AI cheats on Noble?!?!

[RemoWilliams]

I always thought that Noble was the level where you and the AI were on equal footing. But try this on for size:

Start a game (I doubt that it matters, but I chose continents/no barbs/random civs). Found your city, hit the next turn button twice, and enter worldbuilder.

Tell me if all the AI civs don't have half a warrior built already? This is clearly impossible without cheating! What gives?

 

[MrCynical]

The AI has a number of minor bonuses on Noble level, one of which is that it starts off with 10 hammers in its initial city.

 

[naterator]

iAIUnitCostPercent>100</
<iAIUnitSupplyPercent>35
<iAIUnitUpgradePercent>30
<iAIInflationPercent>70
<iAIWarWearinessPercent>70

this is cut from the xml, does this mean that on noble, the AI pays only 30 percent upgrade cost?

 

[vilemerchant]

He might get 10 hammers but at least the AI is honorable enough not to spy on everyone in the worldbuilder

 

[RemoWilliams]

He might get 10 hammers but at least the AI is honorable enough not to spy on everyone in the worldbuilder

I've never played a game where I entered WB, so far I've only used it to generate maps and get a feel for what a map type looks like. Also, one time I conducted an experiment to figure out how a GP farm works.

So, NYAH!

 

[MrCynical]

this is cut from the xml, does this mean that on noble, the AI pays only 30 percent upgrade cost?

Correct; the AI receives substantial bonuses to upgrade cost on all levels (it still gets about a 50% bonus to this on Settler).

 

[Gnarfflinger]

One of these times if I get a decent start spot, but get screwed over, then maybe I'll try to out cheat the computer with WB just once...

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

You think that's bad, I'm playing a game on Prince level, Random Civ's, personalitites, Continents..

I got Isobela...ok Stated in the Artic North, Not good, but perservered...

Which meant chain of cities out of the Artic Ice and Tundra, 7-9 till I could reach habital land, Also was iced in for ships...grab the resources I needed and land I wanted.

Anyway, I had the situation that I was going to lose money even at 0% research rate, So I decided to go to war for some Quick Conquest Cash....and to reduce unit costs...

War went rather well, picked up a few cities that were cash flow positive in the Pre-Medievil times...I messed up science rather badly, Fought Peter the Not so Great down to 4 cities, offered peace, as in "what will it take", he offers ZERO GOLD, ZERO GOLD INCOME as he has NONE!!!! so I sign, nothing to be extorted. Won't give a city.

TECH TRADING IS OFF....

2 Turns later, he 'achieves' Fedualism...and lo and Behold, LONGBOWS appear from his UPGRADED BOW'S...now this actually sent me into a ABSOLUTE RAGE. Against a computer program no less.

But my beef was...HOW can he UPGRADE TROOPS...not new, UPGRADED, WHEN NO MONEY, NO INCOME.....

ME I'm furiously enslaving my good smurfs...to gain courthouses. to stop my financial hemoraging....and comp just gets what it gets with tech upgrade.....

To make matters worse, 2 lots of horses I took off Peter have been lost to other comps due to Cultural creep...and slow recovery of captured cities....

but I have one, and I am going to get "TOTALLY-EVIL" once I get guilds..and Conquistidors...I'll conquist their doors all right....

 

[MrCynical]

War went rather well, picked up a few cities that were cash flow positive in the Pre-Medievil times...I messed up science rather badly, Fought Peter the Not so Great down to 4 cities, offered peace, as in "what will it take", he offers ZERO GOLD, ZERO GOLD INCOME as he has NONE!!!! so I sign, nothing to be extorted. Won't give a city.

But my beef was...HOW can he UPGRADE TROOPS...not new, UPGRADED, WHEN NO MONEY, NO INCOME.....

The AI only displays the amount of gold and gold per turn they are willing to trade, not the total amount. Just because both gold and gold income are displayed as zero in diplomacy doesn't mean that they have no reserves, or that they have no income. In any case at Prince the AI gets something like a 70% bonus to unit upgrade costs, so they wouldn't need that large a reserve.

 

[JesusOnEez]

War went rather well, picked up a few cities that were cash flow positive in the Pre-Medievil times...I messed up science rather badly, Fought Peter the Not so Great down to 4 cities, offered peace, as in "what will it take", he offers ZERO GOLD, ZERO GOLD INCOME as he has NONE!!!! so I sign, nothing to be extorted. Won't give a city.

Not sure whether they actually do the following or not, but he could have dropped his research to 0% for a couple of turns to gain the cash for upgrades. But yeah, what MrCynical said.

 

[BadHorsie]

The AI only displays the amount of gold and gold per turn they are willing to trade, not the total amount.

I though the gold per turn was however much they're currently earning... I'm sure I saw a screenshot of Mansa Musa trading with -189g/turn. Maybe that's a bug.

 

[naterator]

You think that's bad, I'm playing a game on Prince level,

i believe the point is that noble is billed as the level where you're on even footing with the AI. if you're playing prince or higher, then it should be because you WANT to give the AI an unfair advantage? am i right?

 

[dimaliok]

Try warlord its equal

 

[naterator]

Try warlord its equal

as stated before, even on settler, the AI gets bonuses on upgrade and a few others.

 

[otomik]

iAIUnitCostPercent>100</
<iAIUnitSupplyPercent>35
<iAIUnitUpgradePercent>30
<iAIInflationPercent>70
<iAIWarWearinessPercent>70

However, as with all versions of Civ, the AI has production and research penalties at the lower levels and bonuses at the higher levels. The level of the bonuses are lower than they have ever been before; in fact, the AI never receives any bonuses whatsoever for building wonders - a far cry from the "free AI wonders" in Civ 1. Noble and Prince are the difficulty levels where the AI's rules are closest to the human's.

i'm kind of dissapointed, that XML is a pretty significant distortion. is there a "Fair Game" patch somewhere?

 

[naterator]

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/fair_+_balanced.zip
that should work, took me about 5 minutes. select noble and you should be on even ground. i haven't tested it, except i loaded my game, so i know it'll start up, at least. just unzip it into your mods folder.

 

[MrCynical]

Try warlord its equal

In no way can warlord be described as equal. Yes the AI still has a few petty bonuses to things like inflation and war weariness, but they're nothing compared to the huge 10% bonus to production and research the human player gets. Noble is as close as you can get to a fair level, since the AI only has the minor bonuses (not extra units tech, or production and research bonuses), and the human player also doesn't have any.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Noble is the fair level. It's only that in threads like these, people always seem to find the bonuses that the AI has and never the penalties it has at noble difficulty.

So, to be fair to the game and the AI, I'll add two of the penalties the AI gets at noble difficulty:
-The human gets a discount of 50% on unit upkeep. The AI doesn't get any discount.
-The human pays 80% on civic upkeep, the AI 100%.

 

[MrCynical]

Noble is the fair level. It's only that in threads like these, people always seem to find the bonuses that the AI has and never the penalties it has at noble difficulty.

So, to be fair to the game and the AI, I'll add two of the penalties the AI gets at noble difficulty:
-The human gets a discount of 50% on unit upkeep. The AI doesn't get any discount.
-The human pays 80% on civic upkeep, the AI 100%.

You're confusing the base values in the XML file with the human player values.

The "unit cost percent" value is the base value which the human player pays, and this increases up to a max of 100 at Deity, since unit upkeep gets more expensive at higher levels. It's 50 at Noble. The "AI unit cost percent" indicates the percentage of that base value that the AI pays, which at Noble is 100 (so both the AI and humans are paying the same amount, which is 50% of what the human would pay at Deity). The AI has no penalty or bonus to unit cost at Noble.

Similarly for civic upkeep the 80% is the base value compared to what it would be at Deity. The "AI Civic Upkeep Percent" again indicates the percentage of that which the AI pays, which at Noble is again 100%, indicating both humans and AI pay the same.

As far as I can tell from the XML, the AI has no penalties relative to the human player, but it does have minor bonuses to unit supply and upgrade costs, inflation, war weariness, against barbarians, and to relations. It also gets the 10 free hammers at the start.

 

[Roland Johansen]

You're confusing the base values in the XML file with the human player values.

The "unit cost percent" value is the base value which the human player pays, and this increases up to a max of 100 at Deity, since unit upkeep gets more expensive at higher levels. It's 50 at Noble. The "AI unit cost percent" indicates the percentage of that base value that the AI pays, which at Noble is 100 (so both the AI and humans are paying the same amount, which is 50% of what the human would pay at Deity). The AI has no penalty or bonus to unit cost at Noble.

Similarly for civic upkeep the 80% is the base value compared to what it would be at Deity. The "AI Civic Upkeep Percent" again indicates the percentage of that which the AI pays, which at Noble is again 100%, indicating both humans and AI pay the same.

As far as I can tell from the XML, the AI has no penalties relative to the human player, but it does have minor bonuses to unit supply and upgrade costs, inflation, war weariness, against barbarians, and to relations. It also gets the 10 free hammers at the start.

It can't work like that because the difficulty for the AI would then go up with difficulty level:

According to you the unit upkeep for the AI is

Settler: AI pays 100% of 20% is 20%
Chieftain: AI pays 100% of 30% is 30%
Warlord: AI pays 100% of 40% is 40%
Noble: AI pays 100% of 50% is 50%
Prince: AI pays 95% of 60% is 57%
etc.

It goes down eventually, but it is rediculous to think that the AI has to pay more for unit upkeep at the higher difficulty levels.

No, the AI pays the full 100% at Noble difficulty while the human only pays 50%.