What's wrong with this picture?

I'm building ALhambra. It shows that it will be completed next turn. Bbbbbuuuuutttt in the in-between cycle, an AI civ completes Alhambra literally moments before it would have been my completed Wonder.

Soooooo I decide to bend Time a bit to my advantage. I Load a Save from about a half-dozen turns earlier. There I go to the Wonder-building city and tweak a few worker placements, add a couple production-enhancing buildings money-rushed, and now the Wonder should be completed one turn sooner. That _should_ cause a role reversal, leaving the AI civ having the Wonder yanked out from under it. HOWEVER, there I am, one turn sooner waiting for the cut scene when BAM! Once again, the AI civ beats me by ONE turn. Again. One turn sooner than in the original timeline.

Man, it's humbling. Not only does the AI kick my butt on occasion. It also cheats better than me!

 

Same as in BNW... AI is omniscient in terms of knowing how many turns your wonder has left. In actuality I've seen AI park a worker on woods... Waiting for you to come close to finishing and then chopping at the last moment to make sure you lose the maximum number of cogs possible.

This omniscience works apparently even when you two have not even met in the game. Kinda evil of Firaxis to make it that way...

Clear counter is to simply finish the wonder on your turn by chops.

 

high diplomatic visibility means you can actually see how many turns it takes the AI to complete building something, presumably that means they can also see your turn times. Though I would be surprised if they actually were "smart" enough to adjust their workers etc. by seeing your build times. But perhaps that is what happened.

 

I remember back in Civ5 days, there were apparently documented cases of AI building a wonder till 1 turn left, then go on to build something else, and then when another player was 1 turn away from finishing the wonder, they would switch back and finish the wonder. People could see this happening from placing spies in the city. Very weird behavior.

When that's said, it doesn't always work like that, there are many cases where you can load and get to finish a wonder, so for all we know, if you backloaded many saves, maybe game just played out differently and different decisions were made so that AI popped a goody hut, got or kept a suzerain bonus it didn't keep before, chopped a forest or whatever which made it actually finish faster in the second go.

 

A chop is actually the most likely explanation. They did something that gave them more than enough production to finish the wonder, they just happened to do it a turn earlier. Also keep in mind the AI does use Eiffel and the other wonder boosting great engineers.

 

If they manage to get them. I'm always surprised when people on these forums say "don't build industrial districts." Man, those things give you GE points! You get enough industrial districts out and the AI's never gonna keep all those great engineers away from you.

 

Well, in this picture the tables are turned on the AI:

I only need 202 cogs for completion, so the German Eiffel is about to be declared a fake.

Freddy started his "Eiffel Tower" later than me, but has obviously more production in Ulm, as he now got ahead. It was so clever of me to leave that forest there (No not really, it was blocked from my view by the city banner most of the time, I completely forgot about it and re-discovered it was still there when I was looking in desperation what else could be done )

What adds to the irony of the situation - Freddy is my only ally since forever, I'm running democracy and Wisselbanken card and started a few trade routes from Awdaghust to German cities for +7 or 8 cogs.
Oh, sooo satysfing

 

Slight thread hijack, but on the subject of AI building wonders, I've noticed this on more than one occasion:

Screen Shot 2019-01-05 At 7.05.41 PM by FlyinPhil posted Mar 27, 2019 at 1:41 PM

Is it normal for the AI to be allowed to build wonders without meeting requirements? I thought a university was required on a campus before you could build Oxford U. next to it.