I think AI cheats!

[linkhan]

It is the mid-1700's, and I've got an armada right outside of Thebes waiting for two more loaded galleons to arrive and attack Hashetput. The capital has a bunch of units, including a bunch of longbowmen and some elephants/knights. No problem.

But before landing, I check Thebes again, and all of a sudden the 4 longbowmen (str 6) are replaced with riflemen (str 14)!!!

So I frantically start Plan B. I try to trade with all Civs for Rifling (I'm still in good terms with everyone and have plenty of gold) and NOBODY HAS IT! None of the civilizations has Rifling even listed in Red!

The latest tech anyone AI civ has is 'replaceable parts.' How can you have so many riflemen before tech is discovered by anyone???

So this is either a bug (doubt it), some side effect of a Wonder I have no idea about, or a lame way for Firaxis to give you a challenge.

Has anyone else seen this??

[Tiberius]

do you have a save?

[Proteus_MST]

Have you also looked into your foreign advisor screen?

Maybe they have listed it under "Will never Trade"
and it therefore doesn´t even get shown in diplomatic negiations.

And have you tried to also contact Hatschepsut with the proposal to trade techs?
After all it could be that she is the first and only AI-Civ which has discovered Rifling (and has, at once, upgraded her longbowmen to rilflemen as you are approaching the gates of her capital).

[userqwerty]

i just did this as the chinese on the "Earth 1000 AD" map.

you see chinese UU is Cho Ko Nu which you can upgrade from archer for 130 gold

so i just had my only iron resource disconnected by a bunch of mongols. I made piece with them the following turn and they went away, but now i was facing a japanese invasion that was being held in check by my longbowmen. i had no cho ko nu left though. so i built one worker and svitched to all civics that give military experience upgrades and lowered my research to 0 getting about 130 gold a turn.

made all my cities produce archers. in 8 turns i had some 20 archers. the worker incidentally finished iron mining. so began buying them cho ko nu upgrades and all experience went into exra strikes.

poof went the japanese islands and korea.

and just after i finished the japanese off chemistry was researched.

so now i have to keep my research at 80 because i have all these grenadiers sitting around. i probably should go for india before they overdevelop

[LDiCesare]

I think the techs you don't have the prerequisites for don't show in the diplo screen, do they? That'd explain this scenario.

[linkhan]

If LDiCesare is correct, then that'd make sense.

As for the Will Never Trade techs, they appear as red in the trade screen, if the civilization wants to trade at all. That's why I think that these Civs don't even have the tech and look like all of a sudden they have it.

[linkhan]

Answer to Proteus:

Yes, I looked at all the Civs (they're all in good terms with me) and nobody lists Rifling as one of the techs. I also have also explored the whole world, so there's no other civs around.


And, as for the save file, how do I post it on? I'll try to do it.

[Krill]

yeah, if you don't have the prerequisite for Rifling, it won't show up in F4. And Rep parts is a required tech for Rifling...

[linkhan]

Hi Krill,

OK thanks for the clarification!

I've misunderstood the trade screen and made the wrong conclusion. I wished I could change the title of this thread.

I wouldn't have known about this without coming to this forum. Page 102 of the manual doesn't really say anything about needing the prerequisites for a tech, and with stuff presented on trade screen, I assumed the tech list on the trade screen was everything they had.

I don't feel like loading a save now. Learned enough errors from this game to want to start a new one!

[Krill]

Hey, we all make mistakes and kick oursleves in the teeth afterwards. Don't worry about it.

And one of the things I always remember when I stat playing a new game: Never trust the manual.

[Aileron]

Originally posted by Krill
yeah, if you don't have the prerequisite for Rifling, it won't show up in F4. And Rep parts is a required tech for Rifling...

Yeah, this is absolutely correct. But is there any way to see ALL the techs that the other civs have?

[Krill]

Nope. No way of knowing, without using the cheat code, IIRC

[pyrhic]

he might be on to something though...

In a recent game i had england down to 2 cities and was about to claim my continent They had a good stack in each, about 6-8 units of redcoats and grenadiers, but nothing to sweat about for my Infantry w/ cannon. However 2 turns later and I was looking at a solid stack of infantry. I knew I couldnt win against that(and at least not quickly), so i made peace and walked away..

However, thinking abou it, the conversion cost would have been very prohibitive...probably something in the order of 2k gold, and the ai doesn't usually stockpile gold. Anyone know if the ai can upgrade on the cheap? (this was noble difficulty btw).

[SirSebastian]

The AI receives significant bonuses to upgrade cost.

[linkhan]

Hmm...

Looks like we're unearthing more things here.

In Noble difficulty, shouldn't the AI not be having *any* bonuses at all? While we need to confirm pyrhic's enemy civ's treasury balance and the presence of the upgrade-cost-reducing wonder, any bonus for the AI would make Noble a non-equal level.

It might be widely known already, but this is the first time I hear of "upgrade bonuses."

My point being...
Assuming we're playing at higher difficulties (Emperor, deity...), and the AI has production AND upgrade bonuses, then we're facing an AI with exponential bonuses. While having production bonuses, AI civs can already generate gold faster. And now it's cheaper for them to upgrade from longbowmen to riflemen? If that's true, I don't like the sound of that...