Better AI Tweaks

A smarter, harder AI. Not just a bigger one.

I developed this mod because I play Civ6 a lot with my wife in hotseat, and the AI just wasn’t challenging enough, even on highest difficulty and mods. I was tired of mods that just slap flat bonuses on the AI. But there’s no other game like Civ6, so instead of giving up, I decided to try to fix it. I discovered the excellent RHAI mod and decided to expand on it to make the game even more challenging. BAIT takes a additional approach: it targets specific AI weaknesses (city sieges, unit movement, war commitment, defense building, diplomacy) and patches them with smarter behavior, tuned configurations or slight directed boni. The result is a challenging but fairer game, where the AI can’t just snowball by getting massive flat boosts but actually has to play better.

BAIT is designed as a patch layer on top of RHAI. It overwrites select RHAI configurations (PseudoYields, war bias, diplomacy, war operations, defense priorities) and adds new AI behaviors via Lua scripts. RHAI is required.

RomanHoliday’s AI Rework v4 (RHAI)
or
RomanHoliday’s AI Rework v3 (RHAI)

• Better Balanced Game (BBG) Gameplay rebalance for fairness.
• Epoch Equilibrium Era pacing adjustments.
• The Crucible (Map Script) Highly recommended! Good map layout is critical for a fair and challenging game. Maps like The Crucible ensure balanced starts and interesting geography that reward strategic play. Especially for Hotseat games with 2 human players.

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• Coalition warfare – AI players coordinate: joining ongoing wars against humans, responding to religious conversion, and backstabbing when militarily dominant.
• War commitment – AI stays in wars longer (25+ turns minimum), reinforces war posture regularly, and resists cheap peace deals. No more poke-and-peace exploits.
• Formal war preference – AI prefers formal war declarations over surprise wars, especially after denouncements.
• Targeted movement bonuses – AI units get slight movement bonuses when far behind frontline. No more watching the AI slowly shuffle units across the map.

• Diplomacy – The AI is slightly "racist" against human players. AI-to-AI relationships are friendlier, AI-to-human relationships are cooler. They just like each other more than they like you. Denounced-to-war transition is moderated.
• Walls ASAP – AI now prioritizes Masonry tech and builds Ancient Walls as a top priority. Wall upgrades (Medieval, Renaissance) are also properly valued.
• Encampments matter – AI places encampment districts more strategically and builds barracks, armories, and military academies.
• Mobilization – When a human captures an AI city, the AI get’s really mad and starts total war against the invader. Shifting all it’s economy towards war.

• Siege is decisive – Bombard units take reduced city fire damage. District takedowns are faster. Sieges actually work.
• AI Siege Boost – AI Siege units get damage boost when attacking cities to compensate for bad unit movement
• AI veterans – AI units gain experience during wars and every few turns, making veteran armies a real threat.

• PseudoYields – Increased city defense values, boosts standing army priority, and tunes nuclear/diplomatic/luxury valuations.
• War Bias – Increases AI inclination to denounce, declare war, and demand tribute. Reduces peace attractiveness.
• War Operations – AI can run multiple simultaneous city assaults instead of one at a time.
• Defense Priorities – Era-specific defense values kept higher through Medieval and Renaissance so AI keeps upgrading walls.
• Barbarians – Increased barbarian boldness and kill rewards, making camps a persistent threat.

• Barbarian reprisals -Founding a city can trigger nearby barbarian camps with era-appropriate escorts. Scout and screen your settlers.
• No AI bonus settlers – Fair starts for everyone. The challenge comes from smarter play, not extra cities.

• Nukes matter – Thermonukes have blast radius 3, ICBMs range 18. AI actively builds nuclear weapons.
• Culture & Tourism – Wonders produce more tourism, Great Works have improved yields, Culture Victory is competitive.
• Religion fights back – Stronger passive spread, deadlier theological combat, earlier missionary waves.
• War pacing – Minimum peace 20 turns, minimum war 25+ turns. Reduced war weariness lets campaigns play out.

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If you want an AI that actually fights, builds defenses, coordinates attacks, and makes you earn every victory, this is it.