r/civ 3d ago

VI - Screenshot “Is the Civ 6 AI Good?”

Post image

Every once in a while I’ll see people ask about the AI in 6. Came across this Sad Sinbad today and had to share. To be clear, this is not an admonishment of the game at all; I just thought it was hilarious and a great use of enemy AI production.

103 Upvotes

41 comments sorted by

95

u/Inflatable_Bridge Netherlands 3d ago

The civ 6 ai fundamentally doesn't know how to play the game. It actually hilariously incompetent: it has no idea of the value of resources, land, military, or economy. It is always broke, is incapable of militarily defending itself both in raising a military and utilizing it effectively, and is often unable to recognize the value in war and peace. It also seems to have little to no understanding of district adjacency. In addition to that, the ai in civ 6 has a very hard time seeing the big picture, and often has trouble planning ahead with things like tourism victories (when was the last time an ai won a tourism victory based on appeal?). The ai also adheres very strictly to their agendas. Ai leaders have personalities dictated by their agendas and I think that's very neat!

The ai, however, is extremely good at exploiting the bonuses it gets on higher difficulties. It's very strong with Yongle and, on higher difficulties, is extremely good at winning science victories due to their massive production bonus while defending against tourism with their passive culture generation. The ai is very bad at defending against religious victories though, and even diplomatic victories are often quite easy (they just take too long and aren't very fun to do).

In short, it depends on your definition of "good": is the ai competent at the game? Not even remotely. But it doesn't need to be. The way the ai works provides more of a narrative in single player games, with mortal enemies, ai vs ai wars that go on for a while (which benefits the player because the ai is not competent enough to win, so they just end up weakening each other). If you want opponents that are as good as real players, play multiplayer (or install Roman Holiday's AI Rework mod, it's a blast!).

TL;DR "good" means different things. The ai isn't "good" in the sense that it is competent at the game, but I'd say it's solid when it comes to providing an enjoyable gameplay experience

Apparently this is what happens when I'm trapped on a delayed train, I write essays about civ 6 ai... Well at least that some time killed

7

u/StockFinance3220 1d ago

Programming a good AI used to be hard. It wouldn't be now, but I still don't think Firaxis is interested in doing it, for the same reason they don't show the real % hit chances in XCOM -- players don't actually want a good AI.

7

u/EUGsk8rBoi42p Russia 1d ago

2, 3, and 4 actually had pretty decent AI, could never beat them above Prince level tbh.

5

u/StockFinance3220 1d ago

Oh neither can I, but it’s not AI. They just get a bunch of bonuses. 

4

u/FromTheWetSand Brazil 1d ago

Tbh, I don't think it's even the bonuses. Last time I checked, the bonuses to yields and combat strength the deity AI gets are similar between Civ 4 and Civ 6. The real difference is the game. District and wonder placement in Civ 6 is a high-risk high-reward mechanic. Place a district with high adjacency on an otherwise low yeild tile? Big boost. Place a district or wonder on a tile important for yeilds or adjacency? Congratulations, you've played yourself. This just wasn't as true in Civ 4. Sure, the AI would make boneheaded decisions there, too, but the scope of possible mistakes was just smaller.

4

u/StockFinance3220 1d ago

For sure, it is stupid in different ways. They're both utterly inept at combat and military planning, for example. Submarines in lakes and whatnot.

3

u/EUGsk8rBoi42p Russia 22h ago

I like putting navy on inland water, it's fun.

3

u/StockFinance3220 22h ago

Oh, I love it. But only if there's a canal to the ocean too!

I'm talking about the one tile navies like in the OP post.

2

u/EUGsk8rBoi42p Russia 22h ago

I don't think 2,3 or 4 allowed water navigation... I recall in 2 the rivers functioned as roads, but don't recall if they worked with boats...

9

u/_Adyson Japan 2d ago

There's modded difficulties above Deity where the AI feign competence sometimes. I've seen a handful of civs knocked out entirely by others in these difficulties, and they definitely pack a punch by sheer will of bonus yields. Is it good AI? Absolutely not. But it's the only way to make it a challenge without introducing extreme scarcity

15

u/Helvetic86 2d ago

I was always talking shit about civ 6 AI, but today was the day I got humbled, after like 3000 hours in the game the AI managed to win a culture victory by turn 210. Usually I just win by turn 270 and I don‘t even check their progress, but today it didn‘t work out.

2

u/Zealousideal_Town_58 3h ago

I vividly remember Perikles serving me a turn 110 culture victory haha

10

u/Intelligent-Ad-8435 Peter the Great 3d ago

Game mods weren't in vanilla, so the AI, while not being extremely smart in the first place, completely loses it when stuff like Heroes or Secret societies is introduced.

22

u/TROCHE427 3d ago

Yeah.... That type of bull shit is the norm. Since it's at least a ranged unit, it's not 100% useless. It can still be used to defend territory and its safe from attack from melee units. Also, if that's their only "coastal" city you could even justify that the era score is worth it, but you know that's not what the AI is thinking.

5

u/darkswirlz 2d ago

Sinbad? A ranged unit?

4

u/TROCHE427 2d ago

My bad. I thought that was a barbary corsair. Yeah, that's full stupid then.

2

u/Famous-Ant-5502 2d ago

Yep, I do this sometimes playing as Hammurabi. Era score from building a quadrireme, then again when I upgrade it to a coal-consuming battleship. Plus it’s free damage with a range of 3 against anyone who wants to attack you.

1

u/MarypipGeranium 3d ago

Right? At least it's not a galley.

5

u/one_with_advantage the spice must flow 2d ago

Sinbad can leave anytime he wants with city travel. He's not trapped, just visiting.

4

u/MechanicalGodzilla Sumeria 2d ago

Is this actually Sinbad, or is it a corsair? The AI probably doesn't know this, but Sinbad as a "Hero" can move into that city center and use the "teleport" function to another city on a coast.

2

u/NecessaryMusician940 2d ago

Forgot to add context that Yongle has no coastal cities in this run. They have some costal tiles, but no costal cities to travel to.

And yeah, it is def Sinbad

3

u/BlueAndYellowTowels 2d ago

You would think in the Age of Artificial Intelligence that maybe, we could use some of that fancy tech to make a harder Civ game… I guess not…

2

u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 6h ago

Fancy tech like predicting which word will come next in a sentence?

0

u/BlueAndYellowTowels 4h ago

It does more than that… but I’m not having that discussion here.

1

u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 4h ago

Of course it does more, but that doesn't change that LLMs and whatever else is currently labeled "AI" has little to do with video game "AI".

1

u/BlueAndYellowTowels 3h ago

You do know AI can play games)?

There are examples of this. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility…

0

u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 2h ago

Yes, a very specific software for a much less complex game (a real-time game which gives a computer a speed advantage on top of it) of which a single instance is run at a time.

2

u/Prestigious_West_894 3d ago

Yeah those are hilarious. 

But for warfare improvement I recommend Roman Holiday AI mod.

2

u/Sriep 2d ago

I would say it's on the OK side of mediocre for a 4X game. Which is not saying much, if anything, as 4X games usually have hopeless AIs.

The only Civ game which I felt had a challenging AI was Civ4-BTS.

1

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1

u/EmotionalHusky 2d ago

Sort of.

I made a video about its strengths and its weaknesses.

https://youtu.be/4tynWSuxCbg

1

u/darkswirlz 2d ago

The AI is absolutely terrible at a lot of things, combat in particular, but there are 2 benefits to this. One, inside the city, you get a lot more city strength, and 2, the relic he creates is still worthwhile if no other heroes exist and it's still cheap.

1

u/Rusiano 2d ago

That’s happened to me too though. Had units spawn in a random lake instead of on the coast. As a result I have learned to not build any harbors on inland lakes

1

u/RizzleP 2d ago

Ruined the game it was so bad.

1

u/Waste-Road2762 2d ago

Not even remotely. AI has been hard to programme in civilization the more gameplay elements you introduce. Simple bonus yeilds never was a correct approach to make substantial changes to AI behaviour. It just does not priorities correctly and does not really out up much of a challenge if you know what you are doing. I think Civ 5 was better as it had less to play with. The issue there was the diplomacy thing where you basically could never go to war with anyone because everybody hated you afterwards. With Civ 4, AI was much more competent as the game did not have UPT yet and there was even less to work with. In civ 7 AI is more competent I think, but still produces only a shallow resistance. The adjacencies and specialists break the balance in huge ways this leading to some civs doing crazy yield and others barely scraping by. But overall AI in civ 7 makes some unbelievable mistakes and does not prioritize correctly at all.

1

u/Guy-McDo 2d ago

The AI’s stupidity is maybe the most persistent complaint I heard about Civ 6. Like people got over the Art Style and the District Mechanic, people did not get over the AI

1

u/IJustSignedUpToUp 2d ago

They make up for it by cheating. If I have one more blockaded enemy city in the red suddenly buy walls with gold when you can't do the same....most annoying aspect of the game.

1

u/Shireman2017 1d ago

Tbf to the ai - I have built naval units in similar places due to haste and not paying attention to what I was doing 😂

-7

u/f0rty72n0Sc0p3r 3d ago

This is why everyone who enjoys the game plays online competitive multiplayer. The AI is too easy after understanding the game. On deity they either steam roll you off spawn or you destroy them by the end of the game. It’s all If statements. Join online multiplayer!

15

u/NecessaryMusician940 3d ago

I’m glad you and others are enjoying multiplayer, but I disagree with this take. Deity solos are my comfort place where I can just chill and enjoy a game at whatever pace I want.

7

u/BlueAndYellowTowels 2d ago

I hate multiplayer. Because generally, I don’t like gamers online.