Does the Game Cheat?

[Bearcat44]

Im playing at the lowest most easy possible difficulty level.

I'm playing as the University. There are only three factions left. The game ended, but I wanted to continue, so kept going. The Hive has almost two thirds of planet occupied. The Spartans hold a tiny slice, and are totally silent, no activity, not building or fighting at all.

I have much better weapons, but the Hive has suddenly started throwing native weapons at me, I think they are Mind Worms? Bundles of white string.

Here is my question: The number of these Mind Worms is impossible. Literally impossible. Unless the Hive has some kind of special ability where one city can churn out three or five Mindworms in a single turn?

Because that is the number of Hive mindworms coming at me. Normally, I would not care or worry. They bounce right off my city defenses, never break through or harm my city.

However, there are HUNDREDS of these fudgers, and while they can't get into my cities, they CAN and ARE ripping up every single improvement in my territory.

Ten Mindworms die assaulting one of my cities, and the exact next turn, ten MORE show up to assault that exact same city.

As I've said, the Hive has two thirds of Planet, lots of cities.........but even if every one of these were building Mindworms each turn, they could not ALL show up at my cities to fight instantaneously every turn! Most of the Hive cities are far away.

SO: Is the goddamn game cheating, or what!!!!!??????

I've tried using Planet Busters and wiped out huge chunks of territory, but it doesn't slow down the Hive even slightly.

 

[Petek]

The AI doesn't cheat when you're playing at the lowest difficulty level. Even it were cheating, I don't think that free units are part of the cheating. Factions that are behind in tech tend to build native life forms since they aren't affected that much by a tech lead. You can check this by saving your game and then pressing Ctrl-K. That will activate the Scenario Editor and allow you to view what each Hive base is building. When finished. load the saved game. To counter this Hive strategy, build 1-1-2 scout rovers with the Empath Song special ability. They should be able to kill stacks of Mind Worms.

 

[Bearcat44]

The AI doesn't cheat when you're playing at the lowest difficulty level. Even it were cheating, I don't think that free units are part of the cheating. Factions that are behind in tech tend to build native life forms since they aren't affected that much by a tech lead. You can check this by saving your game and then pressing Ctrl-K. That will activate the Scenario Editor and allow you to view what each Hive base is building. When finished. load the saved game. To counter this Hive strategy, build 1-1-2 scout rovers with the Empath Song special ability. They should be able to kill stacks of Mind Worms.

Thank you for all your answers. Although I'm pretty sure I've maxed out research, there was not any special ability option called "Empath Song".
What I did instead was to build hovercraft (or whatever they're called) equipped with PSI gun, and equipped with PSI armor. These seem to work okay against
Mind Worms, and I've finally found something that will penetrate the Neutronium armor the Hive is now equipped with.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the Hive is sending out fewer Mind Worms. I'm having to use Planet Busters because Hive's infrastructure is so solid, and he has
totally chewed away all of mine. I'm building super Formers with PSI armor now.

 

[Tatran]

The Hive is overpowered and shouldn't be immune to inefficiency. I played several games at Librarian level last weekend and only one game the Hive couldn't runaway because they started next to me. The best change is to make the Hive only immune for the Police State inefficiency penalty, not Planned Economics.
Without the patch, the AI missiles (conventional + planet busters) have unlimited range and knowing Brian Reynolds it certainly was not a bug.

 

[Tatran]

This weekend I've played several games where the Hive had only inefficiency immunity for the Police State. And they where still very strong, but not an early runaway anymore.

The code in the Hive file which needs to be changed : remove <IMMUNITY, EFFIC> and replace it with <IMPUNITY, Police State>