The Civ6 AI is THE dumbest Ai I have ever seen

[Elikal]

I mean, seriously. I don't know where to begin. I have played all Civ and Civ-like games there are, and lots of Paradox games. (Man, THEY have a cool AI, maybe Firaxis hires some folk from them.) I have seen so much absurdities now, that it really sours the fun of the game for me. I mean, it has a really good base, I like the game a lot, but the AI is downright the crappiest I can remember.


- Many have already written about the spam. Yes Civ games always sort of did this, but Civ6 really brought this to abtruse extremes. At some point large parts of the map and literally filled with units, and even in the 19th century the city states and the AI Civs keep warriors or pikeman and catapults, like they NEVER improve them, they just spam out more early area crap. France in one game swarmed into my regions with 20 warriors, moved them around for 300 years while being attacked elsewhere from AI Civs, and then just moved out again.

- Despite the fact they are hopelessly weak with their stone age military, several AI Civs declared war against me for NO reason at all. I wanted to play a peaceful culture game with Japan, but time and again I got declared war, so I had to conquer a city or two to force them to give in. Despite me being the attacked, every time the world hates me more. Just now America attacked me in a Holy War, even though I hadn't done squat to them, even though I had modern army and they had only a few early middle age units. WHY? I did nothing against them and they had ZERO chance. Or Norway, being on the other side of the planet, declared war against me for no reason, but never showed up with any army, until it was just destroyed by someone else.

- Which brings me to diplomacy. The AI constantly offers me crappy deals, like give me 3 luxury ressources for nothing, and then hate me when I dont agree. In every game I tried, no matter what I did, at mid game every civ hates me. In civ 5 you could at least stand good with SOME civs.

- Some Civs never really expand. I dont know why. I have India, Brazil and China essentially stopped expanding and creating new cities, despite having plenty of room. Why?

- City States are not so useful to keep them. They give a few points, but IMVPO they are worthless waste of space. They litter the map with warriors and catapults, and in a joint war they are totally useless with their outdated military. Somehow the City States also have no common identity anymore, so a Civ AI can conquer City States without getting any negative diplo status with the other City States.

- Most of the time the AI Civs declare war against each other, it leads to nothing. They are totally incompetent taking cities from another AI Civ 90% of the time.

- Asking the AI not to convert my cities, they agree but it leads to totally nothing. They still convert my cities. It's like they don't even care.

- So far I haven't been able to make real allies with any AI. It's like they are all super aggressive often for no reason at all. One moment they praise you for being pious, 3 turns later they slander you as heretic, so it is totally unforseeable how to be on the good side with Civs.



I could list more, if I had written down all my experiences with the AI, but I am sure you get the idea. It is no surprise Firaxis took out Diplomacy, because the AI is dumb as bread. This is really a mayor letdown in an otherwise good game. I am not sure, maybe I take a break and stop playing until the AI is overhauled. It would be a true shame if this potentially great game would stay with this crappy AI.

 

[RealHuhn]

I personally don't have any issues with war declarations and diplomacy other than a few agendas.
Maybe you should be more careful about their agendas, establish embassies on the same turn you meet them and get open borders as soon as possible. The occasional gift is also quite useful. Also you really have to understand the casus belli system. Not every casus belli reduces warmonger penalties in the same way. Holy War and Colonial War are much more forgiving than the Formal War after denouncement which makes sense. Protectorate War reduces the penalty to zero even. If you think you have a reason to go to war, you should really double check if you follow the game mechanics.
And wars in early game make a lot of sense to the AI because warmongering penalties are zero in ancient era and low in classical.
Also, warmonger penalties decline much faster than in CIV5. A denouncement doesn't mean that the AI hates you for the rest of the game which is a big step in the right direction, in my opinion. It can actually turn into a friendship in like 30 turns or so. After I realized this, I got a lot less annoyed by denouncements.

Other than that, yes, expansion could be better. I'm always baffled when I see Rome with 3-4 cities on Deity although he has more room to expand to.