The combat AI, again, is awful

[Mrdarklight]

I really hate to say it. This is the one area of Civ V that needed the most work, and it is no better than it was in Civ V.

For the third or fourth time, an enemy Civ has declared war on me and gotten 5-10 units near one of my cities. With just a basic strategy of rushing the city, they could have easily taken it.

Instead, they get within range, and incredibly, just move around. Maybe one or two will actually attack the city. The rest wander around, move back and forth, and get killed by my archers.

I can defend any city in the ancient era with two archers, even vs. 10 enemy units.

Very disappointing.

 

[Zenstrive]

Not just combat AI.
The AI will just spam units and park them wherever it wants without apparent logic on why it is doing it...

 

[spfun]

The AI also tends to spam 1 unit type.

The AI is just broken.

 

[AriochIV]

It is a little bit better than Civ V. It has finally learned how to use ranged (not siege) weapons and can move and fire in the same turn.

 

[Mrdarklight]

Having played a bit further into the game, the AI does seem a little better. That first initial Warrior rush is typical Civ 5 "move next to city and then move around for 3 turns while my archers kill you." After that, they tend to be more focused. However, I've also noticed that most AI just builds heavy chariots at that point.

I did get invaded by Brazil once and had to fight hard (and reload several times) to fight them off. So after the ancient era, it seems to get better.

 

[Olleus]

I've actually found the tactical AI to be a little better. At worse, it does the same nonsense as in Civ5. At best, it moves unit with purpose and utilises range units well.

The problem seems to be with building units. In my game Germany has two niter in the late renaissance, but keeps spamming out horsemen. And I mean spamming, there's a horde of 20 of them just milling around.

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

It's definitely a step up from Civ 5. I've found the tactical AI to be improved, with the AI properly using certain units (cavalry to raid, moving and shooting with archers, etc.) I find the biggest problem is that the AI retreats as soon as their units take a few ouchies. Which, okay, sure, they're trying to preserve their units, that's cool; but it also means they inevitably cannot successfully take cities except in rare occasions because they're too afraid to lose their units. Maybe that's linked to the high production costs? I don't know. Either way, they end up shuffling their troops around while I pot shot them.

Also, about the unit spam- every civ has basically trained ONLY heavy cavalry and crossbows. I've only seen seige once, and I've never seen upgraded cavalry or heavy infantry line, with spear men making a rare appearance.

Of course, here's my other question- I've played two full finish games on standard size and speed; and I have yet to see the AI EVER upgrade their units. Even on immortal. Is that just my bad luck from my games? Or is that something that needs to be addressed?

And with the civics and tech tree going through so fast, and the AI never upgrading their units, I was in the information era with Gorgo, and invading an Industrial era Egypt on Immortal, and I had no reason to upgrade my hoplites....There's definitely potential here to have the window of time to use units before they get obsoleted; but with how fast you can get through the tech tree and the lack of AI opposition in later eras, you end up just steam rolling them...

 

[Zuizgond]

I really hate to say it. This is the one area of Civ V that needed the most work, and it is no better than it was in Civ V.

For the third or fourth time, an enemy Civ has declared war on me and gotten 5-10 units near one of my cities. With just a basic strategy of rushing the city, they could have easily taken it.

Instead, they get within range, and incredibly, just move around. Maybe one or two will actually attack the city. The rest wander around, move back and forth, and get killed by my archers.

I can defend any city in the ancient era with two archers, even vs. 10 enemy units.

Very disappointing.

Same experience here and they didn't even pillage any of my tiles.

 

[Staal]

I really hope that because Civ 6 launched with practically all features included and once some additional balance work has been resolved, future work/expansions will involve a major AI project. They never fixed it in Civ 5 because well... they needed several expansion just to complete the game.

 

[tekjunkie28]

I really hope that because Civ 6 launched with practically all features included and once some additional balance work has been resolved, future work/expansions will involve a major AI project. They never fixed it in Civ 5 because well... they needed several expansion just to complete the game.

Oh man I laughed so hard at this. That is so true that they needed expansion packs. Wasn't it Jon Shaffer that caused civ5 to be the crap job it is because he said they dont need to work on the AI because they were making multiplayer great? They were both useless. At least in civ5 the AI is slightly used and multiplayer is still awful.

 

[gberetfr]

I completely agree that the AI needs big improvments and that it's breaking the game.

Of course I would like to see many UI improvements, new civs, maps, scenarios,...

But first and above all AI improvement. I don't know how we could influence this. Make a petition or whatever ?

 

[darko82]

Now people start to realize how terrible the AI is. But when I tried to point this out before, I was percevied as "hater".

People cannot accept that terrible AI. Even at launch! That said.

I will repeat. If you accept it, buy the game, give positive reviews, you will always be getting the same result even when Civ 10 comes out.

 

[Staal]

Oh man I laughed so hard at this. That is so true that they needed expansion packs. Wasn't it Jon Shaffer that caused civ5 to be the crap job it is because he said they dont need to work on the AI because they were making multiplayer great? They were both useless. At least in civ5 the AI is slightly used and multiplayer is still awful.

I don't want to diss Jon Shaffer unnecessarily but Ed Beach is quite a bit older and with that comes invaluable experience. That experience contributed a lot to making Civ 6 the complete package it is right now. In Shaffer's defence he oversaw the transition to 1 UPT and hexagons. That was a major shift for the franchise. Overall Civ 5 made far more changes to the formula that Civ 6 does. It is hard to see but we should give the guy some leeway based on that. I do think though that Shaffer's relative inexperience (compared to Beach) probably resulted in Civ 5 being more incomplete than it should've been at vanilla launch.

 

[Staal]

Now people start to realize how terrible the AI is. But when I tried to point this out before, I was percevied as "hater".

People cannot accept that terrible AI. Even at launch! That said.

I will repeat. If you accept it, buy the game, give positive reviews, you will always be getting the same result even when Civ 10 comes out.

I doubt you were called a "hater" for saying the AI is terrible. Saying the AI needs improvement is one thing and everyone will agree with that. Using that as your premise to start "another" rant thread that Civ 6 is unplayable/broken etc, SoD>1UPT, Civ 4>5/6 or a similarly ridiculously OTT conclusion was most likely the issue.

If you had created a calm thread in which you logically listed the AI short comings and discussed what can be done to fix it I bet you would have had a different response.

 

[Plus Ultra]

Plenty of existing threads discussing this exact thing.

Now people start to realize how terrible the AI is. But when I tried to point this out before, I was percevied as "hater".

Darko82, mate, you were percieved as "hater" because you were criticizing the AI before the game had even launched.

In any case, I've found the AI to be on par with Civ V, somewhat better at times.

Civ VI has more variables for the AI to take in count, more systems to play with. Make of that what you will.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

A step up from civ5?!
I admit, I never played much civ5........ but was it REALLY worse than this?

It's 1640, King difficulty, I'm conquering Norway with Tanks, he:
- Has 4 cities (I have ~30), despite there being large areas of uncolonized land.
- He has only just reached the renaissance
- Is defending with Warriors & Heavy Chariots?!
- Has multiple tiles around his capital that are unimproved

It's not that he's been constantly at war either; he's on a large island along with 4 city states, his nearest competing civ is a good distance away.

Or 50 years earlier when Spain declared holy war on me.... Spain had ONE city.
5500 years and he hadn't managed to settle ONCE?!
Sure he had endless waves of..... horsemen... that all died to a single field gun. REALLY?!

Or a century earlier, when Rome surprise attacked ME, his solitary friend..... with legions and catapults. Thanks for the cities bud......

 

[Staal]

***

That scenario has happened in every other Civ title since Civ 1.

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah, it's definitely bad. It hurts to play the game after the awesome AI improvements done by Vox Populi in Civ V.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I think the AI needs to learn to use less units when attacking a city. Less units would reduce traffic jams and help the AI's attacks be more efficient. As we know, with 1upt, more units is often not better because units will end up just blocking each other's path.

 

[darko82]

Darko82, mate, you were percieved as "hater" because you were criticizing the AI before the game had even launched.

I did not have to play. It was enough to watch this on the screen. I wasn't blind. Now I have played the game and what's the difference? I see the same thing. Most people see the same thing. Now even more issues can be seen.

I think people were unreasonable to believe that playing the game by themselves would change the AI or something.

Besides I had the same experience with Civ V, so nothing new. This is something I expected. This is something I touched upon half a year ago before even Civ VI was announced.