Can’t keep up with AI growth

[nightrunner99]

I recently picked up the GS & RS expansions. I wouldn’t call myself a Civ expert, but I had put in a couple of hundred hours in the standard game. Played a few King games before and they were manageable with smart play. Now though, the AI seems to snowball really fast in science, culture, and growth and I’m finding it impossible to keep up. For example, in my first King game the AI had musketmen by 980 AD. I tried a second game with a strong Civ (Germany) but I still can’t keep up with the AI. They expand so fast so quickly. It seems that immediately they take over city states with no repercussions. When I tried to war against them I got wrecked by their more advanced units, even when I have a higher military score.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

[MrSogard]

What difficulty level are you playing on now?

[Tarrlytons]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2577006856

[Stormwinds]

You need more cities and more districts. If you can't settle more cities, take them from someone else. District adjacency matters a lot too.

[The Bored Chairman]

Sid has a point: Somebody screwed up some code and caused the AI to over-prioritise Science (and they never bothered to fix that single line of code, really says something about the company, huh?)

Anything above Prince means the AI gets bonuses, so if they're all spamming Science Districts, it stands to reason that they'd be much further ahead of you. There are only a few civs that can keep up with that in the early game (civs like Australia, Korea, Babylon and Japan).

Recommend installing the mod if you don't want to spend every game licking their boots until you discover Flight.

[nightrunner99]

Originally posted by MrSogard:

What difficulty level are you playing on now?

King. I had previously played King games on the Standard version and definitely don’t remember those games being as difficult.

[nightrunner99]

Originally posted by The Bored Chairman:

Sid has a point: Somebody screwed up some code and caused the AI to over-prioritise Science (and they never bothered to fix that single line of code, really says something about the company, huh?)

Anything above Prince means the AI gets bonuses, so if they're all spamming Science Districts, it stands to reason that they'd be much further ahead of you. There are only a few civs that can keep up with that in the early game (civs like Australia, Korea, Babylon and Japan).

Recommend installing the mod if you don't want to spend every game licking their boots until you discover Flight.

Thanks! Unfortunately, it seems Firaxis is probably more focused on selling DLC than fixing the game.

[Exemplar]

i played a game this week invested more in religious, was behind in science pretty significantly by 1000ad, but picked it back up later to be "enough". i know it looks harsh.

if i care to, i can about always have at least 1 musket by 50ad, and i've had 2 or 3 in some games. having them closer to 1000ad would feel late, really.

[wildlifeluvr]

I have increased my difficulty to King. I have found recent games to be challenging early but by third era or so, I am leaving the other Civs behind.

E.g., my last three games I won them all:
a) 5.1% have this achievement: "Montezuma's Revenge" Jan 8. Finished this morning. Victory was Diplomatic. King dIfficulty.
b) 1.7% have this achievement: "The Laurels of Virtues and Letters". Victory was Domination. King dIfficulty, possibly Prince. I have since made an Excel DB where I will keep track. (Matthias Corvinus) Jan 2
c) 1.3% have this achievement: "Et tu Gallia" (Ambiorix) Victory was either Domination or Diplomatic. Dec 18.

How is it possible so few players have these achievements???

I have 1,510 hours into the game. I play Gathering Storm. I never play with a mod. I feel like I am still learning. I'm starting to play varied civs and I am having a lot of fun.

I'm at a loss to figure out many of the complaints.

Yes, there are fixes, big fixes needed, in how the AI works and what the computer AI Civs do re production e.g. military resorting to Zero while that Civ focuses on another victory avenue.

One thing I like is how the Free Cities can have powerful military units, sometimes a level higher than what you have. If you capture a Free City but decline to keep it, it reverts back to a Free City with a level higher technology units than what you were just fighting against. That's cool. I like that.

I've seen some tweets about players complaining about barbarian strength. I don't see that at all.

I play at the Marathon rate. All I can tell you is I am having a lot of fun. I'm in the process of trying a new Civ every time. For my first 1,250 hours or so, I only played using 2-3 different civs.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by The Bored Chairman:

Sid has a point: Somebody screwed up some code and caused the AI to over-prioritise Science (and they never bothered to fix that single line of code, really says something about the company, huh?)

It's the same outfit that mis-spelled "Yield" and broke the game. And, of course, Gandhi set to 12. It's not Civ unless something fundamental got ruined by a typo.

https://www.pcgamer.com/typos-in-a-civilization-6-data-file-are-messing-with-the-ais-priorities/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

[The Bored Chairman]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Originally posted by The Bored Chairman:

Sid has a point: Somebody screwed up some code and caused the AI to over-prioritise Science (and they never bothered to fix that single line of code, really says something about the company, huh?)

It's the same outfit that mis-spelled "Yield" and broke the game. And, of course, Gandhi set to 12. It's not Civ unless something fundamental got ruined by a typo.

https://www.pcgamer.com/typos-in-a-civilization-6-data-file-are-messing-with-the-ais-priorities/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

Yeah, but Nuclear Gandhi was funny.

Every civ playing like Korea is not.

[guard65]

The game requires you to kill and expand like mad so take and make cities like candy in the beginning. The bigger your army the better off you are.

The more cities you have the more gold, resources, science and culture you will have.
Districts can come when you do not need any more units. Make sure you get builders to your resources and trade any surplus right away for gold.

Then you just have to keep the hungry city mobs happy with amenities to win.

[nightrunner99]

Originally posted by guard65:

The game requires you to kill and expand like mad so take and make cities like candy in the beginning. The bigger your army the better off you are.

The more cities you have the more gold, resources, science and culture you will have.
Districts can come when you do not need any more units. Make sure you get builders to your resources and trade any surplus right away for gold.

Then you just have to keep the hungry city mobs happy with amenities to win.

Yeah, I'm definitely seeing that. As someone who has played a lot of Civ 5, I wish playing 'tall' was viable. Game doesn't really seem balanced if there's only one way to win.

[magritte]

Originally posted by nightrunner99:

Originally posted by guard65:

The game requires you to kill and expand like mad so take and make cities like candy in the beginning. The bigger your army the better off you are.

The more cities you have the more gold, resources, science and culture you will have.
Districts can come when you do not need any more units. Make sure you get builders to your resources and trade any surplus right away for gold.

Then you just have to keep the hungry city mobs happy with amenities to win.

Yeah, I'm definitely seeing that. As someone who has played a lot of Civ 5, I wish playing 'tall' was viable. Game doesn't really seem balanced if there's only one way to win.

To be honest, I think both games were a little off-balance in opposite directions. In Civ 5, it often seemed pointless to expand much unless you were trying for a domination victory except for precision strikes to prevent opposing victories. In Civ 6, you almost always need to take a few cities from the A.I. to get anywhere. And since you can't productively engage with any of the A.I.'s once you've taken a couple of cities from any A.I., there's really no reason not to continue expanding.

[Exemplar]

Originally posted by magritte:

And since you can't productively engage with any of the A.I.'s once you've taken a couple of cities from any A.I.,

this really isn't true. if you've taken an opponent capital, it's tough to remain friends with that opponent, but anything else can be fixed in most cases.

express opinions, this sucks, that sucks, fine, but don't come at us with blanket mistruths about the game mechanisms.

[Skeev]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Originally posted by The Bored Chairman:

Sid has a point: Somebody screwed up some code and caused the AI to over-prioritise Science (and they never bothered to fix that single line of code, really says something about the company, huh?)

It's the same outfit that mis-spelled "Yield" and broke the game. And, of course, Gandhi set to 12. It's not Civ unless something fundamental got ruined by a typo.

https://www.pcgamer.com/typos-in-a-civilization-6-data-file-are-messing-with-the-ais-priorities/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

the ghandi bug had nothing to do with a "typo".