Why is AI so poorly written?

[planetfall]

Thank you for the video. It's long so will take some time to digest.

There is a lot of truth in making the AI too strong and then no one likes to play as few like to play championship chess. It's too much work and not fun except for the few.

I agree with many posts here that the code is written by design to allow the human to make a come from behind win when all was lost. Some criticize little use of air power or modern armor by AI, but think this is a design to allow catchup. My primary annoyance here is the design decision to limit the AI city building even when tons of tiles are unused. The world does not have to be all one huge metro area, but by the same token, it shouldn't be all fallow federal forests/natural parks/unclaimed space.

For me, and maybe me only, a fun game is a good challenge, with steps to make steady progress towards winning. I don't care how long a game takes, I just love the slow and steady approach to building a strong empire.

What I miss most in civ6 are:
-- mid/late game races by civs to plant a city to claim a strategic resource.
-- ability to spy on a city and get ideas on how to build cities like an AI master, when their city is out-performing your city
-- automated workers/builders so all have to be manually directed. Slows down the game too much.
-- graphs of all civs progress in sci/military/etc

What I don't miss are:
-- corruption model to stop city planting
-- having map covered by railroads
-- limited options on creating the game for playtime.

What I'ld like to see in civ6/civ7 are:
-- more than one civ able to have a religious belief
-- Civ's UU not cheating in development by not requiring the strategic resource of the unit they replace, i.e. swordsman UU without iron dependency, or cavalry UU without horses dependency
-- match between graphics in tech tree and gameplay. Tech tree graphic for Stealth technology shows B-1 stealth bomber image, but game play is a jet bomber with B-52 image. Make it either stealth or jet, don't mix and match.

There's more, but hopefully this will fuel some more discussion.....

 

[Askia Muhammad]

There as a couple of reasons:

1. Increased difficulty does not equal increases sales. The opposite is actually true. Yes there is a market for difficulty games although a large budget game isn’t looking for a market they are looking for mass appeal.

2. Budget. Everything costs money and time. They will spend the money/time on the things that sell the most copies. Visuals and performance.

3. They want to sell additional content which means they want the most number of players to enjoy their product. Even with the questionable ai the average player plays king or lower difficulty. The average player also struggles to win above king difficulty.

People generally enjoy winning over losing in a single player experience. So the ai is designed to appear as if it’s “winning” but not really win in a competitive sense. That’s why all victory conditions have a multi step “finish” so the ai can fail at it and give the player the rush of the comeback.

This makes the player enjoy the game more. This makes the player buy expansions.

4. The vast majority of players who want a stronger ai would not enjoy it.

Stronger ai means the game ends sooner. Better choices means you win faster. I play with the sole goal of finishing the game in as few turns as possible.
Standard speed:
No modes
180 or less turns for science is possible with every civ.
150 or less turns is possible with every civ.
With mistakes and minimal min maxing. Although every game is going to be extremely similar to the last one you played in strategy.

Do you want to play the strict required to win script?
Or do you want to be able to try different approaches or less then perfect strategies?

Bad ai makes it so players can use different approaches and be successful. People want to try different things and succeed.

This is what everyone says but a game with an AI that literally can’t beat you isn’t fun either - once the player realizes they are basically the only real player the game becomes dull fast.

 

[Soger]

This is what everyone says but a game with an AI that literally can’t beat you isn’t fun either - once the player realizes they are basically the only real player the game becomes dull fast.

The game is what 7 years old?
Still regularly one of the top 20 most played games on steam.
What about Skyrim? Literally no difficulty or ai to speak of.

I would say you may no longer find it exciting. Although you bought and played it correct?

There is more than enough people who do find it fun though.

So yeah advanced ai/difficulty is not a real selling point.
It’s something people say they want. The Majority do not care though.

 

[vorlon_mi]

As I wrote above, the Civ6 AI will try to build their way to victory. They will try to win diplomatically.

If the human player focuses largely on military and prevents them from building their way to victory, then @Askia Muhammad is right. The AI can't really beat you. In this aspect, the Civ3 and Civ4 AI were able to pose a significant military threat to the human player; more so than the Civ6 AI.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

As I wrote above, the Civ6 AI will try to build their way to victory. They will try to win diplomatically.

If the human player focuses largely on military and prevents them from building their way to victory, then @Askia Muhammad is right. The AI can't really beat you. In this aspect, the Civ3 and Civ4 AI were able to pose a significant military threat to the human player; more so than the Civ6 AI.

Frankly, that is what I am looking for. I’d enjoy some diversity of playstyle on the part of the AI but every AI seems to be playing SimCity and being an isolationist pacifist mostly focused on science victories isn’t very engaging for me. My biggest gripes with Civ 6 personally have had to do with the AIs inability to wage war and the world Congress feature being so scuffed I wish it didn’t exist. I vastly preferred Civ V’s world Congress.

There also seem to be purposefully broken steps toward science to negate the AI’s initial tech advantages. I’ve written elsewhere but EVERY game I’ve had where the AI has attempted a science victory they pause between 25 turns before even building the third step and then after it’s built never speed it up.

The AI is aware it’s terrible at war too and often doesn’t even bother fielding a large enough army to defend its territory let alone get aggressive. The exception of course is the first fifty turns on deity where they are prone to rush.

 

[UWHabs]

The game is what 7 years old?
Still regularly one of the top 20 most played games on steam.
What about Skyrim? Literally no difficulty or ai to speak of.

I would say you may no longer find it exciting. Although you bought and played it correct?

There is more than enough people who do find it fun though.

So yeah advanced ai/difficulty is not a real selling point.
It’s something people say they want. The Majority do not care though.

If the game doesn't give you anything else, then I would agree that it gets dull fast. I do think 6 at least provides some other stuff that it can honestly still be fun as mostly a city/empire builder, playing a civ along a theme, and just enjoying the game that way. Just playing to get tile yield porn, or plan a perfect holy site out, or whatever, can still be fun even if you're not even really playing against the AI.

And I do think despite the AI's flaws, the one part that people discount a little bit is that the AI can beat you early in the game. I'm not the best player in the world, but I play at Immortal level. And while I "win" basically every game I play, although I do often get through the first 20-50 turns of a game and then quit because a nearby opponent rushes me with way more units than I can fight off, or the barbarians come at you and basically stall your empire out. Or you get to the point where you have like a 50/50 battle with your last unit against their last unit - if my warrior can beat them, I know I'm safe. But if I lose, then they take my city and wipe me out. Sure, if I can survive that initial rush, I can basically come out with a win after that. But that part isn't 100% guaranteed. And I think for the vast majority of people, it's kind of like if you play the game and get through that part of the game, you feel you "earned" the win afterwards, even if the AI will never put up a credible threat later.

Only 1/10 of people who have played the game have won at Immortal (at least, 77% of people got the "build 6 tile improvements" Steam Achivement, and about 7.5% have the "Win at Immortal or Higher"). So for the average person, there's still plenty of higher difficulty levels they can try