AI Technology Cheating
- Thread starter gladoscc
- Start date
wobuffet
Barbarian
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,248
Check out Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v\assets\Gameplay\XML\GameInfo\CIV5HandicapInfos.xml
AI Civs start with free techs and get big bonuses towards happiness, culture (towards SPs), barbarian fighting, gold, and unit/building production. The research bonuses actually aren't that big, surprisingly.
AI Civs start with free techs and get big bonuses towards happiness, culture (towards SPs), barbarian fighting, gold, and unit/building production. The research bonuses actually aren't that big, surprisingly.
Thanks!
So I see the AI starts with free teches at the start of the game, but what about in the middle of the game? I had AIs with tech counts only varying by 2 or 3 so I'm curious if the AI cheats, or if they just prioritize research the same to have similar tech levels.
wannabewarlord
Prince
Btw, please do me a favor and don't call the AI bonuses "cheats". A cheat implies doing something that you are not allowed to. If the AI has inherent bonuses programmed into their diffuclty setting, it is not a cheat. Besides that, a computer cannot cheat anyhow. It is following lines of code.
Thank you.
P.S. Yes, it is a pet peeve of mine and I will not hold back correcting people for it
Thank you.
P.S. Yes, it is a pet peeve of mine and I will not hold back correcting people for it
Mozzington
Prince
Maybe you should get out more.
headcase
Limit 1 Facepalm Per Turn
On Prince they are cheating. The game clearly states that the AI receives no particular bonuses, but they do for happiness and I'm pretty sure gold as well.
Interestingly even in cIV, AI used to have extra sight on Noble & Prince.
headcase
Limit 1 Facepalm Per Turn
Oh yeah, they definitely cheated in 4. Like how they knew the value of your map. Well... you don't know where I've been so how do you know how good my map is? Very suspicious
AI always have cheats if by cheats you mean being able to do things the humans can't/isn't allowed to do.
It's just easier to figure these out with the xmls. On prince difficulty, AI has all penalties below prince rolled to even, and they don't yet get any production advantages or free techs.
There is also an inaccuracy here. AI only gets free techs at higher difficulty levels. Can't recall exactly, but I believe it is emperor+ ; They get 2 free techs on diety.
It's just easier to figure these out with the xmls. On prince difficulty, AI has all penalties below prince rolled to even, and they don't yet get any production advantages or free techs.
There is also an inaccuracy here. AI only gets free techs at higher difficulty levels. Can't recall exactly, but I believe it is emperor+ ; They get 2 free techs on diety.
Aristos
Lightseeker
2 techs extra in Emperor +
Also, happiness is the big cheat. AIs play at Chieftain level regarding happiness (only?) no matter your dif level, which to me is the worst cheat (addressed by Thalassicus in his mod, by the way). I suspect the lack of trading opertures related to hap resources coming from the AI is based on this fact. I wonder if someone that plays VEM regularly can attest that the AI, without the happiness cheat, engages in trading offers regarding hap resources?
12 instead of 9? helps with early growth a bit, but most of the large happiness leads from the AI prioritizing happiness not from the cheiftain happiness bonus; and they do hit up policies, like the honor tree, which has a fairly powerful set of happiness policies that human players ignore because the opener is almost worthless unless you hit it as your early policy.
I've recently learned to use it, and it's crazy powerful for wide empires and you can accure culture faster than with a tradition opener camping barbs.
Aristos
Lightseeker
Oh nonono, it's not only the 12 vs 9, man... as far as I remember, Chieftain levels have huge discounts for the unhappiness factors per pop and per city, and that is what Thal addressed... I'm not sure where to find those numbers in civ5 vanilla, but their counterpart are easy to see in one of Thal's mod files... those discounts are what I consider a huge cheat in favor of the AI, and is why you see the AI's with huge happiness numbers almost the entire game while you struggle to keep hap balanced (in higher levels at least).
and therefore, with such huge discounts producing net happiness in the dozens, I wonder if they don't engage in hap resources offers because they... just don't need them!
(in the end, only the c++ code will tell...)
Martin Alvito
Real men play SMAC
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2010
- Messages
- 2,332
The Chieftain difficulty confers a per city and per pop point 
advantage, and grants one additional 
per unique luxury in addition to the small base bonus.
Functionally, this more or less doubles the size of empire a human can possess before accounting for social policies. Once you start taking SPs and growth bonuses on higher difficulties into account, it's very clear why the AI buries both you in empire size and total
. The 
disparity flows from the much larger population the AI can support.
advantage, and grants one additional per unique luxury in addition to the small base bonus.Functionally, this more or less doubles the size of empire a human can possess before accounting for social policies. Once you start taking SPs and growth bonuses on higher difficulties into account, it's very clear why the AI buries both you in empire size and total
. The disparity flows from the much larger population the AI can support.
Aristos
Lightseeker
The Chieftain difficulty confers a per city and per pop point
Functionally, this more or less doubles the size of empire a human can possess before accounting for social policies. Once you start taking SPs and growth bonuses on higher difficulties into account, it's very clear why the AI buries both you in empire size and total
Exactly my point.
The effects of the Chieftain hap cheat are far and wide, that is why I consider it a cheat.
Now, what surprises me is that VEM users seem to claim that the mod is harder than vainilla, even after removing this blatant and far reaching cheat... I did not have time to regularly try it (because it changes every two days, damn you Thal you excellent modder!
), so I cannot confirm that. Any VEM user around?
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
Correct. Chieftain starts at 12, and gets +1 Happiness per luxury, but the biggest factor is that Unhappiness is multiplied by 0.6. So while your cities generate 3 unhappiness plus 1 per population, the AI's cities are 1.8 plus 0.6 per population. (The difficulty above Chieftain is x0.8, and Prince and everything after that is x1.0.) Also, map size has a small impact on this as well, but let's ignore that for the moment.
But, and here's the fun part, notice on the Colosseum, Theater, and Stadium how it says "limited by population"? It's actually capped at +1 per population. So the AI can actually GAIN happiness from a city using these buildings, even before adding in luxuries.
This is one of the first things modified by balance mods, because it's just so pervasive to the balance issues; on Chieftain the AI spends far too much time in a Golden Age, making tons of money and having boosted production. Both Thal's mod and my own set the AI to Prince, and then find other ways to make them more competitive.
I used it until the last big patch rather often, but am back to vanilla since. I cannot vouch that it is harder, but if so, I think the main reason is that city spacing uses the old formula of 2 hexes, not the current 3, so at higher levels you get major AI REXing to deal with.Now, what surprises me is that VEM users seem to claim that the mod is harder than vainilla, even after removing this blatant and far reaching cheat... I did not have time to regularly try it (because it changes every two days, damn you Thal you excellent modder!
The Chieftain difficulty confers a per city and per pop point
Functionally, this more or less doubles the size of empire a human can possess before accounting for social policies. Once you start taking SPs and growth bonuses on higher difficulties into account, it's very clear why the AI buries both you in empire size and total
Yeah, that's for clarfying. I've observed the AI outpace the humans on growth all the time on higher difficulties, so it's no surprise to me to see this.
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
That's actually a separate thing. Based on the difficulty YOU play at, the AI gets another set of bonuses stacked onto the ones set by his difficulty. For instance, when you play on King, the AI needs only 85 or 90% as much food as you would to gain a size in a city; by the time you get up to Deity this is down to only 50%. Your difficulty also adjusts the AI's unit maintenance costs, upgrade costs, build times for units and buildings, and so on. Changing the AI to use Prince instead of Chieftain doesn't change this, because these numbers are explicitly tied to the handicap used for the human player.
As to how things can be tougher despite the AI losing that handicap, there are quite a few ways modders have done so. By reducing the amount of gold you can generate, it invariably favors the AI since he doesn't tend to save up for RAs like a player would. By reducing the amount of excess Happiness, you discourage the early sprawl where human players would plant as many colonies as possible to grab strategics and luxuries and then fill in the gaps later.
In the case of Thal's mod, he also tweaked Research Agreements to give less beakers to the tech leader and more to someone behind in the tech race, so it's no longer quite so abusive for the human to sign every RA offered; in my mod, I added a tech-stealing mechanism similar to how City-States and Barbarians work in vanilla, to allow weaker civs to catch up a bit. Things like that go a long way in making the game tougher for the Human player.
Generally speaking, there are a lot of changes you can make that basically force the Human player to play the game in a way similar to how the AI already does. So even if the AI loses those "cheats", they'll still be tougher to beat because the player will no longer have access to abusive strategies like the old ICS.
