AI and difficulty in 4x games

In this video, I talk about AI and difficulty settings in 4x games. Looking at common criticisms and some solutions.

I mention a number of mods that can be found below:

Smoother Difficulty for Civ VI:

Progressive Difficulty for Endless Legend:

Timestamps for particular topics

introduction - 0:00

AI - 2:08

AI Bonuses - 5:48

Snowballing - 11:04

Civ VI Eureka System - 17:06

How To Deal With Snowballing - 19:45

Difficulty Mods - 22:09

Adaptive Bonuses - 26:07

Conclusion - 32:02

Included footage from:

[JolNarBinks]

Civ 5's happiness system is certainly better than the almost total lack of anti-snowballing mechanics that Civ 6 happens, but Civ 5 had the problem of making strategies too set in stone and not allowing much room for player adaptation like the Civ 4 civics system.

[ThePhysics]

Science was king for the sole reason that you got alot of value out of putting everything to science. As i remember the best way was to force creating greater scientists and then converting them to science points right away. You would get like a couple of thousand science points while if doing some with the great engineer you would get maybe 300. All of this is under the assumption that one point of science is approximately worth 1 point of labor.

[JolNarBinks]

These are really ingenious solutions to this problem. I will look into these for sure.

[Titantrn]

Cool, would love to see more video essays like this, good work.

[Dreez]

The day we get an AI in games that learns and adapts, we're in big trouble... Judgement day anyone ?.

[khryelll]

One further aspect I think could change how well AI plays is to design the game with 'easy to compute' rules. The design process of Civilization games seems focused on giving to the player a lot of game mechanics and options. This result in an AI that is hard to code if wanting to conply to all these rules. On the other hand, in a game like Offworld Trading Company, the devs focused on mechanics tied to mathematics and avoided pathfinding issues (as you mention, the placement of armies in civ is a pitfall). Which results in an AI that I am still unsure to beat after 50+ hours in game

[Razkunn]

A subscribe, and a curious eye now follows your work.

[enKageKagen]

When you speak about civ and difficult, you should start from civ 4. Civ5 deity is sth between civ4 emperor and immortal. Civ6 deity is Civ4 emperor. And Civ4 has the best antisnowball mechanizm ever (extremely high maintanance coming from number and size of cities growing even more with distance). Even earlier civs make it better than infamous civ5 and 6 having the mechanism of corruption.

[timothymclean]

The big problem is, of course, creating a fiction around the game world which makes the player accept that the AI is getting bonuses that they don't. Perhaps you can disguise it somehow, but I kinda wish more games would ditch the strictly symmetrical and storyless single-player style of game in favor of allowing a little asymmetry. Maybe the humans get some kind of weird blessing that the other AI don't have (giving them an edge), and the AI get bonuses narratively justified by developing ways to get around the benefits it provides?

[ReMeDy_TV]

@ 21:25 I prefer an AI that pretends it's not a game. It would be very ahistorical for, say, a country in real-life to dictate their policies over accomplishing a "win condition, " simply because that's not how real-life works.

Very informative video by the way, thanks! My only question is why does it sound like you're whispering? lol

[Xallisto]

With machine learning I don't think AI will be an issue for much longer, it wont be long before games are asking if they can send tactical data back home in order to train AI's to play their games, and when that happens AI will leap ahead like nothing u have ever seen.

[redseagaming]

I started with civilization 3 + 4 those are fantastic games I haven't played five yet civilization 3 I usually line up my troops along the border of the nation I want to invade and I usually have troops in the east as well while I have my main Army in the northwest I'm trying to recreate the situation that Germany had in World War II where if my neighbors to the east declared war on me while I was winning in the west that would be bad and that would mean I'd have to move troops to the east I think Stacks are actually good but I usually avoid having more than three units in a stack that way I can cover more ground.

[philipollas]

great video, EXPECIALLY cause its civ 6

[BingusTheWockis]

Is there a similar smoother difficulty mod for Civ V too?

[thenoseplays]

I would love to see something akin to this but more adaptive. In other words, the more efficiently a player is playing the more resources the AI get to keep pace. Adaptive difficulty.

[kubatpav]

Hello Casworon,
thank you for a very interesting video!

We have been dealing with all this too and it seems like we were quite successful. One of the things our players appreciate the most is our AI.
If you try that, please send us feedback. We are very curious what you think about that.

[misterfister]

In total war everyone is progessing, and only strong survives same goal take player down and make him harder to WIN nothing more i lost many times in Total war... Where in Civ 0 games out of 600h+ gameplay! Point is Civ6 AI dont know how to use units dont 'know what to do its simply stupid and they dont give a fuck to fix it... They add stupid GS expansion but AI will get more confused with new mechanic and Civ6 will die in maybe 3/4 months, if they dont do something to fix game overhaul!