Does the AI cheat on higher Levels

[Tony.Uk]

I just finished my first game on Emperor level as Poland with 10 cities, which I thought
I was on the way to victory, when Germany won a science victory, 10 techs ahead of me.

What I find very odd is that they built 12 world wonders, and somehow managed to
build a large army of nearly 500,000 solders. Now I thought you just cannot build that many solders if you are buildings lots of wonders, even with engineers. On a fractual map it is difficult to prevent runaway science civ's, also friends with neighbour Washington.

Am I missing something?

 

[phillipwyllie]

I would check the save but you are using many mods that I don't. Perhaps a screenshot that includes your current tech and bpt. Normally on Emperor you should have won by 1961 but I suspect Germany just steam-rolled someone early on and benefited from that. The Ai doesn't chaet on higher levels it's that it get handicaps, on Deity they are insane.

 

[joncnunn]

All of this assumes base game as some mods change handicap info.

AI has some handcap bonuses above the Human even on Prince.

AI has a slight hammer and growth bonuses on Emperor.
It has 90% of normal unhappiness even on Prince, which on Emperor gets multiplied by another 90% bonus for 81% normal unhappiness.

AI gets a 15% science bonus on all difficulty levels.

In your next game, you need to focus a lot more on science. On Emperor you should have caught up to the AI before the Industrial era and have been 10+ techs ahead of the AI when you won if you went after space ship. (A slightly lower count if you won by a faster means)

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

The simple answer is Yes.
Up the difficulty and the AI gets more and more perks.

the "even playing field" level is Prince I think, where teh player and AI get all the same rules and conditions. Which is easy to win on.

The problem is that the AI is mostly "A" and not very "I" so they need perks to make the game harder.

 

[Grendeldef]

Yup, the simple answer is indeed yes but that assumes that the AI is supposed to play according to same rules as the humans.

Production, sci, money etc bonuses on higher levels aren't cheating but built-in features to level the playing ground which in practice results interesting happenings by means of what the AI can produce & uphold.

What I, however, do consider as cheats are the various ways AI circumvents game mechanics without them being mentioned anyhere; usually it involves military units in some way.

Common stuff the AI can do but a human can't

-buy units in a puppet, the city can be under civil disorder and/or have a unit in it
-stack melee units while attacking
-ignore ZoC without a proper policy
-spawn random units

and then there quite a few unfortunate bugs/features/whatever out of which most have probably seen the AI missionaries able to move on the same turn after converting. Another old & familiar one is disappearing workers on player's territory when an AI unit captures it.
The list is endless and some are more annoying and easier to spot than others but personally those have turned me away from the game several times, for months in total. While the game is excellent it isn't necessarily fun to play.

 

[joncnunn]

The simple answer is Yes.
Up the difficulty and the AI gets more and more perks.

the "even playing field" level is Prince I think, where teh player and AI get all the same rules and conditions. Which is easy to win on.

No, there is no "even playing field" even in Civ V unless its a mod. And there hasn't been one on previous versions of Civ either but the AI's bonuses on Prince is more obvious with Civ V than it was in Civ IV.

Yes, it's extremely easy to win on Prince.

In Vanilla and G&K, the AI got all the handicap bonuses a human would if playing on Chieftain.
For BNW, the AI now plays on the "AI Default Handicap" level which features a 15% reduction in tech costs, 90% of the pop & city based unhappiness, an additional flat six points happiness bonus (For human on Prince they start with 9, AI starts with 15)

(Civ IV's bonuses compared to the human were instead a massive discount upgrading military units [prior to BTS which toned it down a bit the AI only paid 20% of unit upgrade cost, this was only noticed when the AI discovered a military tech when the human was at war with them] and an inflation bonus [it meant the AIs costs wouldn't increase nearly as fast as the human and required city visibility to notice at all])

 

[consentient]

Besides the handicap perks, the AI does still visibly cheat.

One example is that their missionaries can move, spam their religion and then move again.

Another is the time my archer got single-shot-killed by a composite bowman freshly built in a city on turn 30 something. Funny thing is that the CB would HAVE to have had range to hit it.

In one of the LPs I watched, the AI was getting 2x culture per tile for its pantheon beliefs instead of the usual one.

Lots of little things like that, which were likely never discovered and accordingly patched out.

The most annoying thing for me is that while YOU can often be dumped in the middle of nowhere, with no one around to send a science caravan to go to, and all the other problems that come from being too far from other AI civs (especially when playing Deity domination), the AI NEVER is. Show me a screenshot of an AI civ as totally isolated as I seem to be a good 40% of the time!

 

[joncnunn]

Besides the handicap perks, the AI does still visibly cheat.

One example is that their missionaries can move, spam their religion and then move again.

Another is the time my archer got single-shot-killed by a composite bowman freshly built in a city on turn 30 something. Funny thing is that the CB would HAVE to have had range to hit it.

In one of the LPs I watched, the AI was getting 2x culture per tile for its pantheon beliefs instead of the usual one.

Lots of little things like that, which were likely never discovered and accordingly patched out.

The most annoying thing for me is that while YOU can often be dumped in the middle of nowhere, with no one around to send a science caravan to go to, and all the other problems that come from being too far from other AI civs (especially when playing Deity domination), the AI NEVER is. Show me a screenshot of an AI civ as totally isolated as I seem to be a good 40% of the time!

The first is a graphic only glitch when an AI Missionary or Prophet uses up the last spread it will show them as moving and disappearing but they only got used up (which can be seen if you also have visibility on the tiles.

If you hand built a ranged unit you can fire it the same turn you built it from your city as well. Sometimes the animations also show in the wrong order. Note that if a ranged unit in the city can hit your unit, the city bombard can also hit it. Archers are really weak compared to both Composites and what city bombard is around then.

Chances are you saw a Wine or Incense tile. Goddess of Festivals stack with a local Monastery if you were looking at tile yield for both culture and faith.

Actually an isolated start is an advantage since you don't have to worry about building an army early.

 

[Browd]

On the double pantheon, he also may be observing the Religious Tolerance bug:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512916

 

[anthropophage]

The religious tolerance thing isn't a bug though. It's doing what it's supposed to.

 

[Browd]

Opinions vary on that point.

 

[consentient]

It wasn't wine or incense, it's just a bug (cheating). As for the CB, he was behind the city, shooting at my archer from 3 tiles away. He popped out on that side since there was already a catapult in the city, and yes, he can fire right away, but he can't possibly have range promotion to start with on like turn 37. That's BS right there. Of course the AI cheats. Firaxis were a bit lazy.

 

[BlackWizard]

It wasn't wine or incense, it's just a bug (cheating). As for the CB, he was behind the city, shooting at my archer from 3 tiles away. He popped out on that side since there was already a catapult in the city, and yes, he can fire right away, but he can't possibly have range promotion to start with on like turn 37. That's BS right there. Of course the AI cheats. Firaxis were a bit lazy.

It shooted when in city and moved to that tile afterwards. Human can do this too. You can test this by having ranged unit in city and building another. They can both shoot same turn from city. Afterwards other is moved out from city.

Edit: If it showed shooting behind the city it's graphic bug.

Edit2: Yes Ai does cheat beyond those handicaps like moving captured worker/settler right away. However sometimes those workers belonged to CS so they can move when CS turn comes

 

[consentient]

Ok so maybe these are bugs rather than cheating, but it's kinda like two ways of saying the same thing. It is possible to beat them, even on Deity. The trick is for the less good players (like me) to use the resources on this site and others to help them improve their play so that they can. I now have one victory of every type on Deity and if I can do it, I'm sure anyone can. Some of my play is downright negligent at times

 

[joncnunn]

It wasn't wine or incense, it's just a bug (cheating).

As Browd said, if that AI went Piety (which is really popular with the AI), it has Religious Tolerance which if the pantheon is the majority religion but the second most popular religion present is their religion, then pantheon yield is doubled. This would occur for the human as well.
In a few turns that religion will become the majority religion and the double bonus for pantheon will go away.

This is actually the inverse of the other feature of when as a non-piety civ your city is in the middle of transitioning between your pantheon and your religion that it may go thru a period of time where it has no majority and so doesn't get the pantheon bonus.

 

[Grendeldef]

Cheats, clever use of game mechanics or just incredible luck but religion really has some awesome opportunities for the AI. Boudicca can found an early religion for sure but T21 with T5 God-King pantheon, 2 cities, without CSs allies or NWs requires some incredible luck with T20 ruins.

The map is 10 civ continents on Deity otherwise standard. Last time I was equally surprised by the AI when Japan hit Renaissance on T81 on similar map by building only units.

Spoiler :

 

[DarkestOnion]

On higher levels the AI gets ever more powerful bonuses, but this does not equate to cheating as much as it feels unfair when you are at the 'pointy end' of a Runaway Civ on Emperor+

I hate to put it this harshly, but if the bonuses feel unfair to you on Emperor+ I think the best options are either to go back to an easier Difficulty Level or to explore changing your Tactics to compensate for AI Bonuses (for example learn to AI Civ Worker Steal/Kill Early Unescorted Settlers).

 

[BlackWizard]

Deity AI doesnt need 200 faith for prophet. Its something like 160 faith

Celts have pictish warrior which gives faith when it kills enemy unit.

 

[Grendeldef]

I'd settle even less than 160 faith - sometimes it feels like 100 is enough but I wasn't implying that the AI was cheating. As a fresh incident it seemed appropriate in this thread as at first it looks like a cheat if we'd assume that the threshold is 200 faith but it's also possible with two ruin pops - I think grabbing the same perks in consecutive ruins is within the limits of AI or as likely, it can do quite a few things at will. Either way what annoys me the most is the grey area where something fishy is happening but one is unable to quite put a finger on what exactly and religion by nature in the game is good playground for the AI.

 

[Trackmaster]

I think that on Settler difficulty level, the humans are actually on an even playing field with the AI, and after that, the AI gets more and bonus bonuses and modifiers. But, the AI is also programmed to be really dumb and passive on Settler (and gets harder and harder as you go up). Really, if the AI and humans are on level playing fields, a human should wipe the floor every time. The programmers can do what they can, but its very difficult to program an AI that can adapt to changing situations and different scenarios. They have trouble sacrificing and playing defensively. This is why I think that humans have more advantages as the game gets longer and longer, as it gets more complex.

For example, the AI sees mountains and they see worthless tiles. I see mountains and I see observatories, wonders that applicable, and defense that will make an attack a nightmare. In general, unfavorable terrain can let you defend your cities with only a few units even against a dozen.