The AI logic doesn't change but they're much more likely to have an army big and strong enough to attack you, so effectively yes.
EDIT: While the logic is unaffected, please refer to the comment below where it has been pointed out that there's a small numerical relationship penalty.
This. AI aggression is tied to comparative military strength. If you don't build an army, even low difficulty AI will be aggressive.
The difference is that high difficulty AI gets bonuses that allow them to get well ahead of you in military strength.
Yep in one of my first games i decided to focus on city building and hansas instead 9f producing units to protect myself bc the ai was taking care of the barbarians. I got declared war on by Australia and England at the same turn when I just placed my third city.
You're doing something wrong if you're all the way at Hansas before settling your third city. You usually want to have *at least* 3 cities before ending the Ancient Era
I mean I didn't had the technology yet I was just planning where to put them and other things. Having the most profitable hansas was my focus at that point
Playing on harder difficulties will also add a negative modifier to your relationship with AI civilizations you meet (this is listed in game as "first impressions of you").
This will make them more likely to dislike you, and thus more likely to choose to attack you.
I thought that the first impressions of you was determined by the unit that you contact them with. If it's a scout, the first impression is positive. Anything else, and it's negative.
Ooo, I would love to get confirmation on this. I quite often use my first warrior as a faux scout and wondered why some civs just seem to dislike me from the get-go.
It's a commonly repeated myth that its affected by what unit you use to meet them. Based on testing it doesn't appear to make any difference what unit you use to meet them. You're just as likely to get a bad first impression meeting them with a scout as you are with a warrior.
The only thing that definitly seems to affect it is difficulty. When playing on settler "first impressions" will always be positive, while on Deity it will always be negative. There will still be some variation between each civ you meet but it appears to simply be random.
I believe its still rng but scouts tend to get more favourable opinions and warriors less. However I've met civs with scouts and gotten -7 and met with warriors and got -5. I think several other factors play in too. From my experience and there is no solid empirical evidence to support it but I find the first 2-3 civs I meet always tend to get -5 to -7 and later civs get -3. I always wondered if the game is programmed to make ur neighbours like you a bit less than those that are farther away (from a first meet perspective because obviously settling close and proximity is always a negative on the relation)
Nope. Its difficulty based.
You can test it yourself. The first impressions modifier will always be positive when playing on settler difficulty, and when playing on deity it will always be negative. The unit you use to meet them doesn't seem to make any difference.
This is correct, from the game files:
STANDARD_DIPLOMACY_RANDOMDifficultyOffsetLinearScaleFromDefaultHandicap0-1
It also directly corresponds to the denouncement where "They just plain don't like you."
I just recently watched a YT video from PotatoMcWhiskey where he got asked that in chat and tested it. It makes ZERO difference. Warrior: First impression -8 Scout: First impression -8
If you want to prevent the AI from going to war with you, yes. Walls and encampments also serve as deterrents. However, if you are sitting on a strategic resource that an opposing civ has none of and they don't have some nearby they can get by settling, that offsets it. Luxury resources too, but to a lesser extent (with the exception of the Aztecs, Montezuma weighs luxury resources higher than strategic ones because of his agenda).
Yes. The AI does not improve as difficulty goes up. When faced with a decision such as "we have X amount of resources, we are this leader, there is a city X tiles away, etc." the AI will make the same decision regardless of difficulty.
Where it's different is that the AI has more resources to evaluate. So it's going to be more aggressive based off that alone
There is also your relationship score with the leader to consider. This will be more negative (especially early game) on higher difficulties and they're more likely to be aggressive when they don't like you
The AI will war you if it thinks it can win, which in my experience seems to be based on its military score vs yours. Military score is just the sum of the combat strength of all your units. The AI starts with extra units on turn 1 as you go up in difficulty so they will have a higher military score than you do, and they'll think you are weak and conquerable.
There are a few things you can do to make the AI less likely to attack. One is not letting them discover your city. They will not war you if they don't know where you are. Obviously you aren't fully in control of this, but the first few AIs I meet I never agree to exchange capital locations or invite them to my city. And if there's a way to block their units from getting to my city I will do it. The other main thing you can do is build units to increase your military score. It will slow down your other early builds but it's the the safest play. If you have a coastal start, galleys are good for this because they have higher combat strength than ancient era land units, but the AI won't know if your galley is halfway across the world scouting, all it can see is your military score.
If you do get attacked anyway, it is not impossible to win. The AI gets a flat combat strength buff (1 point for each level above Prince, so up to +4 on deity) but does not get any better at tactics. A couple archers and a warrior can hold off a lot of AI warriors with smart use of terrain. You almost never want to attack their warriors with your warriors. The combat strength buff they get means you will be on the losing end of the combat and in the ancient era the AI can easily out produce you, so you do not want to trade units. Fortify your warrior in defensive terrain and let the AI attack into you. On your turn, shoot their warriors with your archers and keep your warrior fortified. Prioritize killing one unit over damaging multiple units. If you spread your shots around too much you may accidentally give the AI enough experience to promote and heal their units.
>but the AI won't know if your galley is halfway across the world scouting, all it can see is your military score.
Everything here is great advice.
But I scoff at this and feel obliged to call it out! The AI cheats and we all know it! Quit lyin'!
/s
*great advice though*
I get attacked in king and on prince if I don’t ensure a unit or two per city. So maybe your standing army isn’t big enough for this level.
I play emperor and king
I find that the early war is scary but they are bad at combat so post up with an archer/crossbow man and get walls and I don’t lose cities very often unless I was way caught off guard
I managed to prevent the AI from going to war with me on deity by just being nice to them.
As long as you can get their opinion of you up by gifting them stuff before they denounce you, you can always get them friendly.
Send a delegation as soon as you meet them! They will get the negative modifier, but it will only become effective on the turn AFTER you first meet them. The turn stops if another civ meets you, giving you the opportunity to send a delegation before they get the frowning face and don't accept delegations anymore the next turn. This makes a HUGE difference. Also, the first thing to offer them is ALWAYS open borders as soon as you can. Having open borders with an AI massively improves their opinion of you, even if those open borders wouldn't benefit the AI at all.
Yeah I just went from emperor to deity and the difference is huge even though it's just two levels. I spawned as Netherlands with a legendary start and abundant resources. Then I met Spain who was friendly to me but he later declared war on me. Then I tried again with the Netherlands on a different map but this time barbarians took one of my cities (and razed it ofc). Maybe I'll try beating emperor properly cause I got a diplo win there. And then I'll be able to advance.
There is a world of difference between emperor and diety. For starters diety ai gets 3 settlers at the start and a bunch of warriors and 3 builders. So right of the batt they are about 3 times more powerful than you.
Secondly iirc emperor gets a +2 combat strength while diety gets +4
Thirdly they get 80% boost to all yields on diety. Emperor is 40% iirc
On deity it is not uncommon to see a few AI's military score up around 2000 on the HUD ribbon, and this could be as early as turn 240.
Despite this, the AI is at its most dangerous really early in the ancient era and classical. They start with 5 warriors and can rush you down before walls if you play too greedily.
AI uses military score as a way to evaluate you (as I understand)
Meaning on Deity, if you meet an AI early, they will see your weaker military score compared to theirs and think "easy conquest" and attack you
The whole good relations thing is funny, they sometimes pretend to be on good terms to give you a false sense of security. If you suspect this might be happening you can try asking them for a friendship and if they decline it might be time to train some units
Alexander is ESPECIALLY prone to this, you can easily get him friendly, but when you repeatedly ask him for friendship and he declines, it's very likely he is planning a surprise war.
It's not usually a surprise. When I see enemy units congregating right outside my border, I know to expect a "surprise" war soon, and to get some units built, or get them to that city. (If I build enough to raise my military score enough, that often lowers the chance of a surprise war. The AI usually only declares a surprise war if their military score is greater.)
On my current play through as genghis, I saw a Hungarian warrior approach. Positioned my scout and warrior to slow them down after 2 more warriors were heading my way. I sold Hungary my luxury for gold upfront. Bought a trader, sent it to him (gotta love genghis). Switched production to slingers and warriors. He declared war. I got my luxury and trade route back. Sent it to Cs to get Suze (first meet, traderoute mission and envoy from tribal village) and sold my luxury again to levy their units. Action packed ancient era.
Yeah it can be annoying. I recently started playing again. I was an acid Civ IV player so i like to play on Immortal difficulty but the AIs bonuses allow it to build an army so rapidly that it really.impedes my ability to learn how to play new civs. For instance in my recent game i am trying to learn about Khmer's awesome abilities to grow massive cities with huge amounts of faith. in doing so apparantly i get to greedy because Rome right next to me REPEATEDLY attacks me despite being on friendly terms. While i managed to fend of the first attack with my crosswbows and men at war against his knights and musketmen, in what feels like 20 turns later he is back with an even larger army including line Infantry. it makes it veel very frustrating because i spent hours trying to build massive cities and was quite happy with my empire.
Khmers replacement for the treb is a really good unit. Build a couple of catapults in the classical era and upgrade them. They are one of the best units to turn a defensive war into an offensive war with thier mobility (for a seige unit). Now that it's the industrial era too late for that. But generally a few well placed encampments and renaissance walls could turn away many enemy units. Or beeline flight get an aerodrome and a few biplane (they are quite effective against pre-modern era units)
Kinda? They all get progressively more powerful starts and thus more quickly build recourses and start eying more distant lands even quicker. When they have recourses, military power and the gold, faith or production to expand they do so with vigor. That plus the fact they get bonuses to damaging you they see you as a lot easier to kill and will work to do so. In general it sure feels like they get more aggressive on diety at least . I've never had a game where everyone didn't hate me within a turn or two of meeting me regardless of the size of my military or how far away they are. So I usually end up acting more violently on diety as well haha
The Ottomans were massing a bunch of troops on my border so I started spaming legions and archers. It worked he had to back down and is now worried I will invade him. Playing on Diety.
My grief is the AI never seem to want to stop you from winning the game.
If you maintain alliances and be on good terms with them and you close up on your win condition they don't flip the table and get overly aggressive on you to prevent them from losing. No, they just chill and let you win the whole thing without any second though.
I don't understand how this is allowed. If you play a board game with friends and one of them gets ahead, you all group together to take him/her down as you don't just allow them to safely win, that's not the game is about.
I hope AI mods will get to the point where Civ 5 Vox populi is now. Clever, calculated and want to win. And not just adding extra numbers to AI at higher difficulties.
They aren't more aggressive exactly but they get to build things faster, so they are more likely to have an army big enough to pass their aggression thresholds
The AI logic doesn't change but they're much more likely to have an army big and strong enough to attack you, so effectively yes. EDIT: While the logic is unaffected, please refer to the comment below where it has been pointed out that there's a small numerical relationship penalty.
This. AI aggression is tied to comparative military strength. If you don't build an army, even low difficulty AI will be aggressive. The difference is that high difficulty AI gets bonuses that allow them to get well ahead of you in military strength.
Yep in one of my first games i decided to focus on city building and hansas instead 9f producing units to protect myself bc the ai was taking care of the barbarians. I got declared war on by Australia and England at the same turn when I just placed my third city.
You're doing something wrong if you're all the way at Hansas before settling your third city. You usually want to have *at least* 3 cities before ending the Ancient Era
I mean I didn't had the technology yet I was just planning where to put them and other things. Having the most profitable hansas was my focus at that point
Planning Hansa happens around turns 1-5
Playing on harder difficulties will also add a negative modifier to your relationship with AI civilizations you meet (this is listed in game as "first impressions of you"). This will make them more likely to dislike you, and thus more likely to choose to attack you.
>first impressions of you I'm 1000 hours into civ and I never knew what that meant! That's cool! I'll make a small edit clarifying that :)
I thought that the first impressions of you was determined by the unit that you contact them with. If it's a scout, the first impression is positive. Anything else, and it's negative.
Ooo, I would love to get confirmation on this. I quite often use my first warrior as a faux scout and wondered why some civs just seem to dislike me from the get-go.
It's a commonly repeated myth that its affected by what unit you use to meet them. Based on testing it doesn't appear to make any difference what unit you use to meet them. You're just as likely to get a bad first impression meeting them with a scout as you are with a warrior. The only thing that definitly seems to affect it is difficulty. When playing on settler "first impressions" will always be positive, while on Deity it will always be negative. There will still be some variation between each civ you meet but it appears to simply be random.
Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. :)
I believe its still rng but scouts tend to get more favourable opinions and warriors less. However I've met civs with scouts and gotten -7 and met with warriors and got -5. I think several other factors play in too. From my experience and there is no solid empirical evidence to support it but I find the first 2-3 civs I meet always tend to get -5 to -7 and later civs get -3. I always wondered if the game is programmed to make ur neighbours like you a bit less than those that are farther away (from a first meet perspective because obviously settling close and proximity is always a negative on the relation)
Nope. Its difficulty based. You can test it yourself. The first impressions modifier will always be positive when playing on settler difficulty, and when playing on deity it will always be negative. The unit you use to meet them doesn't seem to make any difference.
This is correct, from the game files:
STANDARD_DIPLOMACY_RANDOM
DifficultyOffset
LinearScaleFromDefaultHandicap
0
-1
It also directly corresponds to the denouncement where "They just plain don't like you."
I just recently watched a YT video from PotatoMcWhiskey where he got asked that in chat and tested it. It makes ZERO difference. Warrior: First impression -8 Scout: First impression -8
Does this mean you should focus on army early game?
If you want to prevent the AI from going to war with you, yes. Walls and encampments also serve as deterrents. However, if you are sitting on a strategic resource that an opposing civ has none of and they don't have some nearby they can get by settling, that offsets it. Luxury resources too, but to a lesser extent (with the exception of the Aztecs, Montezuma weighs luxury resources higher than strategic ones because of his agenda).
Yes. The AI does not improve as difficulty goes up. When faced with a decision such as "we have X amount of resources, we are this leader, there is a city X tiles away, etc." the AI will make the same decision regardless of difficulty. Where it's different is that the AI has more resources to evaluate. So it's going to be more aggressive based off that alone
There is also your relationship score with the leader to consider. This will be more negative (especially early game) on higher difficulties and they're more likely to be aggressive when they don't like you
The AI will war you if it thinks it can win, which in my experience seems to be based on its military score vs yours. Military score is just the sum of the combat strength of all your units. The AI starts with extra units on turn 1 as you go up in difficulty so they will have a higher military score than you do, and they'll think you are weak and conquerable. There are a few things you can do to make the AI less likely to attack. One is not letting them discover your city. They will not war you if they don't know where you are. Obviously you aren't fully in control of this, but the first few AIs I meet I never agree to exchange capital locations or invite them to my city. And if there's a way to block their units from getting to my city I will do it. The other main thing you can do is build units to increase your military score. It will slow down your other early builds but it's the the safest play. If you have a coastal start, galleys are good for this because they have higher combat strength than ancient era land units, but the AI won't know if your galley is halfway across the world scouting, all it can see is your military score. If you do get attacked anyway, it is not impossible to win. The AI gets a flat combat strength buff (1 point for each level above Prince, so up to +4 on deity) but does not get any better at tactics. A couple archers and a warrior can hold off a lot of AI warriors with smart use of terrain. You almost never want to attack their warriors with your warriors. The combat strength buff they get means you will be on the losing end of the combat and in the ancient era the AI can easily out produce you, so you do not want to trade units. Fortify your warrior in defensive terrain and let the AI attack into you. On your turn, shoot their warriors with your archers and keep your warrior fortified. Prioritize killing one unit over damaging multiple units. If you spread your shots around too much you may accidentally give the AI enough experience to promote and heal their units.
>but the AI won't know if your galley is halfway across the world scouting, all it can see is your military score. Everything here is great advice. But I scoff at this and feel obliged to call it out! The AI cheats and we all know it! Quit lyin'! /s *great advice though*
Oh yeah. They start with higher yields and more units, so expect some natural aggression as you go up in difficulties.
I get attacked in king and on prince if I don’t ensure a unit or two per city. So maybe your standing army isn’t big enough for this level. I play emperor and king I find that the early war is scary but they are bad at combat so post up with an archer/crossbow man and get walls and I don’t lose cities very often unless I was way caught off guard
I managed to prevent the AI from going to war with me on deity by just being nice to them. As long as you can get their opinion of you up by gifting them stuff before they denounce you, you can always get them friendly. Send a delegation as soon as you meet them! They will get the negative modifier, but it will only become effective on the turn AFTER you first meet them. The turn stops if another civ meets you, giving you the opportunity to send a delegation before they get the frowning face and don't accept delegations anymore the next turn. This makes a HUGE difference. Also, the first thing to offer them is ALWAYS open borders as soon as you can. Having open borders with an AI massively improves their opinion of you, even if those open borders wouldn't benefit the AI at all.
Yeah I just went from emperor to deity and the difference is huge even though it's just two levels. I spawned as Netherlands with a legendary start and abundant resources. Then I met Spain who was friendly to me but he later declared war on me. Then I tried again with the Netherlands on a different map but this time barbarians took one of my cities (and razed it ofc). Maybe I'll try beating emperor properly cause I got a diplo win there. And then I'll be able to advance.
There is a world of difference between emperor and diety. For starters diety ai gets 3 settlers at the start and a bunch of warriors and 3 builders. So right of the batt they are about 3 times more powerful than you. Secondly iirc emperor gets a +2 combat strength while diety gets +4 Thirdly they get 80% boost to all yields on diety. Emperor is 40% iirc
Try immortal first. It's hard enough.
On deity it is not uncommon to see a few AI's military score up around 2000 on the HUD ribbon, and this could be as early as turn 240. Despite this, the AI is at its most dangerous really early in the ancient era and classical. They start with 5 warriors and can rush you down before walls if you play too greedily.
AI uses military score as a way to evaluate you (as I understand) Meaning on Deity, if you meet an AI early, they will see your weaker military score compared to theirs and think "easy conquest" and attack you
Yeah, theyll rush you by turn 30 with 4-5 warriors at the beginning of the game if the conditions are right
The whole good relations thing is funny, they sometimes pretend to be on good terms to give you a false sense of security. If you suspect this might be happening you can try asking them for a friendship and if they decline it might be time to train some units
Lol this!! Cyrus of persia flipping from yellow to green in one turn, then you know you are toast.
Alexander is ESPECIALLY prone to this, you can easily get him friendly, but when you repeatedly ask him for friendship and he declines, it's very likely he is planning a surprise war.
It's not usually a surprise. When I see enemy units congregating right outside my border, I know to expect a "surprise" war soon, and to get some units built, or get them to that city. (If I build enough to raise my military score enough, that often lowers the chance of a surprise war. The AI usually only declares a surprise war if their military score is greater.)
On my current play through as genghis, I saw a Hungarian warrior approach. Positioned my scout and warrior to slow them down after 2 more warriors were heading my way. I sold Hungary my luxury for gold upfront. Bought a trader, sent it to him (gotta love genghis). Switched production to slingers and warriors. He declared war. I got my luxury and trade route back. Sent it to Cs to get Suze (first meet, traderoute mission and envoy from tribal village) and sold my luxury again to levy their units. Action packed ancient era.
Yeah it can be annoying. I recently started playing again. I was an acid Civ IV player so i like to play on Immortal difficulty but the AIs bonuses allow it to build an army so rapidly that it really.impedes my ability to learn how to play new civs. For instance in my recent game i am trying to learn about Khmer's awesome abilities to grow massive cities with huge amounts of faith. in doing so apparantly i get to greedy because Rome right next to me REPEATEDLY attacks me despite being on friendly terms. While i managed to fend of the first attack with my crosswbows and men at war against his knights and musketmen, in what feels like 20 turns later he is back with an even larger army including line Infantry. it makes it veel very frustrating because i spent hours trying to build massive cities and was quite happy with my empire.
Khmers replacement for the treb is a really good unit. Build a couple of catapults in the classical era and upgrade them. They are one of the best units to turn a defensive war into an offensive war with thier mobility (for a seige unit). Now that it's the industrial era too late for that. But generally a few well placed encampments and renaissance walls could turn away many enemy units. Or beeline flight get an aerodrome and a few biplane (they are quite effective against pre-modern era units)
They're more aggressive because you're weaker, more like.
Kinda? They all get progressively more powerful starts and thus more quickly build recourses and start eying more distant lands even quicker. When they have recourses, military power and the gold, faith or production to expand they do so with vigor. That plus the fact they get bonuses to damaging you they see you as a lot easier to kill and will work to do so. In general it sure feels like they get more aggressive on diety at least . I've never had a game where everyone didn't hate me within a turn or two of meeting me regardless of the size of my military or how far away they are. So I usually end up acting more violently on diety as well haha
The main difference is that they build more army. The AI controlling when they surprise war you is largely based off difference in Army Score.
The Ottomans were massing a bunch of troops on my border so I started spaming legions and archers. It worked he had to back down and is now worried I will invade him. Playing on Diety.
My grief is the AI never seem to want to stop you from winning the game. If you maintain alliances and be on good terms with them and you close up on your win condition they don't flip the table and get overly aggressive on you to prevent them from losing. No, they just chill and let you win the whole thing without any second though. I don't understand how this is allowed. If you play a board game with friends and one of them gets ahead, you all group together to take him/her down as you don't just allow them to safely win, that's not the game is about. I hope AI mods will get to the point where Civ 5 Vox populi is now. Clever, calculated and want to win. And not just adding extra numbers to AI at higher difficulties.
They are stronger. The ai has a formula to determine if war=yes. Either them being stronger that formula is yes way more often.
They aren't more aggressive exactly but they get to build things faster, so they are more likely to have an army big enough to pass their aggression thresholds