Diplomatic AI Cheats

[Tarry]

Here's a screenshot from the latest game of the month 94. Look at all the negative votes against spices from Civ's I haven't met. All the unmet Civ's vote multiple times against Spices. They haven't met me, they don't know that I have 4 spices, I'm pretty sure that spices aren't even on their continent (olives and coco won't be) but all of them vote, and multiple votes against spices.

I'm supposed to believe that they all just happened to pick the same luxury? yeah.

 

[Starwars]

Yeah, the resolution regarding ameneties is something that I will pretty much always kinda ignore since it seems reeaaaaaaally stacked against the player. The AI will go crazy voting against the player in this particular one.

 

[kaspergm]

This one annoys me so much. Not just that they will often - if not always - vote against the player. But why are the AI so obsessed with banning happiness from resources in the first place?

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I generally dislike that the AI cheats with full information of what's happening in the game, even when they haven't discovered you yet, or otherwise know what you're doing.

I've tested around, and the AI knowing whatever you do also for your production tabs.
After some extensive testing I found that the AI always knows how far you've progressed on a particular wonder (that they too are building) and therefore they snipe it usually with 1 turn left before you're finishing it.
I've tested with reloading and trying to shave off 1-2 turns (in order to beat the AI to it), which often doesn't help as it still often gets sniped just before you finish it (but now 1-2 turns earlier), even if you changed your city to "full production mode" by switching to high-production tiles.
The worst case of such behaviour was a case where I was looking further into this, and in order to shave off 4-5 turns (rather than just shaving off 1-2 turns where I still got sniped), I had to reload the game like 10-15 turns back (or something along those lines) and completely reroute trade routes, forest chops, governors, policies and whatnot.
Yet the AI still took the damn wonder the turn before I did.
This was before spies, and the particular AI was unknown on another continent with no vision over me, so there's no way they could've known what I was up to.

What annoys me with this behaviour is that it just feels very unfair.
When you play on Deity for instance, you know perfectly well that you are handicapped as the AI gets 3 settlers, a bunch of warriors, builders and a massive yield bonus.
But nowhere does the game tell you that you the AI has perfect information over everything you do, which therefore feels a lot more unfair.
I also dislike how the AI will happily let you waste production on a wonder for as long as possible, only to snipe it off in the last second.
I wouldn't mind nearly as much if they took a wonder when it was 30% finished, but they seem coded to try to make you waste turns.
Fortunately you can mitigate it to some extent if you have multiple builders chop on the same turn, which is something I've started doing recently in order to trick the AI into believing it can postpone the wonder (rather than use one builder to successively chop multiple forests).
The same was true for civ 5, but fortunately for civ 6 I don't really notice it that much anymore (after switching to the above method) since it's easier to use multiple builders to chop on the same turn, compared to civ 5.

Admittedly, this doesn't happen too often if you multi-chop in a large boost, but the mere principle that the AI knows everything you do just feels very unfair at times.

TL;DR: Hard-building wonders with no chops involved leaves you very open to the AI sniping your wonder since they know everything you do - Be warned!

 

[AntSou]

I always assumed they always target the most common luxury which they themselves do not own.

 

[monikernemo]

maybe you should put spoilers?

 

[Victoria]

is that it just feels very unfair.

Wow, we have so much stacked in our favour and take advantage of many things, often without knowing... and you think the global resources screen is unfair?

the AI has perfect information over everything you do,

utter tosh. I move 15 troops to 3 tile from their border and they carry on building temples. There is a zillion other examples.
And knowing you are building a wonder is diplomatic visibility, not spies. Do not give them an envoy!

I always assumed they always target the most common luxury which they themselves do not own.

Agree, just like they will ban admirals even though I do not have any.

this is a QAnon thread. It has its avid believers but when I take saves and have a look at them, things can be explained. Firaxis know how much we like wonders even though they are bad for our game quite often. Why would they go to significant effort to troll us with wonders? I have 4 spices and now they ban them, just sounds right to me.

meet a civ, offer them a spice, they say 3GPT. Instead give them 1 gold. Next turn offer the spices and they say 4-5 GPT. There ya go, abuse them back.

 

[japanesesamurai]

AI does target the player by banning luxuries, as in civ V. I don’t think they are cheating, though.
And luxuries don’t really mean much in VI compared to V anyway

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Wow, we have so much stacked in our favour and take advantage of many things, often without knowing... and you think the global resources screen is unfair?
utter tosh. I move 15 troops to 3 tile from their border and they carry on building temples. There is a zillion other examples.
And knowing you are building a wonder is diplomatic visibility, not spies. Do not give them an envoy!

I suggest you actually read my post instead of jumping to conclusions immediately and saying that what I'm posting is nonsense.
I was also not complaining about the global resources screen at all, I didn't mention it at all in my post so don't put words in my mouth please.

What I made clear in the post, is that the AI in question that kept sniping the wonder, was an unmet civilization on a different continent - which means, it couldn't even have diplomatic visibility to begin with.
After testing with several reloads (5 turns back to shave 1-2 turns off, then later about 15 turns back to shave off 4-5 turns), the AI kept finishing the wonder right before me, always in the 1-2 turn range.
Most likely it was using a GE to get such massive burst production, but I'm not sure of that.
Either way, it was very clear that it was timing the finishing of the wonder until it was on the brink of losing it, through a sudden burst of production.
Eventually I gave up on getting the wonder, and the wonder itself finished a decent while after I would have originally finished it (I cannot remember the exact amount of turns, but it was in the order of at least 3-5 turns or more).
Personally I don't mind that the AI was finishing a wonder before me, but it was very frustrating to see that it would time it before I finished mine, without any apparent ways of knowing.
I found it peculiar to say the least, that my actions were influencing an unknown AI on the other side of the map.
Just to be sure that it was my city building the wonder that was having an effect on the timing of the wonder (and not some RNG influencing the AIs production choice), I tried testing by making other changes in my empire that did not influence my wonder construction time. However, only those things that affected the wonder construction speed made any change to the production choice of the AI.
Having a different citiy change all tiles to gold/food production or similar had no effect on the timing of the wonder for the AI).

The OPs post seems to me like further evidence that the AI has more visibility over hidden stats that it shouldn't have.
Perhaps not of units moving towards a border (like you pointed out, but that might also be due to how the AI is coded for all I know), but it certainly looks like it has vision over production tabs (and possibly the luxury resources that the player possesses, as shown by the OP where unknown AIs banned spices).

 

[sethjohnson]

i've seen the AI build two archers at once before in a city (that i was attacking). Not sure how that's possible. If they bought one with gold and built the other normally they would have had to move one out of the city first... they could both move and shoot in that turn.

Actually the AI does seem to find money for archers from nowhere early on when you're about to take down their capital in the ancient era

 

[Victoria]

I suggest you actually read my post instead of jumping to conclusions immediately

And if you read any time I am critical of people’s posts it is the over exaggeration, not the wonder sniping. Your use of the words “the AI has perfect Information over everything you do” was utter tosh and was the only bit I quoted. It was what I had issue with. In particular the word ‘perfect’.
WRT the wonder sniping, do you have a save from quite a few turns back which does not have mods?

Actually the AI does seem to find money for archers from nowhere early on when you're about to take down their capital in the ancient era

This is also suspect, and would love to see a save. Firaxis assures is in this version they do not do these things and I have yet to see one.

 

[JesseS]

What I made clear in the post, is that the AI in question that kept sniping the wonder, was an unmet civilization on a different continent - which means, it couldn't even have diplomatic visibility to begin with.
After testing with several reloads (5 turns back to shave 1-2 turns off, then later about 15 turns back to shave off 4-5 turns), the AI kept finishing the wonder right before me, always in the 1-2 turn range.
Most likely it was using a GE to get such massive burst production, but I'm not sure of that.
Either way, it was very clear that it was timing the finishing of the wonder until it was on the brink of losing it, through a sudden burst of production.
Eventually I gave up on getting the wonder, and the wonder itself finished a decent while after I would have originally finished it (I cannot remember the exact amount of turns, but it was in the order of at least 3-5 turns or more).
Personally I don't mind that the AI was finishing a wonder before me, but it was very frustrating to see that it would time it before I finished mine, without any apparent ways of knowing.
I found it peculiar to say the least, that my actions were influencing an unknown AI on the other side of the map.
Just to be sure that it was my city building the wonder that was having an effect on the timing of the wonder (and not some RNG influencing the AIs production choice), I tried testing by making other changes in my empire that did not influence my wonder construction time. However, only those things that affected the wonder construction speed made any change to the production choice of the AI.
Having a different citiy change all tiles to gold/food production or similar had no effect on the timing of the wonder for the AI).

Considering that there's a mod that lets the player view the AI's progress towards wonders (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2122167339), I wouldn't be shocked if the AI has a similar capability in the unmodded game. If you're really convinced that the AI is cheating in this manner and annoyed by it, feel free to use the mod to level the playing field.

That said, in spectator games, I've also seen AIs start building wonders that they had no chance of finishing and waste a ton of production that way. There's a chance that your opponent has partial vision on your land (and therefore wonder progress) through city state suzerainty. Or it could be a chained wonder competition, where 1 AI sees your wonder building, chops to accelerate, and the 1 that actually builds the wonder can see the mutual AI's progress accelerate.

 

[leandrombraz]

The AI doesn't vote against the player. For the AI, you're just another leader in the game, you don't get any kind of special treatment. In this resolution, the AI votes for whatever luxury they don't own that has the highest number of copies. I explain how it works in this spreadsheet:

Use the Global Resource Report screen to see which luxury has more copies, it will be at the bottom of the list. Anyone who doesn't own it will vote for that luxury, the leaders that own it will vote for the next on the list that they don't own. Consider how much favors each leader has. The luxury at the bottom of the list is the safest bet but depending on how much Civs own it, how much favors they have and if they all end up voting on the same luxury, the next luxury might be a better bet or both luxuries might have equal chance. Pay attention to how many of each luxury is on the list though, because luxuries with the same amount of copies can make this a bit more tricky. If the luxury at the bottom of the list has 6 copies, for example, but there’s other two that also has 6 copies and the AI doesn’t own any of them, the AI might vote on any of these luxuries. 1 vote is enough to win in most cases, but you need to be careful if you run into a case where two luxuries have equal chance, then you should invest more votes to tip the scale.

Example of how it works

But why are the AI so obsessed with banning happiness from resources in the first place?

I've been planning to write a thread about that for some time. The lack of variation on what the AI votes for makes them predictable, which is good for diplomatic victory, but really bad for the congress as a mechanic. It basically cancels the congress design of having two choices for each resolution, since a lot of resolutions are unwinnable if you choose the option that goes against the AI bias. There's a lot of congress bonuses that I never got to use in my games and I never will, unless Firaxis changes how the AI vote.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

And if you read any time I am critical of people’s posts it is the over exaggeration, not the wonder sniping. Your use of the words “the AI has perfect Information over everything you do” was utter tosh and was the only bit I quoted. It was what I had issue with. In particular the word ‘perfect’.
WRT the wonder sniping, do you have a save from quite a few turns back which does not have mods?

Fair enough, I might have been a little bombastic on that part.
Maybe "partial perfect information on production tabs" would be a better way to put it, because the margin at how the AI sniped the wonder was fine-grained enough to take it consistently at 1-2 turns before finish.

Unfortunately I don't have a save, as the game was from a couple of years ago, around 2016 I believe.
I remember that it was a late medieval/early renaissance wonder (where I was snowballing heavily, and later on was the first player to meet all civs), and regardless of the amount of save scumming in order to beat the AI, it would simply not allow me to finish the wonder.
In order to finish it on such a short notice, I can only see three explanation:
1. The used a GE only when it sensed that the wonder was about to be finished.
2. The AI chopped in the wonder for the same reason as above.
3. The AI purposely stopped wonder construction at the very end in order to build other things, only to restart it when it absolutely had to.

I'll definitely post a replay if I see such behaviour again from an unmet AI.
I do think it can be difficult to re-create this behaviour, as it would require a situation where both the AI and the player happen to construct the wonder at the same time, and the AI either has the right GE nearby, or workers near choppable forest.
It could perhaps be recreated if a multiplayer game was set up (continents, 2 players) were one swapped the AI and players every other turns to make sure that they both start the wonder at the same time, and that the AI has a GE like Isidore of Miletus or plenty of chops, and check who gets it first depending on the progress of the player.
If anyone is interested in testing this out in detail, the results would be very interesting to see.

Either way, the AI might of course not be programmed to behave in that manner anymore, but after that particular testing session I'm about 95% convinced that the civ AI has access to global production tabs, even if it's located on a different continent.
Since then, that particular situation has caused me to simultaneously chop wonders in from then on, and I don't get wonder-sniped nearly as often anymore.
(This is of course only anecdotal evidence, but it seems to help).

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Considering that there's a mod that lets the player view the AI's progress towards wonders (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2122167339), I wouldn't be shocked if the AI has a similar capability in the unmodded game. If you're really convinced that the AI is cheating in this manner and annoyed by it, feel free to use the mod to level the playing field.

That said, in spectator games, I've also seen AIs start building wonders that they had no chance of finishing and waste a ton of production that way. There's a chance that your opponent has partial vision on your land (and therefore wonder progress) through city state suzerainty. Or it could be a chained wonder competition, where 1 AI sees your wonder building, chops to accelerate, and the 1 that actually builds the wonder can see the mutual AI's progress accelerate.

This might be possible of course.
I do think there was a trade CS nearby, but since I was the first to discover all players, there was no way the AI could have been suzerain of said CS.
Whatever it was, it certainly caused the AI on a different continent to behave very differently.

Never played with any mods for as long as I've played with civ btw (apart from the civ 5 reskin for civ 6, about a month ago), so it was definitely not a mod causing said behaviour.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

The banning of luxuries, to me, remains one of the most idiotic things the AI does. I still don't know why the Devs thought anyone would appreciate banning luxuries again. At least they are not permanent.

 

[JesseS]

I do think it can be difficult to re-create this behaviour, as it would require a situation where both the AI and the player happen to construct the wonder at the same time, and the AI either has the right GE nearby, or workers near choppable forest.
It could perhaps be recreated if a multiplayer game was set up (continents, 2 players) were one swapped the AI and players every other turns to make sure that they both start the wonder at the same time, and that the AI has a GE like Isidore of Miletus or plenty of chops, and check who gets it first depending on the progress of the player.

If you're going down this route, I think you're best off setting up a spectator game, where you have 1 player watching the AI and relaying information about wonder timings to the actual player.

 

[Victoria]

I'll definitely post a replay if I see such behaviour again from an unmet AI.

Great, a save a few turns earlier to correctly assess changes based on your action would be great

If you're going down this route, I think you're best off setting up a spectator game, where you have 1 player watching the AI and relaying information about wonder timings to the actual player.

No need, the logs would have all I need (bar the dll logic)

 

[AlanC9]

I'm a little confused by what the AI is supposed to do with this information it may or may not have. Unless it has one of the appropriate GEs sitting around, there's nothing it can do which it shouldn't have been doing already, is there?

 

[Tarry]

The AI doesn't vote against the player. For the AI, you're just another leader in the game, you don't get any kind of special treatment. In this resolution, the AI votes for whatever luxury they don't own that has the highest number of copies. I explain how it works in this spreadsheet:

The problem with that is that there are 3 civ's that are unknown to me, that are on a separate continent. They should not have access to information about luxuries of Civ's unknown to them (i.e. me), just as I don't have access to information about what luxuries they have. Those 3 unknown-on-another-continent-civ's all voted against luxuries they known nothing about. Nobody on my continent knew about any of those other-continent civ's. Based on this it's clear to me that they have privileged access to information they they shouldn't have