I was originally going to write about the various things that I wanted, and didn’t want, for Civilization 7. And I might still do that, because there are a number of things I’m wishing for. But after thinking about it a bit, there’s one thing I really, really, really want. Something that’s big enough to warrant putting it high above everything else. That one thing? Better AI.

Now, I’m not necessarily asking for smarter AI. Yeah, it would be nice to actually think a bit about defending your cities instead of just shuffling your troops around between a few tiles while your enemy stands in the firing line, but even in 2024, artificial intelligence is…not super intelligent, at least not on PCs. What I want is AI that makes you care a bit about who you’re fighting, and that you might have to use some slight human intelligence to beat them. Basically: give the computer some traits.

To see what I mean, check out the Civ wiki for a sec. You can do it with anyone, but let’s start with Gandhi, and check out his difference from 5 to 6. In Civilization 6, AI leaders only have two traits, called “agendas”. They have their historical one, the same every game, and their hidden one, which needs to be discovered through friendship, espionage, talking. There are three agendas with the Gathering Storm expansion, but even then only one hidden agenda is active at a time. That doesn’t really matter though, because their main agenda is so powerful it generally overrides the hidden ones. Gandhi is going to hate anyone who even thinks about considering starting a war. Civ 6 Gandhi will never declare war where he can be a warmonger (basically only to take back cities), likes civs that don’t declare warmonger wars, and really hates warmongers.

Now, let’s look at Civ 5‘s Gandhi. He, and everyone else, has a total of sixty three traits. Some of them don’t really affect gameplay, how much he talks to you and how much he airlifts troops isn’t much of an issue. But it’s a heckofa lot more than three. Not only that, but the AI has their base trait strength (1-10), and then plus or minus two on top of that. That’s 63 traits, with a range of five for each of them, meaning you’ll never be getting the same AI leader twice. Similar, but not the same. Let’s just compare him to Shaka for a sec, we can head to the site Civ Data to look at everyone at once. Gandhi can have a “meanness” as high as 5, while Shaka can have a meanness as low as 6. Let that sink in for a sec: you can have a game with the nice guy and the mean guy, where the nice guy is almost as mean as the mean guy.

I haven’t played a lot of Civ games, I started with 5, have mostly played 6 since its release, and have only dabbled into 4 and Beyond Earth. So I can’t say much to leaders those ones. But going by the games I do have a lot of playtime in, I want flexible leaders. Not different leaders, I want to know what will probably happen when I meet them. They’re real people who had real ideas, that needs to be represented in a historical game. But those are the big words. Flexible. Probably. I don’t know if I want a whole 63 traits, some of which are basically useless, but that number does need to be above 3 (but basically 2 (but basically 1)). I just want the idea of what will happen with them–I don’t want to know.

What about you? What do you think of how leaders behave? Is there something you really want for Civilization 7? Be sure to tell us in the comments below, or on Facebook!