The AI isn't building military?

[Queen Craw]

I always play slow burn games but this seems to happen very often. Marathon speed, Prince or Warlord difficulty. The AI just goes to zero military or one/two units and that is it. What causes this? Bad AI? The speed setting? Barbarians slaughtering them faster than they can build troops? Screenshot below :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2470818830

EDIT : Also, no mods at all. No extra modes. Just boring vanilla game with all of the victory conditions turned off except for Domination.

[Typha]

I just started noticing this. Entering the industrial age in my current game, Sweden had zero military. Then when I attacked them they didn't build any military during me taking their cities.

[keyshawnwdadrum]

During my experience with this game, the AI almost never attack me when I’m literally sieging their city; much less just acting peaceful. As a matter of fact, the only time I’ve been attacked by a civ without actually provoking them was like 2-3 years ago when Montezuma’s AI gathered troops at my border and then attacked me. Basically, the AI just don't seem to care all that much about military engagement; just about winning the space race or spreading their religion… even when I have those victories turned off. I’m still shocked to this day that an AI even dared to surprise attack me; just goes to show how bad the AI actually is.

[keyshawnwdadrum]

Originally posted by several people:

During my experience with this game, the AI almost never attack me when I’m literally sieging their city; much less just acting peaceful. As a matter of fact, the only time I’ve been attacked by a civ without actually provoking them was like 2-3 years ago when Montezuma’s AI gathered troops at my border and then attacked me. Basically, the AI just don't seem to care all that much about military engagement; just about winning the space race or spreading their religion… even when I have those victories turned off. I’m still shocked to this day that an AI even dared to surprise attack me; just goes to show how bad the AI actually is.

Basically, AI no understand army

[Sarisin]

One thing I have noticed since a recent update is the AI is overbuilding traps, barriers, fire, etc. defenses in favor of military units. For awhile they have not been upgrading resource tiles, but now they are littering their territory with these annoying defenses.

Honestly, they ARE hard to deal with if you are trying to take a city until you can start building bombers and blast them off the map. Until then it is tough because you have to get a unit on one with enough movement points to pillage it. Even then you might lose that unit if the city has walls (and the unit is in range) or, even more likely there will be another one of these adjacent to barrier you want to pillage and that will lower your hit pts as well.

Just like the spamming of religious units previously (some games still have them) and the spamming of Zombies if you use that mode the AI just goes nuts with building these barriers and such. I don't build them myself as I want to have tiles available to build on, but apparently the AI hasn't gotten that memo.

And, yes, just like the OP I am seeing only small amounts of military units in the early to mid-game and zero units later on. The AI just cannot handle the Zombies if you are playing with them with no defenders. City-State, Cities and whole Civs tend to get wiped out during games much more frequently now when Zombies are in the game.

[Cryten]

The AI seems to be bankrupting itself sometimes. My last game I had 4 AI with no income. which of course also meant little to no military.

[ReoHays]

Yea, with no mods that is what happens once you wipe out the main force they fail to rebuild. i have had TONS of Greeks on my boarder and she kept making demands of me so I declared War and all her units disappeared. So it was an easy mow down. I don't get it, never saw it happen until yesterday.
They do have a MOD to limit the number of units a country can have. I just was not using it when this happened.

[OrangeManBad]

The city states build more military than the Civs

[Typha]

Originally posted by Cryten:

The AI seems to be bankrupting itself sometimes. My last game I had 4 AI with no income. which of course also meant little to no military.

But they're finding a way to bankrupt themselves with low military expense. :(

[OrangeManBad]

Yesterday I conquered Gaul. He had two great generals. And his army was two catapults. Why is he building GG when he practically has no army ?

[keyshawnwdadrum]

Does anyone know if civ 5 has better AI?

[OrangeManBad]

Originally posted by several people:

Does anyone know if civ 5 has better AI?

The Vox Populi mod overhaul. The AI is very aggresive and builds army fast. In fact if you don't build an army the other Civs attack you

[keyshawnwdadrum]

Originally posted by wabbajack:

Originally posted by several people:

Does anyone know if civ 5 has better AI?

The Vox Populi mod overhaul. The AI is very aggresive and builds army fast. In fact if you don't build an army the other Civs attack you

Hot

[magritte]

Yes, I've noticed this with the recent update too, although I was thinking that maybe it was because their units kept getting killed off by the barbarians.

[threethreethree]

Long ago...3 years (?) when I first got the game at brick and mortar on disk...more than once a civ would spam the heck out of making balloons. I'd see balloons all over the place. A hundred of them. But little or no military otherwise. I kept wishing I couldn't keep coming in and just kicking their butts...and just kept seeing balloons everywhere. What the HECK was it with all the balloons?!

[HollowKing]

On higher difficulties, AI builds militaries and will attack you if you don't have a military of your own, that's one of the reasons why the game is much more fun on higher difficulties