Bad AI is not likely to be fixed

[MxM]

Creating an AI for a game like Civ is very difficult. I sure hope we'll get a better AI sooner or later (maybe someone will make a better AI mod?)... but there's one thing about the AI that I really hate: The worker AI... The AI keeps on changing tile improvements. 30 turns ago I had a city with farms as far as the eyes could see. Now there's not a single farm left, while there's those trade improvements all over... and what is the AI doing now? Removing all those trade improvements to make them into farms... while there are still some tiles around the map that has not been built on yet
Until this has been fixed, automating the workers is a big NO NO

Did you see any correlation of what workers are doing with your happiness/gold income? Because if you have high happiness and good gold income it make sense to put farms. If you income is negative and/or your happiness is around 0 or less, then it is better to put trade posts. I have observed this behaviour myself, but I thought "wow, AI is that smart that it evaluates my needs first and replaces the improvement according to that"!! If you do not like replacement of improvements, just select it in the options, but I do suspect it will be less than optimal.

[Ming]

Automated workers in Civ IV sucked as well

[Adagio]

Creating an AI for a game like Civ is very difficult. I sure hope we'll get a better AI sooner or later (maybe someone will make a better AI mod?)... but there's one thing about the AI that I really hate: The worker AI... The AI keeps on changing tile improvements. 30 turns ago I had a city with farms as far as the eyes could see. Now there's not a single farm left, while there's those trade improvements all over... and what is the AI doing now? Removing all those trade improvements to make them into farms... while there are still some tiles around the map that has not been built on yet
Until this has been fixed, automating the workers is a big NO NO

[Heraclitus]

The AI has always been ****ing retarded. It's not nearly the worst aspect of this game.

NO WORLDBUILDER HOW DO I GIVE MYSELF CARRIERS?

I AGREE THIS IS A TRAVESTY

[Heraclitus]

Why? just check history. And I don't mean just civ's. Games with bad AI never got their AI fixed substantially. MoO series, MoM, SMAC and TW series to name a few, all had bad AI. Fixes and unofficial patches/mods always came out and dealt with the most urgent matters, yet the AI always remains on the same general stupidity level. It's really hard to write a decent AI to games, and it's even harder fixing it and raising its level from "bad" to even "barely good".
It's history folks, and it's hard to argue with that.

And it also makes me quite sad. I love Civ and I kinda like this game, despite all the issues.

You do realize that Civ4's AI was significantly improved via patches, since they included improvements from the better AI mod right?

[Modo44]

Why? just check history.

Yeah, especially the AI mods for Civ 4 were total crap. Oh, wait...

[pauli]

now LOOK. the ai we got was good enough for civ2, and dammit, it's good enough for civ5!

[MxM]

I am 100% sure that AI will be greatly improved, what I do not know if this greatly improved AI will be done before expansion.

From another side, the game is more difficult than Civ IV in terms of decision making having consequences that happens far in future (city placement is one example, it is more important than in Civ IV and with greater consequences for the end game. Tactical battles is another example. The complexity of it is equivalent to complexity of checkers). So I do think it is more difficult to write good AI, and actually I am quite impressed what is there already, not in terms of game-play, but in terms of AI programming.

[ColdPhoenix]

What? I would have kept them for myself.

I did that last night but was disappointed to find that the settler then turned into a worker...

[quinalla]

While the AI will never be as good as a human player, Firaxis certainly has improved their AI in the past and I expect them to improve the AI in this game as well.

[Louis XXIV]

Why do you want carriers in 2000BC? I assume you want planes to go with them? What's the point of bombing civs back to the stone age if they never left the stone age?

Anyway, you'll be able to do all this stuff relatively soon. The map editor is getting released by the end of next week if the rumor mill is to be believed and Tuner should be out around the same time. With the map editor, you can give yourself Carriers to start. With tuner, if you have the save file set a certain way, you can basically use debug as a cheat mode to give you whatever you want.

[Hauldren Collider]

Uh, build them?

You can't build carriers in 2000 BC

[Fidel]

The more I think about it, the less optimistic I get. I have no other explanation other than that battle design (1UPH), while more complex and rewarding for human players and their immersion, is too complicated for the AI. I mean, they had a VERY good group of betas, from what I can gather from the credits, and the outcome is AI which sometimes behaves unbelievably badly. It does not understand choke points, it does not understand (still) proper landing and advancing in a tactical formation (unless it has a wide open field). It also seems to have 'blind spots' - e.g. its city will bomb some embarked units, but will spare some (it seems to spare artillery units embarked next to it).

[Louis XXIV]

The AI has always been ****ing retarded. It's not nearly the worst aspect of this game.

NO WORLDBUILDER HOW DO I GIVE MYSELF CARRIERS?

Uh, build them?

There are a couple of AI fixes I'd like. The first would be the pathfinding thing mentioned above. Go To and Auto Explore should avoid city-states you aren't friendly with at all costs (if it approaches them and has to go through, it'll stop and ask for orders).

The second is the tactical AI. I feel they'll improve this as they get more of an idea how players play and I'm sure modders will help too. I've heard some people complain that they don't recognize choke points. I haven't experienced this, so I don't know. Perhaps that would be priority number one?

[Fidel]

I witnessed some horrific AI in this game. Granted, the setting was pretty challenging, a rocky peninsula in the shape of a horseshoe on which my CS ally held and Siam attacked it. It was idiotic. Siam would camp around and never get a decisive attack, and the CS did not know how to use its units, e.g. instead of parking its crossbowmen in the city it actually got them out in the open sea (not that Siam attacked them, mind you).
Betas, please report. They might listen to you.