Haha I knew it! The computer cheats, I have proof!

[DarkSchneider]

Alright, I was playing in a Monarch level game and I had sent my first warrior out and by pure dumb luck ended up making B-Line towards the Russian's capital. I figured I would initiate contact, so I moved into their sphere of influence, traded a tech and ended my turn. Next turn I thought, since I got here about as quickly as possible from the start of the game, wouldn't it be funny if I attacked this town and I took it over, the Russians would be wipped out. So I attack the town, and by shear dumb luck my warrior won against the spearman. I conquered the town, and then noticed a warrior and settler I hadn't seen prior, but through shear dumb luck again, I won against the warrior, and the settler ran away and started a town two tiles away.

Immediately after the town was settled there was a spearman in the town! This was impossible! They had nothing else in the area, technically they were destoryed as they had no cities after the first attack. I made peace, rushed for a granary, temple and then started pumping out archers and I took their second town, after that, I offered to make peace, and somehow they had 100 gold. I tried to sell them tech a couple turns later and they still had 0. When I sacked their third town, all of a sudden they had 100 gold to give me, again. The other odd thing I noticied was that somewhere between the second and third sackings, a settler mysteriously appeared on a hill near my territory, and didn't move for something like 6 turns. Due to the relative positions of our towns, it could not have gotten to where it was without crossing through my territory or moving in an extremely rounabout way that would have taken 20+ turns. Once I sent out a warrior it started moving normally.

Has anyone noticied behavior like this? My guess is that if you destory a Civilization's capital very early on in the game it triggers something that gives the Civilization a new settler, spearman and $100. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[The Ripper]

Perhaps they had some allied who helped them giving them military units and gold,or even a city...

Probably the ai cheats,but try to see if this hypothesis could be true,at least not completely

It could be very funny if also the player could achieve so a great help from allied ai...

 

[lc3man]

If you liked that your gonna love it when the comp knows exactly when and where to attack your cities and he also knows where to build cities in your territory. The comp deffinately cheats, no question about it, how else is it supposed to give you competition?

Oh!!! Your really gonna love it when you lose a tank to a long bowmen.

 

[haozertree]

The same thing happened to me. I was lucky enough to find a tribe which gave me a warrior in the first few turns so I rushed another and attacked my neighbor Japan. However, for each of his town I took he would get a new settler AND a warrior already settled in a different location. Within about 50 turns I took over 4 of his towns and finally ended his civ (yes i milked his gold and technology for what it is worth). This is on Warlord level and his population never grew past 1, and all in all the cpu built a total of 5 warriors + 3 settlers within 50 turns.

But this is a GREAT beginning tactic though. Instead of building settlers, you just build warriors/spearmen/archers and take over other people's cities in the beginning. By the time other civs gets 4 cities you will also get 4 cities but with a bigger army!

 

[Dipolmatic Spy]

Of course the computer cheats, it says so everywhere you look. I've figured out that the computer cheats for you in the two easiest difficulties, no cheating in the third difficulty, and cheats against you in the last two diffculties. Without all that cheating the difficulties would be much more similar, so they are a necessary evil to the game

 

[FortyJ]

It's possible that those cities were established prior to your capturing their capitol. The computer does rush projects especially early on in the game. They could have added their worker to their first city and rushed a settler as soon as possible to get their second city within a handful of turns into the game.

One way to check for sure is to watch the replay at the end of the game. It'd be interesting to see when those computer cities were established...

 

[Adam Wallock]

I'm not defending it but its well known that Civ/MOO/MOM games cheat on higher difficulties. It's even documented. In Civ3 Regent is the 'no cheating' level, after that the AI gets production and Science bonuses and probably ahppiness bonuses too. Despite this however, Soren Johnson said yesterday that he feels Monarch is the most fair level of difficulty. Meaning that the AI needs to cheat to keep up with human strategies. I wish it could just be a stronger AI, but oh well.... I just don't get why everyone is so surprised to "discover" this. It's been going on with Microprose TBS games for 10 years.

 

[JeffNebraska]

Here's what I consider proof of cheating. I met up with the Chinese on about turn 15, Warlord level. We started negotiating some deals and I looked at their city list. In the time I was able to create two cities, they had built seven or eight.

It is ridiculous and most A.I.s are well-designed enough to be able to compete with a human without this nonsense. At the very least, the A.I. shouldn't need this kind of leg up on level two out of six!

 

[CoolLizy]

Originally posted by JeffNebraska
Here's what I consider proof of cheating. I met up with the Chinese on about turn 15, Warlord level. We started negotiating some deals and I looked at their city list. In the time I was able to create two cities, they had built seven or eight.

The computer tends to... stock up... on settlers. Once you've discovered their territory, though, you can see where and when they build their cities, even under fog-of-war.

 

[VoodooAce]

thank god the ai cheats.

All there is to this game, until it is completed with MP, is to try to beat it on the hardest level. The only way to make the ai hard enough to still be a challenge 2 months after you buy it is to allow it to cheat. and all the ai is good for anyway, imho, is to learn and practice for the real competition....people.

This will all be moot, as far as i'm concerned, once MP is ready. Once I played my first MP game of civ2, i never played the ai again, anyway.

Ready when you are, firaxis.....

 

[JavalTigar]

I had taken a substantial part of the english/german territory. this left gaps due to some scorched earth tactics of the english. After making peace, inside of 6 turns somehow 2 german colonies and 2 english cities were constructed in this gap without once seeing any settlers or workers pass through my territory. they was no other land route to this spot.(and yes I checked with my spy network, they had no ships to do an beach landing with.)

I realize that the computer has to be given advantages to production and science. but it should still have to be governed by the limits of movement.

 

[DarkSchneider]

I am absolutely certain the computer was cheating, how else do you explain going from 100 to 0 gold and back in two turns. However, I guess the more important question is, has anyone actually been able to eliminate a rival Civilization prior to 10 AD? In the original Civ if you eliminated a rival prior to a certain period (I think it was 1 AD) then a new Civilization would spawn on some random place on the map. I think with this version, instead of a new civ spawning, it's the same one, and they are given $100, a settler and some combat unit as a bonus. As for the phantom worker, my guess is that he was created when I sacked the Russian capital, and just happened to be placed behind my territory by chance, then stopped moving because there was no military unit there to defend (computer settlers always seem to wait for a defender before they will found a city)

 

[alexiscody]

THE COMPUTER WAS NOT CHEATING. You defeated the civilization. It was too soon in the game and gave the civilization another starting location. That is why it had a warrior and settler and 100 gold. the starting resource.

 

[Easy Rhino]

I think DS and AC may be onto the answer.

Seems like they're respawning pretty close to you though.

ER

 

[James Deptuch]

At first I did not realize that the AI respawned if you killed off a civ too early in the game. I was playing a diety level game with a very fast expansion mod. I thought I had killed off the Romans, but they kept popping up. I decided to use the multi .sav cheat to find out was going on. The map showed the single Roman city left surrounded by my units. I destroyed this city and instantly another Roman city popped in an unclaimed space on the map. Not only did it spawn another city, but the new city contained 2 settlers, 2 workers and several fighting units!!!

I have not checked it out, but I would assume that the respawning is dependant on your difficulty level.

I probably will not install the new patch at this time as the multi sav cheat can be useful in testing your mods. As well, it showed exactly how the AI "cheated". Maybe that is why Firaxis is removing this feature in their current patch.

Happy Civving (nice verb, or is it a gerund?)

 

[Rushton]

Regent level- Two large continents. 3,000 bc. I find the Babylonian capitol - no one there. I walk in - yippee. They still have one city left. I must destroy them early, it would be a HUGE bonus. Crank up everything for war and ignore everything else. 20 turns later I still can´t find them and my strategy has now meant that I am way behind. Annoyed I try the "multi cheat" to see what happened.

Two turns after I took the capitol they had 2 cities on the other continent half way round the world!

The computer cheated and with it buggered up my game strategy

I went back to an earlier save with absolutely NO bad conscience at all!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

OK the respawn is buggy. But still I`ve seen settlers appear and disappear and towns grow and pump out Warriors that make it ahrd to believ the AI is sticking to the rules Firaxis claimed it is!
That`s the point, isn`t it?

If Firaxis says Regent is open deck, no advantages whatsoever any way, why do they set the AI-AI trade at 130%?
and
why does the AI constantly do strange stuff that I can`t duplicate?
Pelase don´t give me that **** about me having to learn to paly the game, I know what I`m doing.

Fact is: the AI gets breaks Firaxis didn`t tell us about.

No problemo, I happily give the AI break! But I`d like to F-ing KNOW about them!

 

[Hurricane]

As usual, there is no cheating going on. The computer respawns and gets the starting units and money.

If you don´t like it, you can turn the respawning off, in v1.21.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Hurricane
As usual, there is no cheating going on. The computer respawns and gets the starting units and money.

If you don´t like it, you can turn the respawning off, in v1.21.

Soryy, hurricane, normal respawn only happenes withe enough distance, and in the case described above and in quite a few I saw, there wasn`t.

P.S. either turning it off doesn´t work or there`s an even more blantant cheat. I had the Romans respawn when it was turned off - or else they found a Galley in a good hut . They reappeared on a island when noone yet had Map amking (noone actually had Writing yet)!

 

[dikwhit]

Guys the comp cheats, get over it.There are numerous examples but let me give you the obvious one every1 has seen and not mentioned, workers.You know what i mean, the Ai has a calvalry unit running around claiming your workers deep in your territory. The workers however always get out of your territory, regardless of movement.

The AI has to cheat, it cant think, it has no intuition, and it does not understand logic. I personally just wish if it was going to cheat, it would get better at it.Once you figure out how and where it "cheats" its fairly easy to even exploit this.