AI cheated?? I don't get it....

[IDave]

Ok i was just playing a game in which Tokugawu who was not the most advanced AI built the Pentagon without even having assembly line?

No one had assembly line so i was thinkin great i can still get the pentagon if i build it in my ironworks city, then pow, The Pentagon has been built in a far away land so i was like.... WTH? looked it up in the wonders list and it says Pentagon(Japan) so i check the foriegn advisor and Toku does not have assembly line?

How can this be??

Only thing i could think of is some weird random event which is just wrong if it exists.

Anyway i saved it that turn and i'll post a save for any1 to look at if u don't believe me.

Has this happened to anyone else it was really annoyed me.

 

[Roland Johansen]

If you don't have some of the prerequisite technologies for assembly line, then you can't see if another civilisation has the assembly line technology. You can only see if they have the technologies that you already have or those that you can invent.

Might this have been the source of your confusion? If not, then upload a savegame to inspect the situation.

 

[JujuLautre]

there's a kind of bug in the foreign advisor screen which can give misleading informations. Perhaps it comes from that. Could you post a screen from the FA screen?

 

[lulu135]

If you go into worldbuilder then you can check for sure. If you don't want to spoil the game then you could reload the save game and check later.

 

[Psyringe]

Anyway i saved it that turn and i'll post a save for any1 to look at if u don't believe me.

Please do so. A save from the turn before would be even better (a save from after something happened isn't a good evidence), so if you still have an earlier save, please post this one instead.

Personally, I think that you probably misunderstood the (admittedly confusing) way the foreign advisor screen displays the techs that other civs might know. You wouldn't be the first one. But of course there's always the possibility of a bug, so please let us check it out.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

mmm some good points... the foreign advisor screen is kinda wacky

 

[AriochIV]

I've noticed many games in which an opponent clearly had a technology that was not displayed in the foreign advisor screen. It's not necessarily a bug.

 

[KMadCandy]

it's very odd about the "can research", it gets confused by OR pre-reqs. i just WBd this, gave myself agri/wheel/pottery/writing/alpha so that i can trade techs. gave peter pottery too, which was legit since he knows the wheel, fishing, and agriculture. so he had all the pre-reqs for it, including both OR pre-reqs (pottery actually requires only one of fishing OR agri, + the wheel)



i have agri but not fishing. because i have only one of the two OR pre-reqs for pottery, the FA freaks out, it doesn't quite "click" on the fact that he already has pottery and it instead shows that he "can research" it. i think the same thing happens if they have only one of the OR pre-reqs too, i think it's not only when you have just one, but i can't remember for sure. when i give myself fishing, then pottery disappears from his "can research" list.

it's really stupid, because if he has agri and the wheel and i can't trade him pottery then that tells me he already knows it. but the FA won't tell me. i don't know why they chose to do it that way, if it's a game decision and not a bug in the implementation of the FA, but i'm not in charge.

you can run into cases where FA will tell you that your opponent "will (or won't) trade" Nationalism and "can research" Code of Laws and Constitution. that's ridiculous, Nationalism requires Code of Laws, so he must already know CoL if he knows how to make his nation into a hood. but if you and your opponent both have CoL but got there different ways (i went by currency, you went by priesthood), and still don't have the other OR pre-req, then it displays like that.

now add in that you can't see things he knows if you're too far behind on pre-reqs. so the screen might make it look like toku doesn't have something that's 3 techs backwards from ALine, because of this OR thing, when he really does. so you get the impression that he's missing more techs than he really is. meanwhile he actually already knows the tech that shows up as "can research" already, and things past it on the tech tree, and ALine. it's really weird and awfully confusing.

 

[IDave]

Ok i have an auto save from the turn before and a save from the turn after it was completed. I was about even on tech cozi was just about to research assembly line and it said Toku could research it, but according to the FA he had been slightly behind the rest of his continent.

Anyway here are the saves, it's only my 3rd ever attempt at prince so please don't laugh.

If u wanna know the story behind the game i had basically been bullied constantly by Shaka since about 2000BC, the war lasted til about 1500AD he had an enormous army and it used a lot of my resources fighting him back i eventually managed to pay for peace by giving him back Nobamba which i had taken, he then turned on Hatty who was 1st in score at that point and absolutely anihilated her until she capitulated. As he was doing that William turned on me now, so anyway at this point William has just asked for peace after i razed one of his cities, and my science and merchant cities have just been ruined by having to adopt emancipation. And the whole other continent is now ahead coz of all the fighting that has taken place on ours.

edit: and i have not finished the game yet so please don't post any spoilers if u look in worldbuilder. I just wanna know how Toku could have The Pentagon

 

[Bede]

I just ignore the whole "Can Research" column, because as noted above it is just plain buggy and the presentation of information more confusing than enlightening. The inclusion of that Exotic Foreign Advisor was one of the few disappointments I had in BtS - as the bugginess was known and documented a long time ago.

The only way to tell what's really going on is to open diplomacy and look to see what's on the other side of the table.

In the case of your game you were one pre-req back from seeing whether or not anyone really held Assembly Line in any case.

Just can't trust those dudes in the striped pants and top hats.

 

[IDave]

I think i just figured out what is going on. I don't have corporation and that is a prereq for assembly line, could that be why i can't see even if he does have it?

Surely if the FA was working properly it should show up in the can't trade section tho?

 

[KMadCandy]

he did have the tech. look at my picture up there: the circumstances of how it happened were different, but the result is the same. Peter in my picture DOES know pottery, but the FA doesn't know how to interpret my case since i don't have the same pre-reqs to it that he does, so it put it in "can research".

for ALine you need steam power and corporation. because you didn't have corporation, it doesn't show you that he knows ALine. talking to him in trade wouldn't show it either, because you can't trade for it. if you did know both pre-reqs, it would be in "will trade" or "won't trade." but it's silly because when it shows it as "can research" that gives the impression that they don't know it yet

really, "can research" means "they have enough techs that they can be researching this tech now, or they might already know it, i'm not allowed to tell you, that information is classified until you learn all the pre-reqs yourself". sometimes it says it when you know darn well they already have it, because they have something that needed it as a pre-req! but it gets weird with the pre-req situations. definitely confusing.

i don't even know why "can't trade" is still in there. i think it's only used when you trade for something, but then can't trade for something that needed it as a pre-req until the next turn. so that column is there only for those "one-turn-delay" cases i think?

"it's only my 3rd ever attempt at prince so please don't laugh." oh man, when shaka comes at me in 2000 BC, i start a new game! i'm not laughing, you're doing WAY better than i would.

 

[Bast]

I think i just figured out what is going on. I don't have corporation and that is a prereq for assembly line, could that be why i can't see even if he does have it?

Surely if the FA was working properly it should show up in the can't trade section tho?

Yeah probably. He did have it the bastard. I understand Dave, I'm just starting on Prince too and I'd love to catch the AI cheating red handed.

 

[KMadCandy]

Surely if the FA was working properly it should show up in the can't trade section tho?

i've only ever seen anything in there during the one-turn-delay after i get something in a trade but can't "officially" use it to learn anything else with it yet. IMO they should just take that column off if that's the only use for it. because what does it do, other than confuse people?

ps bast you change avatars every other day it seems like! how am i supposed to recognize you?

 

[Psyringe]

The "can't trade" column should be very useful when you have "no tech brokering" option switched on (if it works correctly in that context, which I haven't checked yet).

 

[Bast]

ps bast you change avatars every other day it seems like! how am i supposed to recognize you?

Hi. I haven't changed since we last conversed which was in the war weariness thread.

 

[KMadCandy]

well, this buggy "if i have only one OR pre-req then it shows up as can research even tho both of us already have it" thing was happening before BtS, in the EFA part of the HoF mod, before that option existed, and the screen looked exactly the same, with the "can't trade" part empty except for that one-turn-delay thing. so it wasn't created just for the tech brokering thing. but maybe it helps there, i dunno, i haven't played with that, i don't think i'd like it *giggle*.

bast you change a lot, seriously. like twice in one week i think! i could be crazy, but i already am so that's no evidence of it.

 

[RockTheCazbah87]

On the Sir David save, I went on the wonders screen thing and the Pentagon hasnt even been built yet.

And you dont have Corporation, the prereq. for Assembly Line. That might be your problem right there.

 

[IDave]

Ok so i get it now, i basically misinterpreted the FA screen and messed up by not realising i needed to have corporation.

Rock i posted 2 saves, 1 from the turn before he built it and 1 on the turn after, but they are not really necessary since we've figured it out. Unless u wanna have a look to comment on my empire, criticism (as long as it is constructive) is welcome.

And i called my self Sir David, coz i like to think of names in keeping with the civ i am playing so i went for Sir David coz i went England, but had to rename the civ to Britain since i'm Scottish

 

[RockTheCazbah87]

Woops...

Haha, your empire isn't actually that bad. I'm only a Warlord player, so more power to you for playing Prince.