What are the least successful Civ AIs?

[ahawk]

In my experience, the AI versions of Egypt, India, and Korea all seem to do very, very poorly.

Korea is hit or miss... Egypt and India tend to be sub-par, especially when they get Marble (they wonder-spam and get trounced by the closest war-monger).

 

[Himmurabi]

America is usually a runaway for me, just so long as he doesn't start as my neighbor..

 

[Smokeybear]

Just my personal experience, but the early rushers like Ghengis, Monty and Atilla have never runaway and won in any game I've played, that I can ever remember. The AI just doesn't have the smarts to win that kind of ploy, I guess. They just let their civs go to hell and focus 100% on military, and when you stop them, they just get into the same rut of surrender, recover, attack, surrender, etc., until you or somebody else puts them out of their misery. No balance, one trick ponies, losers all. When you look at their cities and lands afterwards, the neglect is often pathetic.

Never seen Dido do squat yet, couple times she was a mid-level player, but never a threat. Same with Theodora. They're like female Washington's.

 

[OmniPotent42]

Unless Austria gets a couple of city-states, they tend to do poorly.
But yeah, Sweden gets killed off early a lot. Same with Siam, for some reason.

 

[Petiscator]

For some reason, Theodora seems to do a poor job

She is usually my BFF in all games, but she usually loses a bunch/every single city in her empire. I don't know why, but people like to DOW her. And get all her cities. And resources. And then they hate me. And try to get my cities. And resources. And fail miserably. And so on.

 

[Squibbon]

Aztecs, India, Japan, China, England, and America are always in the bottom of my games. Mongolia, Iroquois, Inca, Ethiopia, Siam, Germany, France, Spain, and the Maya are always on the top of my games.

 

[theguy8882]

I find the Huns too be a threat early game. But become back of the pack late game.

 

[Peacemongerer]

Denmark never seems to go past 2-3 cities and usually spends the early game asking me to declare war on people, then getting his tail kicked by five AI at once.

The Huns are feast or famine, usually famine in my games. They'll spend the whole game declaring war and I have yet to see them take more than 1-2 cities. They usually don't DoW me for some reason, even as neighbors (even though I seldom have any active military to speak of) and when they do, it usually ends badly for them because their battering rams can't quite get through all the hills and whatnot to reach me before my cavalry tears them apart from the rear. He also falls behind in tech.

Monty also does poorly.

 

[DGDobrev]

My first vote goes to Greece. The AI knows well that the Hoplite is a great unit and tries to do an early rush with it. This rush usually works against an AI player or a city state, but is the worst thing to try against a human player. A human can slap Alexander so hard, that any other civ that goes to check on him will find him with his pants down. This happens in 90% of my games, and I usually expect to see them sliding down the scoreboard as the game progresses.

My second vote goes for Byzantium and I kinda give it with a heavy heart. They aren't bad at all. If they spawn between decent neighbors, Theodora will start cranking out wonders like crazy and will easily beat you to almost every single one of them till Renaissance. However, on lower difficulties they do poorly, and if they find themselves between warmongers, they are as good as mediocre... or worse.

 

[PhilBowles]

Unless Austria gets a couple of city-states, they tend to do poorly.

Austria was odd in my current game - she grabbed all the CSes I hadn't allied (very helpfully for my eventual diplo victory), and was the highest scorer and main aggressor for most of the game, but she was never obviously a threat for any victory condition, making it uncertain what her strategy was. Diplo was evidently out - not only did she marry all her CSes, she pissed off everyone else, but without apparently trying to take any territory, so it wasn't domination either. She was late to Apollo and made no attempt to build spaceship parts until very late (when Egypt and Korea led on that score), and was nothing out of the ordinary culturally (although the Maya completed policy paths earlier, somehow I won all but one CS culture quest throughout the game, and I only completed three policy branches and had just opened Freedom by the end of the game). And this isn't atypical - Maria Theresa is a powerful opponent militarily and a high-scorer, but she never seems to be any kind of serious rival for victory.

 

[erebos]

I don't believe in threads like this. All civs can and will succeed if starting position is good, and they fail if put in a bad place. I've seen nearly all civs succeed that are described as always failing in this thread and also saw the ones winning that are labeled as loosers. If the AI does not see enough resources or favorable land to settle it will stay small.

 

[GThreepwood]

In vanilla Japan was like the Huns, always making a ton of units while generally not caring about expansion. I was used to seeing Japan stay a single city for ages until they finally started expanding. In G&K they now will expand more often and maintain military.

I also rarely see Dido overexpand. She seem to have a tendency to go tall... while also not really caring about wonders either. She will expand though if she feels her neighbours are "building cities aggressively" but other than that, I rarely even see her expand big even when she's isolated.

Totally agree on Dido. In my games she stays quiet for a long time and then BAM! Four cities appear and I realize my Minuteman are making a detour.

 

[Orgetorix]

Denmark never seems to do well. Also I find that all "aggressive" civs (Japan, Aztecs, Huns, Greece) either fail miserably or end up steamrolling everyone. Except Genghis who always seems to do great. Sometimes though, Monty decides to get all civilized for a long time in which case he also does really well.

Runaways are usually "builder" civs (most notably Rome) or "diplomatic" civ (Siam, Austria).

 

[smallfish]

Rome is NOT a builder civ, even though his UA encourages it. Vastly different personality than Gandhi or Ramesses, both whom are actual builders.

 

[El Caballerion]

I'm not sure, but one thing is true... ROME has always been a runaway civ. Put ROME on an island with 4 other CIVs and more than likely, Rome will dominate all of them by the Industrial age.

 

[seasnake]

Never seen Sweden or Denmark have a good game, but I've seen everyone else (including Attila) do pretty well or win. C'mon Scandinavia, way to represent!

 

[Peng Qi]

I rarely see Theodora even get a religion, and she usually founds less than 5 cities.

 

[GreekIrish]

Denmark is almost always terrible.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Aztecs are always fodder in my games. And once in a blue moon Hiawatha will prove a threat but mostly he doesnt get past 3 cities before someone starts chopping him down to size.

 

[OmniPotent42]

I swear Germany in every game I am in eats every other civ on his continent, doesn't matter which. Except for one time when he was sharing with Ghandi. Figure he got out-spammed that time with something other than pikeman.