Has the AI been granted Holy Sight?

[Kinniken]

And no, I'm not speaking of it knowing where resources are before it should, we all know it does.

I was playing with the babs and was the dominant civ. I had met the french, isolated on a small continent, and kept them in the dark. I was the ONLY ONE having contacted them. I'm sure of it, I could sell them communications with all the other civs.
Well, I agreed to a map exchange... and was rewarded with an up-to-date view of the zulu infrastructure!

BTW, it happened in the late middle-age, so they had no planes to do reconing with. And as explained above, they couldnt have traded it. I guess Joan must have been granted Holy Vision...

 

[royfurr]

I am afraid that the ai Sees All, even if it doesn't Know All.


As in exactly how many defenders you have in EVERY city.

As in when you move units to block that in-coming settler, 20 tiles away from it, and it consequently turns away.

etc.!


I wonder, can AI X "see" this way into the cities of AI "Y"? Has anyone ever seen an ai bypass anothers heaily defended city and go unerringly to the second civs city which are the ones with only a single (or no) warrior etc. defender?


BTW, in your example, is it possible that that civ had had previous contact with another, now extint civ, that it might have traded maps with and gotten the info you recived?

 

[Mr Spice]

Are you using path 1.17? One of the bugs that comes with that patch is AI civs being able to communicate before making contact.

 

[NY Hoya]

Originally posted by Mr Spice
Are you using path 1.17? One of the bugs that comes with that patch is AI civs being able to communicate before making contact.

are you sure about that? I haven't noticed it

 

[Mr Spice]

It seems like my memory was slightly inaccurate, but this is what I was refering to. I have not experienced it myself since I did never install that patch. (Sorry Eyrei... And yes, Killer was a little upset when I told him... )

 

[NY Hoya]

yeah, i heard about that one too, but it certainly hasn't come up in any of my games on 1.17

 

[Ribannah]

AFAIK this can only happen when you continue with the 1.17 patch a game that was saved with the 1.16 patch.
Made it impossible for me to try most of the old games-of-the-month.

 

[ETO_Peregrine]

I've found that the AI automatically knows the positions of all barbarians and privateers. Often I churn out privateers only to find a prodigious number of AI ships on a direct interception course, even when my eager patriots have not yet left my borders. Even AI fleets on the other side of the world will set sail to join the battle.

As an experiment, I disbanded a privateer just before it made contact with the AI. Every single AI ship reversed direction and speeded home. The next turn, I popped out another privateer. Predictably, the AI ships, now far out of sight, turned right around and headed straight for it. The same holds for barbarians and their encampments.

Perhaps they remotely sensed a hostile presence?

 

[Arenar]

This brings up a rather interesting point.

How is the game supposed to effeciently calculate the Fog of War stats for the civs without lagging the living life out of you? hiding information from an AI in a game is very hard to do without taking a decent speed hit. Consider the amount of operations it takes to simply reveal 4 tiles of terrain after you move your own unit, now consider that times 10-100 (depending on what stage of the game you are in) and done in rapid succession... your computer would be reduced to a crawl unless it's really fast.

heh, i'm prolly wrong, but its the best i can say without doing any research.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Mr Spice
It seems like my memory was slightly inaccurate, but this is what I was refering to. I have not experienced it myself since I did never install that patch. (Sorry Eyrei... And yes, Killer was a little upset when I told him... )

I was laughing my butt off! The forces of dark have already entered your heart!

back on topic: the AI knows all, sees all. They do go for undefended AI cities they can`t know off - and the other AI promptly blocks them!

I actually cheat: I buy troop plans, then reload to save the money since the AI knows where my troops are.

Since I do that, military campaings on deity have become fun and interesting - I can sneak attack the AI same as he can sneak attack me now!

 

[Mr Spice]

Originally posted by Killer

I was laughing my butt off! The forces of dark have already entered your heart!

Yeah. But I resisted your no-capital thing... So I can still be saved...

Cool idea with the battle plans. However, there is one small problem I use to encounter - I almost never succed in stealing them. So I stick to Monarch and Emperor.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Mr Spice


Yeah. But I resisted your no-capital thing... So I can still be saved...

Cool idea with the battle plans. However, there is one small problem I use to encounter - I almost never succed in stealing them. So I stick to Monarch and Emperor.

Hmmm, what price option do you try? I always go for the most expensive one - after all I don`t have to pay

99% of the time it works!

 

[Carver]

Originally posted by Killer

They do go for undefended AI cities they can`t know off - and the other AI promptly blocks them!

Of course the human can have fun with this AI habit. Remove the defenders from your inner cities; instead of facing an onslaut in your border towns let the AI trickle in towards your national heart and pick him off. Take off HPs with artillery and finish them off. Kind of like what the Chinese did to the Japanese.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Carver


Of course the human can have fun with this AI habit. Remove the defenders from your inner cities; instead of facing an onslaut in your border towns let the AI trickle in towards your national heart and pick him off. Take off HPs with artillery and finish them off. Kind of like what the Chinese did to the Japanese.

That one`s pretty effective, but isn`t it a pity that we have to resort to tricks like that???

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Mr Spice
It seems like my memory was slightly inaccurate, but this is what I was refering to. I have not experienced it myself since I did never install that patch. (Sorry Eyrei... And yes, Killer was a little upset when I told him... )

Blasphemer! The 1.17 patch is good practice for keeping in constant contact with the other civs. I sometimes feel like I am in CIV3 training school, and each patch is a new course.

 

[brody]

The AI does NOT know and see all. I can prove it! If you NEVER sell your map to anybody for any reason, you'll see other people trying their hardest to run units into your territory before they'll declare a war. And when you do declare war, they hit the cities close to your borders. I had pretty new cities defended with 1 or 2 guys that they didn't even consider attacking. They went for my heavily fortified cities simply because they'd never seen the other cities.

The only thing I don't understand is how they know after they've seen the map... I think they get autmatic free spying once they've established a spy or something.

Other than that, the AI seems to make heavy use of subs for surveilence. My continent has a TON of subs on one side, close to the french continent. They're always watching me with those subs and it's damned annoying. Makes it tough to sneak any of my own subs to their territory!

 

[Orac]

The AI certainly can see more than you. In a recent game a settler
walked in to my empire; probably on his way to some free terrain on the other side. when I blocked his passage with some units(still approx. 20 squares away) it turned around immediately.
I move one unit, he comes back; close the gap, he turns;move one unit............fill in the blanks

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by brody
The AI does NOT know and see all. I can prove it! If you NEVER sell your map to anybody for any reason, you'll see other people trying their hardest to run units into your territory before they'll declare a war. And when you do declare war, they hit the cities close to your borders. I had pretty new cities defended with 1 or 2 guys that they didn't even consider attacking. They went for my heavily fortified cities simply because they'd never seen the other cities.

Well said. I think the main reason the AI can see into the fog of war has to do with the fact that the AI has no memory. Consider this example:

5 enemy Cavalry are moving towards Thebes, but does not have move to attack it. During the defender´s turn, 3 musketmen are moved inro Thebes by road (RR not invented yet). There is only 1 city within 3 tiles of Thebes, and no musketmen have been spotted ouside any cities for a long time.

Now, if the aggressor is a human player, you would know Thebes is now heavily defended, and that you have little chance taking it. Instead, you move attack the other city which now hopefully has only a weak defence.

If the aggressor instead is the AI, it has recorded nothing. It does not understand that Thebes has been reinforced, and that the other city has been drained of defenders. It would happily attack Thebes and lose.

Coding some kind of memory into the AI would of course be both incredibly hard, and would also require too much processor power for today´s computers. I don´t think any PC game has an AI with a memory.

Of course, the AI sometimes knows too much, but as you have written above, it is very easy to take counter-measures against.

 

[Mapache]

After 2 attack rolls only one defender of my border town was left. In this moment the A.I. gave up. You can see that the AI is learning.
There are also pathfinding issues. AI determines a path and then follows the path. Often the A.I. looks for opportunities and takes the chance, though.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Hurricane


Well said. I think the main reason the AI can see into the fog of war has to do with the fact that the AI has no memory.

Sure, and it`s OK if it only applies to that. But that the AI automatically knows about free land I know about - the reason why they always show up on newfound islands - that is kinda unfair. Same goes for the out-of-the-blue coastal attacks - when I land troops like that I cannot watch for several turns beforehand either!

Maybe Firaxis should turn it down a little, like restricting the AI to it`s actual map knowledge, but give it the ability to calculate troops strength by watching. Shouldn`t be soooo hard (I asked a friend who`s an experienced programer and he said it`s doable).