Possible AI cheat: does "no tech trading" only apply to the human player?

[morchuflex]

Hello.

If you go for a custom game, you can select various game options, among which "no tech trades allowed". I decided to try this one, because I hate the way AI civs offer better tech trades to other civs than to you.

My game (on Prince level, archipelago) went rather well. I built the biggest and most prosperous empire of the world. But upon reaching mid-game (gunpowder) and having eventually met all other civs, I realized that I was very backward in tech, even comparatively to small civs that only had one third my number of cities. How is this possible? I see two explanations, both of which are unpleasant.

Either I play really badly, or the AI still does trade tech - just not with me...

Not that I would swear hypothesis 2 is the right one: I'm a veteran Civ player, but rather new to Civ4. So, maybe I just suck...

Any similar impressions, anyone?

 

[Efexeye]

Well, the AI can't trade tech with each other if you turn tech trading off...but the AI also kicks a lot more ass than it did in CIV 3...I tend to fall behind in tech no matter what I do, even on Noble.

Practice, man, practice!

 

[Ogrelord]

Maybe they use Great People for a free tech. ( or almost free tech )

 

[Traxis]

Tech costs are modified depending on how many known civs know a certain tech. This means that isolated civs will research at a slower rate.

 

[Nilrim]

Besides the AI cheats like a mother just like in all Civ games. I played a game last night that had a Civ with only 4 cities. That Civ was only a few points behind me, I had 9 cities at the time. All his cities I had converted to my state religion so I could see what he had in all his cities and it was amazing, he had a good 40 to 50 militray units. He decided to go to war with me and I must of destoryed a good 15 of his units while losing a lot myself. Anyway I thought it was a good time to attack his cities since surly he had depleated his home guard and those same number of units were still in his cities. So how the heck could it keep making all those units, keep up in Sci and Culture with just 4 cities? Easy like I said the AI cheats like a mother!!

 

[Seven05]

Tech costs are also different when you have no tech trading enabled, they're slightly cheaper (or more accurately, you produce slightly more reasearch beakers).

 

[Ogrelord]

Besides the AI cheats like a mother just like in all Civ games. I played a game last night that had a Civ with only 4 cities. That Civ was only a few points behind me, I had 9 cities at the time. All his cities I had converted to my state religion so I could see what he had in all his cities and it was amazing, he had a good 40 to 50 militray units. He decided to go to war with me and I must of destoryed a good 15 of his units while losing a lot myself. Anyway I thought it was a good time to attack his cities since surly he had depleated his home guard and those same number of units were still in his cities. So how the heck could it keep making all those units, keep up in Sci and Culture with just 4 cities? Easy like I said the AI cheats like a mother!!

Did he have Nationhood civic? Cuz every turn you draft 3 military units.
Maybe he dedicated one of his city to pure research, (half of the hammers go to research?)

 

[Nilrim]

Did he have Nationhood civic? Cuz every turn you draft 3 military units.
Maybe he dedicated one of his city to pure research, (half of the hammers go to research?)

Hummm I bet that is how he did it, ok maybe it was not cheating like a mother maybe just cheating a little You have to admit that the AI does get some large production cheats, call it advantages if you don't like the word cheat, that the human player does not.

 

[Desert-Fox]

I noticed this too... I played on prince. With normal tech trading... I can keep up, no problems to be advanced... but when i turned it off... I was really backward. I usually play in style that I do not trade each tech away... so it would work for me. So in reality it makes a challenge for you not handicap.

AI cheats in other ways too... they declare wars on human player easier than on another AI, they can upgrade easier units... even if they have no holy cities they can make spam cities everywhere and keep up tech race. For me the maintance costs would kill me... even with half religions founded.

 

[Lucas87]

I think one thing people have a tough time getting used to is that cmall civs are EXCELLENT at tech in what I call the middle game. If you just keep a 5 city empire you can run your empire at 100% science. Plus if those cities are good, you can have a few specialists in them, plus maybe some commerce from a bunch of towns depending on your strat. It doesn't really matter how many cities you have if 1 of them makes 500+ beakers a turn. Obviously in the end you'd like to have more cities for production and even science as tech costs eventually go up, but civ4 has been designed so that a small empire can keep up very well in tech. So just looking at the AIs size and saying it should suck at tech is a bad assumption. Just put Library, University, Oxford, Academy in one city and that's three times the science in your best city. (Even more with Observatory and eventually Laboratory) Stuff all your excess super specialists in there with representation and build a boatload of towns and you have a single city that can make more science than someone else's poorly organised gigantic empire.

 

[Renata]

Tech costs are modified depending on how many known civs know a certain tech. This means that isolated civs will research at a slower rate.

Are you sure that's still true in CivIV? I thought I remembered reading that tech costs will drop as more civs learn a tech no matter whether you know them or not.

 

[Renata]

I think one thing people have a tough time getting used to is that cmall civs are EXCELLENT at tech in what I call the middle game. If you just keep a 5 city empire you can run your empire at 100% science. Plus if those cities are good, you can have a few specialists in them, plus maybe some commerce from a bunch of towns depending on your strat. It doesn't really matter how many cities you have if 1 of them makes 500+ beakers a turn. Obviously in the end you'd like to have more cities for production and even science as tech costs eventually go up, but civ4 has been designed so that a small empire can keep up very well in tech. So just looking at the AIs size and saying it should suck at tech is a bad assumption. Just put Library, University, Oxford, Academy in one city and that's three times the science in your best city. (Even more with Observatory and eventually Laboratory) Stuff all your excess super specialists in there with representation and build a boatload of towns and you have a single city that can make more science than someone else's poorly organised gigantic empire.

Don't forget monasteries. A civ with lots of religions can get very nice mid-game research boosts by building monasteries in high-commerce cities.

 

[BCLG100]

I generally fall behind in tech about the industrialisation era

 

[Efexeye]

Hummm I bet that is how he did it, ok maybe it was not cheating like a mother maybe just cheating a little You have to admit that the AI does get some large production cheats, call it advantages if you don't like the word cheat, that the human player does not.

As I understand it, the AI NEVER gets a production advantage beyond the fact that it can check every single piece of information available to it on every single turn, and a human player probably can't/won't.

In terms of number of hammers needed to build stuff, I don't think there is any disparity at all.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I think one thing people have a tough time getting used to is that cmall civs are EXCELLENT at tech in what I call the middle game. If you just keep a 5 city empire you can run your empire at 100% science. Plus if those cities are good, you can have a few specialists in them, plus maybe some commerce from a bunch of towns depending on your strat. It doesn't really matter how many cities you have if 1 of them makes 500+ beakers a turn. Obviously in the end you'd like to have more cities for production and even science as tech costs eventually go up, but civ4 has been designed so that a small empire can keep up very well in tech. So just looking at the AIs size and saying it should suck at tech is a bad assumption. Just put Library, University, Oxford, Academy in one city and that's three times the science in your best city. (Even more with Observatory and eventually Laboratory) Stuff all your excess super specialists in there with representation and build a boatload of towns and you have a single city that can make more science than someone else's poorly organised gigantic empire.

You've summed it up well, a point most people miss is that the AI doesn't get bored like a human does.

I just couldn't play with only 5 cities , virtually no production , towns on hilly grasslands (instead of mines or windmills), devoting everything to commerce and hence science..Its natural for the human player to want to expand (its been programmed into us by 3 previous generations of the game).

Its incredibly frustrating to see a great site for a city, perfectly positioned for your "empire grid system", but having to say to yourself , "I can't afford to build a city there quite yet".

Still its up to you how you want to play it. You can expand like mad early on , even though your science will suffer, but with good play you will almost always catch up...(but thats a post for anothertime).

In most games I have played (huge maps) you almost always get 2 or 3 nations who by the end are way ahead in science.Who these are, depends upon an almost incalcuble number of previous occurances throughout the history of that world.

Hopefully one of them is you

This is what makes us go back and play Civ over and over again. Its basic simplicity of form, combined with a myriad of interweaven subtle possibilities. give it almost infinite replayability (god Im sounded like an advert for the thing).

The AI doesn't cheat I guarantee you..It just doesn't need to.


DrewBledsoe

 

[777]

Upkeep cost, man, upkeeps cost. If you build huge empire you can produce military units in many cities but you have to set empire so you direct all the funds for your city upkeeps and military. If you have small civ with economical boosted cities you can run science with big percents and still get some money for candy.

One of the best traits in cIV, really puts game into another perpective.

 

[Seven05]

As I understand it, the AI NEVER gets a production advantage beyond the fact that it can check every single piece of information available to it on every single turn, and a human player probably can't/won't.

In terms of number of hammers needed to build stuff, I don't think there is any disparity at all.

Unfortunately that's not exactly true, let's look at the Prince difficulty level for example:

AI work rate modifier: 10 (bonus percent)
AI Growth Percent: 95 (percent of normal growth requirement)
AI Train Percent: 90 (percent of normal unit build cost)
AI World Train Percent: 100 (percent of the world size multiplier)
AI Construct Percent: 95 (percent of construction cost used)
AI Unit Cost Percent: 95 (unit maintenance cost modifier)
AI Unit Supply Percent: 30 (percent of "away" unit upkeep applied)
AI Unit Upgrade Percent: 25 (upgrade cost percent)

And that doesn't include lesser bonuses such as free wins against barbarians and modified inflation values.

The two that affect hammers required directly are the AI Train Percent and the AI Construct percent. It's not as bad as you may think though, even at Deity their modifier is only 60 for both, meaning the cost for them is 60% of what the cost for you is.

You have to consider a couple of things when looking at what bonuses the AI receives. If you have an AI opponent and their difficulty level is set at Noble while yours is set at Prince they will receive the bonuses/penalties not specific to AI for the Nobel level and the specific AI bonuses for your Prince level. So if you want the AI to be roughly equal to you, make sure you put them on the same difficulty level. If you want them to be easier, put them on a higher difficulty level and if you want them to be tougher put them on a lower difficulty level.

I can't tell you the exact way it works because I don't know the formulas. I have gone through and done a lot of testing with difficulty levels and when you switch a single value to something absurd it's pretty clear what the effects are. Likewise, if you negate all of the AI specific modifiers by setting them to zero on 100 (whichever is appropriate) they will play with the same bonuses and penalties you are enduring.

So if you're feeling like a game where the AI definately cheats, don't be a wimp and just play on Immortal or Deity, make the AI all settlers too

 

[Seven05]

In defense of the game's AI I shoudl also add that even when the difficulty level is modified so there are absolutely no bonuses or penalties for either the player or the AI they do ok for the most part. The only thing that really kills the AI is upkeep for their units and maintenance for their cities. As a result they really start to suffer as they try to expand, much more than a human player does.

 

[warpstorm]

Tech costs are modified depending on how many known civs know a certain tech. This means that isolated civs will research at a slower rate.

This is not true. I have it on very good authority that it isn't known civs, it is all civs known or unknown.

 

[SwedishChef]

Hmmm. I remember seeing a thread where they explained tech costs. (This grew out of questions about why people were receiving "bonus beakers." You'd look at your one city early in the game, see you had 10 commerce, pick something to research, hit next turn, mouse over the tech and see you now had 12/nnn beakers towards the tech.)

Unfortunately, I regret to admit I cannot now find this thread.

In that threat, I thought that the person who figured out the costs said the factor was for KNOWN civs with the tech. But obviously I can't even document that person saying it, let alone document their claim...