AI cheating to beat me on same turn to wonder

I don't know that I've ever seen this "AI adjustment" thing. Every time I lose a crucial wonder and feel it's detrimental to gameplay if I don't reload the save (Petra or something), I know what turn they get it on, and I can adjust accordingly and beat them to it. It's always the same turn for early wonders in my experience. I've never had this "repeatedly lose" phenomenon happen.

Late wonders -- well, that shouldn't be an issue either, because you should either be building them as the first one to the tech, or you should know other AI have it and not bother.

Chum said:

I don't know that I've ever seen this "AI adjustment" thing. Every time I lose a crucial wonder and feel it's detrimental to gameplay if I don't reload the save (Petra or something), I know what turn they get it on, and I can adjust accordingly and beat them to it. It's always the same turn for early wonders in my experience. I've never had this "repeatedly lose" phenomenon happen.

Late wonders -- well, that shouldn't be an issue either, because you should either be building them as the first one to the tech, or you should know other AI have it and not bother.

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Note that I said, '=> sometimes <=', which is pretty rare because it is already rare that an AI beats me to a wonder by 1 turn. But since I started checking this I have sometimes noticed shenanigans. But I haven't had it happen often enough that I can exactly say why it happens. It could happen more often for others because I usually play on immortal and diety, thus I don't build many wonders.

==> The occurence that made me start looking at what was happening was when I rush built the Leaning Tower and England made it on its turn. I reloaded and upped my science by a lot so I could rush build it 5 turns sooner (was epic game speed). Again England beat me out! That seemed impossible so I looked back at multiple saved games using the Ingame Editor and found that England had 'completed' the Leaning Tower at least 20 turns earlier but simply left it in its build Q.

And also, like I said before, it could be a bug where I never received the 'so and so built wonder X' or 'wonder X was built in a far away land'. If it is a bug that would explain why it gets built by the ai even if I up production or use a GP to build it many turns sooner. (because it is already built!)

Just check it anytime the AI beats you to a wonder by 1 turn, its is very easy to do with the Ingame Editor (just load a slightly earlier saved game with the mod activated and check out the city that made the wonder).

I'd be very interested in seeing some cheating done to give yourself more production than possible, see if the AI still wins by 1 turn.

Only cheat I have definitely seen is the AI buying a unit then moving and attacking with it the same turn. But could have been a bug just as easily.

Most of the wonders seem fairly lame to me. There's only a few must haves and even some of those are largely situational.

Greyhawk1 said:

Only cheat I have definitely seen is the AI buying a unit then moving and attacking with it the same turn. But could have been a bug just as easily.

Most of the wonders seem fairly lame to me. There's only a few must haves and even some of those are largely situational.

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I have seen the AI move on to a hill, and settle on the same turn. THAT one annoys me, because whenever I see that kind of stuff, it's usually because I'm in a position to settle where I want to, or because I'm thinking I don't have to DoW him to get what I want.

DeletedSettler said:

I'd be very interested in seeing some cheating done to give yourself more production than possible, see if the AI still wins by 1 turn.

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I have done this and the AI does not still beat me by 1 turn.

I have rewound my game to the turn where I started building the wonder and then by hook or by crook found a way to squeeze out enough hammers to build it 1 turn faster. Usually by selling my last copy of a luxury, all my horses, iron, etc., to buy that forge or stable or whatever pushes me over the limit, diverting some workers to chop trees, and carefully optimizing my citizens. Until I get that 1 turn shaved off my build time.

When I cheat like that, I always beat the AI to the wonder, presumably by 1 turn.

Still.... the AI beats you by 1 turn too frequently for it to be a big coincidence. I am not sure how to explain it.

There are definitely some changes in the AI decision tree that can change between reloads and affect the turn completion of wonders. But after playing a lot--I mean an embarrassing quantity--of early-game wonder races, I'm pretty sure there's no cheating going on. Just confirmation bias on our parts when we feel like something must be up with the AI and so... THERE, THERE, SEE THAT!?! IT CHEATED!

Separating out confirmation bias is very tricky, especially since loosing a wonder by one turn is so memorable, but my own recent experiment was enough to convince me that it&#8217;s not chance. Did you see Brok&#8217;s post a page back? I had concluded that the AI was tweaking its production to beat me by a turn, and maybe the behavior was not intentionally programmed, but that&#8217;s not what is going on. It&#8217;s worse than that! The AI actually delays it&#8217;s production to beat the player by one-and-only-one turn! Why? Did the developers think this funny? What is the possible rational for trolling the player like this?

I am actually a little encouraged because it means that, if you have chops available, shaving one turn right at the end is more important that saving multiple turns in the middle.