Does The AI Cheat?

I've recently gotten some of my friends into multiplayer FfH2. But we're having some issues with the brutal difficulty. My friends are convinced that the AI is flagrantly cheating. But I'm not so certain. So I decided to take the question here.

Does the AI give itself unfair advantages? Like spawning in units, working in concert with barbarians and other such fun AI perks.

We're playing on Noble difficulty level with the Extramodmod patch installed. We're also playing with the Advanced Tactics option turned on, if that helps.

Thanks guys!

they don't play exactly by the same rules but noble difficulty is pretty fair, iirc they get bonuses to upgrade costs for units

I do not know much about the FFH2 MOD, but, in BtS, the general opinion is that the AI does not cheat.

However, I do suspect that it might cheat when using the Barbarian units: I am suspicious that Barbaric hordes tend to choose humans and disregard AI a bit. I've seen strange barbaric movements, where it ignored AI Civ's and came straight at me... it might have been some programming logic, but... I was suspicious ever after.

Regarding battles, the AI does take more risks, sometimes winning with amazing odds! Even though it often feels unfair, tests made show that the AI does not win above what it is statistically expected of it.
If we came to think of it, an attack odd of 25% stil leads (in theory) to victory of 1 out of 4 battles... but it will always seem unfair...

I haven't played much FFH but that MOD is harder than regular BtS, so Noble in that MOD is likely equivalent to a higher level in the std game.

oh yeah I think they also have a combat bonus vs barbarians

Interesting... Yeah, my impression was that Noble was the most even of difficulties when it came to AI and Player perks.
How about unit spawning? One of the biggest bugbears my friends has was that they were convinced the AI was spawning in Settlers and Combat units.

Since we're playing modded, there is an outside chance that they change the rules a bit as well. I'm hoping to hear from someone who knows the mechanics of FfH2 and Extramodmod. See if that might influence it.

no, they don't spawn units out of thin air

Do AI get cheaper build costs for units? I can't remember exactly but I thought I may have seen that in WorldBuilder...

I do see AI eliminated at the start of the game (I play raging barbs though) and also I do see Archeron's disciples/Sons of the Inferno destroying the AI players so I don't think the AI cheats in that respect.

at noble build cost is even iirc

You should know that the AI has a much larger sight radius than a human player, but that's probably true in BtS as well. There's an option when you start a game to allow the AI to build units in a city without having first built the building that's necessary for a human player, e.g. archery range for archers. But that option is turned off by default. Those are the only "cheats" that I know of that relate to your experience.

The Barbarian AI cheats and knows where all of your units are at all times. Thus you'll see situations where Barbarian animals hunt your scouts long past when they should have lost vision over them. It's pretty braindead otherwise though, so it balances out.


All of the AI get increasingly unfair advantages over Noble difficulty.

I haven't studied/looked-at the coding at all, so take this with a grain of salt (aka: it's just likely faulty perception on my part):

Fall from Heaven (2) definately is much more 'harsh' than civ/bts, or, at the very least, it's different, which takes awhile to learn/get accustomed to, as you're already learned and becomed used/accustomed to civ/bts.

Once you start to learn Fall from heaven and how it works (and thus the AI), it starts to become as "easy" as civ/bts is for you. You just have to get used to its dynamics (what works well / is powerful vs what doesn't work or works badly) and etc, which does take some time.

Obviously, the 'AI' does have to 'cheat' in the basic sense, as you got to 'teach/get' it to understand/do what we understand and do naturally. It must be taught/forced how to play, at least adequately. It must be programmed. The harder difficulties gives the AI bonuses and/or gives the humans penalties. Sometimes the reverse happens at the lower (easier) difficulty levels: humans get bonuses and the AI gets penalities.

maybe it is because I'm a bit older and I've been practicing, but now I can beat Diety quite easily (with some "cheating" on my part), so long as I don't let the AI get too many more cities than I have (as at that point, its bonuses just overwhelm you, no amount of expertise/skill level can help you overcome it - I think, lol). This is using the vanilla, not the more/better naval ai mod, and etc mods. I actually have more difficulty with civ/bts at the hardest difficulty (diety? can't remember, lol) as I do with the hardest difficulty in Fall from Heaven (diety).

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I think the AI does cheat a bit, as I have seen its city spawn more than one unit per turn in it (unless its using some kind of feature like maybe drafting or whatever).

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the key to dominating militarily in fall from heaven is PROMOTIONS (QUALITY over quantity of units). unfortunately, this makes the even the 'warrior' (or even the 'scout' !) a super unit, able to crush all opposition, if it gets enough promotions (and/or spell buffs and/or metal upgrade buffs). the mechanics make the warrior/scout too powerful, in my opinion the warrior needs to be nerfed (not sure if there's a way to nerf the scout unfortunately), but not sure how (aside from removing the warrior's 25% city defense bonus - but this is a minor nerf - it needs other nerfs for removing its ability to crush opposition - wipe out human/AI civs).

The AI does get bonuses to production, etc based on difficulty level (see Civ4HandicapInfo.xml for details).

They do not purposefully collude with barbarians (though there are players who start the game at peace with barbarians). They do not get extra free units (though they can draft units just as human players can).

Base Civ4 does give the AI a lot of information that they shouldnt really have. For More Naval AI (and its modmods), I removed quite a bit of these cheats (mainly around visibility), though I am sure there are a number of other spots in the code where the AI gets extra information when making evaluations (one example might be that the AI knows what everyone's actual power values are).

So really, the 'cheating' is more subtle and probably not something you would actively notice in a game.