From my last two games with the 0.6.1 patch, AIs seem to settle very often in corners or edges in a region. They do not seem to be building boroughs even during the endgame; the cities I take are often 10+ population yet limited to the initial seven hexes. The attached screenshot shows the very poor placement and management of cities that makes the AI factions vastly weaker than they should be. To clarify, Rouster, Byaegol, and Madirod were my initial 3 regions. I conquered cities in a clockwise rotation.

I wanted to add that AI is extremely passive and weak. On "Normal" difficulty, I don't have to do anything (pretty much) and I will win just because Roaming armies and winter will kill off all AI players. On "Serious" difficulty AI is more active and actively expands, BUT it doesn't actively defend it's territory and cities. Plus if you don't do anything to "Drakken AI", it will achieve "Diplomatic victory" around turn 150, but is easily prevented from doing so by attacking with just one army. Also, several roaming armies just stand around, admiring the scenery.



Currently the AI difficulty seems one level lower than what it is stated to be (Normal is actually Easy for example). It seems devs have a real difficulty with AI coding, seeing how it is still unbalanced in Endless Space too.



Cheers.

Hi there,



This is a consequence of a behaviour we have added for the AI to colonize the city at once, to avoid losing its settler to a roaming minor army (one of the reasons the AI was too weak before). We have to tune it a little better to accept more risks or push a few hexes further.



Thanks for the report!

AmpliMath wrote:
This is a consequence of a behaviour we have added for the AI to colonize the city at once, to avoid losing its settler to a roaming minor army (one of the reasons the AI was too weak before). We have to tune it a little better to accept more risks or push a few hexes further.

Why doesn't the AI then protect its settlers with one or two units?

Yes it could be a possibility but it removes units for other AI missions. It is all a matter of balancing.



In any case the AI programmers told me they greatly improved this behaviour, and this should reflect in the next build.

Well, it's the same balancing me as a player goes through. With all the roaming armies in this game, I wouldn't dare to send out a lone settler.



Thank you for the information, looking forward to the next build!