A Taste Of Honey - CLEAR evidence of the AI cheating

[Grumbold]

The AI knows, and exploits, your troop locations. Live with it. I have stumbled on one nice advantage. If you have an offensive army then spend your turn killing some of his units then sprinlke a handful of your (preferably captured) workers near the front line (but not near enough to be visible to the enemy). His high speed offensive units will ignore the opportunity to kill your offensives, preferring to capture some additional workers instead. They will go to quite ludicrous lengths to do so, riding past whole stacks of your opportunity-firing troops to catch a worker. Then in your turn you can crush the weakened attackers, nip a few old cheap units out of the rear area to recapture the workers and begin the whole process again.

Exactly the same effect can be used to keep the enemy from settling your country before culture expansion fills in the gap. While they stagger around at non-road speeds, run up a few locals at the last minute and block any nearby potential city site. Snigger as they pause, select a new (never before explored by them) city site and retrace their steps. Once they have gone far enough, return to normal duties. It won't work if you are stuck in the middle of a landmass but with two sides bordered by sea it will allow you to "steal" a much larger area to live in.

[TCO]

The game has always known and used your troop/city locations (in Civ2 and Civ3). The reason you are seeing a difference is because Soren has made the AI more sophisticated. It goes after the best prize now, not the closest prize.

I'm not sure...but it may be possible to tweak this to still make it challenging but less evident that the AI knows your situation.

[TheDarkside]

**tries hard to think of a game that has AI which dosent know everything about your troop locations**

it makes the game somewhat challenging as opposed to boring, but for stuff like subs its unacceptable. Here, I'll even contribute the code to fix this:

void GetNextTarget() {
for (i = 0; i < ENEMY_CIV.NavalUnits.length; i++) {
if (ENEMY_CIV.NavalUnits[i].isSubmarine())
continue;
else
Attack(ENEMY_CIV.NavalUnits[i]);
}
}

[Oerdin]

Originally posted by Compugasm 2
I've noticed these things also. I play Monarch/China and I've built cities on food squares producing a new settlers. Then, build a city 3-6 squares away on another food resource. After building 5 cities, i quit and viewed the timeline. The Russians had 10-11 cities. This isn't possible and you can't rush build settlers early in the game.

I've noticed my own units disapearing. A few times I've sent a settler to automatically goto a food square and eventually realize he never got there. He could have been captured, but by the time i realize he never got there, its a total mystery.

They could have found cities or settlers in Barbarian huts thus resulting in more cities then you. Also at higher levels the AI gets a "bonus" to the amount of gold and shields they produce plus things cost them less. The end result is the AI will almost always out produce you above regent.

[TCO]

Originally posted by TheDarkside
**tries hard to think of a game that has AI which dosent know everything about your troop locations**

Stratego? Is there a computer version of that?

[CyberGnu]

**tries hard to think of a game that has AI which dosent know everything about your troop locations**

Strip Poker? Oh, wait, never mind...

Zapperio, I think there is another part of the chat transcript that deals with this again. I distinctly remember Soren talking about CTP2...

Yoleus, I think they put a lot of effort into making the AI capable of waging a modern war. Give the AI tanks and Mech. Infantry and he can function quite well. Unfortunately, with anything else the AI is actualy worse than Civ2, I think.

I know about the Ex thing... It's just that when I had it as From instead of In I got questions about it... Forcing me to start talking about greek dramas... And so I just changed it. After all, it is easier to explain this a few times to someone who knows to much than numerous times to people who dosn't.

[Elucidus]

It would be nice if the city would have an on-map display that would let you know at-a-glance whether a defender was there or not. Did that make sense?

[GodSpawn]

Just a thought - doesn't an embassy allow you to investigate any city (at a price)? Couldn't the AI therefore check your cities periodically? (That doesn't mean it isn't cheating, just that there may be a more innocuous explanation...)

[TheDarkside]

Yeah at the cost of rush-building a Cathedral, you can investigate a city for one turn. Overpriced? You decide. It's not like you are getting top secret info... its pretty much info you can gather going on a stroll in a city for a day.