The most competent AI leaders?

[Kimiimaro]

Gitarja and Jayavarman VII added to the poll.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Peter has always been the most competent across the board. Mvemba and Curtin are good as well. Recently Qin is doing good as well. He actually builds wonders now. Harald is usually the joke. I usually never fear the Viking King.

 

[sonicmyst]

Seems like those who has the ability related to Great People and production is considered a big threat.

Mvemba, pray that Firaxis won't see this poll, or the nerf axe will be on your head next patch =)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Curtin loves starting near the coast with those high appeal tiles.

 

[Wingednosering]

Mvemba is unquestionally the best. The AIs that perform the best are the ones that either:

- Have upgraded units/buildings that are along the standard AI progress path.

- Have passive bonuses that don't require a change in strategy to utilize.

I don't mod civ, but I am a lead programmer in the game industry. My guess is that all of the AIs use the same code and simply have different weights assigned to their preferences. This makes the code work easier and is a smart use of resources, but it means special rules won't be utilized.

For instance, I doubt Montezuma uses the builder rush ability on districts.

Mvemba is the strongest because he has an early game unit along the main upgrade path that is quite good and he has insane passive bonuses from his CA.

On top of that, religion is actually disabled for him, which takes a typically unsuccessful strategy out of his Markov chain.

 

[Kyro]

Kongo without a doubt...pretty sure I've said that since the release. Followed by Rome...Trajan tends to snowball from military expansion.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Mvemba is unquestionally the best. The AIs that perform the best are the ones that either:

- Have upgraded units/buildings that are along the standard AI progress path.

- Have passive bonuses that don't require a change in strategy to utilize.

I don't mod civ, but I am a lead programmer in the game industry. My guess is that all of the AIs use the same code and simply have different weights assigned to their preferences. This makes the code work easier and is a smart use of resources, but it means special rules won't be utilized.

For instance, I doubt Montezuma uses the builder rush ability on districts.

Mvemba is the strongest because he has an early game unit along the main upgrade path that is quite good and he has insane passive bonuses from his CA.

On top of that, religion is actually disabled for him, which takes a typically unsuccessful strategy out of his Markov chain.

Agreed. Additionally, his UU suffers less from rough terrain choke points, which are problematic for the tactical AI.

 

[Disgustipated]

Haven't played enough with the new civs to gauge them in the hands of the AI. Kongo is still without a doubt the best. Khmer is doing pretty good in my current game. On a side note, his language sounds so fake LOL. That's probably the first time I've ever heard that language. It's interesting.

And the Indonesia's leader language is pretty sexy the way she says it. Even when she's saying bad things to me, I'm still attracted to her. She has a cute voice.

 

[Morningcalm]

Kongo still the best, hands down. I enjoy having Kongo as a rival in games; makes things far more interesting and fun.

 

[bbbt]

Mvemba is the strongest because he has an early game unit along the main upgrade path that is quite good and he has insane passive bonuses from his CA.

On top of that, religion is actually disabled for him, which takes a typically unsuccessful strategy out of his Markov chain.

Yes, and it's a passive bonus that can give the relatively weak theatre districts - which the AI loves to build - general infrastructure bonuses and give benefit beyond the culture/tourism victory.

 

[Guandao]

I only voted for Kongo. They usually build a large empire in my games, and grab a lot of Great Writers, Artists.... As for the rest, they vary in competency from game to game.

 

[Vahnstad]

Tier 1
Kongo (runaway civ probably)
Persia (possible runaway civ and generally strong)
Rome (maybe not the typical runaway civ, but always on the top)
Aztec (if they runaway, it's game over)

Tier 2
Russia (not a runaway civ, but always good to very good)
America (stable but very good civ)
Scythia (but varies a lot, runaway or a tier 4 civ)

Tier 3
Greece (tier 2 or 3 - not a runaway civ but always good. Haven't played against Gorgo that often)
China
Germany (surprisingly not that strong)
England
(Sumeria) -> not enough experience, but I know i suspected them to be stronger

Tier 4
India (aside of religious & elephant units spam, not much a threat)
Australia (not enough experience, but they go usually unnoticed)
Norway (but weaker on land maps)
Egypt

Tier 5
Arabia (I had them three times, and they never made it to the finish, they always got wiped of the map)
Spain
Japan
France (weakest civ)

Brazil is rumoured to be good, but I haven't met them actually that much (think i never finished a game with them as an AI). Nubia is going to be good too. Indonesia probably good. Khmer weaker.

And i still never did met Poland lol, but if i look around and watch streams, they seem to be one of the weaker AI civs.

 

[Kimiimaro]

@Vahnstad, from my experiences, Pedro is always a weak and incompetent guy who whines about my empire being better and full of great people

 

[Vahnstad]

Mvemba, no doubt. Second place for Brazil. Aside from the factors already mentioned (low to no religious flavor, great district builders), I think their Jungle start bias helps these two as well. AI sucks at improving their tiles, with jungle they at least get a lot of 2/1 tiles to work right of the bat, as well as a food/production burst from chops. Makes sense, I also do really well with jungle starts.

Dishonerable mention to Tomerys, she runs one of the most OP civs and yet always does terrible.

Maybe that's why the Aztecs also do so well on continental / pangeae maps. In the games that they WRECKED ME, they had strong jungle starts.

We were with 8 civs lol. I think I did lost this game (but maybe I didn't end it). Should try to finish it, but it's on my other laptop. Aztecs went into space lol.

 

[Swissy]

Germany, Kongo, Aztecs and Scythia, as they are the only ones I've seen regularly conquering city states from the start of the game. This gives them a superior army based on having more promoted units. And, gives them more cities than the typical AI civ.

 

[sonicmyst]

Maybe that's why the Aztecs also do so well on continental / pangeae maps. In the games that they WRECKED ME, they had strong jungle starts.

We were with 8 civs lol. I think I did lost this game (but maybe I didn't end it). Should try to finish it, but it's on my other laptop. Aztecs went into space lol.

Aztec's potential to SV is due to builders that can rush spaceport districts. I had my previous game where I had built spaceports in few turns

 

[Vahnstad]

Also, they always seems to do well when they conquer one or two city-states. In that game they conquered one or two city-states and eliminated Australia pretty soon, while I eliminated Japan pretty quickly, and then i went after Scythia (that was the third best civ back then, taking the infrastructure), and then i was into a war with Spain, and I think Aztecs had some Greek cities too, and the Greeks went into several wars with Egypt too.

Aztecs are not guarenteed to be the best AI civ or to even do well, but they certainly have the potential to do so

 

[PYITE]

I think most of the civs that got the low religious preference with this patch can be as tough or harder than Kongo. It is highly dependent on which secondary agenda the AI gets. Technophile (likes science) is probably the best.
Teddy is held back by always getting the environmental secondary agenda which prevents him from chopping. If you remove that preference, Teddy becomes super tough. I had Teddy as a neighbor (same continent) show up at my capitol on turn 30 with 3 level 1 swordsman with Oligarchy government. That is 36 (base) + 5 (home continent) + 4 oligarchy + 7 (level 1 upgrade) + 4 (Deity) = 56 combat strength

 

[DWilson]

In my games, including AI only, Tomyris allows looks really good, expanding well and building a solid military. Then she does nothing.

Amonitore seems ideal for the AI (powerful UU that comes in time to protect from barbs, production bonuses). And yet, even with her unique unit, I see her often struggle more than most other civs, as her archers get destroyed and her civilians captured. Her inability to handle barbs effectively limits her empire, and she rarely becomes more than a middling power.

My inclination from this is that the AI is not capable with ranged units, which, after having fought many wars against them, seems about right. Meanwhile these two build more ranged than most due to their unique. In human hands, that's a great thing. In this case, it isn't.

Meanwhile, I often see Rome struggle to get anywhere to start, often wasting their units (and thus production) on wars that go nowhere. But then, when they switch to expanding their empire in the mid- to late-early game, they grow very well. I imagine if they started without focusing on early wars, they would end up similar to Kongo.

Jadwiga starts off really well, usually, expanding and fighting relatively successfully. And then she outgrows her amenities, and subsequently gets blasted by negative modifiers and rebels as she fails to correct for it. If she could get that in check, she would likely be a major threat.

Mvemba, Peter, Montezuma, and Qin all tend to outstrip the rest.

 

[Ferocitus]

Absolutely no contest on the ludicrous size maps I play, with all civs, the
maximum number of CS, Emperor level, marathon pace.
Aztecs, Kongo and Brazil are equally strong; the others don't have much of a chance.

Caveats: I haven't played enough games (on auto-run) yet with Khmer and Indonesia
to rate them.
Human players would usually do much better than the AI with many of the civs.