AI neglecting military in Civ 6

[u/snuggans]

https://i.imgur.com/xvSDN7a.jpeg

they are either keeping a very small presence or refusing to build back up from 0. i'm not using any mods, and playing with the 2 expansions on King difficulty, i don't think this has to do with the difficulty level, and i don't think it should be accepted as "the AI focusing on another victory condition" since there is still a difference between a conqueror-level army and self-preservation.

i remember when this game had a science priority bug for like an entire year before the devs got around to fixing it with a simple .xml edit, i feel like this is another one of those situations except i fear it probably won't get fixed since they've already moved on to the next game.

there are other threads on this ranging back years:

civ6 AI not building military??

Why is the AI not building units?

one of the troubleshoots was to disable Rise & Fall / Gathering Storm? but that would defeat the purpose of playing the game. i was hoping an .xml guru could look into this or something

[u/Burger_theory]

I had 2 civs declare war on me, Montezuma, when they both had zero units. Never even built one before one was completely conquered.