AI cheating

[binyo66]

Originally posted by zamaikun
thats weird, does anyone know if there's a patch for it?

IMO, The word "cheat" for Rychan and the rest of the players are different. Appearantly for rychan "no-cheat" means AI has to play with the same rules and bonus. In other word, no bonus in any kind and has nothing to do with level. I dont want to argue about it, but I would suggest rychan to "play" no less, and no more than regent to avoid arguments.

Since the difinition of "cheat" and "bonus" for rychan and the rest are different, there would be no finish line in this thread, One go to the left, others go to the right, you never meet. So let's stop it here

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by zamaikun
thats weird, does anyone know if there's a patch for it?

For what? The fact that the AI knows everything? If so, the answer is no. Such a patch will probably not come before Firaxis manages to program a decent memory into the AI.

The human player remembers that he saw an enemy ship pass away in a certain direction and can guess about where the ship is now, he remembers how long ago he was informed that the AI started building a wonder and can guess whether he can beat the AI and so forth. The AI has no such memory, and uses the full knowledge cheat instead.

A decent memory is not something to expect in a patch or even CIV4, so I guess we must live with at least part of the knowledge cheat. I just wish some aspects of it was removed or made less blatant. The AI should not know about future resources, and should at least be a bit smarter when going for interior, undefended.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne

For what? The fact that the AI knows everything? If so, the answer is no. Such a patch will probably not come before Firaxis manages to program a decent memory into the AI.

Or... the answer is 'hmm, yes'.´

That is, you can of course adjust your strategy.
If the AI knows your troops positons and strengths (or where you're weak, respectively), it is very easy to lure them into a trap, since the dumb AI would circumvent your well-defended cities at the border and moves in Cavs or whatever w/o actually attacking. That gives the chance to easily pick they're offensive SoD up.

With some luck, you can also make a guess about future resources (why is there an AI city in the middle of nowhere in the unfertile tundra or desert).

 

[Turner]

Grille - Those are good points. The 'patch' is our ability to out think the AI.

binyo66 has a good point too. Rychan can just play Regent, where the AI has no production bonus'.

Personally, I don't mind them. If nothing else, knowing that they AI has an advantage and knowing what it is, has made me a better player. I'm a much better Civ3 player than I ever was at Civ, or Civ2. Now I realize that I was a 'part time' player of the older games. Not that I didn't enjoy them, or have fun with it, but Civ3 is what I'm better at. Civ wise, at least.

 

[supaguruzebidy]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne

It has nothing to do with rate of fire. The unit shown is the best defender, but the best defender is the one that has the best combination of hit points and effective defense value. If thir hit points are equal and the modern armor is shown, then you must have fortified the MA and not the MI, which increases the MA's defense.

There is also a bug that I've encountered 2-3 times during my entire CIV3 career, which results in the second-best unit being displayed as defender, but when the square is attacked, the best suddenly appears and defends. It doesn't seem like this bug here, so its probably that you fortified the MA and not the MI.

Once again negative.Both units fortified both units same hit points both units at the same level of experince.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by supaguruzebidy
Once again negative.Both units fortified both units same hit points both units at the same level of experince.

SO you're saying that on the same square you have one unmodded MI and one unmodded MA, both with the same fortification status and the same number of effective HP (currently remaining HP) - and the MA is the one shown as best defender?

If all this is true, please provide a save, since this seems like a bug.

 

[Greyhawk1]

In my opinion the limitations on AI programming routines lay the foundation for many of the accusations of 'cheating' the AI gets. When you think about it, even the most simple Human task of just finding land in an unknown ocean would take a gazillion AI calcs to get right. It would be much easier for programmers to give the AI knowledge of the map firsthand and cut out all those routines.

Same for strat. resources. If a strat resource suddenly appears on the map then all the AI's would have to go through a large filter of possible options to stay within the rules of the game and stand a chance of gaining the resource. Even a Human player has to do some beard stroking at times like that to gain the resource.

Its annoying but you have to weigh up the cost of inifinitely long turn times and realistic AI or fast turn times and pseudo realistic AI.

 

[Arathorn]

Just want to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to the folks here who told me to set "preserve seed off".

I find it the height of irony that a thread complaining about imagined computer cheating is solved by telling the human player a way to cheat that the AI could never imagine.

Quite the exchange...

"Waah...The computer is cheating."
"Just cheat it worse."
"Thanks. That makes everything better."

Meanwhile, the people explaining that it's not cheating are ignored.

Sigh....

Arathorn

 

[supaguruzebidy]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne

SO you're saying that on the same square you have one unmodded MI and one unmodded MA, both with the same fortification status and the same number of effective HP (currently remaining HP) - and the MA is the one shown as best defender?

If all this is true, please provide a save, since this seems like a bug.

Will do but bear with me as it will take a few days if not weeks as Im currently playing a scenario game in conquests which doesnt use this tech. Once I finish that game I'll start a new one and get it up to that tech level and post a thread with the save on it. Till then hang on and we will crack this one together.

 

[Gen]

Originally posted by Greyhawk1
Same for strat. resources. If a strat resource suddenly appears on the map then all the AI's would have to go through a large filter of possible options to stay within the rules of the game and stand a chance of gaining the resource. Even a Human player has to do some beard stroking at times like that to gain the resource.

IMO, this cheat isn't really necessary and removing it would only make game better. Why? After all, resources quantity is limited and regardless of strategy used by AI for acquiring land at the end there will be civs which happen to have said resources in their borders and there will be some less lucky civs, too. Even if they placed cities in truly random manner, effect will be the same! I mean, terrain evaluation function should ignore bonus points for invisible (yet) resources.
If the only reason for this cheat was to make AI more competitive against a human, then developers achieved exactly opposite: now after observing AI a bit human exactly knows where that oil or uranium will appear.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Gen
IMO, this cheat isn't really necessary and removing it would only make game better.

I mostly agree with you Gen, although there may be some cases where the AI took the iron and horse spots before you since it knew about them.

However, if they could remove this cheat, and instead make the AI a bit more agressive in getting discovered resources inside their cultural borders and connected, that would be a big improvement.

In one deity GOTM where I started on an island together with the Persian I managed to beat them even though there were two iron sources: one on the other side of Persia, and one between us: The one between us was taken by me since I made sure to build a city adjacent, the one on the other side of Persia was in mountain/tundra terrain, so the Persians built a city too far away, and didn't get the iron inside their cultural borders until after I had almost totally wiped them out with both swordmen and knights. This shouldn't be too difficult to make the AI do better.

 

[Brendon2424]

I apologize if this has already been covered, but since we can’t search the forum I can’t find this discussed any where.

With regards to the "known" knowledge cheat, does the AI know where my subs are? I have used them on a limited basis and the AI did not seem to know they were there.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Tough call.

Technically the AI "knows" where they are, but they play like they don't. -- Hence them running into one with a ship & starting a war.

 

[AxWolF]

You can lose a tank against an spearman.
If you atack with your last movement, if he is fortified, in a hill/mountain/jungle, if he has a radar tower close, in a fortress. If you do the math for the units u will see their defense raises a lot.
Can raise more than 300%. But i think what really afects more to atackers is their movement. I read somewhere units lose shields depending on the terrain they cross.

 

[arretium]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne

...and you have checked that this is a cheat, right?
For the record, have you heard about pop rushing a defender? This is actually something the AI uses, and is no cheat.


A rather dubious position to counter the cheat argument. You argue that because the computer can do it, thus it is not a cheat. Using that logic, If the computer program is written such that the AI can conjure 100 tanks & 100 steath bombers, then it is not a cheat. I think his position is that because the computer can do it, it is a cheat. Of course a computer can't do anything it is not instructed to do. His position was that the computer aI was instructed to do something that he felt was cheating.

 

[rychan]

Originally posted by arretium
A rather dubious position to counter the cheat argument. You argue that because the computer can do it, thus it is not a cheat. Using that logic, If the computer program is written such that the AI can conjure 100 tanks & 100 steath bombers, then it is not a cheat. I think his position is that because the computer can do it, it is a cheat. Of course a computer can't do anything it is not instructed to do. His position was that the computer aI was instructed to do something that he felt was cheating.

I think his argument is that you can do it as well. Which, I think we'd all agree, means it's fair game.

 

[Turner]

Originally posted by Brendon2424
I apologize if this has already been covered, but since we can’t search the forum I can’t find this discussed any where.

With regards to the "known" knowledge cheat, does the AI know where my subs are? I have used them on a limited basis and the AI did not seem to know they were there.

Actually, Brendon, the search has been turned back on. There should be an announcement at the top of the forums saying something to that effect. So search away!

 

[wilbill]

Originally posted by AxWolF
But i think what really afects more to atackers is their movement. I read somewhere units lose shields depending on the terrain they cross.

That was how it worked in Civ 2, but not in Civ 3. You can attack on your last movement point after crossing any kind of terrain without losing any attack value.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by arretium

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
A rather dubious position to counter the cheat argument. You argue that because the computer can do it, thus it is not a cheat. Using that logic, If the computer program is written such that the AI can conjure 100 tanks & 100 steath bombers, then it is not a cheat. I think his position is that because the computer can do it, it is a cheat. Of course a computer can't do anything it is not instructed to do. His position was that the computer aI was instructed to do something that he felt was cheating.

You misunderstood me. I argue that the AI did something that is part of the rules both for AI and human: pop rushing.

His position was that he though the AI was cheating because he failed to imagine that the AI can actually do smart things like pop rushing when necessary.

Otherwise I agree with you: If the AI can suddenly create units outside the normal build rules, then that's a cheat, however no such cheat has ever been verified.

 

[Gen]

Actually, there are some exceptions which allow AI create free defender immediately after founding a city. However, this happens only in these game modes:

- Elimination
- Regicide
- Mass Regicide
- Capture the Flag
- Reverse Capture the Flag

It used to be also true for games with victory points locations in PTW but this is no longer true in Conquests.