Sid Meier's Civilization Series (Main Titles)

Yes, that's basically it. If the AI perceives an advantage, such as having a larger army than you at any given time, it will very rapidly move to attack even if it was otherwise friendly. This is how human players end up getting dogpiled. The AI isn't very good at looking at the strategic picture, such as whether you have enough gold to rapidly buy defensive units, or whether the city it's obsessed with has a strong defensive position.

I actually kind of like getting attacked in the early game, because I can dig in and build up my units' XP. However, this only applies if I have an advantage, such as better tech or more resources. The AI can steamroll you if you aren't prepared.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 10th 2020 at 3:44:46 PM

There's also their nasty habit of throwing their whole everything into an attack without adequately having the infrastructure to support it, and continue to do so even as their civ is falling apart.

The number of times I've seen the leading AI pick a fight with me (or someone else), fail, and basically ruin themselves in the process is staggering - sometimes without there even needing to be retaliation in the first place.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 10th 2020 at 12:51:45 PM

Worst is when they attack right after a damaging barbarian attack

On the subject of the AI constantly picking fights with each other, how on earth am I supposed to get the Steam achievement for getting the maximum bonus from Gandhi's ability? It requires all seven religion-founding nations to be at peace (not just with each other, in general), but there's always at least two or three pointless asshole wars going on between two nations on opposite continents, or someone picking on city-states.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Aug 10th 2020 at 5:07:46 AM

Especially since "you converted one of my cities" is one of the AI's favorite reasons for war.

I suspect that the easiest way is to establish founder reservations. So reduce each religion founder to 1 city surrounded by you. You’re then the only war target for any of them and you’re to strong.

Unfortunately I got geographically-screwed this session and am far too weak a military power to be conquering anyone, let alone the whole world, and will have to try again. Maybe just cheese it on an easy difficulty.

Imperial Gandhi's words will be backed with nuclear weapons. Maintain the peace... or else.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Aug 10th 2020 at 6:27:08 AM

Thing is, I feel like this sort of thing disproportionately affects player-controlled civs whose power spikes are mainly in the first couple eras of the game, such as the Aztecs. While at the same time making those civs absolute terrors when they're in the hands of the AI.

Really, I sort of feel like if you're an early-game-focused civ, then you sort of have the deck stacked against you, since that's the point in the game where you're still trying to establish yourself. Stuff that arrives later means you can more afford to divert resources for it. (Sumer gets by despite both of its unique things coming in the ancient era because war-carts are Just That Good.)

In other news, I managed to wipe out both Sumer and Sweden. Sumer was first; turned out that other than those few knights and a couple of horsemen, he didn't have much. Still took a while, since he had settled a fair number of cities. The fact that he apparently never built any walls certainly helped, though it made my seige units kind of useless.

Doing that triggered an emergency, of which I was the target, and Sweden answered. She sent a couple of knights my way, but there was a lot of rainforest in the way, and I had a city and a crossbowman to help whittle them down. Just as I finished Sumer off, though, it was the late medieval/early renaissance era, so she started sending Caroleans my way, and those things are kind of scary.

I fought that off and started marching on Sweden, and I find out that unlike Gilgamesh, Kristina is smart enough to build walls. But apparently not smart enough to build walls in more than one city. So once I finally managed to bust down that fortress city of hers (it was placed just past the end of a mountain pass, and I can't decide if the AI specifically settled there for how defensible it was), the rest of Sweden was pretty much helpless. Especially now that my attack boost from amenities was really starting to manifest itself.

She apparently had a disagreement with the Cree at some point, since I found their former capital way at the other end of the continent. Which hilariously had rebelled and become a free city by the time I found it. And it had a practically unique luxury in its borders (there were other nodes close by, but nowhere I'd actually want to found a city otherwise), so of course I snapped that up.

It is now the late industrial era, and I finally am the undisputed ruler of my continent. Now I just need to take my aggression overseas.

Edited by IrishZombie on Aug 10th 2020 at 5:07:00 AM

I assume the AI basically settles where they spawn.

The game has been patched a fair bit and now the AI doesn't forward settle nearly as much as it used to. The Loyalty mechanic really helps with that. With very few exceptions it builds cities close to existing ones. (Except for Kupe, of course, who settles wherever he pleases.)

I have noted the tendency for it to focus on "fortress" cities that are excruciatingly hard to take. Sometimes I wait out the Renaissance Era on those so I can have bombards. You need either a tech level advantage or a massive unit advantage to take down a fortress. You can also starve it by plundering all its districts and improvements, which will render it largely impotent and subject to unhappiness and loyalty pressure.

With the new Apocalypse mode in the latest patch, you can move an upgraded Soothsayer next to it to automatically besiege it, although that may not be worth it if floods and volcanoes are wrecking your civilization in the meantime.

If you hold an entire continent by the Industrial Era, you've all but won. There is a huge Unstable Equilibrium to Civ games.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 10th 2020 at 9:35:54 AM

The Spiffing Brit demonstrated that the new secret societies DLC is very unbalanced indeed, and allows you to exploit the loyalty mechanic to the point where you can do a pacifist world conquest run.

(He still wins a culture victory by accident, by the way, which is just the way this game is sometimes )

The moment they said "this society gives a buildable unit that can take off loyalty," I figured there would be trouble.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 10th 2020 at 7:18:33 AM

Eleanor is the leader to use if you want a peaceful Domination victory. Her city-flipping ability is absolutely disgusting. You can even use it to flip city-states, which are normally impervious to loyalty pressure.

Which unit is this, by the way? I don't think I've used all the secret societies yet, although Rock Bands were already pretty broken for loyalty bombing.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 10th 2020 at 11:23:03 AM

What civ works well with Eleanor?

The Voidsingers. Their unique that lowers a city's loyalty is the Cultist. It also works double time for Eleanor as a Cultist's death gives her a Relic, which also works naturally with her ability to turn Great Works into loyalty loss per turn.

And also their unique building gives her an additional Great Work slot per city.

Generally, French Eleanor is considered the better of the two, mainly because France's ability and unique improvement tie in better with Eleanor's own ability, and the fact she wants to go for a Culture victory most of the time.

English Eleanor has a bit better of a start since England has a unique Harbor and it allows her to better establish new cities on other continents, which can help on maps with split up land masses.

Ah wait nvm, I was thinking of England's old ability.

Given we're only about a month from when it's supposed to drop anything on the grapevine for who the next DLC/expansion pack Civ is?

I suspect the next balance patch is next Thursday with the Developer Update video this Thursday. We'll probably also get an announcement on what the two Civs are coming for the September portion of the New Frontier Pass.

Well, there isn't any new Developer Updates, but VI is now out on Android.

Free update info coming on Monday.

Finished trying out each of the base game's civs (though I probably need to do another round with England, since their ability completely changed at some point). I started on the next set (civs added through DLC content packs, rather than expansions), randomly rolled to see who I'd play as, and ended up with Poland. Ended up going for a religion victory.

Is it just me, though, or is the religion victory in this game kind of one-note? Just rush your religion, get some apostles to evangelize your extra beliefs, maybe grab some inquisitors to spread to/defend your own territory, then just throw apostles at everyone's cities that have a holy site.

At that point it's basically just domination but with only two types of unit (apostles and gurus), and you only have as many opponents as there are other religions. Even though there are apparently other ways to apply religious pressure, IME that's by far the most efficient way to do it.

I say this because even with the civs I've played that have other ways to convert cities (Spain's conquistadors, Poland's culture bombs from encampments), in the end surgical strikes with apostles just works much better, because one requires you to go to war, and one requires to to somehow settle a city within range of one of their major cities (and also possibly go to war). Also, by hitting their holy site cities with apostles, you quickly eliminate their ability to make more religious units and are then free to convert their other cities unopposed.

Also, relics are weird. I was lucky enough to get one from a village in the first several turns, but beyond that, they're incredibly rare, which makes Poland's boost to relics hard to use. Hell, I ended up building Mont St. Michel in one of my cities to synergize with that... only for my apostles to then never die from combat, because the AI just was not fielding opposing religious units in the numbers needed to threaten me.

Unrelated note: My game right before this one was with Kongo. And I get the feeling their boost to relics, artifacts, and sculptures is meant to be flavorful of something, since those feel too specific to be otherwise. No clue what it might be referring to, though.

There's a Religious city-state whose bonus gives you a relic each time you discover a natural wonder. It's pretty broken if you get that one early on. Otherwise Relics are a total crapshoot.

As for getting a Religious victory, the AI is pretty bad at utilizing its religious combat units, I've noticed. All you need is a bunch of Apostles with the +20 combat bonus promotion and you're mostly set. It just requires a lot of focus on Faith to build all of those units, so you end up sacrificing other areas of your economy. The price compounds as you buy them, so if you're ten or fifteen units deep, your opponents will be able to buy their own a lot more cheaply.

What I think is missing is the AI having the foresight to declare war in order to be able to destroy your religious units. I don't think I've ever had a Holy war declared against me. I've done it to the AI a few times.

The AI's tactic for religion is spamming units and then swarming another player with them.

Has anyone seen an AI civ actually win a Religious victory? I never have.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 15th 2020 at 2:03:48 PM

I've never personally seen the AI win a religious victory, but they could definitely win one on smaller maps and I have seen others accidentally give the AI a religious victory while going domination.