said:
Thinking about it more, I feel that where the AI has the most improvement lately is in city defense. For example, if I am on a defensive footing, I can hold off the AI just fine. But once I push my army forward I find the AI uses similar techniques that I would deploy, and just systematically snipes off unit after unit. If I don't push, I can hold, but then the wars begin to last for a long time.

And just to counter the "no mounts" theory, I can say that as of this moment, Sweden has 9 lancers and 2 cruisers in their army around my cities....so they seem to like them just fine:)
Click to expand...

The AI is also much better in naval combat. Where the human still seems to have a relative advantage is in taking a city from the sea, rather than from land.
 
AFAIK, the big difference between AI and human is the AI don't get many secondary clues/advanced thought. For example, I'll produce a large sub screen at the borders of my empire to make sure I see naval invasions early. Invariably, at some point in every game the AI will try some massive naval invasion, and I destroy the entire thing in the waters because they didn't think about me having melee naval units with all the +sight promotions, or subs.This leads to sea being really easy because it is far easier to leverage an advantage when there are no landscape issues and reinforcement is far more difficult.

Overall, I'd say the AI is about as good as you could get as far as how it acts in war from a turn to turn basis, its just the longer-term or more abstract concepts it fails at.
 
Bhawb said:
AFAIK, the big difference between AI and human is the AI don't get many secondary clues/advanced thought. For example, I'll produce a large sub screen at the borders of my empire to make sure I see naval invasions early. Invariably, at some point in every game the AI will try some massive naval invasion, and I destroy the entire thing in the waters because they didn't think about me having melee naval units with all the +sight promotions, or subs.This leads to sea being really easy because it is far easier to leverage an advantage when there are no landscape issues and reinforcement is far more difficult.

Overall, I'd say the AI is about as good as you could get as far as how it acts in war from a turn to turn basis, its just the longer-term or more abstract concepts it fails at.
Click to expand...
Maybe they don't use sub screens, but I think the AI does scout with ships.
 
chicorbeef said:
Maybe they don't use sub screens, but I think the AI does scout with ships.
Click to expand...

They do scout, but they don't have the ability to consider how large my defensive sight radius is when they are sending units in for a sneak attack, for example. So if my destroyers have 7 sight radius they might not realize I could see them from outside their sight radius. Or to consider that I have access to subs before they even have destroyers so they can't even see my scouts. Things like that. AI is very good at war in the short term, but they don't have the ability to consider these more contextual clues for war, and that was more my point.
 
Bhawb said:
They do scout, but they don't have the ability to consider how large my defensive sight radius is when they are sending units in for a sneak attack, for example. So if my destroyers have 7 sight radius they might not realize I could see them from outside their sight radius. Or to consider that I have access to subs before they even have destroyers so they can't even see my scouts. Things like that. AI is very good at war in the short term, but they don't have the ability to consider these more contextual clues for war, and that was more my point.
Click to expand...

Possible, though I am sure more naval improvements can be made. Realistically naval warfare should actually be easier for the AI than land, because basic positioning and unit numbers means a lot more in naval terms...and the AI has advantage in production. I never would have thought the tactics I see today are possible a year ago, so I wouldn't count out the naval AI just yet!
 
I'm just happy that we can all find an appropriate level to play at.

There is no shame in playing the game at easier levels, but I would say that because I play very badly.
 
Stalker0 said:
Thinking about it more, I feel that where the AI has the most improvement lately is in city defense. For example, if I am on a defensive footing, I can hold off the AI just fine. But once I push my army forward I find the AI uses similar techniques that I would deploy, and just systematically snipes off unit after unit. If I don't push, I can hold, but then the wars begin to last for a long time.

And just to counter the "no mounts" theory, I can say that as of this moment, Sweden has 9 lancers and 2 cruisers in their army around my cities....so they seem to like them just fine:)
Click to expand...

No kidding, last AI (japan) had row after row of musketmen,I broke through because of better tech and outproducing but still lost quite a bit when pushing in.
 
After cruising through an Immortal game, I tried a game on Deity. I got crushed early on. France literally wiped me out in Turns 70-84 :0 Part of that was me only having a Scout, and Archer, and a War Elephant as defense at the time of DoW (quickly purchased another Elephant and built another Archer), but still... never been literally wiped off the map like that.

I got baited into trying to kill one of their Warriors, only to get my Elephant slaughtered. The AI had a line of Archers behind a line of Spearmen. Very deadly and very impressive.
 
I shared OPs experience on how Emperor became more difficult. AI is very hostile on diplomatic front and uses troops better during wartime. Also usually their religion picks are perfect for their grand strategy. (at least initial founders)

A year ago I could win wide-progress games but nowadays I cannot catch up AI like I used to do. Therefore I reverted back to tall-tradition style.
 
Bhawb said:
AFAIK, the big difference between AI and human is the AI don't get many secondary clues/advanced thought. For example, I'll produce a large sub screen at the borders of my empire to make sure I see naval invasions early. Invariably, at some point in every game the AI will try some massive naval invasion, and I destroy the entire thing in the waters because they didn't think about me having melee naval units with all the +sight promotions, or subs.This leads to sea being really easy because it is far easier to leverage an advantage when there are no landscape issues and reinforcement is far more difficult.

Overall, I'd say the AI is about as good as you could get as far as how it acts in war from a turn to turn basis, its just the longer-term or more abstract concepts it fails at.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the example you give you are way ahead in tech and have a large amount of naval units. If the AI were in the same situation — which they often are — they pretty much do the same thing: set up a picket line that spot your naval invasion force before it ever gets there.
 
Txurce said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the example you give you are way ahead in tech and have a large amount of naval units. If the AI were in the same situation — which they often are — they pretty much do the same thing: set up a picket line that spot your naval invasion force before it ever gets there.
Click to expand...

They try to spot, but they don't consider sight advantages. If you have enough +sight, they won't even know you can spot them, and they constantly let units die because of it.
 
I haven't been playing Civ for a while (more then a 1 year). Just installed new 4.20 few days ago and as always in VP I've picked Emperor. Soon I had to reconsider my skills in the game and I won only by nuking top civ...

I've seen nice AI defence, coalition wars, aggressive cs diplomacy, proper naval invasions. In my game I was playing as Poland and I was leader of Order, Austria (top) was leader of Freedom. Only 2 civs were Order and most of the map was freedom so I had proper Cold War and it really felt that way, constant pressure, somehow they didn't like me much (that's why my nuking operations are justified). Also we were both sanctioned by congress :) Still that pesky Austria manage to almost get diplo victory by dominating congress with it's rm policy.

I must admit I've installed few big addons (civic and reforms, eevp, wonders extended, extra events, world congress reformation, vp bare necessities) so prolly balance was a little off but still I've had best solo game in my history with civ. Thanks to CaR options to modify your government I've created proper totalitarian, full state property red block with iron curtain and propaganda :).
Practically no bugs apart one in which after any civ lost city with wonders made that wonders appear again in building queue, fortunately Austria was constantly 6 techs ahead of everyone so it wasn't big issue...

Notable moment: During second nuclear war with Austria I've rebased 3 nukes into city close to the border and Austria took it with it's fleet next turn...

Amazing and frustrating experience so well done mr.Gazebo&Team.
 
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