Caught the AI Cheating

Nergal said:
Preferred results from goody huts. Playing an expansionist Civ with 4 or 5 scouts covering a pangea effectively and the Americans end up with 8 techs ahead of me. My scouts only get maps or cash and the odd warrior ???
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I'm too tired to see if this really covers your comment or not but are you aware of the probabilities of certain things in the goody huts? Remember it's affected by the level you're playing and whether or not your expansionist. *yawn*
 
Absolutely, the AI uses "advantages" that a live player wouldn't normally have.

Trick is, as someone suggested - use that advantage against them.

You can pretty much figure out what they're going to do. For example, during war - leave a city with few military units on the city guard - but leave the stack of doom one space nearby. Pick off the advancing AI hoards when they come targeting this least-defended city.

Here's another that works great (someone here suggested it). I used it just recently, works like a charm.

Had the Aztecs on the continent just south of me. They declared war about a thousand years earlier - but there was not much conflict, they'd send a ship up every now and then and I'd just pop it. Came time to deal with them, and since they're not warring actively (with me or other civs on the map) - they had stacks of units on their few cities (they had a small continent).

How do I invade when they can dump probably 100 or better units on whoever I land?

Well, I just parked about 5 transports on their north shore and with a few carriers and a stack of bombers on my southern city that reached far enough - I'd plant a "bikini babe" (explorer) on a non-roaded hill on their shore. They'd empty the entire friggen continent to go after this one unit (who was at least one turn's reach out), I'd reload him on the transport the next turn and pick off their stacks of units that they had sitting like ducks.

A few turns of this, then I land my 30 or so units and basically marched through their kingdom. In a matter of a few turns, bang - gone!
 
@Nergal post#17

For the AI, the goody huts are always as they are in regent level. This is, of course, an advantage over the human on levels above regent, and a disadvantage for them on levels below regent, but I'm not buying they get favorable results beyond that.
Above a certain difficulty level, the human always get cash, nothing, or barbs. But that is a known and documented feature. Below those levels, you probably just had bad luck. (its still chance based)

The same for the combat results, you described I'm pretty sure you are suffering from cognitive bias.

(post #19) And a "friend of yours" has observed warriors with 2 movements rate? Sure it weren't just Aztecs?
 
Nope plain warriors ... And I already pointed out cognitive bias ...
 
Headbanger said:
He's referring to the ai's goody hut hauls, not his.
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Yeah but as MAS sorta pointed out, I was more reffering to the difference between what he got for a goody hut, affected by the above, and what the AI got thus giving a reason for why the AI may have seemed to get better goody huts.
 
Nergal said:
Questionable movement rates ... movement through unroaded jungle at roaded rate. I've already pointed out that its probably the AI using its movement more effectively than I do, but I'm not anal enough to worry about every last point of efficiency. Preferred results from goody huts. Playing an expansionist Civ with 4 or 5 scouts covering a pangea effectively and the Americans end up with 8 techs ahead of me. My scouts only get maps or cash and the odd warrior ??? Countless combats, reported by others on the forums where a stack of troops gets decimated taking an AI town, first troop reduces a defender to redline and dies, defender promotes, second troop does the same, 3rd troop hits%2
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Sorry, but no. I've been playing Civ since about 1993 and i've never seen the wrong movement. You probably just can't see the roads.

As to AI defenders promoting: any unit that survives a combat will automatically promote if they do so again. If you get the chance take on some weaker units with a regular Modern Armour, if it survives three attacks I guarantee it'll be an Elite. That's what is happening with AI defenders if they outclass attackers, if they can defeat a second attacker they'll always get promoted. This can happen multiple times.

When were the Americans ahead in techs? At what level? They're probably just trading better than you.
 
Nope .. to be honest I give up .. I'm not arguing over a flipping game .. I've rarely encountered such hostility and disbelief ....
 
I'm sorry you feel that way. I agree hostility would be unwarranted, but quite frankly I don't see that in other people's posts. I see alternative explanations being offered and general skepicism, but I don't think there is hostility.

As for disbelief, I see 2 posts (rysingsun and Marsden) offering some support for your theory, but in general, when you have a game that has been out as long as civ 3 and has been played and replayed as many times as civ3, I don't think you can claim to have discovered something new and expect belief without proof beyond your saying it happened.

But it doesn't really matter much to me either.
 
Very little hostility, but a lot of disbelief.

After all, the developers have clearly explained that the code never checks to see "who" (human or AI) is up in the turn order. It only checks when it needs to verify a bonus, and then only *after* the decision point. E.g., the AI decides to offer a tech for sale. It only checks to see if you are human after it decides this, and only to see how much it should charge you.

The only "cheat" the AI has is that it knows the entire map at all times, including the location of all forces. And most of the time, it is programmed to ignore that knowledge.
 
The whole game is built on the AI "cheating". The worst part of that cheating imo is that if you do well, the game penalises you! Suddenly, you get very bad pRNG results ( :spear: anyone?), barb massive uprising appear continously, tying your forces down, really piss-poor AI civs demand MP&RoP deals (I had 40+ cities & towns, Hittites with four towns demanded some 650gpt for one and went from polite to annoyed when I declined) etc etc. Conversely, if you're doing poorly, you're rewarded. :rolleyes:

I guess the highest levels would be impossible without this setup and of course the game is all about winning at Sid and not about being a better civ-builder or even simple enjoyment... ;)
 
I don't want to jack Nergal's thread, but I think I've seen an AI cheat that I haven't seen definitively confirmed or denied. I don't have any saves to back this up (but I'll be on the lookout for one, if need be), but I would almost swear that I've seen the AI draft defensive units when it shouldn't be able to. I think I've seen conscript spears in towns < size 6, and (IIRC) pre-nationalism. Aren't two of the requirements for drafting: (a) Nationalism; and (b) a town size 6 or larger? Does anyone know whether the AI can do this?
 
Aabraxan said:
I don't want to jack Nergal's thread, but I think I've seen an AI cheat that I haven't seen definitively confirmed or denied. I don't have any saves to back this up (but I'll be on the lookout for one, if need be), but I would almost swear that I've seen the AI draft defensive units when it shouldn't be able to. I think I've seen conscript spears in towns < size 6, and (IIRC) pre-nationalism. Aren't two of the requirements for drafting: (a) Nationalism; and (b) a town size 6 or larger? Does anyone know whether the AI can do this?
Click to expand...

I've never seen conscripts before, but I could swear that I've seen them pop-rushing defenders during my turn. I've seen others report similar situations, where you can sneak-attack and find a town undefended, or containing a just a warrior, while if you declare war there's a spearman. However, try as I might, I have not been able to set up such a situation in testing. My old memory may simply have been misinterpretation of the "scared to death" bug.
 
Somehow they are able to pop-rush on the players turn, because I've seen that too, it's the essence of the scared to death bug. Very strange. Niklas said that that is prevented if you give the AI a cash rush government tech like monarchy, so that would probably help if you want to capture cities rather than raze them.


And Nergal, I don't think anyone has been hostile to you here. One person's cheat is anothers bonus, so the whole discussion is subjective, but no one has expressed any negativity towards you, only disagreement of your opinion, which is discussion, not negativity. I often feel cheated, but later realize I should have not let my towns riot when I miss a tech by one turn. It happened to me just recently and I was angry, but I realized if I didn't sell certain techs when I did I could have made it, and that's what happened. Shouldn't the AI play to the best of its ability? Why would we need one if it didn't?
 
If memory serves (that's a big enough "if") in scared to death it doesn't matter whether you declare war or not, does it? Plus no defender results.
 
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