How to fix (Parts of) the A.I.

Overview

This guide should help you make the A.I. suck less when it comes to war and hopefully in general. I think it puts them closer to the civ 5 level.

What am i doing and why?

Update and warning: I have not had a chance to play since the most recent patch. Some comments from others indicate that the changes to walls and disabling the ability to bombard are no longer working. I will try to test and/or fix this when i get a chance to play civ 6 again.

First, I type alot. Sorry for the wall of text but i like to explain things in detail. I’d rather you didn’t take my word for it that this stuff makes things better but reach your own conclusion. Thus I want to explain why and how I came to make these changes.

Second, I am not promising to fix everything you think is wrong with the A.I. I’m just trying to make it fight wars better and a bigger threat in general. Something closer to civ 5 at least. I think I have acheived that.

The 3 problems with the A.I. at war.

1) Problem number 1 (and that i think is the most gamebreaking) is that the A.I. cannot seem to figure out how to capture a city once walls have been built. I watched Bismark send 5 AT crews to capture a city defended by a pikeman and a wall. The AT crews never once attacked the city, they just stood there and died. It’s my experience that once you reach the classical era, A.I. wars are basically just tantrums and have no real affect on the game.

My solution? Remove walls, castles, and city defenses.

2) Production is horrible in this game. Districts can take 30-75 turns on marathon (10-25 on standard). And that is in your best production cities. For the A.I., they never seem to change thier production in the middle of building a district. This means that when a civ loses troops in a war, they will finish thier building before replacing them.

My solution? A slight increas in production (approx 20% overall) allowing the A.I. to build more stuff (And the player too).

3) Barbarians can and do overwhelm the A.I. I have seen sections of the map with 3 civs and not a single non-barbarian troop in the area because the 20 or so barbs killed them all.

My solution? Tame the barbarians. This can be done in multiple ways.

Yes, there are more problems. The A.I. does not properly upgrade troops, for example. But changing that is a logic change and I’m not suited for that level of adjustment. Fixing the above is at least a start.

The data I used.

I play on marathon, huge map, emperor, 16 civs, 8 city states, pangea or fractal.

Without my changes (playing just vanilla) I had the following games: Note: Every game except the first in an autoplay game like the devs battle royal.

Game 1) Egypt died in the ancient era, 2 city states were conquerer. 15 cities (of 120) changed hands by games end.
Game 2) 2 city states were conquered. No A.I. civs died. (8 of 113 cities changed hands)
Game 3) Greece died in the ancient era. 3 city states were conquered. (14 of 103 cities changed hands)

Then I made my changes and had the following 3 games.

Game 1) 7 players and 3 city states died. 42 cities changed hands (Of 111).
Game 2) 4 civs and 2 city states died. 24 cities changed hands (of 109).
Game 3) 5 civs and 3 city states died. 42 cities changed hands (of 118).

As you can see, more players were killed and more cities were captured, in the games after i made my changes. Players also lost cities and were eliminated in multiple eras, not just ancient or classic. If you are interested, follow the steps below. Individual results may vary.

The changes part 1: Disable walls and city defenses.

First, you need to go to your steam folder (usually under C: – program files(x86) – steam). After that, click on steamapps – common – sid meier’s civilization VI – base – assets – gameplay – data.

Find the files named “Buildings” and “Civics” and back them up. (Right click, copy, and paste them in another location such as the my documents folder). Once the files are backed up, go back to your steam folder. Right click on the original “buildings” file and select edit.

Hit control + F and search for ( OuterDefenseHitPoints=”50″ OuterDefenseStrength=”2″ ) without the brackets. You will find this text in 3 places in the file. Each time, change the “50” and the “2” to both be “0” They should now all read ( OuterDefenseHitPoints=”0″ OuterDefenseStrength=”0″ ) without the brackets. Make sure all 3 have been changed.

Once this is done, save the file and close it. Next, right click on the original file “Civics” and hit edit. Hit control + F and search for ( DefenseValue ) without the brackets. You should have 3 lines that say:

<ModifierId>CIVIL_ENGINEERING_URBAN_DEFENSES</ModifierId>
<Name>DefenseValue</Name>
<Value>200</Value>

Change the 200 to a 0 so the lines now read:

<ModifierId>CIVIL_ENGINEERING_URBAN_DEFENSES</ModifierId>
<Name>DefenseValue</Name>
<Value>0</Value>

With that, all walls and city defenses will be nullified. You should still be able to build them (so as not to interfere with other systems that may depend on them) but they will not actually do anything. This will make it far easier for the A.I. to capture cities since it seems incapable of doing so currently.

NOTE: THIS WILL REMOVE YOUR CITIES ABILITY TO ATTACK BY ITSELF. YOU MUST NOW DEFEND IT WILL TROOPS.

The changes part 2: More production.

You should still be in the same folder as before. If not go to your steam folder (usually under C: – program files(x86) – steam). After that, click on steamapps – common – sid meier’s civilization VI – base – assets – gameplay – data.

Find the file named “Terrains”. Back it up by copying the file to the same place as the others. Once that is done, right click on the original file and select edit. Scroll all the way to the bottom and find the lines:

Increase all of the numbers by 1 in the lines i’ve posted above (The ones in the file that say “YIELD_PRODUCTION” in the middle of them. Do not change the others) It should now read:

This will increase the overall production available in game. Hopefully without making it feel like there is too much. It feels reasonable to me so far.

The changes part 3: Tame the barbarians.

There are 3 ways to do this. The easiest is to turn barbarians off completely in the in-game set up options. Your A.I. opponents will do better with them off. But, since i like to play Gilgamesh, I’d still like barbarians in game.

That leaves 2 other options but to decide which you want you need to understand how barbarians spawn in Civ 6.

1) Time. Every 15 turns on standard (45 on marathon) a new barbarian will spawn like clockwork. This is how it worked in Civ 5.

2) Boldness. When a scout reports back a city location, when a barbarian kills a unit, when a barbarian pillages a tile, and every turn in general they earn boldness. Once the boldness hits a certain amount, a new barbarian will spawn. This is in addition to the time method and the main reason you get out of control barbarians sometimes. This is also how a single barbarian encampment will sometimes wipe out an entire civs army. Every time they kill a unit, the barbarians tend to spawn one of thier own. It’s like a zombie movie.

So, your options to fix this are as follows. NOTE: FOLLOW THE STEPS FOR OPTION 1 BELOW, EVEN IF YOU CHOOSE OPTION 2. OPTION 2 IS IN ADDITION TO OPTION 1.

Option 1: Civ 5 style barbarians. If you choose this option, they will spawn only due to turn time, like in civ 5.

To make this change, go back to the folder we were in before and back up the file called “GlobalParameters” Copy and save it in the same spot as the others. Then, right click on the original and hit edit. The lines we need should alread be on your screen. They are as follows::

Changes all the numbers in these 5 lines to “0”. ONLY THESE 5 LINES. It should now read:

This will result in civ 5 style barbarians, congratulations. Make sure to save before you close the file.

Option 2: Basically guarded 40g-only goody huts. If you make the following changes as well, barbarians should never spawn other than the scout and the initial defensive troop. You can then kill them at leasure for the gold. NOTE: IF YOU CHOOSE THIS OPTION, FOLLOW THE STEPS FOR OPTION 1 ABOVE FIRST OR YOU WILL STILL IN UP WITH CITY-RAIDING BARBARIANS.

Same folder, find the file named “Barbarians” and back it up. (Same as before, copy and paste to the same location as the others) Right click on the original, select edit, and hit control + F. Search for the phrase ( TurnsToWarriorSpawn= ) without the brackets. 2 of these phrases will be followed by the number 15, 1 will be followed by 25. Change those numbers to “200”. The phrase should now read ( TurnsToWarriorSpawn= “200” ) without the brackets on 3 seperate lines. I am not posting the lines themselves because they are rediculously long. NOTE: ON THE SECOND OF THE 3 LINES, MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE THE PHRASE TurnsToWarriorSpawn= “25” AND NOT PercentRangedUnits=”25″ OR YOUR CHANGE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT.

In addition, if ur making guarded goody huts, they should be a little better guarded. Still in the barbarians file, search for the phrase ( DefenderTag=”CLASS_ANTI_CAVALRY” ) without the brackets. Change the “CLASS_ANTI_CAVALRY” to “CLASS_MELEE”
This will replace the spearmen with warriors, removing your bonus against anti cavalry units when attacking encampments.

Save the file and your done.

Conclusion:

Again, sorry for all the text i’ve put in this guide but i hope it helps. If you follow the above steps, the A.I. should now be able to actually kill each other (And maybe you if your not careful). I doubt they’ll really pose a threat to you but at least now they should be more on par with civ 5 when it comes to fighting wars.

That said, individual results may vary.

If this guide is helpful to you, please let me know.
If something doesn’t work right for you, please double check you followed the instructions properly and then feel free to ask me about it in the comments.

Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI Guide