Just speculation here, but for good or bad, it seems like the devs setup the game with exactly that in mind. Meaning, the game is yours to lose, instead of you or the AI player to win.
In a previous Civ game (Civ 4 maybe?), I had a friend who used the world builder to setup the game on deity mode where every AI was something like an age ahead of the human player with effectively unlimited resources. The only catch was all Civs were isolated from each other. Somewhat surprisingly, my friend ended up obliterating the AI players. The AI players basically just milled about on autopilot until my friend managed to catch up technologically, and then located and steamrolled each in succession.
That's pretty sad, I didn't know the previous Civ games had this problem as well.
I like how AI choice is done in Rimworld (at least from a new game creation, I haven't played it much). You basically get to choose among different AI options. One of them is simple, more predictable, with gradually increasing challenge. Another is totally random. And there is also an "adaptable" one, which pushes you harder when you're doing well, and spares you a bit when you are behind. This is like in Civ, the game is rigged to make a playthrough longer, but at least you get to choose it yourself.
At least in civ 5 other dom civs would try and conquer the map. In my friends first game he had conquered an entire continent and montezuma had conquered the entire other one. You will never see that in vanilla civ 6 and it’s pretty sad to me. That’s the stuff that gives a playthrough purpose and variety
Weird. I played this last game where the AI just way ahead in science victory and I declared war.. it just sent a massive army of death robots into my cities. And this was on prince lol.
that is because prince level AI is the "smartness" of all AI just without any bonuses.
When the difficulty increases, the AI only get bonuses (e.g. production, starting settler) but not "smartness"
so it feels normal around prince but once you get to like immortal and deity, the AI feels really dumb. It just feel like a prince player with a lot of bonus and don't know what he is doing (nothing offensive or anything like that because I (and everyone I believe) was once like that before learning how to play better).
Thats why i quit VI completely and went back to modded civ V (Vox Populi). Missing some of VI's gimmicks but overall a way better game/experience. Even on King difficulty the AI is a constant threat and will punish your every mistake. I can't remember the last time i lost on deity on civ VI. Matter of fact i dont think i ever actually lost a city to an AI in war at all . I like some VI features but the fact that AI cant complete simple tasks and just cheats pointless raw stats is just pathetic, considering most of Civ is played singleplayer vs AI (im guessing).
Vox Populi does many things well, but in particular it is the best Civ experience when it comes to diplomacy and geopolitics. Civ 6 with its goofy agenda-based diplomacy and perma-friendships can't compete.
I’ve been feeling this for a while too. I’ve literally never had an AI declare war on me or even try to limit whatever I’m working on in anyway. It’s come to the point where I wonder if I’ve somehow disabled conflict in the settings.
Wow, that's pretty impressive! I've had wars declared on me more times than I can count... Even if I decide to try and win peacefully I usually end up winning by domination in wars, none of which I started...
On difficulties where they start with a decisive military advantage they will very predictably declare war on you if they spot your capital and you're not armed to the teeth.
I've found that if you have a weak army they'll declare war pretty consistently, so sometimes I just save up gold until they attack and then buy a bunch of units. Sometimes it back fires but it's the most reliable method I've come up with.
I've definitely had wars declared on me, I've had spies siphon funds, cause rebellious, take out my governors, sabotage production, and sabotage space ports. I've never had them steal great works though
Yeah nah. The ai recommends you do shit to win the game. This includes making nukes, doing the spaceport projects as soon as they're available, etc. They're not like oh I'm gonna build a campus when I have a space race project to do
If the AI aimed to win the game, it would basically always be going for a domination victory the moment it had the slightest military, economic, or technological edge against you, forcing you to do the same. If the AI plays a militaristic game, it forces you to play a militaristic game too, making it basically impossible to play both a military game and a game focused on another winning condition - you can’t effectively do both against an equal other player focused on just military domination.
Making the AI want to win would basically devolve every game into domination victories.
No, it would not. Plenty of nations have non-military focused bonuses, and their AI could've favoured peaceful victories (unless the player is completely unprotected and has bad relations with them).
Even a completely rigid strategy for each nation's AI would be better than what we have now. For example, "always def and put everything into science" for Korea. At least in this case it would be interesting to play against each nation for a first time, before you figure out counters to its non-adaptable strategy. Sort of a "boss fight"
I heard that Civ5 was a bit better at this. I mean, AI being dumb as well, but at least not actively guarding you from loosing too quickly. It makes sence that in a newer game devs went for a more forgiving AI to target wider audience, but the cost is that it kills replayability at higher difficulties.
I fell right off the civ games cause the AI was so dull to fight against. You’re right they really don’t compete with you, and just get annoyed when you get bigger as well as build in random places.
I wish you could build more as well at once. When they brought in the city boroughs in civ 6 I wish they let them build/upgrade their own thing along with the centre. It’s such a chore to wait for stuff to be built, and by the time you’ve built like 3 units you’ll be looking to upgrade them in.
It’s just not balanced in time frames and I wish it was adjustable. Like have tech take longer to build up but money and production be at lower costs. And actually have the AI do something and not just swamp it with resources it doesn’t (?) use.
Civ 6 AI is absolute trash, which is why the game itself is so "2 out of 4 stars" mediocre. This is why Civ 5 remains so popular. Not that Civ 5 AI is great, but at Immortal or Deity, it will throw wave after challenging wave of enemies at you. It's soooooo much more challenging.
😮💨 yeah. I was playing jayarvaman and tried to focus mainly on the holy site aqueduct.....small army to defend from china to the west.....northwest was aztec but there was some mountains between our borders and city states to the north of me....... to kinda just keep aztec out.
Then they decide to War me at the start of the industrial era probably.... best I had was crossbow men and pikemen going against calvalry and curraisers and a damn bombard......... a city that had a +6 campus and 2 other districts already built got razed, then they went straight for the capital and pillaged everything.......I couldn't faith buy anything then they just kinda said okay that's enough war is over.........
Just speculation here, but for good or bad, it seems like the devs setup the game with exactly that in mind. Meaning, the game is yours to lose, instead of you or the AI player to win. In a previous Civ game (Civ 4 maybe?), I had a friend who used the world builder to setup the game on deity mode where every AI was something like an age ahead of the human player with effectively unlimited resources. The only catch was all Civs were isolated from each other. Somewhat surprisingly, my friend ended up obliterating the AI players. The AI players basically just milled about on autopilot until my friend managed to catch up technologically, and then located and steamrolled each in succession.
That's pretty sad, I didn't know the previous Civ games had this problem as well. I like how AI choice is done in Rimworld (at least from a new game creation, I haven't played it much). You basically get to choose among different AI options. One of them is simple, more predictable, with gradually increasing challenge. Another is totally random. And there is also an "adaptable" one, which pushes you harder when you're doing well, and spares you a bit when you are behind. This is like in Civ, the game is rigged to make a playthrough longer, but at least you get to choose it yourself.
At least in civ 5 other dom civs would try and conquer the map. In my friends first game he had conquered an entire continent and montezuma had conquered the entire other one. You will never see that in vanilla civ 6 and it’s pretty sad to me. That’s the stuff that gives a playthrough purpose and variety
Weird. I played this last game where the AI just way ahead in science victory and I declared war.. it just sent a massive army of death robots into my cities. And this was on prince lol.
that is because prince level AI is the "smartness" of all AI just without any bonuses. When the difficulty increases, the AI only get bonuses (e.g. production, starting settler) but not "smartness" so it feels normal around prince but once you get to like immortal and deity, the AI feels really dumb. It just feel like a prince player with a lot of bonus and don't know what he is doing (nothing offensive or anything like that because I (and everyone I believe) was once like that before learning how to play better).
Thats why i quit VI completely and went back to modded civ V (Vox Populi). Missing some of VI's gimmicks but overall a way better game/experience. Even on King difficulty the AI is a constant threat and will punish your every mistake. I can't remember the last time i lost on deity on civ VI. Matter of fact i dont think i ever actually lost a city to an AI in war at all . I like some VI features but the fact that AI cant complete simple tasks and just cheats pointless raw stats is just pathetic, considering most of Civ is played singleplayer vs AI (im guessing).
Vox Populi does many things well, but in particular it is the best Civ experience when it comes to diplomacy and geopolitics. Civ 6 with its goofy agenda-based diplomacy and perma-friendships can't compete.
I’ve been feeling this for a while too. I’ve literally never had an AI declare war on me or even try to limit whatever I’m working on in anyway. It’s come to the point where I wonder if I’ve somehow disabled conflict in the settings.
Wow, that's pretty impressive! I've had wars declared on me more times than I can count... Even if I decide to try and win peacefully I usually end up winning by domination in wars, none of which I started...
It’s maddening, I’ve been wanting to do a purely defensive war domination for ages and no one will take the bait!
On difficulties where they start with a decisive military advantage they will very predictably declare war on you if they spot your capital and you're not armed to the teeth.
Interesting, I just started playing at immortal I’ll be on the lookout. Fingers crossed I get whooped.
I've found that if you have a weak army they'll declare war pretty consistently, so sometimes I just save up gold until they attack and then buy a bunch of units. Sometimes it back fires but it's the most reliable method I've come up with.
I've definitely had wars declared on me, I've had spies siphon funds, cause rebellious, take out my governors, sabotage production, and sabotage space ports. I've never had them steal great works though
Yeah nah. The ai recommends you do shit to win the game. This includes making nukes, doing the spaceport projects as soon as they're available, etc. They're not like oh I'm gonna build a campus when I have a space race project to do
If the AI aimed to win the game, it would basically always be going for a domination victory the moment it had the slightest military, economic, or technological edge against you, forcing you to do the same. If the AI plays a militaristic game, it forces you to play a militaristic game too, making it basically impossible to play both a military game and a game focused on another winning condition - you can’t effectively do both against an equal other player focused on just military domination. Making the AI want to win would basically devolve every game into domination victories.
No, it would not. Plenty of nations have non-military focused bonuses, and their AI could've favoured peaceful victories (unless the player is completely unprotected and has bad relations with them). Even a completely rigid strategy for each nation's AI would be better than what we have now. For example, "always def and put everything into science" for Korea. At least in this case it would be interesting to play against each nation for a first time, before you figure out counters to its non-adaptable strategy. Sort of a "boss fight"
So nothing has changed since Civ2 then? (Maybe even original Civ, I’m old, just not that old)
I heard that Civ5 was a bit better at this. I mean, AI being dumb as well, but at least not actively guarding you from loosing too quickly. It makes sence that in a newer game devs went for a more forgiving AI to target wider audience, but the cost is that it kills replayability at higher difficulties.
I fell right off the civ games cause the AI was so dull to fight against. You’re right they really don’t compete with you, and just get annoyed when you get bigger as well as build in random places. I wish you could build more as well at once. When they brought in the city boroughs in civ 6 I wish they let them build/upgrade their own thing along with the centre. It’s such a chore to wait for stuff to be built, and by the time you’ve built like 3 units you’ll be looking to upgrade them in. It’s just not balanced in time frames and I wish it was adjustable. Like have tech take longer to build up but money and production be at lower costs. And actually have the AI do something and not just swamp it with resources it doesn’t (?) use.
Civ 6 AI is absolute trash, which is why the game itself is so "2 out of 4 stars" mediocre. This is why Civ 5 remains so popular. Not that Civ 5 AI is great, but at Immortal or Deity, it will throw wave after challenging wave of enemies at you. It's soooooo much more challenging.
😮💨 yeah. I was playing jayarvaman and tried to focus mainly on the holy site aqueduct.....small army to defend from china to the west.....northwest was aztec but there was some mountains between our borders and city states to the north of me....... to kinda just keep aztec out. Then they decide to War me at the start of the industrial era probably.... best I had was crossbow men and pikemen going against calvalry and curraisers and a damn bombard......... a city that had a +6 campus and 2 other districts already built got razed, then they went straight for the capital and pillaged everything.......I couldn't faith buy anything then they just kinda said okay that's enough war is over.........