Bugs? Bugs? or Sloppy?

[bearcat22]

I can't tell if these are bugs, or sloppy game design:
A couple of things that seem very strange and suspicious about
civ3, playing against the AI. The AI enemies seem to have
impossible abilities. For example, long before having done
the prerequisite technology research that makes the "oil"
resource appear on the map, an enemy appeared to know exactly
where to place a new city, to capture this resource even before
anyone, including them, could have been aware that oil was there.
This happened with lots of resources. Have the programmers
deliberately done this?
Next, the enemies seem to have the ability to "see" inside of
all my cities, to tell which ones have the smallest or weakest
garrisons. This happens long before anyone has developed
espionage.
Next, enemies commit betrayal and treaty-breaking, against me,
and against each other, constantly. Yet, despite obtaining a bad
reputation this way, other nations appear to continue to do business
with them and make yet more treaties later on. By contrast, if I do
anything at all to violate a treaty (for example, accept a peace
treaty before my ally makes peace) forever after that, every single
nation will categorically refuse to make any sort of treaty with me,
no matter what. This makes no sense whatsoever.
Next, enemy defenses seem insanely strong. Infantry out in the open,
attacked by, for example, Cossacks, act as if the bullets are bouncing
off them. These are REGULAR infantry, against VETERAN
cossacks, yet it takes three cossacks to defeat one infantry?
When enemies attack me, it feels as if my armies are made out
of wet toilet paper. Unless inside a city, they burn up as if they
were not even there. What gives?
Next, except VERY early in the game, no AI will make an even
or a fair trade/deal with me, yet they appear to be rapidly and
eagerly making deals with each other. Are they also cheating each
other?

 

[Turner]

I can't tell if these are bugs, or sloppy game design:
A couple of things that seem very strange and suspicious about
civ3, playing against the AI. The AI enemies seem to have
impossible abilities. For example, long before having done
the prerequisite technology research that makes the "oil"
resource appear on the map, an enemy appeared to know exactly
where to place a new city, to capture this resource even before
anyone, including them, could have been aware that oil was there.
This happened with lots of resources. Have the programmers
deliberately done this?

Yes, it was deliberately done so that the AI knows the map and resource placement at the start of the game.

Next, the enemies seem to have the ability to "see" inside of
all my cities, to tell which ones have the smallest or weakest
garrisons. This happens long before anyone has developed
espionage.

Again, yes, this is a programmed 'feature'. For the AI at least.

Next, enemies commit betrayal and treaty-breaking, against me,
and against each other, constantly. Yet, despite obtaining a bad
reputation this way, other nations appear to continue to do business
with them and make yet more treaties later on. By contrast, if I do
anything at all to violate a treaty (for example, accept a peace
treaty before my ally makes peace) forever after that, every single
nation will categorically refuse to make any sort of treaty with me,
no matter what. This makes no sense whatsoever.

The AI is not supposed to know whether or not they're dealing with another AI or human player. I'm not quite convinced that this is true, despite several people who would know having said so. It's not that I don't believe them, but I'm rather skeptical about it.

But are you aware of all the trade deals? The AI won't do a per turn deal with someone who's broken a treaty with them or any other civ they know in the past. But that doesn't mean they don't do deals when negotiating peace. Perhaps the deal was tied up into that. Without seeing your save game it's difficult to say.

Next, enemy defenses seem insanely strong. Infantry out in the open,
attacked by, for example, Cossacks, act as if the bullets are bouncing
off them. These are REGULAR infantry, against VETERAN
cossacks, yet it takes three cossacks to defeat one infantry?
When enemies attack me, it feels as if my armies are made out
of wet toilet paper. Unless inside a city, they burn up as if they
were not even there. What gives?

You're probably doing it wrong. I don't recall the attack value of a cossack off the top of my head, but I want to say it's a knight replacement so it's probably around 5. Infantry have a def value of 10. And if they're just sitting there on open grassland, it's going to be rounded up to 11 because of the inherent defense bonus that grassland has, which is 10%. If they're fortified, that adds another 5 as fortifying gives a 50% bonus. If they're on a hill on the other side of a river, that defensive bonus could be close to 30. So yeah, it's going to take a lot of them to take down an infantry.

Over in the Utilities subforum, there's a combat calculator. I'll have to dig the link up, but this will help you decide when and where to attack.

Next, except VERY early in the game, no AI will make an even
or a fair trade/deal with me, yet they appear to be rapidly and
eagerly making deals with each other. Are they also cheating each
other?

The AI does indeed get a bonus when trading with other AIs, but that's at Monarch and above. However, I don't think you're fully appreciating the situation. If your civ is much larger than the AI's, and you're trying to buy a lux from them, the AI is going to look at how much happiness you're going to get out of it. If it's a lot, then yeah, it's going to cost you. Also, if the AI you're dealing with is the only one who knows that tech you're trying to buy, then it's going to be more expensive. The more AI that know the tech, the cheaper it becomes. So by the time you get around to trading for that tech, it could very well be that the AI has already traded with a bunch of people for it, and you lose out on it.

These are kind of vague examples. If you could post a screenie or exact situations, we could tell you what's going on with it.

Edit: Just checked the editor, and Cossacks have an attack value of 6. So if you're attacking that infantry on grassland and they're not fortified, then their defensive value is 11. So, yeah, it might take 3 Cossacks to take that infantry down.

Edit again: Here's the link to the combat calculator. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=75765

 

[Aabraxan]

Welcome to CFC, bearcat22!

Turner pretty well covered everything else.

 

[Optional]

AI has some unfair advantages against human, but also unfair disadvantages:
* AI can't use specialists;
* AI can almost not use lux slider;
* AI can almost not use armies;
* AI has problems with amphibious ability (units can only attack from boats when all boarded units have the amphibious ability).
* AI can almost not use artillery, not for attack at least.
And there is more. No, the AI is not perfect in this game, but it's extremely hard making a good AI. I've seen worse.

The AI does indeed get a bonus when trading with other AIs, but that's at Monarch and above.

The AI bonusus start at Monarch, but a trading bonus already exists at Chieftain.
AI to AI trade modifier at Chieftain = 110. Warlord = 120, Regent = 130 and Monarch is already 140.
This means that if at Monarch level an AI offers another AI 100 gold or the equivalent of a 100 gold for something, the other AI considers this to be 140 gold. So AI to AI trade is stimulated.
The AI's are cheating each other as well. Constantly.

 

[vmxa]

I would not be attacking Infantry with Cossack units, that will not turn out well as you have seen. Inf has 10 defense and then any bonus goes on top of that. I fear even attacking them when they are down to 1HP.

That is just experience and the combat calculators will confirm it. Beyond needing to know the odds, you still have an arbitrary rng.

 

[Omni314]

These advantages are to balance out the fact that the AI is artificial inteligence, which is vastly inferior to our real inteligence

 

[CommandoBob]

These are REGULAR infantry, against VETERAN
cossacks, yet it takes three cossacks to defeat one infantry?

AI has some unfair advantages against human, but also unfair disadvantages:
* AI can almost not use artillery, not for attack at least.

Cossacks have the ablilty to make multiple attacks in one turn, which their base unit (Cavalry) cannot do. Armies can do the same thing, but Cossacks are the first unit you can build that can attack more than once per turn.

But if you are attacking healthy defenders you will take losses.

Here is the human advantage over the AI. We can and will use artillery to even up the odds. Especially artillery, since it has a range of 2 and can bombard units and not always be subject to a counterattack. The earlier rock-throwers (catapult, trebuchets and cannons) have to be adjacent to the unit they want to damage, but not artillery.

Humans may not have the unit building discount the AIs get but we can manage our units better. So we build bombardment units to take hit points off the AI's units before we attack. A red-line Infantry is much easier to kill than a healthy. If it loses one round of combat, it is dead. And when we attack a red-lined unit with a healthy unit of ours, we can lose a round or two of combat and still survive, but the AI cannot.

What you describe is not an AI advantage but just faulty tactics, which can be corrected.

And...

Welcome to the Forum bearcat22!

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

These advantages are to balance out the fact that the AI is artificial inteligence, which is vastly inferior to our real inteligence

I second Omni, they call it AI but its really just a set of randomly chosen options to make the game challenging/infuriating. And as you pointed out it's not random very often. Search on pseudo random number generator, to get a feel for what is really going on.

 

[TheOverseer714]

You might also use what the AI "knows" to your advantage. Why work at locating future resources? The AI usually builds right on top or near them, and they are wasting a settler on marginal or useless territory. When you need that resource, take it when you need it, or better, grab the town in a war that comes along. The AI knowing about your garrisons opens up a world of manipulation. They will bypass heavily defended towns for towns that are undefended, giving you more time to get troops in place and pick off their stacks with artillery. Wounded AI troops tend to run for the border, taking their number advantage away. Also, the fact of the AI going for undefended towns allows you to make their slow movng troops mill around aimlessly, chasing the undefended town back and forth. The trade advantages make your monopoly tech more valuable, research left to right, trading the monopolies for the rest while the AI researches top-to-bottom. The AI also puts an absurdly high value on government techs and wonder techs researching them first, which means that when they are researching Printing Press, Democracy and Free Artistry, you can blow past them, continuing into the Industrial Age, where the AI chases after Nationalism, Communism, Fascism and Espionage while you grab Steam Power, Medicine, Electricity, and Scientific Method. Use you Palace pre-build(another thing the AI can't do) to build the Theory of Evolution, grabbing 2 free techs. There are so many things that you, the sneaky, cunning human, can do to outsmart the AI that you start to pity the brainless enemy.

 

[bearcat22]

Thank you all for clear answers and good advice. Thank you also for leaving out the sarcasm and obscure answers that make so many game forums a waste of time. I appreciate your help, and hope to pass this on to others who are similarly frustrated. It would have been nice if the game manual expained how the game will cheat against players.