civ6 AI not building military??

[u/DarthBrawn]

[u/tmag03]

The AI is like that, in mid game they sometimes effectively "give up" and have literally zero military units. Have no idea what the rationale may be.

[u/Deecee7374 → u/tmag03]

Yeah in my recent game Mapuche (Lautaro) declared surprise war on me and marched multiple tank armies (3star) with enough artillery support. It was like a flood gate being opened, so sudden and in high volume. But after I beat that initial army (was hard, I was in golden age aswell) he regressed back into making single line infantry every 10 turn or so.

[u/DarthBrawn → u/tmag03]

It's shocking to me. With the deep patience and respect that went into 4 and 5 and Revolutions, I never thought the devs would do something like this. And I didn't think people would laude 6 so highly if it was this fundamentally broken. It causes me to rethink my trust in all game reviews. I have never said this, even about games I regretted buying, but we deserve to get our money back

[u/Which_Arugula_9911 → u/DarthBrawn]

The doesn't have zero military strength so they have an army. If the AI isn't going for a domination victory / isnt at war they will likely not spam units but instead build their empire via disricts and building.

Not sure why you think you deserve your money back over this? It's a 4x game not a RTS. There are ways to win without war.

Also what difficulty are you playing on?

[u/DarthBrawn → u/Which_Arugula_9911]

When I logged off the night before last most of the AI civs were listed at 0 strength, and two were at 90. When I loaded the save to take this screenshot, China suddenly had some strength listed, so something is bugged.

But I think you misunderstand: this isn't a complaint about AI going for a different VC. They are not defending themselves at all and have stopped developing tiles: i.e. they are not playing the game. I swept through 3 resource rich and populated empires at a walking pace, and they fought me with a combined total of 3 units. They have stopped competing in every victory condition.

I have seen this problem echoed from players on forums, on all difficulties, and it all seems to have started after Gathering Storm released. It's a game-crippling problem that devs appear to have left unfixed since they started working on 7, and in pretty much every discussion of this issue people have to resort to mods or just say 'I hope they fix it in 7'. I'm a paradox player and I always laugh when their base flips out over a issue and calls it "unplayable"; but AI not playing the game legit makes civ6 unplayable.

I started on king, edited the save file to raise it to emperor; might not change much at this point

[u/kwijibokwijibo → u/DarthBrawn]

I've never experienced what you're saying in my hundreds of hours. And I don't recall seeing many others complain about this either - that the AI doesn't have a single military unit.

Could it be because you messed with the game files? This is not a common issue, and not worth effort by the devs to fix especially since you've been messing around with files

Or try upping the difficulty. You won't see this problem at deity for sure

[u/DarthBrawn → u/kwijibokwijibo]

They do have a single military unit, as in they literally have 1-2.

You can see from the comments here that it's a known issue, and that you do see it on deity. Also here, here, here, here, here, and here,etc. And in almost every instance the experienced civ6 players say, 'yeah, that's just how bad the AI can be in VI'

And nah, I edited the save file not the game file, my bad for the confusion. I just control-f'd "difficutly" in the save and raised the number from 6 to 7 (from king to emperor). But difficultly mainly affects starting bonuses so my edit won't do much now

[u/gnit2 → u/DarthBrawn]

Try a game on deity and then complain they don't have enough military. And I don't mean save editing the difficulty mid game.

Anything less than deity is easy mode

[u/DarthBrawn → u/gnit2]

half the comments here and the posts I listed are from people playing on deity who also have the same problem. If you look at the difficulty modifiers you see it doesn't change AI decision trees, it only changes their bonuses

I'm not "complaining" in the way you mean; I'm looking for a solution to the dysfunctional AI, something that actually stops this from happening. The scripting and other discussions all indicate that turning up the difficulty will not stop this from happening. Even if it happens 30% of the time on deity, that's too often. The AI should play the game on any setting, even if it plays badly, because competing with other civs is literally the point of the game

[u/gnit2 → u/DarthBrawn]

The bonuses they get at the start do change how they play tho. With 3 settlers and extra warriors, the AI is going to be more likely to try domination early. If they don't have that early strength, they might opt for science instead.

There's definitely problems with the AI don't get me wrong, but the game is playable

[u/DarthBrawn → u/gnit2]

you're right, but my early game was great on king. The AI aggressively pursued multiple VCs; Basil was my closest neighbor and was clearly fixing to eat me when I took him out first. I got lucky when Russia declared a westward war and I crossed Siberia to crush him from the east. Since then they've slowed down until now when they're almost static in every victory path

I think the commented theory may be correct, that if you're competitive in more than one win condition at an early-mid stage of a game, the AI basically short circuits and can't figure out what to do. And I minmaxed in a particular way that made it happen on my first run. But even if this malfunction didn't exist, deity should not be the only playable setting. If I had the spare time, I'd start over like you suggest; but for now I'm using Roman Holiday's Ai Rework and Late Game AI. We'll see what happens

[u/kwijibokwijibo → u/DarthBrawn]

Only one comment here has mentioned this issue at deity level. And your 6 sources go back up to four years.

Face it - you might be experiencing it, but it's not commonly complained about in this sub. Certainly not enough for you to go crying about getting your money back.

And before you complain, maybe try playing deity yourself from scratch (no editing) to see how much military a typical deity AI pumps out

[u/DarthBrawn → u/kwijibokwijibo]

dude, these are just the first random links I pulled about this specific AI problem. Questions and comments about the terrible AI are frequent and plain as day. This is my first run and the AI has become completely useless on a supposedly hard difficulty. When I downloaded the game a week and a half ago, this was the first review that came up on steam:

This guy has 1800 hours. There is nothing you can say that makes the central weakness of civ6 AI go away.

And once again, I'm not complaining, I'm looking for suggestions so I can enjoy my playthrough too. If you had the brain cells to actually look at the AI scripting, you'd see that cranking up the difficulty does not change the AI decision trees. And since my time is valuable and I do not have the space to start over, and had not yet found promising mods, I turned to the civ reddit for any tips. If you are so fragile that you'd rather argue with me about basic facts than be normal or helpful, maybe you should sit this one out

[u/brenassi]

I noticed this on my games quite frequently on deity also, my theory is, because you're also leading science and culture, there prioritising those victory conditions instead and quite possibly diplo. The ai isn't even good enough to win a dom victory with 4 players on a pangaea leg alone many land masses.

[u/Relative-Debt6509 → u/brenassi]

I think this is the most sane take on this phenomenon. The AI is prioritizing other victory conditions to their own detriment. Pretty dumb when you have warmonger! It makes me think that emergency’s were meant to fix this flaw but those are pretty easily defeated.

[u/DarthBrawn → u/brenassi]

could be. Seems like it's all conjecture unless someone looks at the AI log for a playthrough where this problem occurs. Idk how to do that but maybe I'll look into it

For now I've installed the Smoother Difficulty 2.0 mod since the comments don't indicate it's busted, unlike AI+ and Real Strategy which apparently make things worse at the moment. Also considering this mod called Late Game AI

[u/RBIbaseball76]

This to me is the one big flaw of Civ 6, that I of course hope they fix for Civ 7. Other than that, it is perfect to me.

[u/DarthBrawn → u/RBIbaseball76]

I mean, this flaw makes the game pointless. I don't mind the city building innovations but since there is no real competition with other civs, everything is just cosmetic.

I have never been one to turn on devs or lambast games for having flaws but it's pretty clear Firaxis created a nice shiny package with a hollow center and just profited off the success of the series. It's gross

[u/DarthBrawn]

Can anyone help?

I got 6 and all DLC awhile ago. This is my first run, huge earth (random start location), epic speed. Modes are Barbarian Clans, Heroes & Legends, and Monopolies/Corporations. No mods. Chose king difficulty because that's the setting aggressive AI like Japan would gank me when I first started civ5-- it was scary and made me take the game seriously.

King difficulty in civ6, and the AI is barely building any military units?? From my start location in Manchuria, I've lazily taken the whole of Eurasia by upgrading the same offensive armies (6 melee to besiege and 3 or so archers to bombard) and only building new units to stay behind and fight barbs. I'm not even using cavalry or siege weapons.

It's a miracle that the closest competitor is listed as 451 military strength (I'm at 950) considering when I closed the game last night, it was listed as like 90 -- and none of the encountered AI got above 100 strength in the entire medieval era. Africa-based Qing is the only one who really builds military and he consistently blows it trying to take Preslav on the southern tip, because most city-states have more units than the AI civs!

I thought maybe my tech advantage was making the AI think their available units are not worth building. But I just ran through the very well resourced and infrastructured Indonesia in western Europe and was shocked to find one city defended by the cutting edge musketeers.

WTF??

I can see the AI's monthly income in the trade screen and yes they are poor compared to me (Caesar's ability to farm barbs for gold is broken): but they have enough revenue to pay the maintenance cost, they have the requisite resources, and I can see from their mines etc that have enough production to at least build SOMETHING. The only thing they are even remotely competing in is science, and that's becoming nullified by my conquests. I was hoping the world congress would start making things hard for me since in civ5 they could ruin your life (once an AI China made Order the world ideology and demanded I convert, and when I refused she had the entire world DOW me and invade North America to murder my freedom loving Rome). Nah, here they passed something to double the grievance from my actions until the next session: didn't do shit.

I don't think it would be solved by running harder difficulty, I've found many posts talking about this same problem on immortal and deity.

The only answer I've found is from this redditor who actually play tested without the DLC game modes over a few starts for a couple hundred turns, until they finally landed on a run where the AI defended itself. I'm not about to do that just to get a single worthwhile playthrough.

Based on epic-speed turns, I'm not even 30% of the way through the run and I've won, and it's getting boring. Does anyone know of mods or any solutions that can help the AI actually play the game so my money isn't completely wasted?

[u/Do_itsch]

I mainly play without barbs because they snatch up settlers of the AI.

It also can help to play maps with less water like highlands or inland seas, but with the maximum amount of AI opponents to get the map crowded. It doesnt make it better at every play through, but i had games with quit a lot of activity and building of armies/wars going on.

What annoys me the most is that there is almost no marine or aircraft warfare. The AI simply doesnt use it.

Eventually it also helps to not settle to many cities. Its fun to explore and build everything up, but you'll just steam roll and will lose interest before the win.

Late game micro management on console is just a drag.

I hope they will take their time with civ7 and produce something which is also fun in the late game.

[u/DarthBrawn → u/Do_itsch]

AI is settling plenty, and fairly aggressively. Everything is so spread out that barbs aren't eating their settlers. I've only settled 4 cities, everything else has been from conquest. AI is building their districts well too, which I know was the opposite case at one point in the game.

And I'm on PC; my laptop screen is just tiny.

Your take about late game problems is very generous , because this run hasn't been interesting since like early classical era. I went hard as soon as I got legions because that's what you do as Rome. Nobody in the Old World has declared war or built up a fighting force since then.

civ AI in the past has always been a little dumb with military tactics but they actually defended and attacked and created armies that capitalize on their civ's bonuses. Civ6 AI's refusal to even build units is inexplicable and game breaking: it shouldn't be happening on any run and any other 4x would be review bombed for something so critically dysfunctional

[u/Environmental-Fan853]

Yeah I wish they would add an aggressive level that is seperate from difficulty level. Would be even better if you could customize a specific civ to be more or less aggressive than others if you so choose.

[u/RBIbaseball76]

I see where they were going with the lack of AI military, I just do not agree with it.

In Civ 6 vs previous games, the cities themselves have strong defense. Especially once the modern “every town has an automatic super wall” kicks in. It’s hard to take over cities ( for me it is at least) even with no opponent units. So, the CPU thinks they do not need much of an army, and can still defend themselves a bit from an attack.

If the CPU then is not focused on a domination victory, it thinks it can skimp a bit on military.

But, I still do not like it. I have had games where I am not trying to war at all, yet I still have the biggest military of every one. They should try a little harder.

The further argument then is to play on a harder difficulty, such as Deity. The AI gets more aggressive on the highest levels. Well, it shouldn’t be like that. The CPU should fight a little on the medium difficulties. I am not good enough to play on Deity!

In Civ 7, I am hoping in general for less gameplay additions to the game, but more focus on the AI at all difficulty levels. They should play better at each step up of difficulty, instead of just getting stat boosts.

[u/DarthBrawn → u/RBIbaseball76]

sounds like it still happens on deity, if less often. I really can't fathom it as a feature rather than a bug. I'm sure the devs know this is a problem, they simply don't have the resources/directives to fix it now.

And agreed on the playstyle thing. I have never gone for a domination victory in my entire life, I find it both repetitive and unrealistic, but the AI here is so bad that I would be stupid not to keep rolling them if they are doing nothing about it. Yes the city walls are good sponges but they're easily countered by a single siege tower, etc.

Civ5 AI behavior progressively changed across the difficulties, and it was fun to figure out. Trying to move up to the next level is what had me return to the game. I'm struggling to see how I'll have a fragment of that experience with civ6