Just how much does the AI cheat on 'noble'?

[Strategist83]

I checked in the world builder - the AI only gets a settler and a single scout/warrior to begin with, but the moment it settles it's initial city it gets a warrior for free.

I thought 'noble' didn't cheat? Does the AI get any other advantages? Is there a difficulty setting where the AI is neither handicapped or given benefits?

[alva]

It also gets upgrade bonusses and better odds versus barbs (I think).

On the other hand, even on Noble, you get some help over the AI aswell.

[Senethro]

This is just the wrong way of thinking about it.

Essentially, you're cheating because you have advanced pattern recognition and the ability to actually make decisions, rather than just spot good moves.

Beating up a CPU is not hard for an organic machine billions of years in the making. Don't concern yourself with so-called cheating and just play the game without complaint against the CPU or, better, play humans.

[Chaos Theory]

It would still be nice, for comparison, to have a difficulty level on which the AIs and humans play by the same rules, like Librarian difficulty on SMAC almost is.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
It would still be nice, for comparison, to have a difficulty level on which the AIs and humans play by the same rules, like Librarian difficulty on SMAC almost is.

I made one myself by editing the civ4handicapinfo.xml file. At the time I did it, I could only win occasionally on Noble but could beat Warlord consistently. The version with no bonuses to any side was significantly harder in the early game (because barbarians were a lot harder without the player bonus vs. them) but a lot easier later in the game, as the AI had difficulty managing the finances of large armies and several were crippled by encounters with barbarians early in the game. So, difficulty-wise a fair game with no AI bonuses would be tougher than Warlord but easier than Noble.

Some of the bonuses the AI receives on Noble...

iAIUnitSupplyPercent - 35 - This means the AI pays a lot less maintenance on his milmitary units, especially when they are outside his borders.

iAIUnitUpgradePercent - 30 - The AI only pays 30% of what the player does to upgrade his units.

iAIInflationPercent - 70 - This is not as big an advantage as it seems as the player pays 90% on Noble, not 100.

iAIWarWearinessPercent - 70 - AI gets a substantial bonus when it comes to war weariness.

iAIAnimalBonus - 70 - This is to be compared to the 40% bonus the player gets vs. barbarian animals on Noble. A full-strength player warrior will always defeat a strength 2 animal but can lose to a bear. AI warriors don't even have to worry about bears, having an effective 3.4 strength vs. animals.

iAIBarbarianBonus - 40 - This is to be compared to the 10% bonus the player gets vs. barbarians. The AI gets this bonus on all difficulty levels, and the only level where the player is on equal footing with the AI vs. barbarians is Settler. This is because the AI has trouble preparing against barbarian threats in the early game, if you take away this bonus you'll often have some of your AI opposition wiped out by barbarians and usually at least one AI civ will have been crippled by bad barbarian luck.

Otherwise, Noble is fair. There are no construction advantages, whether of units, buildings, or wonders (there are on lower difficulty levels). Note that Noble also gives significant bonuses to the player, it may be considered the 'default' difficulty but the player gets to pay lower civic upkeep costs than the default engine value, still gets bonuses vs. barbarians, and multiplies the chance the AI will deny a technology trade by 70%.

[Hengist]

It still baffles me why they just didn't make a 'AI v Human' equal level playing field setting for people to try, rather than tell us what would we should use, with all these secret bonuses given.

They could let people decide for themselves if a truely equal game against the AI will ruin the gameplay or not. Oh, and please don't reply that they have done by allowing us to mod the game, yada yada ya, etc. I haven't the time or inclination to start modding a game. I bought this game to play, not to fart around changing the game files.

[marvinkosh]

Um, despite the actual bonuses, Noble is fair enough so that you can feel like you're not necessarily going to roll over the AI. Warlord, after a while, is easy enough to master over a period of time while you're learning the game.

[Urban Ranger]

Go into World Builder a turn after you build your intial city. Look at all the computer players. While it takes you 5 turns or so to build your first warrior, some of them can do that in 2 turns.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Hengist
It still baffles me why they just didn't make a 'AI v Human' equal level playing field setting for people to try, rather than tell us what would we should use, with all these secret bonuses given.

They could let people decide for themselves if a truely equal game against the AI will ruin the gameplay or not.

Because you need to balance.
A game is not as an instrument you can set referring to a given value (e.g. a zero celsius degree reference for a thermometer); a game AI is the result in real life of your project and guess.

Then they tested the whole thing against real players (none of them can be considered a universal reference, AFAIK ).

Tuning here and there, they defined as a fair AI opponent can be obtained mixing some change of game parameter both for AI and human player. Nothing suggest that a value of "zero", "1" or 100% is the neutral setting for game engine.

We know that 3.1415 etc. is a strange value perfectly fitting the purpose to compute circle related geometric formula

Asking for a setting to "neutral" value of any variable parameter, you only obtain to discover how much the original game design was right on target of final player level and experience.

Not really relevant, IMHO, or at least not as much relevant as check if the current setting fit nicely the game purpose, during the whole game (from 4000 b.c. start to end) and for a statistically large enough number of games.

IMHO, of course.

[Hengist]

I didn't understand a word of your post.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Hengist
I didn't understand a word of your post.

Probably my english is so bad, it isn't your fault. Sorry.

[Paddy]

ahh the old cheating AI

[Meef]

somewhere in the game it is said that noble-level just is the level where humans and ai play with the same conditions.
however, in any game the diffculty is always raised by giving boni and mali rather than by letting it act smarter. so you can be sure that a level where both, ai and human face equal conditions is too easy for experienced players. being human i create a strategy based on other things than algorithms and programmend circumstances. the ai often do stupid things, regardless of the diffculty level. some of the tactics they use only work if they´re superior in military strength. but espacially inferior civ could do a lot better if they acted different. through espionage and permanent alliances i took a look at what the ai build in their cities. e.g. if they conquer a city in later eras, the first thing they build is a sam-infantry that would take 4 times as long as a granary or library or temple etc.

in one game i had permantent alli with monti, who tried to build the three gorges-dam, and switched the production three times, though it was almost done, just because i declared war on someone, and monti thought it would be smarter to have another sam-infantry right away, than to finish that damn dam. most stupud thing about it was, that i couldn´t build it because he started building it in another city.
however, comparing humans to ai doesn´t make sense yet. so take it or leave it.

[jonta]

Better to play a great game with a cheating AI
that you will have to go to Worldbuilder to check
Than to play a no good game with a non cheating
AI

If they could make a superclever no cheating AI
that would beat your Azz every time, because a human will at some point make 1 single mistake.
And this super clever AI would do the superright thing
all the time.
(off course taking a good pause of waiting every turn)
Would you think that was better ?

Imagine that you would have 10 AI's all dooing the same perfect strategi all the time, only diffrence would be their use of terrain.

Its just not what funny gaming is about.


If we are talking RTS, no cheating AI is the goal
in CIV it's not important.

[inetd]

I've always thought that "Noble" difficulty would give AI and player equal conditions

In my opinion, in a game that relies so much on AI, an "equal" difficulty setting is mandatory. I don't mind giving the AI player a free unit / improvement to start with in order to prevent them being extinguished by barbarians early in the game. But giving them advantages that last for the whole game is not a good thing, even if they are "compensated" by other advantages for the human player.
Would you play a chess game against a computer if you aren't allowed to move your rooks and bishops more than 3 squares, and to compensate that, the AI wouldn't get a queen? At least I'd prefer an equal game. If the AI is too weak, improve the AI (which has been done in chess) and not just change the rules in favor of the AI. I know that AI programming isn't easy, especially for such a complex game like Civilization, but I hope every sequel of the game will improve the AI and allow to gradually take away its bonuses.

[dearmad]

In my mod I rebalanced Noble to be a lot more even. I also took away the AI's initial 10 point bonus it was getting toward building that firs tunit.

No real harm done AFAICT.

[inetd]

Actually, I find games with your mod enabled harder than normal games...

[JimMac]

Originally posted by inetd
Actually, I find games with your mod enabled harder than normal games...

Yep, so do I (especially the early game) , in a good way.

[Harrier UK]

Originally posted by Hengist
It still baffles me why they just didn't make a 'AI v Human' equal level playing field setting for people to try, rather than tell us what would we should use, with all these secret bonuses given.

They could let people decide for themselves if a truely equal game against the AI will ruin the gameplay or not. Oh, and please don't reply that they have done by allowing us to mod the game, yada yada ya, etc. I haven't the time or inclination to start modding a game. I bought this game to play, not to fart around changing the game files.

The main reason is that the human (intelligent or not) has one main advantage over the computer (at least until someone designs a computer like HAL [from the film 2001]). SCAN.

The computer can just process what information it finds in each location (tile) and compare it to what it finds in other tiles. If the AI is not programmed to cheat - that will limit its abilities. We are informed Civ4 does not cheat. (Hidden AI coding). Therefore it needs some advantages. (As mentioned above).

The computer can not SCAN like the human - well it can, but in a PC the time between moves would be unacceptable to most players. So shortcuts are made by giving the AI slight advantages.

What do I mean by SCAN - the simple visual ability to look at the screen and see lots of information immediately {without any apparent processing power}, unlike a current home computer. The game even makes it easier for the human with the zoom in or out functions.

Maybe in 10 years time home PCs will be powerfull enough for you to play a truely equal game against a computer AI - all things considered.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Harrier UK
The main reason is that the human (intelligent or not) has one main advantage over the computer (at least until someone designs a computer like HAL [from the film 2001]). SCAN.

The human brain is a slow but massively parallel computer

This is completely opposite to what a tranditional computer is. This makes the human brain and computers complement each other.

To make a computer beat what we are good at requires it to be a massively parallel computer. That's what Deep Blue (the IBM chess machine that defeated Kasparov) is.

Originally posted by Harrier UK
The computer can just process what information it finds in each location (tile) and compare it to what it finds in other tiles.

A modern day CPU does that very, very, quickly. It can add two numbers much faster than we can.

Originally posted by Harrier UK
If the AI is not programmed to cheat - that will limit its abilities.

Yes, no, maybe. I content that a nice database and some fuzzy logic will help a lot in this respect.

[Charles_Bronson]

Maybe this stupid AI (yes, I think it´s stupid, alpha centauri´s AI and GalacCivs Ai are much smarter) is due to the hurry to launch the game, or low budgets.

Anyway, if you don´t like the computer, play against humans.

[Urban Ranger]

I wouldn't say the one in Alpha Centauri is smart. When I play the game I usually play on Thinker (second highest) and still have no problems winning.

[joncnunn]

Well, basically in the previous version; the most equal setting was "Regent", but even at the start, they estimated that the median player after a few games would be an even match for the AI at "Monarch", because there are things the poor AI couldn't do.
(And if I recall corectly, the no bonus for AI trade was at Cheftain)

In the Civ IV doc; the quote is that Noble is "closest to equal footing." The above description of where it's the bigest points to where the AI is weakest: Too many units doing nothing [defending interal cities], decreasing it's offensive punch and also subjecting it to defeat in detail.

Originally posted by Hengist
It still baffles me why they just didn't make a 'AI v Human' equal level playing field setting for people to try, rather than tell us what would we should use, with all these secret bonuses given.

They could let people decide for themselves if a truely equal game against the AI will ruin the gameplay or not. Oh, and please don't reply that they have done by allowing us to mod the game, yada yada ya, etc. I haven't the time or inclination to start modding a game. I bought this game to play, not to fart around changing the game files.

[Saurus]

About A.I cheating in general... I just think that the human player MUST always know exactly what is the cheats A.I is using - otherwise countering the A.I is difficult as the human player, in fact, are not told about all the rules the A.I plays with - thus difficult to counter.

[morchuflex]

I disagree... knowing exactly how the AI cheats spoils the game...

[Hengist]

As I said earlier....

Why didn't they just give us a totally equal (Human v AI) setting, without the need to mod' the game, and let us decide for ourselves? I'm not interested in the arguments for or against. I just don't like being told that I have to play it a certain way. I'd sooner try for myself and then decide.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Hengist
Why didn't they just give us a totally equal (Human v AI) setting, without the need to mod' the game, and let us decide for ourselves? I'm not interested in the arguments for or against. I just don't like being told that I have to play it a certain way. I'd sooner try for myself and then decide.

You can do that by editing HandicapInfo.xml IIRC. Save your modified file to "custom assets."

[Hengist]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


You can do that by editing HandicapInfo.xml IIRC. Save your modified file to "custom assets."

Thanks for the reply, but if you'd read my first post in this thread, you would have noticed that I originally wrote the following...

"Oh, and please don't reply that they have done by allowing us to mod the game, yada yada ya, etc. I haven't the time or inclination to start modding a game. I bought this game to play, not to fart around changing the game files."

Again, why didn't they just give us a totally equal (Human v AI) setting, without the need to mod' the game, and let us decide for ourselves? I'm not interested in the arguments for or against. I just don't like being told that I have to play it a certain way. I'd sooner try for myself and then decide.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Hengist
Again, why didn't they just give us a totally equal (Human v AI) setting, without the need to mod' the game, and let us decide for ourselves? I'm not interested in the arguments for or against. I just don't like being told that I have to play it a certain way. I'd sooner try for myself and then decide.

Because doing so would add nothing to the game except for the few people who want to try the game like that...and you can bet those few people would not play that difficulty level more than once or twice. On the minus side, the developers would have to...

...decide what to call this difficulty level without confusing people

...decide where to list the choice - I've modded a 'fair' difficulty level and I couldn't tell you where you would rank it difficulty-wise - it starts out being harder than noble, and ends up easier than Warlord. If you listed it with all the other difficulty levels, would it be between Warlord and Noble? Noble and Prince?

...have to deal with people who don't understand game AI asking why the computer can't play the game without bonuses

...deal with people who think the game sucks and is imbalanced because they only want to play the 'fair' setting without realizing it was put in just to appease a tiny minority of Civ gamers

The developers have good reasons for giving the AI certain bonuses on all difficulty levels - extensive testing. I played only two games (actually, didn't bother finishing the second because my victory was a given) and it was clear that the AI can't mount an effective defense unless they are allowed some breaks on unit maintenance, upgrade costs, and barbarian strength. The game starts off challenging, but if you can survive through that the AI is going to be very slow at reasearch, have small stacks of outdated units guarding their cities, and some of the AI civilizations will have been crippled by barbarians. It's not fun to play a game that becomes less and less challenging as the turns progress until there reaches a point where no decent player would be threatened in the least by the AI.

The difficulty levels we do have in the game are balanced to provide the same level of challenge at all stages of the game - Warlord is always easier than Noble, whether at turn 10 or turn 300. They go from extremely easy to impossible to defeat without exploiting game mechanics. These difficulty levels will serve the purposes of 99% of Civ gamers. It's easy enough to mod a 'fair' difficulty level, and if enough people want to play a fair game I'm sure someone will make a mod available for download. I deleted mine, though.

[bigvic]

on noble i reach a point where its no more fun - i'm just doing stuff til i win...which can be a while

now i'm playing a prince level game - in the industrial age - ai tech trading cheats are irritating, if thats whats going on... if not its still irritating - and spies dont steal tech? how do you overcome tech inferiority?