Does Better AI remove AI cheating?

[r_rolo1]

but for that to work the key thing imo is something no one else has realized yet: the AI units would need to move one tile at a time and re-evaluate their mission and destination each tile in case they discover an enemy unit (or goody hut) mid-move, like humans do. That's actually something I might be able to code but it's not quite trivial heh (and would probably slow down turn processing considerably, when you factor in all the normal speed-1 units that are still moving up to 10 tiles per turn b/c of Railroads or whatever).

Or worse, the 12 tiles/turn of a gunship on roads

That is a big issue indeed, given how the AI handles all the stuff related to pathing and units missions. It would be cathastrophical if a AI could call off their war plans just because it saw an unexpected unit in the way of their SoD, for a extreme but plausible effect ( Planetfall had some issues with a far more mild version of that, because units in regular BtS reset their missions when they enter in a diferent domain ( say, a unit that can move on land and water without external help ) ... this made that a AI that sent a stack of those units to attack someone and by acident the better path involved a change of domain would reset their mission target and come back home ... ). I don't see how to solve that without a "unit memory", a thing that also would not help with performance ...

 

[jdog5000]

something no one else has realized yet: the AI units would need to move one tile at a time and re-evaluate their mission and destination each tile in case they discover an enemy unit (or goody hut) mid-move, like humans do. That's actually something I might be able to code but it's not quite trivial heh (and would probably slow down turn processing considerably, when you factor in all the normal speed-1 units that are still moving up to 10 tiles per turn b/c of Railroads or whatever).

They'd actually only have to stop when they revealed a previously unseen tile. Most unit movement by mid/late game happens inside their borders, so it wouldn't be killer in terms of turn time ... probably like +15% or so.

However, without some memory of units it's seen recently, this would make the AI worse ...

 

[MartinHarper]

However, without some memory of units it's seen recently, this would make the AI worse ...

Could we give the AI visibility of all units that it saw last turn? I'm particularly thinking of 1-speed units, where watching closely during the enemy's turn allows you to see which square they moved to if they move out of sight.