How does the AI break the rules so much?

[Tamed]

How can they manifest 2-3 units per city per turn without slavery or universal suffrage?

I just tried to attack Napoleon very low game with an army of axemen, and all the sudden 2 chariots popped up in his city in the same turn. They aren't moved there.. they just appeared. Lame.

 

[phungus420]

The AI doesn't "cheat" in the way you describe. So it didn't happen, it can't. The AI does get various production, commerce and happiness bonuses, many of which slide with difficulty level. It's too numerous to go into line by line, but basically the AI can upgrade units much cheaper then a human can, and pays significantly less for maintenance. The costs for techs and production scale depending on difficulty. Also if you were late game, it's possible the AI could draft units to defend if in Nationalism, but the AI drafting code isn't very robust. It's use of slavery is very good though, especially if a city is "threatened" it wol't spare the whip to get emergency defenders.

 

[Tamed]

Well, he may have insta-produced one and then slaved one the same turn, or something. :\ But I'm not lying, it was his last city, and I had no fog of war around it. Nothing was moved into it. Then bam, hit complete turn, 2 chariots.

 

[Silu]

Well, he may have insta-produced one and then slaved one the same turn, or something. :\ But I'm not lying, it was his last city, and I had no fog of war around it. Nothing was moved into it. Then bam, hit complete turn, 2 chariots.

Not possible, AI or otherwise; only way to crank 2 units out of a city on the same turn is to complete one by build/slavery/rushbuy and draft another. Chariots can't be drafted AFAIK, so he just probably moved them in from somewhere (up to 4 tiles away on roads).

 

[Badtz Maru]

I remember (I believe it's on another board) someone was complaining about the AI blatantly cheating by moving a stack two spaces to immediately by his city and then declaring war and attacking that turn. He uploaded his save, I looked at it, and what happened was the stack was in another civ's territory, and that civ ended his open borders agreement, which moved the stack to the nearest legal position, which was right next to the player's city. Mystery solved, and all it took was looking at it without assuming the AI was cheating and trying to figure out how that could happen.

There is no incentive for cheating (beyond the bonuses AI receives) to be coded into the game.

 

[Front242]

I have noticed also that movement of troops is not necessarily visible to us. I have seen troops seemingly pop up in the middle of my territories with no advanced warning. More of a glitch in the GUI than anything else. I too have had troops pop up in last city, and took some time to realize that if the AI has troops elsewhere on the board they will be moved to the city to help defend and waltz right past the wall if troops I have attacking. This is not always visible to us. This is my observation at least.

 

[r_rolo1]

I never seen seen anything like Tamed is saying in my time playing the game, so I must side with phungus and Silu and say that most likely the units were rushed and/or came from elsewhere. Obviously, if you have a save to post, all the doubts would be resolved... like I said to other person in a similar context, the game is not suposed to behave like that, so if you really saw it, you uncovered a bug. But we will never know if it was the real deal or just your mind playing tricks on you if we can't reproduce it....

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I remember (I believe it's on another board) someone was complaining about the AI blatantly cheating by moving a stack two spaces to immediately by his city and then declaring war and attacking that turn. He uploaded his save, I looked at it, and what happened was the stack was in another civ's territory, and that civ ended his open borders agreement, which moved the stack to the nearest legal position, which was right next to the player's city. Mystery solved, and all it took was looking at it without assuming the AI was cheating and trying to figure out how that could happen.

There is no incentive for cheating (beyond the bonuses AI receives) to be coded into the game.

The logical extreme for borders expelled showed up in bug reports once. Someone was *completely* isolated by quite a bit of ocean, and then suddenly some galleys drop off some trebs into the guy's territory. Same thing happened there -----> OB cancelled expelling the ships.

However with chariots they probably just moved into the city from out of view.