Does the AI cheat with information?

[Kyro]

I can't seem to find any reliable source for this. Does AI have access to information that a human player could not possibly have?

Does it know what Wonders/Projects you are building?

Does it know how much production/faith etc you are churning out per turn and use it to beat you to great people/wonders?

 

[Victoria]

I am not surprised you cannot find any reliable source, the AI has killed them all.

Considering that if you have Top Secret access to a civ you can see what color pants they are wearing... and it is the AI who is giving you this information. The question is, is the AI putting their hand over their eyes when they do this?

Now consider that when the game was first release the AI would stop building at 5 cities it is clear they are not playing by the same rules as us.

However... a scout accidentally walks into my warrior all the time and naturally my warrior takes offense. But this does show the AI is not watching every move and consider how stupidly the AI still moves settlers around despite the developers trying to stop it.... I'm starting to think maybe we would benefit more if we gave the AI the information if it did not have it.

Some people have claimed for example that the AI will start building a wonder when you do and say they can replicate it.... this scares me a little because I want the AI to waste time building wonders without me starting them off.

I think the simple answer is sure sometimes, but only by the design of the developers who do not want to annoy us too much. I doubt its much as developers are always under pressure and remember that paranoia is 10 times the size of truth.

This post has been certified as constructive by the AI

 

[Disgustipated]

Keep in mind if they have a delegation/embassy with you then yes, they can see what wonders you started. As you get a message when they start their wonders. I don't think first level access gives that information, but second level I believe does.

As for your second question, I've heard the AI does use gold to finish off great people they are close to getting.

I know on Prince level I don't often get beaten to wonders if I start them before the AI. My last game I managed to get the Coloseum despite starting after China (I chopped 3 or 4 jungle tiles to speed things up). But then later I lost the Oxford University wonder despite starting it LONG before the AI started. They most likely had a great engineer to speed things up. I also lost that Huey wonder as well, but no big deal since I don't really care about that stupid wonder.

Just keep in mind there is a price to pay for allowing the AI to establish delegations and embassies. Although I still do it.

 

[Kyro]

Keep in mind if they have a delegation/embassy with you then yes, they can see what wonders you started. As you get a message when they start their wonders. I don't think first level access gives that information, but second level I believe does.

As for your second question, I've heard the AI does use gold to finish off great people they are close to getting.

I know on Prince level I don't often get beaten to wonders if I start them before the AI. My last game I managed to get the Coloseum despite starting after China (I chopped 3 or 4 jungle tiles to speed things up). But then later I lost the Oxford University wonder despite starting it LONG before the AI started. They most likely had a great engineer to speed things up. I also lost that Huey wonder as well, but no big deal since I don't really care about that stupid wonder.

Just keep in mind there is a price to pay for allowing the AI to establish delegations and embassies. Although I still do it.

Well there was never any information on how much the AI gets to know once they get an excuse/trigger of having an embassy or delegate in your city so I don't ever let them do it unless they're too far behind to compete for anything. I know in Civ 5 allowing embassies multiples the possibility of war significantly.

What I meant by them knowing your city outputs is whether they use that information to calculate whether they have to spend faith/gold to purchase a great person before you do; or to calculate whether they can beat you to a wonder before starting to build it. IE they avoid/minimise risk of losing Great People/Wonders to players through information fed directly by the game engine rather than acquired by espionage.

I mean given that the Devs have no qualms about giving the AI cheats as an excuse for difficulty I think this is a perfect way to fake difficulty as well.

@Victoria

You sounded a tad out of this world when typing that I can't really grasp what your intentions were.

I just need to know so I won't have to pit myself against the cheats if possible by identifying what triggers them. I will then also know when I can risk not rushing a great person/wonder based on what the AI expects. Of course this could be done by examining the source code but there's simply too many lines and too little time.

Sometimes Paranoia is spot on and the truth is you can never be too careful if you're playing with stakes as high as mine.

 

[Victoria]

You sounded a tad out of this world when typing that I can't really grasp what your intentions were.

Thank you and sure. One blows like the wind and when caught with such a juicy question so close to the end of my working day one got a tad off-worldy.
Sorry, I like to try and mix humour in with with the truth but my sense of humour often has no sense ... or is that nonsense, its only one n away
Would you rather I was grey and danced the forum waltz?

 

[Kyro]

@Victoria
Whimsical is fine, just don't get carried away by the clouds. There was no need to apologize the forums do get heated and boring sometimes.

 

[joncnunn]

The main knowledge the AI has is that it's settler founding formula counts the value of strategic resources even if it doesn't yet have the tech for it. (But a human who turned on help for city founding locations would also piggy back on it since the help uses the same function.)
The AI used to have even more (in Civ III the AI knew where all your units were), but enough players turned the AIs knowledge against it (rope-a-dope tactics of purposely leaving a city undefended that you wanted the AIs units to head towards) and so that was dropped from future versions.

Civ V and VI though have a lot more info available to the human than most think; they just have to go look for it.
It was possible in Civ V if you zoomed in very tight to see some world wonders under construction in their cities if you had visibilty. In Civ VI with world wonders taking an entire tile each, it's visible at most zoom levels if you look closely as long as you have visibility.
Districts taking entire tiles each make it much easier in Civ VI to get a good estimate of what someone is making in terms of faith / science / culture. Just count the districts they have in each category is first approximation. Second approximation is consider the known adjacency bonuses. Third is guess based on tech level what improvements are within each district; but if you have visibility and recognize how each district icon changes as buildings are added you might not even have to guess that.

 

[Leyrann]

The main knowledge the AI has is that it's settler founding formula counts the value of strategic resources even if it doesn't yet have the tech for it. (But a human who turned on help for city founding locations would also piggy back on it since the help uses the same function.)
The AI used to have even more (in Civ III the AI knew where all your units were), but enough players turned the AIs knowledge against it (rope-a-dope tactics of purposely leaving a city undefended that you wanted the AIs units to head towards) and so that was dropped from future versions.

Civ V and VI though have a lot more info available to the human than most think; they just have to go look for it.
It was possible in Civ V if you zoomed in very tight to see some world wonders under construction in their cities if you had visibilty. In Civ VI with world wonders taking an entire tile each, it's visible at most zoom levels if you look closely as long as you have visibility.
Districts taking entire tiles each make it much easier in Civ VI to get a good estimate of what someone is making in terms of faith / science / culture. Just count the districts they have in each category is first approximation. Second approximation is consider the known adjacency bonuses. Third is guess based on tech level what improvements are within each district; but if you have visibility and recognize how each district icon changes as buildings are added you might not even have to guess that.

If you hover over a tile with the mouse, even if it's in fog of war at the moment, you can actually see in the tooltip when there's a wonder or district, and you can also see wheter the wonder is under construction or finished and what buildings are in the district. It also updates while in fog of war. I believe it even shows +yield from adjacency (it does for own districts), so you might even be able to figure out wheter they got one of those cards in their government.

 

[Kyro]

It is true that you can estimate output of districts and buildings based on appearance.

That however, doesn't make it a design excuse for AI to know how much faith/gold you have currently or what tiles you are working(given that Faith/Gold is a resource constantly changing based on usage) and use it along with the knowledge of your output per turn to make decisions; and without even having full vision on top of that.

What I find troubling is that cheats like these don't even attempt to replicate difficulty because they are impossible abilities; much like the teleporting AI of Civ Rev. Cheats that replicate efficiency are okay. Outright impossible feats are not.

"Hey I know everything you're up to because I have an embassy in your city!" I think excuses like this have to stop; players like me will just manipulate them to their advantage anyway.

Not saying they definitely cheat that way; I have no proof but just saying this has been a trend for many Civ versions and I won't be surprised if it were the case for Civ 6.

 

[notque]

Civ 6 barely has a functioning AI, let alone one that knows hidden details.

 

[Leyrann]

Civ 6 barely has a functioning AI, let alone one that knows hidden details.

Actually a barely functioning AI is one of the best reasons to have it know hidden details.

 

[notque]

Actually a barely functioning AI is one of the best reasons to have it know hidden details.

Outside of the resources being known (which was true in civ 5 as well), I don't believe they have any additional knowledge.

Without the DLL it's impossible to be sure, but that's my take.

 

[Victoria]

You can see a barb camp spawn through the fog too. A very useful 'feature' from older releases.

They also have kindly shown wonder progression visually meaning you can see if you are ahead or not

Is it a cheat or are friendly locals passing gossip.

 

[Rosty K]

There are bits where the AI has the advantage (like seeing hidden resources, and I think it was said somewhere that they actually see the whole map). Apart from that, the largest 'cheat' the AI uses is it actually being the AI: this means that unlike human it will never miss any information. That means you don't normally look at the GP screen, espionage, religion, score and so on every turn, but the AI does, and uses all of it.