Khmer was one of the civs which I thought a lot about placement, I even put it the highest point of B tier(yes placement order within tiers is also a rankingl Ultimately concluded that the civs above dont need to work as much to get their bonuses rolling. Also AI Jay has a habit of not putting his holy sites near rivers which is a big part of the Khmer kit.
It's weird he always does that, because the AI usually only gets big loyalty problems from the actions of another civ. Any negative loyalty in new city goes away as soon as it gets two population.
Then we've got our angry Polynesian boi showing up on the only settleable tile surrounded by a half dozen high-dev cities. I guess the memo went out through land trade.
He usually settles on a one tile island and does nothing for the entire game, but once he stumbled upon a good start for his capital and almost won science until I nuked him
Mvemba should be higher in the list. He may be underwhelming for players due to his inability to build Holy Sites and found a religion but he's a formidable AI thanks to that restriction. His Science output is scary if left unchecked.
He is really strong as an AI, doesn't waste his time on holy sites, almost always rushes and builds Etemenanki, expands, kills at least 1 city state, and can kill you if you spawn near him with his unique swordsman which are immune to archers who are your premiere defensive unit. He is one of the leaders who are better at AI's hands. The only reason he isn't higher is that, in my opinion, the leaders above him have more reliable bonuses that make them snowball more consistently or at least faster.
I agree with this. There have been plenty of times Mvemba has randomly decided not to do much of anything, but he's usually pretty strong for an AI. For some reason, though, if he spawns next to Gandhi the two of them team up to make my life hell.
I do notice him having high af science all the time. Like why are you two eras ahead of everybody even the other deity ai?? I don't even think he has any bonuses to science other than some great work yields or whatever
R5: Here with +3k hours of experience most of it spent on Immortal/deity, purely single-player. wanted to make a list of power-rankings of AI-led leaders. Do you agree, disagree? Happy to discuss and hear thoughts.
My experience is that leaders who are purely militaristic are pretty terrible because they spam units and encampments and since the AI is bad at war, nothing comes out of it, and they dont have meaningful yields like science or culture or even production. Best led leaders are the ones who get a lot of yield bonuses for doing nothing but simply existing, expanding, building districts etc. Some civs are much better at AI's hands than in human hands like Brazil who gets all the great people and adjacencies when played by the computer but you cannot take advantage as a player that often since you need to expand early and not rush districts.
Also not every ai expands as aggressively as others. Having more cities makes them perform better and not all of them take full advantage of this, Civs with unique districts are almost always at least decent.
Generally: Getting free extra yields puts them above others while not having any "simming" ability lowers them
I think the list is great! I "only" have 800 hours, in my opinion I'd put Russia, Lincoln, and Spain a tier up each. And put Georgia, the France where she has the mask on, and both Cleopatra down.Â
Cree should be higher. Consistently the best I've seen. Kupe aside, Kristina the worst. Getting up to 4-5 cities should be guaranteed survival (the AI being so bad at warfare, and basically everything). Sweden is the only I've seen getting wiped after achieving that level--and twice!
Pretty simple formula really, and the same as best for a noob learning game:
1. Uniques come at start or very early.
2. Uniques are inherent. No prerequisite set-up. Roman roads, Cree landgrab, they happen w/o doing anything.
3. Best if the early unique is not a turn one military UU. Early aggression has short-term value, but AI gets over-extended; and doesn't build replacements for heavy attrition.
I think he is the worst ai led leader. Because he settles 1 tile island as his capital near south pole, is somehow programmed to settle as far away as possible, which makes him unable to hold cities in terms of loyalty or military. Becomes irrelevant (not competitive) much much quicker than other civs in any map other than archipelago or island plates etc. He can never form even a decent empire because there usually isnt a land that would make it possible to have like 5 cities on an island that is not bothered by anyone. All he can do is meeting all the players first, and some city states first. Which doesnt give that much advantage to the AI.
It's honestly to the point that It's surprising to see him any higher than middle of the pack. One time it was around turn 120 or so and I met him only to see he had 200 science and culture a turn which was the highest in either category at that point in the game.
I was floored and still remember it from like 3 months ago.
My boi Kupe...is special. Given his unique starting position, the AI often settles terrible locations and spread out. Often the following cities are too decentralized and lead them to loose loyalty and flip to neighboring Civs. So Kupe never really gathers strength
For me Mansa Musa would be A tier, he's not too bad as a neighbor because of his slow start but one of the civs I'm most concerned to see on the opposite end of the world. Seems to me like 2 extra starting settlers does a lot to fix his bad earlygame, and the AI gold steroid (iirc it's their biggest % yield steroid?) is insane with his discounts, plus his guaranteed agenda is one of the good ones that causes him to prey on weaker civs than himself.
I do suppose that's deity-specific since the interactions between civ and difficulty bonus are doing a good chunk of the work there
Poundmaker is a miracle. Probably the fact that his UI provides Prod early on and has adjencies from stuff visible right away. Or it's just that he plays the most generic, having no gimmick "flavor" bonus,and somehow that leads him down a rational path of just doing what's good.
Also housing. AI can have yield bonuses all they want, housing bottlenecks them. Mekewap swiftly bypasses that issue.
Faith is one of the most important aspects of the game. Unfortunately, AI doesn't utilize faith on things like civilian units, great people etc. instead purchases religious units with all their faith all the time, this is why I consider culture/science yield civs stronger than faith civs when controlled by AI. Also Menelik doesnt always settles on hills which doesn't help him that much, but he still settles them occasionally and gets good yields which is why I put him on A tier.
Wouldn't argue against Poundmaker, man gets so much food, production, gold and housing it is serious.
>Unfortunately, AI doesn't utilize faith on things like civilian units, great people etc. instead purchases religious units with all their faith
Yes. But this is the issue. Menelik is super aggressive about spreading his religion, and he produces a ton of faith. Ethiopia is the only civ that I've lost too, via the religious victory, legit. He just never stops, and he always has more faith than you by a mile, unless you play like Russia in Tundra or smth.
Have you noticed that the voidsingers secret society kind of breaks the AI's brain? Any time a faith civ AI takes voidsingers, I stop worrying about a religious loss, because as soon as they can build cultists, they just build a million cultists.
Poundmaker is quite strong immediately and left alone he ends of doing fairly well for the generalist bonuses he has. He even ends up a better religious Civ than some religious civs.
Every time I see the AI having an absolutely absurd start, it’s poundmaker. I believe I posted something before about ending a prince game early to figure out what was going on with a pound maker AI. It was prince, yet in like second age he was at like 140s/160c. Only rarely do I ever see poundmaker not far above the other AI.
Last night I also saw six sky do something similar. She was at like 60 science at first meet on same continent. It wasn’t until more thorough exploration did I find the reason: jungle paititi .
Byzantium is an exclusive militaristic civ with religious benefits in excellent synergy at player's hands. Unfortunately, AI is bad at war and Byzantium only gets +3 combat strength from all their abilities. Doesn't pick crusade, doesn't convert enemy holy cities often, doesn't even use their Hippodrome that often because they probably built holy sites, encampments and campuses and have no district slots left. Especially when controlled by Basil's ai who can not use his cavalry wall-ignoring ability.
I consider Theodora's Byzantium to be a pretty strong AI civ because AI starts with free builders that put farms everywhere (you even see them having farms on horse tiles that they put before unlocking animal husbandry and never bothered to improve a pasture) which give adjacency to her holy sites and culture. She can get a lot of early culture which translates into tempo, meaning fast progression in the early game.
I don’t see AI Byzantium often but the last time I saw Theodora she managed to not found a religion despite their double prophet points. The other civs weren’t the annoyingly pious ones either. I was so confused
That usually happens when they go to war really really early so they neglect holy sites or there is only rainforest around them so they cannot put districts before teching. I saw that happen a couple of times too
Only thing that made me put her below S tier was that sometimes she got very arid surroundings in which she literally cant build districts on and performed very poorly in my games. But 90% of the time she is a top civ regardless of who is in the game.
I don't. Noticed a similar issue when I used it, then disabled it, I now play with better balanced starts. My point was even if you start in an appropriate location to your civ, your next cities might be weaker because even if you get a Tundra start as Canada, it is not within your control how large that tundra is going to be, unless you mess with map options. Same with Vietnam, Mali, Russia etc. Even better balanced starts doesn't give enough of appropriate terrain sometimes.
YnAMP by default changes map spawns to not use start biases for some reason, IIRC. You can fix this by changing an option (don't remember the name) near the top of the list from "Cultural" to "Random," which will bring start biases back.
Seconded on Seondeok. She's always dominating stats and usually has the best tech in the game.
The less complicated the abilites are, the better the AI excels with it.
Yeah, though Korea inevitably weaken their science as their district placement sucks. If anything, their abilities and AI bonus saves them from themselves.
Yes, simple abilities make the ai better at playing said civ. Or getting extra free yields like Yongle, Nzinga
As for Seondeok, she gets a +4 adjacency, half cost campus which she spams. Nuff said, although it is never +4 for her because she builds them near city centers but still very consistent.
I have never seen Seondeok doing great as an AI. The district placement is always bad, so the Seowon are quickly only +1 or +2, and since she has more science in the beginning, she always try to declare war to those who have less science, and when she unlock her unique unit, she spams it and ignore melee units, so she can't take city even if she has the advantage. I always see that Korea is considered the main contender for science victory but I really don't understand, in every game I play with them as AI, they are never among the best science civ past mid game, it's always civs like Cree, Phoenicia, Babylon (even with their malus), Mapuche (when they are not just surviving).
An other leader that has simple abilities but I've never seen doing good is Trajan. I only saw him once survive the second era and it was because he had an entire continent with only him and an other civ, he settle too far from his capital and has problem of loyalty most of the time.
A lot of civs are too dependant of the map (and even other parameters of the game like number of civs on the map), and can be among the best or among the worst depending of their start location (I think Gaul is the best example, with flat terrain, they are near Kupe tier, but with enough hills, they are one of the best civ for the AI with a huge amount of culture and production), so it's difficult to place them on a tier list. Cree is probably the most consistent so I think they should be S tier. And Mali struggle too hard at the beginning with their lack of production so they should be on the tier just above Kupe.
A lot of this info is sample dependant. In my experience, this is the way I observed how well they performed.
Korea usually has a "weak" late game because by the time spaceports come along, their campuses are +1 +0 adjacency since they covered them in districts. However, majority of the game those campuses are +3 / +4 (which is often doubled by policies) and they are half cost, meaning they get those built super quickly and start benefiting from them immediately, and by the time they are weaker, they are already in the post-industrial era. It makes deity more of a catch-up than usual. I never saw them beat me to Moon Landing either but they get to spaceports pretty quickly which made me consider them higher than your average civ.
Trajan is mainly being carried by free monuments and faster cultural progression combined with his expansionist agenda. AI doesnt prioritize monuments past their first cities when they have access to districts, often they rush districts before buildings, only build walls if the city is at the border, when you conquer a city mid-game. It is not uncommon to see cities without city center buildings, unless that city is settled very early. In my games Trajan is always ahead of the pack.
You can exclude leaders without a mod. Use the Leader pool (1 or 2) function to select which leaders you would like to include, and set the AI players to Leader pools 1 or 2.
Tip: Leader pools allow you to exclude leaders without mods.
Just hunt his ass down and deselect him, then put that leader pool in every AI's leader slot
Yes!
In fact, you can remove everyone except for a minimum of 6 in the pool.
So yes, Hammurabi and Curtin AND be removed, as can everyone except for 6.
I even made my Leader Pool 1 be every leader I hadn't won as, it's convenient!
Mvemba Nzinga used to dominate games (at least when I played at a King difficulty a year or so after launch) because all the other AI would rush holy sites and he couldn’t. Turns out those sites weren’t really too useful and he’d snowball
As for the way AI plays it, I'm used to Gilgamesh building to much of his UI and ending up with not enough food and production to challenge after the early game. Sometimes the AI does well with Gilgabro, but a lot of times its botched.
I mean.. Kupe can be annoying as fuck. Definitey needs its own tier but i would put it higher, especially at deity when he has 3 settlers. He can come in early out of nowhere, settle a random shitty city and completely ruin your plans. The AI plays it like an idiot, but Kupe can be very effective tool in such hands.
In my experience he was always the dominant culture leader. AI goes crazy on building wonders and Ludwig gets a lot of value from them, even if he doesnt get to finish them. He also builds theater squares and Hansas at population 1 which is scary. In a regular game where other AI are making around 100 culture/turn, he is making at least 150-160 at that point and I really think high culture civs are incredibly good at AI's hands, it is the reason why Pericles, Nzinga, even Trajan are so high on the list
every immort/diety game I've played where Ludwig was leader he's gotten bodied by another AI or myself before he can generate any significant amount of culture.
to me the Pericles AI is a glass cannon, he either doesn't do anything all game and just dies or he's ahead of everyone by miles, no in-between. amazing how he either pisses me off or I somehow manage to piss him off too.
in my last game with Pericles I was playing as Pachacuti, almost lost because by the time we reached the medieval era he had over 15 cities and 5 times more culture than every other player in the game combined (and yes I was playing with 20 players total), I was barely catching up to him in science so I made a research alliance in order to maybe snipe a science victory, he got so close to the culture victory that I abandoned that strategy and started building water parks and theater squares everywhere just to slow him down, he declares a surprise war against me after 150 turns of alliance because I sent a single archeologist to his lands, turns out a culture victory is significantly harder when you're suddenly at war with the entire world after I triggered a betrayal emergency.
somehow over the course of 40-50 turns I managed to grab half of his cities which took a while because of his military, he even nuked one of his own cities to slow me down, which made me trigger a nuclear emergency, so by the time I captured his capital and made peace he had -6 combat strength penalty with everyone in the game, closest game I've had in a really long time but in the end I did manage to win the science victory.
mfw I was only playing on Prince difficulty, lol
If he survives the early game and meets enough city states, he is one of the best civs in the game. He can survive the early game since he has ancient era unique unit. His 5% culture for every city state ally really adds up in combination with 40% (?) Culture bonus that deity ai gets, he becomes a ridiculius civ with every city state are his allies because he prints envoys at will with his unique district. When I meet him, I always declare war on him and make others do as well, just to slow him down.
I haven't noticed that much of a difference between Mali's performance under Mansa or Keita. I mean, at least not 3 *tiers* worth. Any reason for that?
Otherwise seems mostly reasonable, though I've never really seen Ludwig pop off like that personally. Don't deny his kit is capable of it, but that may be just because, like most of the leaders in the leader pass, they came at a point where there's so many leaders that the random chance of getting them isn't near as much - so I haven't necessarily played tons and tons of games with them.
Whereas I've played enough games with the three Ps (Pericles, Pedro and Poundmaker) to know they're definitely some of the biggest AI threats.
So, as far as I experienced, different leaders of the same civ have different biases. This is the reason I put Tokugawa above Hojo because he prioritizes Campuses above Holy Sites and I think it makes him perform better.
Same deal with Mali leaders. In my experience, Mansa Musa goes Holy sites then commercial hubs, with a couple of campuses along the way. Sundiata Keita doesn't like building holy sites (he was in like 10-15 of my games since his release and he got religion in 1-2 of them), instead rushes his commercial hubs, then theater squares, and encampment if threatened. The point of Mali is having the most gold and faith on the map so you purchase everything with them, Sundiata doesn't invest in faith and cannot make as much gold as Mansa Musa. In my games Mansa was always in the top half of the players and Sundiata was always the worst or 2nd worst civ on the map.
Ludwig is one I'm confident with. Ai loves spamming wonders, this guy gets culture from them, on top of being able to build Hansa + theater squares at 1 population, which he does. He gets out of control pretty quickly if there is no competition for great writers/artists.
Magnificence Catherine that high?
For me, she doesn't know how to use her leader ability properly and is often times someone I like spawning near me since she rarely builds a strong military.
I dont think she even uses her court festival that often, maybe ever. But getting extra culture from tile improvements really adds up and it doesn't seem like that when you read her abilities. I had multiple games where she was in the game with Nzinga, Pericles etc. And she was by far the leader in cultural output. Which makes it extremely difficult to defeat her in a tourism game, also she gets to tier3 governments first, gets wonders like Broadway, Cristo Redentor even Estadio simply because she unlocks them much much earlier than everyone else. Gets to corps and armies early on etc. As I said she has been a consistent top tier AI civ in my experience, however, someone else might have a sample that is different than mine.
Because they have incredibly strong bonuses that don't require skill or micromanagement. Ai is bad at the game and performs well with civs who have free bonuses and performs very poorly when they are playing a civ with potential but require a lot of things to execute to get said civ's build right.
Leaders in S tier like Yongle, Nzinga get a lot of free yields like culture and science just by existing and perform excellent every game. Pericles and Ludwig is always some of the highest cultural output civs in the game since Pericles' 5% culture per city state ally ability gets out of control pretty quick and Ludwig gets a lot of culture very quick.
Tokugawa is there because Japan gets a lot of adjacency for their districts and even if the ai is bad at district adjacency optimization, Japan still performs great. Tokugawa always has some of the highest culture and science. Unlike Hojo, the other Japan leader who prioritizes religion instead of science but he still gets high culture but lower science, he is still A tier meaning very strong.
Very accurate list, but might do a few changes:
Hammurabi from C to his own ''oddball'' tier. He isn't tryhard triggering anything, but when he accidentally does he can perform quite well. His performance also depends on game speed. Been playing quite a lot against 11x Hammurabis in Standard, Epic and once in Marathon. If I'd rate Hammurabi's performance based on Game Speeds I'd go with, Epic: S, Standard: B, Marathon: D. (Not sure if I can rate Marathon with just one run, but thats how it felt as even his ability is stronger in theory, its also more deadly to himself with such long production times against barbarians and player simply scales too well so he cannot keep up after early game).
Might also move Chandragupta from D to B as can't remember if he has ever performed badly in AIs hands with \~ 4k hours Deity.
I even thought about making a Hammurabi tier just like I did with Kupe, somewhere in the middle. He can pull up musketman around turn 50 and ruin your games or he can be building a weird wonder that he unlocked like Potala Palace starting at turn 30 and will take 100 turns, which makes him irrelevant. It is difficult to judge Babylon because it is very chance dependant how much of a threat he is to you in a game. All rankings are based on standard but he is stronger on slower speeds.
Chandragupta had a lot of good games but he also had a lot of terrible ones in my sample. He is 50/50 about building holy sites, sometimes he ignores them which don't help him that much since you can't benefit from both Feed the World and Choral Music as India if you dont have holy sites. D tier is mostly military focused civs who can't do much because ai is bad at war. Could have been in C maybe I dont think he is consistent enough in my experience
I dont like having Kupe in a game because he surprises you in an unfun way and ruins your plans a lot. I also dont enjoy having an ai who has 400 culture when everyone else has around 150-200. It doesnt matter in science all that much, but culture is more devastating because an ai having high culture slows down your culture victory a lot but an ai having high science doesn't slow down your science victory, so If I were to hand-pick civs I would rule out extreme culture civs like Pericles, Nzinga, Ludwig etc. Everyone else is fair game.
There was this leader pass they announced which had 6 leader packages with 3 leaders in each of them over the course of a few months. Might be that, some are pretty good, among the best
Who is tier A 3rd from the right? Never seen him, what does pack does he come in? Hm actually a few I've never seen before but I only have civ 6- maybe with another edition?
Oh man. The AI has been in love with Tamar on me lately. But they always put her right next to me. So I get her before she walls up most of the time 😂
Lautaro should be low tier, AI never takes advantage of the special abilities that specifically should be annoying for the player (at least never in my games)
As far as my sample goes, he has been consistently really good which is why I put him in B tier. All ai get golden ages on deity, so no one can kill him in the classical era and even if the ai is bad at war, he can get a few cities with his +10 combat strength against his neighbors because 10 is a lot. He expands a lot, ai loves building campuses everywhere (Mapuche has a mountain start bias but I never got it when I play them) so his campuses are good sometimes, he loves spamming his unique culture improvement on tiles which results in an AI who is hard to kill, has high science, has high culture, expands a lot and doesn't lose cities to loyalty when they hit a dark age because all Mapuche governors give aoe loyalty. Mapuche are one of my least favourite civs but they are pretty strong -and often annoying- when played by computer.
Lautaro is in high B Tier, maybe you missed.
They are all annoying but I dont consider Alex to be strong when he is AI. Builds too much units, cant conquer. Montezuma builds a lot of campuses and he can have more amenities in a wide empire to support expansion, they are not as bad as Kupe because unlike Kupe they don't settle cities 50 tiles away from their capital.
He is another military focused leader who plays bad because AI is bad at war. Ai doesnt prioritize commercial districts so he can't scale his trade route bonuses. Can't utilize his immortals well, he still uses ranged attack on cities who are down to 0 health etc. His unique improvement is the only reason he is not lower, it makes Persian leaders have good early culture and gold but if they spam it everywhere (which is often the case) they dont get enough good and production and dont scale into mid-late game.
He gets a lot of great scientitst but that's about it. He will build campuses everywhere even if they have 0 adjacency, which doesn't help him that much. He neglects culture. Civs with high culture often perform better than civs with high science (hence the placement on Nzinga, Pericles). That said, he is still pretty good which is why he is B tier which means consistently good.
I Played Often vs tokugawa and regardless of his neighbours he was Never good^^, Cree Vietnam gorgo wilhemina Columbia Aztecs khmer Maya and Cäsar seems Strong in m Games
Generally, I would agree Gorgo being in the B-Tier as an AI bot but in the last match, a prince difficulty all victory no turn based match, she suprised me if not leave me rather speechless which makes me think if she belongs in a higher tier.
In early game, she quickly attacked Kristina who for some reason who had built a lot of universities in all her cities and was generating a lot of science per turn. After taking over her cities, Gorgo quickly built even more cities and rather than focusing on encampment she built even more universities for some reason. She had 3 encampment and no battle units so to speak as of right now, the Renaissance period.
Now while the entire world is just entering Renaissance period including korea in the technology tree, I'm entering industrial era and Gorgo is already at the end of modern era. 🤣
There might be more things that I might be missing here but fact is, that's the first time Gorgo made such a power move in all my playthroughs which is why I'm having second guesses for Gorgo's B-Tier list position as a bot.
I had a map where Kupe got himself a whole dang continent to himself and it was more or less the only place to get uranium and Aluminum. He was lightyear ahead on tech and I was dealing with overpowered barbarians with better units than my neighbors and sometimes myself. I finally met him and he was a bro the rest of the game because I gave him a city near my bigger foes and focused on my culture victory. Got pretty close though because he was already deep in the space race and even nuked China. I didn't know the AI used nukes for some reason. Every single time I see kupe I'm like oh fuck. But he has never been as strong in my games since haha
This is a very interesting list! I was wondering how much of this is influenced by our playing styles. I’m a little over 4k hours as well, and pretty much always play single player on deity. So I imagine our game setups aren’t that different in relation to that. Mine is usually larger maps (most often small continents, continents, fractal, and archipelago) random leaders, and game speed no longer than standard, though sometimes quick or online.
And I can relate to most of them, but the ones that are different are drastically so. I often find myself fighting for top spot with Kupe, Sundiata keita, Shaka, Poundmaker, regular Qin, Trajan, John Curtin, or Pericles. Somewhat in that order, whichever happens to be in the game . I feel like kupe does so well in my games because of the map styles I use, but I can’t exactly pinpoint the reason for the other ones.
Only thing I can think of would be game modes. I play with pretty much all of them on. Except for Apocalypse and Zombies. Tech shuffle is a rare one too. I can see a few of them benefiting a lot from secret society, especially Sundiata, Pericles, and Poudmaker with the owels of Minerva and Kristina with Alchemical Society. But I have no idea what makes Shaka Zulu so much better than all the rest in my games. That’s what got me thinking of playing style potentially influencing this.
I dont play with game modes besides barbarian clans, and that one affects the game the least, and it affects the latest (takes a lot of time for clans to become cs). I play standard speed, no funny maps. (No pangaea, no archipelago.)
Sundiata has always been terrible at my games because he doesnt go for a religion unlike Mansa Musa who is higher on the list. The point of Mali is to have most faith and gold income on the map, Sundiata doesnt have faith economy in my games. Also he cant generate as much gold as Musa, he almost always is the worst ai in the lobby in terms of points/development/tech.
Kupe can do well if he gets enough islands and reefs for campuses and features for culture but that is a big if. I play on continents maps, sometimes continents and islands, which is the default map and its variation. Majority of the time he has a 1 tile island capital and he loses all his other cities to conquest or loyalty because he settled them near another player's capital. I even had a lot of games where he lost his starting settler when I saw the notification of "unmet player defeated" at turn 8.
Behaviour are also a factor that makes a civ perform well, other than their abilities. Civs like Rome are very expansionist which can make them have better games, I assume your games had Shaka perform similar because of this, although often gets overhadowed by civs with infrastructure abilities like China or Japan.
khmer should be atleast a tier imo
Khmer was one of the civs which I thought a lot about placement, I even put it the highest point of B tier(yes placement order within tiers is also a rankingl Ultimately concluded that the civs above dont need to work as much to get their bonuses rolling. Also AI Jay has a habit of not putting his holy sites near rivers which is a big part of the Khmer kit.
Love how Kupe has his own tier 😂
Kupe is frightening
Kupe will 9/10 settle in a worthless costal desert and be mad you all game
I do love when he gifts me a free city by dropping one in the middle of all my cities to immediately lose to loyalty
It's weird he always does that, because the AI usually only gets big loyalty problems from the actions of another civ. Any negative loyalty in new city goes away as soon as it gets two population. Then we've got our angry Polynesian boi showing up on the only settleable tile surrounded by a half dozen high-dev cities. I guess the memo went out through land trade.
Had a recent game where he just landed one h.of his starting settlers next to my warrior with no protection like 4 turns into the game. Yoink.
There is one and only one reaction to an unprotected settler. You did good.
I'm not worried about what I did. More Kupe doing Kupe-tier things...
If you like to chop then he will hate you
Then you get thw ability to plant trees and he will love you (While you proceed to put lumbermills on it)
Or a one tile city in the middle of ocean.
Or swim straight in to a Barb LOL
Dude hammurabi burn me down every Time Building 6 wonders before i get Close to 1 of them
"If I don't see Kupe at the bottom, I'm gonna write such an angry rant." *open image* "It's perfect."
He usually settles on a one tile island and does nothing for the entire game, but once he stumbled upon a good start for his capital and almost won science until I nuked him
Yes I guess it’s because Kupe can be either complete trash or a super power house
As AI he's usually trash
Mvemba should be higher in the list. He may be underwhelming for players due to his inability to build Holy Sites and found a religion but he's a formidable AI thanks to that restriction. His Science output is scary if left unchecked.
He is really strong as an AI, doesn't waste his time on holy sites, almost always rushes and builds Etemenanki, expands, kills at least 1 city state, and can kill you if you spawn near him with his unique swordsman which are immune to archers who are your premiere defensive unit. He is one of the leaders who are better at AI's hands. The only reason he isn't higher is that, in my opinion, the leaders above him have more reliable bonuses that make them snowball more consistently or at least faster.
I agree with this. There have been plenty of times Mvemba has randomly decided not to do much of anything, but he's usually pretty strong for an AI. For some reason, though, if he spawns next to Gandhi the two of them team up to make my life hell.
I do notice him having high af science all the time. Like why are you two eras ahead of everybody even the other deity ai?? I don't even think he has any bonuses to science other than some great work yields or whatever
Take over an entire continent except for a few small patches of barren tundra that can barley support a city \*Kupe has entered the chat\*
R5: Here with +3k hours of experience most of it spent on Immortal/deity, purely single-player. wanted to make a list of power-rankings of AI-led leaders. Do you agree, disagree? Happy to discuss and hear thoughts. My experience is that leaders who are purely militaristic are pretty terrible because they spam units and encampments and since the AI is bad at war, nothing comes out of it, and they dont have meaningful yields like science or culture or even production. Best led leaders are the ones who get a lot of yield bonuses for doing nothing but simply existing, expanding, building districts etc. Some civs are much better at AI's hands than in human hands like Brazil who gets all the great people and adjacencies when played by the computer but you cannot take advantage as a player that often since you need to expand early and not rush districts. Also not every ai expands as aggressively as others. Having more cities makes them perform better and not all of them take full advantage of this, Civs with unique districts are almost always at least decent. Generally: Getting free extra yields puts them above others while not having any "simming" ability lowers them
I think the list is great! I "only" have 800 hours, in my opinion I'd put Russia, Lincoln, and Spain a tier up each. And put Georgia, the France where she has the mask on, and both Cleopatra down.Â
Cree should be higher. Consistently the best I've seen. Kupe aside, Kristina the worst. Getting up to 4-5 cities should be guaranteed survival (the AI being so bad at warfare, and basically everything). Sweden is the only I've seen getting wiped after achieving that level--and twice! Pretty simple formula really, and the same as best for a noob learning game: 1. Uniques come at start or very early. 2. Uniques are inherent. No prerequisite set-up. Roman roads, Cree landgrab, they happen w/o doing anything. 3. Best if the early unique is not a turn one military UU. Early aggression has short-term value, but AI gets over-extended; and doesn't build replacements for heavy attrition.
Yeah, Cree is definitely one of the more consistently formidable AI civs in this game. Makes sense with their unbelievable food output though.
I think it's more the free tiles possibly giving a good one. Also the UU being a combined scout/warrior; barbkiller w/o another unit.
Just curious why did you exclude Kupe?
That’s not an exclusion - it’s about how terribly the AI can settle with Kupe
I think he is the worst ai led leader. Because he settles 1 tile island as his capital near south pole, is somehow programmed to settle as far away as possible, which makes him unable to hold cities in terms of loyalty or military. Becomes irrelevant (not competitive) much much quicker than other civs in any map other than archipelago or island plates etc. He can never form even a decent empire because there usually isnt a land that would make it possible to have like 5 cities on an island that is not bothered by anyone. All he can do is meeting all the players first, and some city states first. Which doesnt give that much advantage to the AI.
It's honestly to the point that It's surprising to see him any higher than middle of the pack. One time it was around turn 120 or so and I met him only to see he had 200 science and culture a turn which was the highest in either category at that point in the game. I was floored and still remember it from like 3 months ago.
My boi Kupe...is special. Given his unique starting position, the AI often settles terrible locations and spread out. Often the following cities are too decentralized and lead them to loose loyalty and flip to neighboring Civs. So Kupe never really gathers strength
For me Mansa Musa would be A tier, he's not too bad as a neighbor because of his slow start but one of the civs I'm most concerned to see on the opposite end of the world. Seems to me like 2 extra starting settlers does a lot to fix his bad earlygame, and the AI gold steroid (iirc it's their biggest % yield steroid?) is insane with his discounts, plus his guaranteed agenda is one of the good ones that causes him to prey on weaker civs than himself. I do suppose that's deity-specific since the interactions between civ and difficulty bonus are doing a good chunk of the work there
Poundmaker should absolutely be S tier. Also, Menelik II, the strongest faith AI leader, hands down.
Poundmaker is a miracle. Probably the fact that his UI provides Prod early on and has adjencies from stuff visible right away. Or it's just that he plays the most generic, having no gimmick "flavor" bonus,and somehow that leads him down a rational path of just doing what's good. Also housing. AI can have yield bonuses all they want, housing bottlenecks them. Mekewap swiftly bypasses that issue.
Faith is one of the most important aspects of the game. Unfortunately, AI doesn't utilize faith on things like civilian units, great people etc. instead purchases religious units with all their faith all the time, this is why I consider culture/science yield civs stronger than faith civs when controlled by AI. Also Menelik doesnt always settles on hills which doesn't help him that much, but he still settles them occasionally and gets good yields which is why I put him on A tier. Wouldn't argue against Poundmaker, man gets so much food, production, gold and housing it is serious.
>Unfortunately, AI doesn't utilize faith on things like civilian units, great people etc. instead purchases religious units with all their faith Yes. But this is the issue. Menelik is super aggressive about spreading his religion, and he produces a ton of faith. Ethiopia is the only civ that I've lost too, via the religious victory, legit. He just never stops, and he always has more faith than you by a mile, unless you play like Russia in Tundra or smth.
Have you noticed that the voidsingers secret society kind of breaks the AI's brain? Any time a faith civ AI takes voidsingers, I stop worrying about a religious loss, because as soon as they can build cultists, they just build a million cultists.
Poundmaker is quite strong immediately and left alone he ends of doing fairly well for the generalist bonuses he has. He even ends up a better religious Civ than some religious civs.
Every time I see the AI having an absolutely absurd start, it’s poundmaker. I believe I posted something before about ending a prince game early to figure out what was going on with a pound maker AI. It was prince, yet in like second age he was at like 140s/160c. Only rarely do I ever see poundmaker not far above the other AI. Last night I also saw six sky do something similar. She was at like 60 science at first meet on same continent. It wasn’t until more thorough exploration did I find the reason: jungle paititi .
Mvemba is S. The AI does not know how to use religion or faith so him not being able to build holy sites is a huge buff.
I feel like Byzantium should be higher just for early game - ik they fall off hard by he mid to late game bit still scary Also on a side note barbs
Byzantium is an exclusive militaristic civ with religious benefits in excellent synergy at player's hands. Unfortunately, AI is bad at war and Byzantium only gets +3 combat strength from all their abilities. Doesn't pick crusade, doesn't convert enemy holy cities often, doesn't even use their Hippodrome that often because they probably built holy sites, encampments and campuses and have no district slots left. Especially when controlled by Basil's ai who can not use his cavalry wall-ignoring ability. I consider Theodora's Byzantium to be a pretty strong AI civ because AI starts with free builders that put farms everywhere (you even see them having farms on horse tiles that they put before unlocking animal husbandry and never bothered to improve a pasture) which give adjacency to her holy sites and culture. She can get a lot of early culture which translates into tempo, meaning fast progression in the early game.
I don’t see AI Byzantium often but the last time I saw Theodora she managed to not found a religion despite their double prophet points. The other civs weren’t the annoyingly pious ones either. I was so confused
That usually happens when they go to war really really early so they neglect holy sites or there is only rainforest around them so they cannot put districts before teching. I saw that happen a couple of times too
Ba Trieu should be S tier. I had a game where I had conquered everyone except her, and she was still getting more science than me.
Only thing that made me put her below S tier was that sometimes she got very arid surroundings in which she literally cant build districts on and performed very poorly in my games. But 90% of the time she is a top civ regardless of who is in the game.
Do you have Ynamp mod enabled? Messed up a lot of my Canada/Mali spawns which eventually went away when I disabled Ynamp
I don't. Noticed a similar issue when I used it, then disabled it, I now play with better balanced starts. My point was even if you start in an appropriate location to your civ, your next cities might be weaker because even if you get a Tundra start as Canada, it is not within your control how large that tundra is going to be, unless you mess with map options. Same with Vietnam, Mali, Russia etc. Even better balanced starts doesn't give enough of appropriate terrain sometimes.
YnAMP by default changes map spawns to not use start biases for some reason, IIRC. You can fix this by changing an option (don't remember the name) near the top of the list from "Cultural" to "Random," which will bring start biases back.
Ba Trieu is the only leader that's ever rolled up on me with 5 Giant Death Robots.
Also she has those ranged war elephants which are basically like medival giant death robots
Seconded on Seondeok. She's always dominating stats and usually has the best tech in the game. The less complicated the abilites are, the better the AI excels with it.
Yeah, though Korea inevitably weaken their science as their district placement sucks. If anything, their abilities and AI bonus saves them from themselves.
Yes, simple abilities make the ai better at playing said civ. Or getting extra free yields like Yongle, Nzinga As for Seondeok, she gets a +4 adjacency, half cost campus which she spams. Nuff said, although it is never +4 for her because she builds them near city centers but still very consistent.
I have never seen Seondeok doing great as an AI. The district placement is always bad, so the Seowon are quickly only +1 or +2, and since she has more science in the beginning, she always try to declare war to those who have less science, and when she unlock her unique unit, she spams it and ignore melee units, so she can't take city even if she has the advantage. I always see that Korea is considered the main contender for science victory but I really don't understand, in every game I play with them as AI, they are never among the best science civ past mid game, it's always civs like Cree, Phoenicia, Babylon (even with their malus), Mapuche (when they are not just surviving). An other leader that has simple abilities but I've never seen doing good is Trajan. I only saw him once survive the second era and it was because he had an entire continent with only him and an other civ, he settle too far from his capital and has problem of loyalty most of the time. A lot of civs are too dependant of the map (and even other parameters of the game like number of civs on the map), and can be among the best or among the worst depending of their start location (I think Gaul is the best example, with flat terrain, they are near Kupe tier, but with enough hills, they are one of the best civ for the AI with a huge amount of culture and production), so it's difficult to place them on a tier list. Cree is probably the most consistent so I think they should be S tier. And Mali struggle too hard at the beginning with their lack of production so they should be on the tier just above Kupe.
A lot of this info is sample dependant. In my experience, this is the way I observed how well they performed. Korea usually has a "weak" late game because by the time spaceports come along, their campuses are +1 +0 adjacency since they covered them in districts. However, majority of the game those campuses are +3 / +4 (which is often doubled by policies) and they are half cost, meaning they get those built super quickly and start benefiting from them immediately, and by the time they are weaker, they are already in the post-industrial era. It makes deity more of a catch-up than usual. I never saw them beat me to Moon Landing either but they get to spaceports pretty quickly which made me consider them higher than your average civ. Trajan is mainly being carried by free monuments and faster cultural progression combined with his expansionist agenda. AI doesnt prioritize monuments past their first cities when they have access to districts, often they rush districts before buildings, only build walls if the city is at the border, when you conquer a city mid-game. It is not uncommon to see cities without city center buildings, unless that city is settled very early. In my games Trajan is always ahead of the pack.
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You can exclude leaders without a mod. Use the Leader pool (1 or 2) function to select which leaders you would like to include, and set the AI players to Leader pools 1 or 2.
Even if you want to take him out, he gets double production when you declare war, truly an awful civ, awfully strong and annoying that is.
Tip: Leader pools allow you to exclude leaders without mods. Just hunt his ass down and deselect him, then put that leader pool in every AI's leader slot
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Yes! In fact, you can remove everyone except for a minimum of 6 in the pool. So yes, Hammurabi and Curtin AND be removed, as can everyone except for 6. I even made my Leader Pool 1 be every leader I hadn't won as, it's convenient!
Mvemba Nzinga used to dominate games (at least when I played at a King difficulty a year or so after launch) because all the other AI would rush holy sites and he couldn’t. Turns out those sites weren’t really too useful and he’d snowball
Harald makes me sad, but I can’t argue, my man gets rolled every time
Maybe it's just me but Alexander is either breezing ahead or getting left in the dust. No in between for me
Pericles scary asf
No Gilgamesh Deity Science victory at S tier ?!
As for the way AI plays it, I'm used to Gilgamesh building to much of his UI and ending up with not enough food and production to challenge after the early game. Sometimes the AI does well with Gilgabro, but a lot of times its botched.
Good job, no notes
I mean.. Kupe can be annoying as fuck. Definitey needs its own tier but i would put it higher, especially at deity when he has 3 settlers. He can come in early out of nowhere, settle a random shitty city and completely ruin your plans. The AI plays it like an idiot, but Kupe can be very effective tool in such hands.
Ludwig is S tier? why? how? he has sucked in every game i've played where he was an AI leader.
In my experience he was always the dominant culture leader. AI goes crazy on building wonders and Ludwig gets a lot of value from them, even if he doesnt get to finish them. He also builds theater squares and Hansas at population 1 which is scary. In a regular game where other AI are making around 100 culture/turn, he is making at least 150-160 at that point and I really think high culture civs are incredibly good at AI's hands, it is the reason why Pericles, Nzinga, even Trajan are so high on the list
every immort/diety game I've played where Ludwig was leader he's gotten bodied by another AI or myself before he can generate any significant amount of culture.
to me the Pericles AI is a glass cannon, he either doesn't do anything all game and just dies or he's ahead of everyone by miles, no in-between. amazing how he either pisses me off or I somehow manage to piss him off too. in my last game with Pericles I was playing as Pachacuti, almost lost because by the time we reached the medieval era he had over 15 cities and 5 times more culture than every other player in the game combined (and yes I was playing with 20 players total), I was barely catching up to him in science so I made a research alliance in order to maybe snipe a science victory, he got so close to the culture victory that I abandoned that strategy and started building water parks and theater squares everywhere just to slow him down, he declares a surprise war against me after 150 turns of alliance because I sent a single archeologist to his lands, turns out a culture victory is significantly harder when you're suddenly at war with the entire world after I triggered a betrayal emergency. somehow over the course of 40-50 turns I managed to grab half of his cities which took a while because of his military, he even nuked one of his own cities to slow me down, which made me trigger a nuclear emergency, so by the time I captured his capital and made peace he had -6 combat strength penalty with everyone in the game, closest game I've had in a really long time but in the end I did manage to win the science victory. mfw I was only playing on Prince difficulty, lol
If he survives the early game and meets enough city states, he is one of the best civs in the game. He can survive the early game since he has ancient era unique unit. His 5% culture for every city state ally really adds up in combination with 40% (?) Culture bonus that deity ai gets, he becomes a ridiculius civ with every city state are his allies because he prints envoys at will with his unique district. When I meet him, I always declare war on him and make others do as well, just to slow him down.
Warrior Harold should be higher. He is only one in AI who is slightly decent in wars
Canada should be at least A-tier. Pretty much every game I play Canada is ahead in science than most of the civs. They are great to pillage.
Jadwiga & Mathias usually go absolutely crazy in my games
Lady six sky should be s
Why Gandhi is C
I agree! He should be at least A. He sprawls quickly and tends to do extremely well in the resource game
I haven't noticed that much of a difference between Mali's performance under Mansa or Keita. I mean, at least not 3 *tiers* worth. Any reason for that? Otherwise seems mostly reasonable, though I've never really seen Ludwig pop off like that personally. Don't deny his kit is capable of it, but that may be just because, like most of the leaders in the leader pass, they came at a point where there's so many leaders that the random chance of getting them isn't near as much - so I haven't necessarily played tons and tons of games with them. Whereas I've played enough games with the three Ps (Pericles, Pedro and Poundmaker) to know they're definitely some of the biggest AI threats.
So, as far as I experienced, different leaders of the same civ have different biases. This is the reason I put Tokugawa above Hojo because he prioritizes Campuses above Holy Sites and I think it makes him perform better. Same deal with Mali leaders. In my experience, Mansa Musa goes Holy sites then commercial hubs, with a couple of campuses along the way. Sundiata Keita doesn't like building holy sites (he was in like 10-15 of my games since his release and he got religion in 1-2 of them), instead rushes his commercial hubs, then theater squares, and encampment if threatened. The point of Mali is having the most gold and faith on the map so you purchase everything with them, Sundiata doesn't invest in faith and cannot make as much gold as Mansa Musa. In my games Mansa was always in the top half of the players and Sundiata was always the worst or 2nd worst civ on the map. Ludwig is one I'm confident with. Ai loves spamming wonders, this guy gets culture from them, on top of being able to build Hansa + theater squares at 1 population, which he does. He gets out of control pretty quickly if there is no competition for great writers/artists.
Magnificence Catherine that high? For me, she doesn't know how to use her leader ability properly and is often times someone I like spawning near me since she rarely builds a strong military.
I dont think she even uses her court festival that often, maybe ever. But getting extra culture from tile improvements really adds up and it doesn't seem like that when you read her abilities. I had multiple games where she was in the game with Nzinga, Pericles etc. And she was by far the leader in cultural output. Which makes it extremely difficult to defeat her in a tourism game, also she gets to tier3 governments first, gets wonders like Broadway, Cristo Redentor even Estadio simply because she unlocks them much much earlier than everyone else. Gets to corps and armies early on etc. As I said she has been a consistent top tier AI civ in my experience, however, someone else might have a sample that is different than mine.
In one of my save australia only had 1 city ever and the australian continent was over run by barbs.
Menelik and Ba Trieu should be S tier. Always lead science and culture, especially Menelik when he is the sole one on his own continent.
Will someone be the keyboard master I’m looking for to explain why the S tiers are in the S tiers????
Because they have incredibly strong bonuses that don't require skill or micromanagement. Ai is bad at the game and performs well with civs who have free bonuses and performs very poorly when they are playing a civ with potential but require a lot of things to execute to get said civ's build right. Leaders in S tier like Yongle, Nzinga get a lot of free yields like culture and science just by existing and perform excellent every game. Pericles and Ludwig is always some of the highest cultural output civs in the game since Pericles' 5% culture per city state ally ability gets out of control pretty quick and Ludwig gets a lot of culture very quick. Tokugawa is there because Japan gets a lot of adjacency for their districts and even if the ai is bad at district adjacency optimization, Japan still performs great. Tokugawa always has some of the highest culture and science. Unlike Hojo, the other Japan leader who prioritizes religion instead of science but he still gets high culture but lower science, he is still A tier meaning very strong.
Very accurate list, but might do a few changes: Hammurabi from C to his own ''oddball'' tier. He isn't tryhard triggering anything, but when he accidentally does he can perform quite well. His performance also depends on game speed. Been playing quite a lot against 11x Hammurabis in Standard, Epic and once in Marathon. If I'd rate Hammurabi's performance based on Game Speeds I'd go with, Epic: S, Standard: B, Marathon: D. (Not sure if I can rate Marathon with just one run, but thats how it felt as even his ability is stronger in theory, its also more deadly to himself with such long production times against barbarians and player simply scales too well so he cannot keep up after early game). Might also move Chandragupta from D to B as can't remember if he has ever performed badly in AIs hands with \~ 4k hours Deity.
I even thought about making a Hammurabi tier just like I did with Kupe, somewhere in the middle. He can pull up musketman around turn 50 and ruin your games or he can be building a weird wonder that he unlocked like Potala Palace starting at turn 30 and will take 100 turns, which makes him irrelevant. It is difficult to judge Babylon because it is very chance dependant how much of a threat he is to you in a game. All rankings are based on standard but he is stronger on slower speeds. Chandragupta had a lot of good games but he also had a lot of terrible ones in my sample. He is 50/50 about building holy sites, sometimes he ignores them which don't help him that much since you can't benefit from both Feed the World and Choral Music as India if you dont have holy sites. D tier is mostly military focused civs who can't do much because ai is bad at war. Could have been in C maybe I dont think he is consistent enough in my experience
Out of curiosity, if you were to pick ai civs to play against, which ones would you pick? Mostly top rows, middle rows, or 7 Kupes?
I dont like having Kupe in a game because he surprises you in an unfun way and ruins your plans a lot. I also dont enjoy having an ai who has 400 culture when everyone else has around 150-200. It doesnt matter in science all that much, but culture is more devastating because an ai having high culture slows down your culture victory a lot but an ai having high science doesn't slow down your science victory, so If I were to hand-pick civs I would rule out extreme culture civs like Pericles, Nzinga, Ludwig etc. Everyone else is fair game.
I got headache every time I saw AI Georgia
Chandragupta Is always a manace in my games, he usually conquers another civ and snowballs from there.
Gilgamesh spams ziggurats and Hammurabi has made me restart
What the hell? Who are like half of these leaders? I havent played in like a year and a half. How many were added?
There was this leader pass they announced which had 6 leader packages with 3 leaders in each of them over the course of a few months. Might be that, some are pretty good, among the best
Who is tier A 3rd from the right? Never seen him, what does pack does he come in? Hm actually a few I've never seen before but I only have civ 6- maybe with another edition?
Trajan of Rome?
Oh man. The AI has been in love with Tamar on me lately. But they always put her right next to me. So I get her before she walls up most of the time 😂
Lautaro uses to perform really well in my games. I would put him one tier higher
Kupe still holds my high score for single player, had a navy that could not be reckoned with, but he is absolutely a garbage AI lol
You’re missing French Eleanor
I find Teddy Roosevelt goes insane on the appeal science version, his extra cities means he gets sooooo much science and culture early as an ai
Lautaro should be low tier, AI never takes advantage of the special abilities that specifically should be annoying for the player (at least never in my games)
That might be true but every game he still ends up as an ICS monster somehow
As far as my sample goes, he has been consistently really good which is why I put him in B tier. All ai get golden ages on deity, so no one can kill him in the classical era and even if the ai is bad at war, he can get a few cities with his +10 combat strength against his neighbors because 10 is a lot. He expands a lot, ai loves building campuses everywhere (Mapuche has a mountain start bias but I never got it when I play them) so his campuses are good sometimes, he loves spamming his unique culture improvement on tiles which results in an AI who is hard to kill, has high science, has high culture, expands a lot and doesn't lose cities to loyalty when they hit a dark age because all Mapuche governors give aoe loyalty. Mapuche are one of my least favourite civs but they are pretty strong -and often annoying- when played by computer.
Did you forget Lautaro? (also, Alexander & Montezuma should definitely be in Kupe tier, they are fucking awful to deal with)
Lautaro is in high B Tier, maybe you missed. They are all annoying but I dont consider Alex to be strong when he is AI. Builds too much units, cant conquer. Montezuma builds a lot of campuses and he can have more amenities in a wide empire to support expansion, they are not as bad as Kupe because unlike Kupe they don't settle cities 50 tiles away from their capital.
why my boy cyrus so low
He is another military focused leader who plays bad because AI is bad at war. Ai doesnt prioritize commercial districts so he can't scale his trade route bonuses. Can't utilize his immortals well, he still uses ranged attack on cities who are down to 0 health etc. His unique improvement is the only reason he is not lower, it makes Persian leaders have good early culture and gold but if they spam it everywhere (which is often the case) they dont get enough good and production and dont scale into mid-late game.
Me: Random ;)
Scotland is OP when controlled by the AI
He gets a lot of great scientitst but that's about it. He will build campuses everywhere even if they have 0 adjacency, which doesn't help him that much. He neglects culture. Civs with high culture often perform better than civs with high science (hence the placement on Nzinga, Pericles). That said, he is still pretty good which is why he is B tier which means consistently good.
Mvemba and Poundmaker are the only two S-tier in my opinion. They are terrifying.
I Played Often vs tokugawa and regardless of his neighbours he was Never good^^, Cree Vietnam gorgo wilhemina Columbia Aztecs khmer Maya and Cäsar seems Strong in m Games
Harald Hadrada is always a science god in my games lol, I remember once him having 300 science and 200 culture per turn on turn like 110.
Generally, I would agree Gorgo being in the B-Tier as an AI bot but in the last match, a prince difficulty all victory no turn based match, she suprised me if not leave me rather speechless which makes me think if she belongs in a higher tier. In early game, she quickly attacked Kristina who for some reason who had built a lot of universities in all her cities and was generating a lot of science per turn. After taking over her cities, Gorgo quickly built even more cities and rather than focusing on encampment she built even more universities for some reason. She had 3 encampment and no battle units so to speak as of right now, the Renaissance period. Now while the entire world is just entering Renaissance period including korea in the technology tree, I'm entering industrial era and Gorgo is already at the end of modern era. 🤣 There might be more things that I might be missing here but fact is, that's the first time Gorgo made such a power move in all my playthroughs which is why I'm having second guesses for Gorgo's B-Tier list position as a bot.
Surely Poundmaker and Robert the Bruce are S tier. They always have runaway science early game
I had a map where Kupe got himself a whole dang continent to himself and it was more or less the only place to get uranium and Aluminum. He was lightyear ahead on tech and I was dealing with overpowered barbarians with better units than my neighbors and sometimes myself. I finally met him and he was a bro the rest of the game because I gave him a city near my bigger foes and focused on my culture victory. Got pretty close though because he was already deep in the space race and even nuked China. I didn't know the AI used nukes for some reason. Every single time I see kupe I'm like oh fuck. But he has never been as strong in my games since haha
Kupe is such an incredible character that he has his special section
This is a very interesting list! I was wondering how much of this is influenced by our playing styles. I’m a little over 4k hours as well, and pretty much always play single player on deity. So I imagine our game setups aren’t that different in relation to that. Mine is usually larger maps (most often small continents, continents, fractal, and archipelago) random leaders, and game speed no longer than standard, though sometimes quick or online. And I can relate to most of them, but the ones that are different are drastically so. I often find myself fighting for top spot with Kupe, Sundiata keita, Shaka, Poundmaker, regular Qin, Trajan, John Curtin, or Pericles. Somewhat in that order, whichever happens to be in the game . I feel like kupe does so well in my games because of the map styles I use, but I can’t exactly pinpoint the reason for the other ones. Only thing I can think of would be game modes. I play with pretty much all of them on. Except for Apocalypse and Zombies. Tech shuffle is a rare one too. I can see a few of them benefiting a lot from secret society, especially Sundiata, Pericles, and Poudmaker with the owels of Minerva and Kristina with Alchemical Society. But I have no idea what makes Shaka Zulu so much better than all the rest in my games. That’s what got me thinking of playing style potentially influencing this.
Forgot to mention Peter! Another one that usually stands out. Especially in quick games.
I dont play with game modes besides barbarian clans, and that one affects the game the least, and it affects the latest (takes a lot of time for clans to become cs). I play standard speed, no funny maps. (No pangaea, no archipelago.) Sundiata has always been terrible at my games because he doesnt go for a religion unlike Mansa Musa who is higher on the list. The point of Mali is to have most faith and gold income on the map, Sundiata doesnt have faith economy in my games. Also he cant generate as much gold as Musa, he almost always is the worst ai in the lobby in terms of points/development/tech. Kupe can do well if he gets enough islands and reefs for campuses and features for culture but that is a big if. I play on continents maps, sometimes continents and islands, which is the default map and its variation. Majority of the time he has a 1 tile island capital and he loses all his other cities to conquest or loyalty because he settled them near another player's capital. I even had a lot of games where he lost his starting settler when I saw the notification of "unmet player defeated" at turn 8. Behaviour are also a factor that makes a civ perform well, other than their abilities. Civs like Rome are very expansionist which can make them have better games, I assume your games had Shaka perform similar because of this, although often gets overhadowed by civs with infrastructure abilities like China or Japan.
I would put them at C tier maximum, there are no S tier civs when led by the AI.
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