A.I cheats so much!

[Nooble]

I was playing a game, and I am china. I'm right beside the ocean. As I was building, almost all of the land were taken. But, there were still some small gaps near the coast. This land was only between me and the ocean. I was waiting for my boarder to grow to take the spot.

But somehow, me enemy knows that there's untaken land right there! They tried to travel all the way across my country to get there to build a city. I didn't try to force them out because they would declare war on me. So I had to build a wall with my men. When I finished building a wall, my enemy starting travelling back to their city, they didn't even see my men build a wall.

I think the A.I cheats.....

They can see where all your units and cities are....They should have to explore for themself. Why do they get this cheat bonus?? This was the early gunage.

 

[wilbill]

I think the A.I cheats.....

They can see where all your units and cities are....

You're right. The AI does get some "cheat" advantages. They also know where all the resources are - even before they appear on the map. And once you move above Regent level, the AI's start getting bonus settlers and military units. Also, the higher the level you play, the more of a "discount" the AI's get when they trade techs among themselves.
These cheats are in the game so that the AI can stand a chance of winning or at least staying in the game against a decent human player.

 

[Willem]

It's common knowledge that the AI knows where your units are. But you should think of it as an advantage for you instead of a cheat. Would you have preferred that the AI travel all the way to your wall, or is it better to have it turn back early?

And during battles, you can use this in order to set traps for the AI. For instance, you pull all your troops out of a city and have them fortify right next door to it. The AI heads for that city while your offensive troops cuts it's forces to pieces along the way. Just before the AI reaches the city, you put all the defensive troops back into the city. The AI just wasted an offensive against you.

 

[Nooble]

Well, if the A.I never had this "advantage", they woudn't of tried to come to my place in the first place. And I'm playing emperor level, so far behind tech.

 

[Bluemofia]

The AI once attacked amphibiously with a mech infantry once. It wasn't a modded map, so don't say that. The AI also can take cities with hidden nationality units, unlike humans. lots of the AI cheats are known, but these are the only ones I've encountered.

 

[Huzzamaster]

I have trouble because I never have defensive units spread out, I have them stacked in on emassive area to destroy the enemy. So I will lose the occasional city, and it will really become annoying. Even though I do crush them with an iron fist!

 

[planetfall]

These "cheats" are not significant. If you think they are, get CRpRings and "cheat" also. After a game or you, you'll realize this "extra" knowledge is not of much benefit.

PF

 

[thescaryworker]

[sarcasm] Join the club! We've got T-shirts.[/sarcasm]
The AI cheats so that on the hardest level, it won't be as easy as chieftan. Hopefully, in civ4, they will find ways to make the AI have less of an *advantage*.

 

[dexters]

But somehow, me enemy knows that there's untaken land right there!

AI probably traded another AI or maybe even you for a territory or world map and found the empty tiles. The AI will rush for unsettled tiles after they get the map information that there are empty tiles. They don't know automatically that there are unsettled tiles, and even if the game knows it, the AI can be prevented to act on it. So this isn't a cheat.

lots of the AI cheats are known

News to me.

There are only 3 confirmed AI advantages
1) It knows where resource locations are 2) It knows where your undefended or weakly defended cities are 3) It doesn't suffer as much as a human player when it comes to breaking deals

Everything else is speculation

There is no evidence for example that the AI knows your unit composition. If can find this out probably like the humans do, by planting spies.

There is no evidence it knows what kind of resources is on the map. It may settle on a tile close to a resource, but the city AI has no clue what resource it will be and will not go out of its way to hook it up before the AI can 'see' it after getting the right tech. (comfirmed a long time ago by me from a debug game)

On the issue of seeing 'weak spots' The AI applies they same rules against other AIs so they will attack weakly defended AI cities as well.
------------------
People need to stop complaining about Civ3 AI cheating. Compared to Civ2, that old AI cheats like a psychopath.

 

[dannergreg]

You're right. The AI does get some "cheat" advantages. They also know where all the resources are - even before they appear on the map. And once you move above Regent level, the AI's start getting bonus settlers and military units. Also, the higher the level you play, the more of a "discount" the AI's get when they trade techs among themselves.
These cheats are in the game so that the AI can stand a chance of winning or at least staying in the game against a decent human player.

WHAT THE HECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they really do cheat!!

 

[DaveDash]

The AI clearly knows your offensive unit capability vs your defensive unit capability, but the human has a rough idea too (military adviser).

The biggest problem is the RNG. It's not so random.

This game can really be ruined by the RNG and turn it into frustration. I had a game the other day where I got nothing but Angries in every goodie hut, who proceeded to destroy my fortified regular and elite warriors, then pillage and kill my spearmen defending cities (containing workers).
All conscript barb warriors btw.

Sure in single player you can just start again but in multiplayer you can't do this without being extremely unfair to the other humans who HAVE had a 'luckier' start.
Yes there are options to turn off barbs, but barbs arn't the only frustrating part about Civ's RNG system.

 

[dexters]

The AI clearly knows your offensive unit capability vs your defensive unit capability, but the human has a rough idea too (military adviser).
.

AI uses the same algorithm to calculate your relative strength as your military advisor.

In pre-patched vanilla Civ, the military advisor was broken and took a shortcut of measuring strength based solely on # of units your rival posseded. But the AI back then still used the correct strength assesment formula that our military advisor uses today.

That said, I was noting specificially unit make-up, as in # of aircraft you have, # of nukes etc.

Since I'm usually in Republic, my regular spies fail a lot and I've never been in a position to root out the spies. In my recent game, I was in Communism and with my veteran spies, rooted out the spies both my rivals planted in my capital.

This confirms the AI does use espionage effectively and confirmed that the arms race style build up I had observed in my current game and in my previous games was not the AI cheating, but their spies telling them what I have.

You can observe this fairly easily with your ICBMs or tactical nukes. Your main AI rivals will keep ICBM and tactical nuke parity between each other, and also the human player (if we are one of the major powers). If one side start building more, everyone will build more. I'm convinced this is not a coincidence but actual AI spying. Very good stuff.

 

[Padma]

Firaxis admitted a few years ago that the AI knows the entire map - where your units are, where the pre-plotted resources are. However, in *most* cases, it is programmed to act like it does NOT know these things. For instance, it will not send a settler to that blank spot on the other side of your civ until it *should* know, from exploration or map trading. But for some things (planting a city where a resource will appear 2 ages later, or knowing where your troops are) it does act on its "improper" knowledge.

And Dave: the RNG is proven to be *very* random! It fits almost perfectly what a true random number generator would come up with. The problem is, we humans think a RNG shoud be *less* random!

 

[garric]

Is there an AI mod?

 

[wilbill]

Is there an AI mod?

On the Apolyton site, you can download the "AU" mod. It's not really a change in the AI, but a combination of mods designed to improve the AI's chances of being competitive. I played it quite a bit during the PTW era. It was, perhaps, a little more challenging than the unmodded game, but it didn't turn the AI into a human-level opponent.

 

[planetfall]

You missed the biggest AI advantage. It is not a cheat but still is an advantage. The AI has a happiness advantage. It doesn't need as many luxuries to run a happy civ. But the other side, it has a great disadvantage. It's automated worker favor irrigation to mining about 3 to 1. This is great for the tech race but hurts it in producing units.

PF

 

[bingen]

The AI has a happiness advantage.

The AI does not get any happiness advantage compared to the human player at regent level. However, on higher levels the AIs will still operate at a regent difficulty setting in relation to happiness(and also other things like research costs and barbarians).

With a couple of luxuries, happiness is no great problem for the human player either, even on Emperor +.