AI "tribal" civs?

[Parker Posey's Mouth]

Something I've noticed about once or twice a game, is that some civs, regardless of their starting area or relative merits, never get off the ground. They're never competitive, and in many cases, fail to ever found more than two cities (if even.) Geneally, they spend the game locked a few hundred points behind the rest, two or three eras behind the lead, and in some cases I suspect the only reason the barbarians haven't raized their capitols is because I'm pretty sure the barbarian AI isn't actually allowed to eliminate an AI player's last city.

I remember once poking around at the map editor, and noticing an entry for "Tribal" Civilizations. Like, on a map with eight players, some were marked as Civilizations, and some as "Tribal" Civilizations. At least think it was "Tribal." Might have been "Primitive." In either case, this suggested to me that at the start of every game, a group of random AI civs are just artificially handicapped, and rendered non-competitive. Which kinda sucks.

Am I understanding this right? I generally play on Prince or King, so I have no insight into higher difficulties, but this pattern is pretty definite in my experience. And if this is indeed the case, is there some way to turn it off? A mod maybe? I just hate to discover that the civs I've been wondering about the whole time weren't worth ever meeting. Makes the late game pretty lack luster when you know there's only really two opponents that are even in the game anymore.

[Kyl]

In the game data there are three civilization levels: Tribe, Minor, and Major

Major players are the actual civs, minor players are the city states, and tribal are just the barbarians. Each civ type defines what it can and can't do.

So no, the "bad" AI major civs are classified the same as the others in terms of Civilization type.

That being said, I see the same thing in games. It definitely doesn't seem as if all the AI are operating on the same level, with some civs just not doing the right stuff (more than the best AI civs don't do the right stuff :p). I suspect each major civ is randomly given a "level" at which it will operate for the game, determining how well it does for that difficulty.

[Parker Posey's Mouth]

Ah! Well, that explains the world builder thing then. I guess then we'll have to wait until we have better tools to know what's happening with the underperforming AI, but I appreciate the insight.

[jonnin]

You can sometimes see the reasons, other times it makes no sense. I often find a civ mid or late game that has had a time with barbs... everything is burned, barb troops all over, 10 barb settlers running around... Other times a side is too cramped and landlocked to get out. Mountains, city states, water, another AI side... It can't figure out where to go. These sometimes have as many as 4 tiny cramped citys on top of each other.

I have watched the AI refuse to adapt. If you see it sending a settler to your area and block it with friendly troops, it will just sit there waiting on you to go away. Eventually if you send your own settler to claim the area it wanted, it will finally go on a new path to do something else, but (not sure) if this logic holds against other AI it could just be stuck in stupid mode.

And then there are the unexplained ones, where it appears the AI is still on turn 1 and never initialized (bug?). Empty space all around, nothing bothering them, just sits there like a city state.

[pitonsnaboca]

Originally posted by jonnin:

You can sometimes see the reasons, other times it makes no sense. I often find a civ mid or late game that has had a time with barbs... everything is burned, barb troops all over, 10 barb settlers running around... Other times a side is too cramped and landlocked to get out. Mountains, city states, water, another AI side... It can't figure out where to go. These sometimes have as many as 4 tiny cramped citys on top of each other.

True. We can just (and usually do) restart a game when we don't fancy the starting point, poor AI is stuck with what we "give" them. :)

Originally posted by jonnin:

I have watched the AI refuse to adapt. If you see it sending a settler to your area and block it with friendly troops, it will just sit there waiting on you to go away. Eventually if you send your own settler to claim the area it wanted, it will finally go on a new path to do something else, but (not sure) if this logic holds against other AI it could just be stuck in stupid mode.

One thing I noticed in one game. I once got an english settler cornered in a tile with no exit (cliffs all around and one unit of mine on the only land exit) and we never went to war. England never built another settler, because they still had that one alive and (not) kicking. This went on for more than 2000 years.

Originally posted by jonnin:

And then there are the unexplained ones, where it appears the AI is still on turn 1 and never initialized (bug?). Empty space all around, nothing bothering them, just sits there like a city state.

Never found one of those. Underdeveloped yes, but never like that.

[Parker Posey's Mouth]

Originally posted by pitonsnaboca:

One thing I noticed in one game. I once got an english settler cornered in a tile with no exit (cliffs all around and one unit of mine on the only land exit) and we never went to war. England never built another settler, because they still had that one alive and (not) kicking. This went on for more than 2000 years.

This exact thing happened in my very first game on launch day! England, from what I've seen, seems to be particularly vulnerable to these AI quirks, from Victoria's agenda and insistance on settling on every continent. Evidentally, to the exclusion of their ability to settle anything on a smaller home continent, or an awkward land formation.

I just had an island plates game where me and England started on two fairly small (3 city maximum) islands pretty close together, and technically on the same continent. They did the England thing, rushed ships, and sailed the entire planet in the time I'd settled two cities and invaded a city-state. When I finally got around to sending the armada their way, I discovered that they'd just been sitting there in their capital, not expanding into the rest of their island. They had a settler just waiting around, apparently for their one city with no campus to finally research ship building, so they could go colonize some equally dismal landmass too far flung for them to possibly support. I really hope the new patch fixes this kind of thing. Agendas probably shouldn't take priority over basic civilization functionality.

Originally posted by jonnin:

I have watched the AI refuse to adapt. If you see it sending a settler to your area and block it with friendly troops, it will just sit there waiting on you to go away. Eventually if you send your own settler to claim the area it wanted, it will finally go on a new path to do something else, but (not sure) if this logic holds against other AI it could just be stuck in stupid mode.

Definitely. I remember reading something about how the AI in these games is programmed to make decisions. It basically has two "brains," one managing the macrogame, and one managing the microgame. They do not have the ability to coordinate or communicate with one another, like a human player does.

What's more, in Civ 6, iirc, they have different "planning" scopes, where macrogame brain can make decisions tens of turns out, but microgame brain can only do like, five turns or something. So macro will assess things, note that it's turn X, and it only has Y number of cities, and will decide to prioritize building a settler. Micro has no idea there is a settler on the way. It's just moving things at random, waiting for a more immediate stimulus to respond to. Then suddenly a settler appears in it's control, and it just knows it has to settle them.

It uses some formula to pick a plot (the same way the game recommends you plots to settle,) and chooses one of the available ones more or less at random (hence the questionable choices, if it is aware of a valuable plot far away from it's actual empire,) and if anything interrupts it's short term plan to get there, micro does not know what to do. If it can't settle there, because it's no longer a valid tile to settle on, it'll maybe pick new target at random and head that way. But as long as that original tile is around, it will try and get there, and if it can't it will just sit there forever. And if the settler is threatened by barbarians or enemy civs, it'll retreat like it does with workers, only unlike workers, micro doesn't seem to know what to do with settlers when the threat passes. It doesn't always seem to successfully pick a new target to aim for at this point, and that seems to be where the "two cities and a settler just sitting there doing nothing" phenomenon happens. Because micro isn't doing it's job, and as long as macro assesses that there is a settler on the field, it's not going to decide to build another one. No communication.

[c.l.bissell]

yeah seen similar things. Once though me versus 7 ai. All but one ai started on massive supercontinent with another getting absolutely screwed small land mass with room for 2 cities had a few warriors nothing else at end of game when i destroyed them.

[HaroldClapsaddle]

Originally posted by jonnin:

You can sometimes see the reasons, other times it makes no sense. I often find a civ mid or late game that has had a time with barbs... everything is burned, barb troops all over, 10 barb settlers running around... Other times a side is too cramped and landlocked to get out. Mountains, city states, water, another AI side... It can't figure out where to go. These sometimes have as many as 4 tiny cramped citys on top of each other.

I have watched the AI refuse to adapt. If you see it sending a settler to your area and block it with friendly troops, it will just sit there waiting on you to go away. Eventually if you send your own settler to claim the area it wanted, it will finally go on a new path to do something else, but (not sure) if this logic holds against other AI it could just be stuck in stupid mode.

And then there are the unexplained ones, where it appears the AI is still on turn 1 and never initialized (bug?). Empty space all around, nothing bothering them, just sits there like a city state.

My simple solution and it works for everything, live by the warmongers motto. "Burn em to the ground, for a scorched earth is a cleansed earth" Just take the settlers and keep a moving on stupid is begot the stupid whereof the stupid lives, yet does not spam. So remove stupid and live it up. The more intelligent civs are stupid in that they spam you with cities that can develope your civ. burn em or take em, to be or not to be, that is the question. lol just enjoy :-))

[Parker Posey's Mouth]

Part of the reason I hate seeing failed civ starts is that there's no challenge in conquering them. Rolling over everyone is less entertaining than dueling with them for centuries, imo.

[Martin]

Originally posted by jonnin:

You can sometimes see the reasons, other times it makes no sense. I often find a civ mid or late game that has had a time with barbs... everything is burned, barb troops all over, 10 barb settlers running around... Other times a side is too cramped and landlocked to get out. Mountains, city states, water, another AI side... It can't figure out where to go. These sometimes have as many as 4 tiny cramped citys on top of each other.

I have watched the AI refuse to adapt. If you see it sending a settler to your area and block it with friendly troops, it will just sit there waiting on you to go away. Eventually if you send your own settler to claim the area it wanted, it will finally go on a new path to do something else, but (not sure) if this logic holds against other AI it could just be stuck in stupid mode.

And then there are the unexplained ones, where it appears the AI is still on turn 1 and never initialized (bug?). Empty space all around, nothing bothering them, just sits there like a city state.

Yeh looks this way to me as well, the ai settler seems to be sent literally from created city to settle location. If you block the specific tile or overall path to whatever it's specific target is, it'll usually return to the nearest ai city and await further instructions.

The odd thing about unprotected settlers, is if you follow them, the barbs often don't cap them. Unless it's a horseman.. they usually do. But I've seen ai settlers run right up to next to a barb camp and settle on the next turn and the barbs do nothing about it. If I tried that.. I'd loose my settler.

Also notice if you kill a camp now by settling next to it, the camp auto spawns a new melee and scout. Which usually then attack your city.

I had india in last game send a settler, escorted by 3 elephants and an archer right across my land to a small 8-9 sized bit of land in my tundra area. It went to the center of that area.. then decided it didn't want to build there and tried to leave. So I gave it new instructions. And the elephants a watery grave.

The ai in general seems very A to B scripted. In Civ 5, you could rip an army apart just attacking it from behind, because the ai just ignored you until it reached it's destination. At least in 6, it'll turn around and fight.

[Parker Posey's Mouth]

Originally posted by Martin:

The ai in general seems very A to B scripted. In Civ 5, you could rip an army apart just attacking it from behind, because the ai just ignored you until it reached it's destination. At least in 6, it'll turn around and fight.

I suppose this is a difference in action between Civ V's micro AI and Civ VI's. V could plan ahead long enough to send a force to attack a city, but not deal with more immediate threats to that force. VI can have an ultimate goal in mind, but plans short enough that they can sort of react to things?