AI cheat?

[Spearthrower]

Bear in mind that prior to any tests, the alleged problem save game must first be posted. It's no good starting to run tests (i.e. spend time) on someone's word of what happened....

Just to be clear, I don't mean to indicate that anyone is lying.

 

[Munro]

You piqued my curiosity... Here are 3 identical saves, saved 1 turn before the advisor popup, except that two of them have copper in the initial fat cross (one in the initial city square).

View attachment 161038
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I tried 5-6 times on each, and it makes no difference to the advisor. No surprises there I guess...

 

[DemonMaster]

So we have a bunch of people that "knows" that the AI cheats, but everyone seams to have misplaced their saves.

Wouldn't the eastiest way to check this is to open WB - Cheat youself a good moving solider - charge - check the AI city before and after. Boring perhaps but you could also open WB every turn to see the how the AI is progressing in general or how a besieged city is progressing (since there is threads about cheating AI about that to).

 

[Spearthrower]

Claims about cheating and RNG are always anecdotal, while people, like Munro has just done, can show immediately that the purported scenario doesn't happen. Obviously, it's impossible to prove that something never happens, but if you can prove in a game context that it doesn't generally happen, then you have proven that it is not a piece of code running the alleged cheat.

Really, the onus is on the claimant to provide substantial evidence for people to look into. Otherwise, it's all just Old Wives Tales - making erroneous connections between facts.

There have been times where I wanted to wring my monitor's neck (if it had one) thanks to a series of bad luck scenarios.... but it's fairly easy to appreciate that over a matter of countless hundreds of hours playing, I am going to have some sequences of good/bad luck. That's what I think happened to the Appearing Warrior (tm).... it was just bad luck, an erroneous connection was made and it became an Old Wives Tale.

 

[Elandal]

If you want to observe AI behaviour and see how it gets eg. a warrior faster than you expected, do the following:

Find CivilizationIV.ini (should be in <My Documents>\My Games\Beyond the Sword). Edit the file, changing "cheatcode = 0" (or possibly commented out or otherwise disabled) to "cheacode = chipotle".

Then start a game (or load suspicious save).

When in game, press CTRL-Z. This reveals map, all AI actions, and all information there is (there are numerous other debug features, but this is mostly enough to observe AI behaviour).

Now that you can see anything and everything that happens, do whatever you would to trigger cheating (eg. warrior rush a nearby AI to show how it gets free warrior). You can at any time look into the AI capitol, and see how far it is building the warrior - you can even observe the capitol on turn one (first turn being 0 - human player is player 0 and goes first in turns, so at that moment no AI city has been founded yet) to see that indeed, it has some extra hammers there - a bonus to AI civs.

There's no need to use worldbuilder when debug interface exists. Of course you can use WB as well, but debug interface is IMO more convenient.

 

[DemonMaster]

I have managed to survive civ1, a game where the AI suddenly got his entire land fully improved with roads and irrigation and I enjoyed it, so even if they have scripted something (which I dont think they have) I can live with it and in the case they have scripted some AI cheats, I must give them my best because I haven't noticed anything that cannot be explained by ordinary play, goody huts, or headstart.

 

[Cvntpumeler]

You piqued my curiosity... Here are 3 identical saves, saved 1 turn before the advisor popup, except that two of them have copper in the initial fat cross (one in the initial city square).

View attachment 161038
View attachment 161039
View attachment 161040

I tried 5-6 times on each, and it makes no difference to the advisor. No surprises there I guess...

Thanks for testing that, I lack the patience and a fast machine... the two may go hand in hand...

I'm still curious though... did the Advisor want you to research the same thing each time (based on the visable resources next to your cities), or was it a different random tech each time?

 

[Munro]

Thanks for testing that, I lack the patience and a fast machine... the two may go hand in hand...

I'm still curious though... did the Advisor want you to research the same thing each time (based on the visable resources next to your cities), or was it a different random tech each time?

There was some randomness. In this particular setup, the recommendations would vary randomly between Fishing + Bronzeworking, or Archery + Agriculture (even when reloading from the exact same save).

Bronzeworking didn't come up any more often though when there was 'hidden copper' in the city's fat cross.

 

[ViterboKnight]

A question about something I noticed during my last game.

I know that AI receives bonuses on levels higher than Noble, allright!

However, I was about to attack an enemy civ. Espionage allowed me to examine his cities, and I saw his next longbowman was being produced in three turns. So, to avoid him to finish a new unit, I attack immediately.
I declared war, moved into his land, and ended my turn.
While no more units moved from outside the city to defend it, another longbowman appeared inside, and he was actually starting to build a new longbowman.
So, no way! The unit, that was expected to be built in three turns, was finished in only one turn!

 

[Spearthrower]

A question about something I noticed during my last game.

I know that AI receives bonuses on levels higher than Noble, allright!

However, I was about to attack an enemy civ. Espionage allowed me to examine his cities, and I saw his next longbowman was being produced in three turns. So, to avoid him to finish a new unit, I attack immediately.
I declared war, moved into his land, and ended my turn.
While no more units moved from outside the city to defend it, another longbowman appeared inside, and he was actually starting to build a new longbowman.
So, no way! The unit, that was expected to be built in three turns, was finished in only one turn!

He whipped it or bought it with cash.

If you claim this is not true, then please attach the save game.

 

[ViterboKnight]

He had no time to whip or buy.
If he rushes in either way, the unit is ready the next turn, not immediately!
Whatsmore, Nationhood was too far for him to draft units.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Probably AI whipped it after your turn ended?

 

[Elandal]

Hammers are applied at the end of the turn, with builds completing. So if you whip a longbow, it'll be available to defend the city already if an AI attacks on the same turn. Of course works for AI too: if it whips a longbow, it'll be there on the next human player turn already.

 

[Arlborn]

I declared war, moved into his land, and ended my turn.

What do you mean, same turn? As I quoted above, you stated that you finished your turn, so he had one turn to whip the longbowman... No?


EDIT: I shouldn't open a page, not reading it right away because my daughter woke up or something else, then coming back in half an hour, read it and post a reply right away! Next time I refresh the page!

 

[r_rolo1]

I agree with Spearthrower.... Nothing personal ViterboKnight, but the best way of proofing that is to post the before and after save. If what you are claiming is true it is a serious bug ( AI should not do that ) and Firaxis should be warned of that. But I believe that you can understand that a lot of us already heard zillions of unproofed claims of AI cheating and find really hard to believe in one....

P.S Did you noticed a drop in pop or of the avaliable money ( drafting is out.. you can't draft longbows )? What were the civics that the AI has using ( you can rule out whip or $buy if the AI is not in slavery or US ( if not spiritual or with CR ...). Are you really sure that the longbow didn't came from elsewhere?

 

[Cvntpumeler]

Hammers are applied at the end of the turn, with builds completing. So if you whip a longbow, it'll be available to defend the city already if an AI attacks on the same turn. Of course works for AI too: if it whips a longbow, it'll be there on the next human player turn already.

Yep, thats how it works. If you whip a defender with enemy troops only 1 turn away, that defender will be available to defend the very next turn.

 

[Ermelinho]

Now please, not that unfounded rumor again. Where's your proof?

well, my proof is this: i´m currently creating a mod, where units can create res plots. ( "plant" horses e.g.) these replace former res on that plot, if there´s one . now, for test purposes, i watched how the ai handles this unit. so i gave it several of these units. coincidently (?) the ai wouldn´t plant horses on plots which already contain other res, though it shouldn´t know about them, yet (coal, aluminium, uran etc). but it did on every other unoccupied tile.

someone said this bug was fixed already. that maybe true. i have to admit, that my mod is a modification of "next war" with a 34 civs gamecore.dll I downloaded
from here. so if the .dll is the "source" of this bug, that might be the reason....

 

[r_rolo1]

^^ I don't know if it is related with your unit, but animals can't enter resource tiles ( don't know why.... ). Maybe your mod unit has some animal like "code" usage?....

 

[Psyringe]

well, my proof is this: i´m currently creating a mod, where units can create res plots. ( "plant" horses e.g.) these replace former res on that plot, if there´s one . now, for test purposes, i watched how the ai handles this unit. so i gave it several of these units. coincidently (?) the ai wouldn´t plant horses on plots which already contain other res, though it shouldn´t know about them, yet (coal, aluminium, uran etc). but it did on every other unoccupied tile.

Okay - first of all, I apologize for being unnerved by your assertion that the AI knew about resources. i thought you were simply rehashing an argument that's already been resolved years ago, but apparently you aren't.

What I thought you were talking about (and what's been tested b me and other people) is the AI of *settler* units - i.e., we were testing whether the AI knew about hidden resources and (for example) planted a city in an otherwise totally useless desert spot because it magically knew that some oil would be found there several millennia in the future. This was the case in Civ3 (and a quite annoying cheat imho), but it's *not* the case for Civ4.

However, what you actually were talking about is not settler AI but rather *worker* AI - i.e., do workers (or other units with the ability to modify the terrain) know where hidden resources are.

That's actually an interesting question and I don't think it has been tested before. If AI workers *do* know about hidden resources, then this could give the AI a slight advantage (for example by mining the hill where copper will surface instead of all the other hills available). That would probably be a bug rather than a cheat though. Also, I wonder, doesn't the AI use the same algorithms like the player when he automates his units? If so, then there'd be little room for cheats.

However, a final verdict isn't possible without seeing what exactly you did in your mod. Since you're doing something that surpasses the boundaries of the base game, unexpected AI behavior isn't really surprising - but it's nevertheless worth having a closer look.

someone said this bug was fixed already.

I said something like that, but I meant a different bug than the one you described now.

 

[Roland Johansen]

However, what you actually were talking about is not settler AI but rather *worker* AI - i.e., do workers (or other units with the ability to modify the terrain) know where hidden resources are.

That's actually an interesting question and I don't think it has been tested before. If AI workers *do* know about hidden resources, then this could give the AI a slight advantage (for example by mining the hill where copper will surface instead of all the other hills available). That would probably be a bug rather than a cheat though. Also, I wonder, doesn't the AI use the same algorithms like the player when he automates his units? If so, then there'd be little room for cheats.

I've often seen the AI build a windmill on a hill with coal before they know that coal will appear there. So the worker AI doesn't use knowledge it shouldn't have to improve resources before they appear.

Of course this doesn't rule out that in some other cases the AI controlling worker like units behaves in odd ways.