Anyone else notice the AI cheating like nuts in R&F??

[fotonut]

In general most games "cheat" in some way by giving the AI advantages the user doesn't have. Consider first person shooters, where AI keeps on churning bodies out wave after wave, and it's just one of you!

With Civ, the heavy start advantages that the AI gets in higher levels does tend to make the early game more challenging, but also frustrating. It could be interesting if the AI started with exactly the same number of units as the player (but still got the various production and other ongoing bonuses). That way the AI wouldn't end up with 3 cities in the time it takes the user to crank out a settler. That could reduce some of the frustration of the early game...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In general most games "cheat" in some way by giving the AI advantages the user doesn't have. Consider first person shooters, where AI keeps on churning bodies out wave after wave, and it's just one of you!

With Civ, the heavy start advantages that the AI gets in higher levels does tend to make the early game more challenging, but also frustrating. It could be interesting if the AI started with exactly the same number of units as the player (but still got the various production and other ongoing bonuses). That way the AI wouldn't end up with 3 cities in the time it takes the user to crank out a settler. That could reduce some of the frustration of the early game...

We do need to disambiguate AI controlling "playable options" from non-playable ones. Goombas in Mario, FPS mooks, and city states all share the distinction that they are not standing in for something that could be playable, or an opponent with the same win conditions. Same goes for barbarians or random encounter enemies in an RPG. All of these things need AI, of varying complexity, but they're operating under different design conditions and AI "cheating" doesn't really fit a description of that scenario.

AI doing/knowing things the human doesn't is still common in TBS/games where AI/bots have same rules as players. There are multiple reasons for this. One is to just make it more competitive, but just as often it's much easier to code that then have the AI behave conditionally based on what information would be available to a human player using eyesight in the same situation. You'd have to write the AI differently outright, and likely wind up with a worse AI in practice. That said, when it's blatantly using impossible information on the player it annoys people, so devs usually wind up with a balancing act in that regard from what I've read.

 

[pietro1990]

Maybe they boughte the granaries

 

[Becephalus]

If it was completely fair, and you played against say 20 civs,
you'd win, on average, about 1 in 20 games and score above
average about 50% of the time.
Is that what you want?

That is exactly what I would want if the AI could get there even sort of legitimately. But they would rather add more bells and whistles the AI cannot use and then just stomp on the cheat pedal than make an actual game.

 

[NukeAJS]

I've noticed a bit of screwiness with the AI and dropping lots of cities really quickly. I just assumed it was because I normally play on Emperor and there has always been some level of "cheating" at higher difficulties.

I usually play at normal speed, but I'm playing on epic for a change and ... man -- the game is way easier on epic. I dunno if more turns simply makes me more careful or that simple mistakes (like moving builders around efficiently) isn't as punishing at slower speeds. But yeah. It's a lot easier.

 

[Ferocitus]

I've noticed a bit of screwiness with the AI and dropping lots of cities really quickly. I just assumed it was because I normally play on Emperor and there has always been some level of "cheating" at higher difficulties.

I usually play at normal speed, but I'm playing on epic for a change and ... man -- the game is way easier on epic. I dunno if more turns simply makes me more careful or that simple mistakes (like moving builders around efficiently) isn't as punishing at slower speeds. But yeah. It's a lot easier.

It depends a lot on how many civs are in the game and the map size.
It's not easy to get wonders and great people playing against 25+ civs.
It's also very hard to disrupt civs you can't get to for 100+ turns on ludicrous
size (e.g. 200x100) maps.

Make them cheat more, in my first couple games (emperor and immortal) it seems like the AI forgot how to reach tech. Now I'm pushing ahead to atomic while they're still in industrial.

Vanilla had this problem for a bit as well, but with patches they got the ai to keep a solid pace, and it was pretty common for me to see them spend most of the game ahead or on track. But not so far with Rise & Fall.

Playing against a few civs on small maps is as easy as winning against a kid
at tic-tac-toe.
There many other ways to make for a more challenging game, but they might not
suit your style, or the time you want to spend in the game.

 

[FractalAdvocate]

...now wondering if the AI is good enough to use Magnus chops+Colonization for early settler spam.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

There have been some mods that smooth out difficulty, for both Civ V and VI (maybe earlier). I have often used one that gives the AI only one Settler except on Deity. Another gives free Walls to CS. I have also given myself a starting Scout, or Scout and Worker, with or without mods... These approaches let the AI retain it's various bonuses, but allows for a smoother/easier early-mid game, which is far more enjoyable to me (as I usually do not do early wars, the biggest boost to humans).

 

[Disgustipated]

Do we know for sure they are cheating? Maybe they are using Magnus and chopping a lot. My current game I wonder if the AI thinks I'm cheating because I chopped so much stuff with Magnus.

But I often see games, even on Prince where I see the AI is able to pump out so much where as I can only seem to pump out a military, or pump out a religion, not do both. But the AI does seem to be able to do both. It's frustrating.

 

[TheodoreTrump]

The progress of Civ 6 has me very disappointed. Going back to Civ 4. Civ 5 I played the heck out of too, and I just don't like global happiness.

 

[Cagarustus]

My suggestion to help you is this:

1) get the ‘Starting Units’ mod on steam workshop. This will give youthe same number of starting units as the AI according to their difficulty. You might call this cheating but I call it taking advantage. What I notice about the AI is that their aggressiveness is determined by how many units you have. If you have as many warriors as they do, they’ll be less likely to attack you. This will ensure that you have an even start. Even on king the AI gets bonus starting warriors.

2) focus on settling near hills. Spam mines. I made the mistake for a long time of not focusing on hills when settling. Then, build industrial zones; these should have at least +3 adjacency bonus.

3) take advantage of policy cards for production.

I play on standard and am able to build musketeers and infantry in 5 turns in my highest production cities.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Diety AI have 3 initial settlers, this is what "difficulty" comes from.