Ai blatantly cheat on Prince difficulty?????

[dannythefool]

I see a lot of people accepting on very little evidence the claim that at Prince difficulty the AI doesn't "cheat" and that it is on equal footing with the player.

It's because that's what the manual says.

“Prince” is the middle level. On that level neither you nor your AI opponents get any particular bonuses.

 

[Fistalis]

It's because that's what the manual says.

Meh thats what they said about noble in civ IV and it was blatantly false lol. Not saying your right or wrong.. just pointing out you can't always trust what they tell us.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Exactly, what is written in the manual definitely falls under "very little evidence". One only has to glance at the civ5 manual errata thread to see the how often the manual gets things wrong. It's not as if there is a direct code relationship between the data in the manual and the data in the game files.

 

[Malkaviel]

I said this in another thread...

When the AI builds, it builds what AI would. When puppets build, they build what the AI would.

Maybe it makes more sense here.

It's not "better". It's taking advantage of aspects you're discarding.

 

[dannythefool]

I had one another problem where AIs have tons of gold with 10 cities, what, they are only sitting on trading posts(prince difficulty which I have already beaten, but still)? I mean, Rome has around 60 gpt somewhere around renessaince area and he has musketeers as I and I had a tech lead and I can't understand it.

Ok. I played your save game for a few turns until wife aggro commenced around turn 422 due to other weekend plans. Initially, when loading your save, Rome has 25 GPT, England has 60 GPT and I think those are the two strongest.

First, you have tons of resources, sell them to the AI. You don't need extra luxuries, you don't even need all your iron because you hardly have any units that require iron. I kept selling them to the AI for GPT and extra gold and it pushed my gpt up to between 40 and 60 too (along with some other things I did). Meanwhile, the AI's GPT kept fluctuating, they were probably doing the same thing and numbers are changing as trades end and new ones are made.

I mean, where he gets all the food, he's not allied with any maritime city state and has no caravels to find the other continent.

I don't think his civ is so large. From those few turns I can't tell if he's cheating, but it doesn't look *too* abnormal.

I still have a tech lead, but there's soomth strange in this round, maybe I should invest more on trading posts and less on farms and science or what?

If you are trying to make money, there are some oversights. For example, you have one city set to produce wealth, which is very inefficient in this game, but all your cities are set to default focus. Setting them to gold focus would help your gpt. I set the production cities to production focus and those that had little hammers to gold for my handful of turns, and both helped a lot.

Also, you have all those workers. I disbanded all of them. Your biggest problem right now is Rome and Rome has tons of workers, so you'll get new ones soon. (Heh heh.)

In my other prince games, AI was really stupid.

It's not too intelligent in this one either. None of the AIs has any hopes of winning this game anytime soon apart from a score victory.

For that matter, you have about three hundred turns left, so at least a score victory should be possible for you, too. I don't have enough experience with epic games so I don't know how likely it is that you can win one of the other victories. With domination being easier here than before, I wouldn't rule it out.

Regardless, as I said, the biggest problem is Rome. He doesn't have that large an army. With all the extra gold I bought a crossbowman, and later another one. Between these, your great general, your alliance with Monaco, and your existing army, I had no trouble taking Ravenna and that other city next to Monaco (puppet them, of course). After that, he almost stopped sending more units. It'll also gain you the allegiance of that other city state on the west coast of your continent who asked you to weaken Rome. So I definitely think you have a realistic chance if you can take out Rome.

Regarding science, you could probably improve a lot, but adding more cities even if they're only former Roman puppet cities, should help too.

Oh and I cancelled the war with Liz since you have no hopes of doing anything there, and it would probably end up making either her or Hiawatha stronger, which you don't want. But I don't know, it could work if you just declare on her and just sit there.

 

[Mad Hab]

Check out this presentation by Soren Johnson where he talks about how there are different ways the AI "cheats" in Civ 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI&t=25m10s.

Soren's Da Man... Too bad Firaxis couldn't keep him happy there. Maybe Sid could have offered him the name on the box of Civ 4 (Sid Meier and Soren Johnson's Civilization IV - now that's a long title!)

Cheers,

Mad Hab

 

[russelcoight]

People making comments like this should be ashamed of themselves, because you didn't read the thread and you don't know what you're talking about. Somewhere along the way one of you invented the strawman argument that the OP wasn't good at the game and that's not at all what discussion should be about here.

If the OP is right, as it seems he is, that the AI is permitted to go into negative gpt without penalties, that's the problem here, and the OP is correct to suggest it should be fixed. The AI shouldn't be able to go into hundreds of negative gpt with no consequences, especially when the human clearly cannot.

Tbh im not sure if its my fault or the peoples, I thought my point was clearer then it seems , but by god!!! THIS MAN GOT IT... Thank you btw

This is the fundamental issue im having. I could have left some parts of my op out but this was the point of it all , the rest was to try illustrate the game.

I have some screen shots which should help explain what im trying to get at here. Egypt is sitting at -4000+ gpt with zero treasury. Take a look at hes army size though. As well as this take a look at who is by all rights coming dead last , the Iroquois nation , and note they are ahead of me in military. However if we go several turns back we can see that although egypts -gpt has increased dramatically , hes army has .... well its actually become stronger ?!?!?!?!?! um how??? the only way it can happen in my view is if the AI completely ignores any upkeep costs. That is a pretty big thing to not mention, since the ability to do so trumps all advantages on all difficulties.



&



Again this isn't about me having problems with AI or Prince level or w/e. Games outcome isn't decided. But i find it incredibly cheesy to have dumb ai mixed with blatant and ridiculous cheating.

 

[Sephi]

I see a lot of people accepting on very little evidence the claim that at Prince difficulty the AI doesn't "cheat" and that it is on equal footing with the player.

It wasn't true in civ4 (Noble difficulty) and probably isn't with civ5 either. Unless you've checked the code for yourself, I'd advise against stating it (no bonuses at Prince difficulty) like it's fact. The game and its little mouse-over tooltips is not an authority on the matter!

If anything, Prince difficulty is probably just where the developers found the middle of the bell curve of players tended to be, and so called it the "normal" difficulty. Even more likely is that Prince is the 40% or 30% point instead, so there aren't so large a proportion of players who feel dejected form not being able to beat the normal difficulty.

Biggest advantage for AI on Prince is that it can upgrade units at half price. But most other settings are equal for AI and human player. Pretty much the same like in Civ4.

edit: not being forced to disband units at negative gold looks like a very strong advantage in some situations too

 

[ChaplainDMK]

Im playing on prince as America, im in the 1980s, i have destroyed Persia, Songhai, Ottomans, badly mauled Russia (they wen't from largest country and largest military to last in military and half their towns were burned down by me in like 30 turns )
Im now the biggest country, have the most GPT (+60), biggest army, most literate, most advanced (tech wise) and have the most happiness (20)
And this is my 4th game of Civ 5. But the first 2 games i played i got immense unhappiness, barely kept a positive budget and was far behind evreyone. Just play a bit and you will get the hang of the game

 

[Fabien]

Tbh im not sure if its my fault or the peoples, I thought my point was clearer then it seems , but by god!!! THIS MAN GOT IT... Thank you btw

This is the fundamental issue im having. I could have left some parts of my op out but this was the point of it all , the rest was to try illustrate the game.

I have some screen shots which should help explain what im trying to get at here. Egypt is sitting at -4000+ gpt with zero treasury. Take a look at hes army size though. As well as this take a look at who is by all rights coming dead last , the Iroquois nation , and note they are ahead of me in military. However if we go several turns back we can see that although egypts -gpt has increased dramatically , hes army has .... well its actually become stronger ?!?!?!?!?! um how??? the only way it can happen in my view is if the AI completely ignores any upkeep costs. That is a pretty big thing to not mention, since the ability to do so trumps all advantages on all difficulties.



&



Again this isn't about me having problems with AI or Prince level or w/e. Games outcome isn't decided. But i find it incredibly cheesy to have dumb ai mixed with blatant and ridiculous cheating.

I hate to say it, but you've probably found a bug. There is no way he could have -4000 Gold per turn and have an empire of that size, especially since he only has double your army and you seem to be quite fine income wise. Whatever it is, it surely isn't working as intended. Maybe it's just a display bug.

 

[Rince]

I hate to say it, but you've probably found a bug. There is no way he could have -4000 Gold per turn and have an empire of that size, especially since he only has double your army and you seem to be quite fine income wise. Whatever it is, it surely isn't working as intended. Maybe it's just a display bug.

I agree. russelcoight, could you post the savegame here? You could also post it to the bugs forum while you're at it.

 

[gunter]

No matter how many proof you will show here, there will always be someone who will say that the AI doesn't cheat, the AI has a fair play, the developers told the AI doesn't cheat and bla bla bla.. they are republican I guess

I can say there is plenty of similar " behaviours " within civ V .... I have also seen a few of them...

 

[r_rolo1]

Soren's Da Man... Too bad Firaxis couldn't keep him happy there. Maybe Sid could have offered him the name on the box of Civ 4 (Sid Meier and Soren Johnson's Civilization IV - now that's a long title!)

Cheers,

Mad Hab

Soren couldn't make a Ai that was both able to make early wars ( that is , rushes ) and capable of fighting in later eras ... this in his own words, according to a civ IV beta tester and highly respected civ player ( Sullla ).

That and Spore ( ugh ) make me think that your respect for Soren is probably not totally deserved

 

[afa2000]

IMO, AI being able to retain a big army at negative gpt while player cant is "blatantly cheat". Although I think it's just another bug.

There are more threads pointing it out. I have seen that happening too.

 

[generalwar]

Ok. I played your save game for a few turns until wife aggro commenced around turn 422 due to other weekend plans. Initially, when loading your save, Rome has 25 GPT, England has 60 GPT and I think those are the two strongest.

First, you have tons of resources, sell them to the AI. You don't need extra luxuries, you don't even need all your iron because you hardly have any units that require iron. I kept selling them to the AI for GPT and extra gold and it pushed my gpt up to between 40 and 60 too (along with some other things I did). Meanwhile, the AI's GPT kept fluctuating, they were probably doing the same thing and numbers are changing as trades end and new ones are made.


I don't think his civ is so large. From those few turns I can't tell if he's cheating, but it doesn't look *too* abnormal.



If you are trying to make money, there are some oversights. For example, you have one city set to produce wealth, which is very inefficient in this game, but all your cities are set to default focus. Setting them to gold focus would help your gpt. I set the production cities to production focus and those that had little hammers to gold for my handful of turns, and both helped a lot.

Also, you have all those workers. I disbanded all of them. Your biggest problem right now is Rome and Rome has tons of workers, so you'll get new ones soon. (Heh heh.)



It's not too intelligent in this one either. None of the AIs has any hopes of winning this game anytime soon apart from a score victory.

For that matter, you have about three hundred turns left, so at least a score victory should be possible for you, too. I don't have enough experience with epic games so I don't know how likely it is that you can win one of the other victories. With domination being easier here than before, I wouldn't rule it out.

Regardless, as I said, the biggest problem is Rome. He doesn't have that large an army. With all the extra gold I bought a crossbowman, and later another one. Between these, your great general, your alliance with Monaco, and your existing army, I had no trouble taking Ravenna and that other city next to Monaco (puppet them, of course). After that, he almost stopped sending more units. It'll also gain you the allegiance of that other city state on the west coast of your continent who asked you to weaken Rome. So I definitely think you have a realistic chance if you can take out Rome.

Regarding science, you could probably improve a lot, but adding more cities even if they're only former Roman puppet cities, should help too.

Oh and I cancelled the war with Liz since you have no hopes of doing anything there, and it would probably end up making either her or Hiawatha stronger, which you don't want. But I don't know, it could work if you just declare on her and just sit there.

Thanks a lot for all of this advices. You see, I'm too cautious when I see a big state like Rome so, I'm doing some stupid things. i played another one game with Egypt, still playing, where I have really good 3 cities, destroyed 5 Rome cities and captured Rome itself(with riflemen) allied with America who is big, but doesn't have even muskets, I'll probably go to war with him but, what I wanted to say is that I noticed that I'm not doing really good city specialization even now, in this round, I didn't have a production city. So, I think that my civ 5 gaming is going to improve. Thanks again for those advices. Btw, I have found 1 really big post about whole civ 5, specialization, combat, changes in civ 5 etc. so, if anyone want to read, here's the link.

 

[Malkaviel]

-4000 gold per turn was an obvious display bug. Absolutely nothing, huge map, hundreds of units, could cause that disparity.

 

[generalwar]

danny, thanks a lot! If you want to see what my empire turned into( thanks to you)

Here!

 

[dannythefool]

danny, thanks a lot! If you want to see what my empire turned into( thanks to you)

Cool, glad I could help

So, who are you going to invade next?

 

[russelcoight]

-4000 gold per turn was an obvious display bug. Absolutely nothing, huge map, hundreds of units, could cause that disparity.

Perhaps but the other two nations both have bigger armies then me despite being smaller in every way. As well as this they are both running negative gpt's and their armies are still growing in strength.

This is the problem really. Their armies continually grow no mater what circumstances are playing out. But in the case of the other two its hard to understand how they could have stronger economies then me. And oh yes , i trade post spammed. But its possible it is just a display error , though i am unable to trade gpt with any of the ai's under any circumstance when they are -.

 

[Rince]

No matter how many proof you will show here, there will always be someone who will say that the AI doesn't cheat, the AI has a fair play, the developers told the AI doesn't cheat and bla bla bla.. they are republican I guess

I have no problem accepting proof that the AI is cheating. I do have a problem with the attitude of people in this forum though. Maybe I'm getting too old for forum discussions but is it so difficult to start a rational thread after discovering something instead of a hate thread? Why not post the screenshots and a savegame right away and ask whether others have seen or can reproduce the effect?

No, instead all post have to start with an inflammatory title, followed by tiresome bashing and leading to an endless discussion I guess. A little bit of open-mindedness would help this forum a lot.