AI Knows Where Your Units Are

[spa]

Just a quick note. It can't be promotions as I have seen the Arab fleet. If you hover your cursor over their boats it lists promotions and all they have is the AI's favourite, +10% strength. In my save file you can move off the resource and check for yourself. As for the increase line of sight, that could be a possibility, but they are moving from being two squares away to as far away as possible. If they can see from that far away then the AI has a line of sight cheat for naval units which I think is unlikely. It's more likely that they just know that I'm on that resource.

Bhuric: Did you move the right galleon fleet? I actually have two near fish. The one you need to move is the one with three galleons (not the five fleet) right next to Satricum. Move it off the fish and the Arabs will be there. Hold it on the fish and they won't (I don't know if the workboat that's also with them affects things so I would keep it with the galleon fleet just to be sure). Everytime I have done it the Arab's have responded exactly 100% knowing that I'm there or not.

[spa]

Sir Ralph: I took a look at your thread and it's consistent with what I have found. The AI knows what's up at sea. Now does this mean that it knows the same info for land resources? What about cities? I haven't seen any behaviour on land that's equally suspect, but in light of this it wouldn't surprise me if the AI has the same land info, but the fact that it knows is compensated for by programming it to pillage and hit targets of opporunity. The sea is a much simpiler environment so it's obvious what's up there. On land everything is more complicated.

[Bhruic]

Originally posted by spa
Bhuric: Did you move the right galleon fleet? I actually have two near fish. The one you need to move is the one with three galleons (not the five fleet) right next to Satricum. Move it off the fish and the Arabs will be there. Hold it on the fish and they won't (I don't know if the workboat that's also with them affects things so I would keep it with the galleon fleet just to be sure). Everytime I have done it the Arab's have responded exactly 100% knowing that I'm there or not.

Yup, that's the one I moved. There were 3 galleons and a work boat. I moved the galleons off, and left the work boat, and they didn't come towards it at all.

Bh

[spa]

Did you also move the five fleet galleon? It is also sitting on top of fish so if you opened up two targets the AI might have responded differently. Try it again. Load it up move the three fleet with workboat one square off, but leave every other unit where it is. You'll find the AI reacts as I decribed. I know because I just downloaded my own save file and overwrote my old game file (just incase something happened in the zip uploading) and found that it works. Saladin's fleet will end up just off the desert island to the West of Setia if you're off the resource and they won't come at all if you are on it.

Edit: Ahh I see. Move the workboat with the galleons so that their are no units on the fish. The AI might just be recognizing units on the space and not their stats (his frigates could beat my galleons so running away seems strange to start with). The workboat is probably mucking up the test.

[spa]

I just confirmed it. If you leave the workboat on the space, but move the three galleons, the AI won't come after the fish. If you move both the workboat and galleons off though they will. So it doesn't seem to matter what the units are, the AI just knows that there is a unit there and if there is it won't come attack. This makes an annoyance into an even bigger potential hilarious mess. It might be possible to keep the AI off of your coastal resources with workboats! This would leave your other naval units for more important tasks. Or even if workboats can't defend all your resources they might be able to keep the ai shuffling from one target to the next by alternating moves off and on. Very distressing that the AI not only knows, but is dumb about that knowledge and can't recognize the workboat as a non-combat, non-threat unit.

[amicus curiae]

I am waiting to hear from Soren, Solver, or someone else at Firaxis about this issue. Very troubling if true. And it seems to be true...

[Aro]

Well... Solver is a beta tester and member of Apolyton staff, not exactly a Firaxis employee...

[Ka Plewy]

While it may be true, it needs to be verified under different conditions (different game).

[inca911]

So what do you really want? An AI that has some subtle advantages built in that can compete against the human player, or an AI with no advantages that cannot complete ala Civ2 Deity?

The AI needs some help and I prefer it gets subtle extras so I can play against it. For a real game, you need to play a person.

[dearmad]

This isn't a sublte behavior- it's a weakness to be exploited and ruin the game play. The should just patrol and react to things it has seen. Or go where the resources are to check- we all know where the resources are, but manipulating the Ai's units like this is bad.

[Arrian]

I can't say much, but let's just say that Soren is concerned about this issue. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, being able to exploit the AI's use of such information one of the things he specifically wanted to stamp out (vis-a-vis CivIII).

It seems to be worse on the sea than on land...

-Arrian

[spa]

Originally posted by Ka Plewy
While it may be true, it needs to be verified under different conditions (different game).

Why? The behaviour is as clear as day. Download the save. The reason I suspected this was happening becasue I observed similiar behaviour in a past game for which I didn't have a save file. Add to that, that Sir Ralph posted a link in this thread to another forum topic that he started a while ago where he documented the same type of AI behaviour at sea and it amoutns to pretty convincing evidence. I'm not making this up. I have documented evidence with a save file, instructions as to what do and predictions as to what the AI will do based on what you do. So we have two cases where it has been documented by someone and a cleary testable hypothesis. I don't know what more you want as far as proof. This is about as irontight as it gets.

As for what I want, I want an AI that has bonuses as I recognize it's impossible to create an AI that can compete on level ground with a human, but one that isn't given its own set of rules. I'm fine with the AI being able to build more units than me because of faster production or having less maintenace cost or whatever, just not with having it operate under its own special rules with conditions that are totally different from the players. Plus, this isn't what we were told. The situation at sea is Civ3.

The big thing here, as has been pointed out, is that this isn't really a help to the AI now that it's know. If I want to sink the AI's fleet, I'll simply put a workboat on top of all my sea resources except one and station my fleet next to, but not on the, last one. I know the AI will go for that resource so I'll have a shooting gallery for his ships. If it's later in the game I'll put my ships next to it and base some planes nearby. The AI won't have a chance. That's not good. The AI's naval game is weak.

I'm actually a Civ fan. I'm not here to make a negative topic. This thread is an information thread that shows some of the games mechanics and where things need to be improved. If one never pointed out flaws no one would ever bother to improve things. This doesn't break the game and I'll still be playing, but it does put the first minus on it for me.

[Ka Plewy]

1) I said before, don't have the game, yet.

While it may be perfectly valid in this particular game, it may not be reproducible in other similar circumstances. Reproducing the behavior is what will get the developer's attention and cause them to either 1) fix it if it's not correct or 2) explain it.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Aro
Well... Solver is a beta tester and member of Apolyton staff, not exactly a Firaxis employee...

Whaaaaaaat?

[spa]

Originally posted by Ka Plewy
1) I said before, don't have the game, yet.

While it may be perfectly valid in this particular game, it may not be reproducible in other similar circumstances. Reproducing the behavior is what will get the developer's attention and cause them to either 1) fix it if it's not correct or 2) explain it.

So you're leaping to the defense of a game you don't even own even when Sir Ralph and I have now both provided evidence that the AI's sea game is weak, flawed and very exploitable. I grant you that one instance could be a fluke, but Sir Ralphs, my earlier game which got my suspicions up and now this one which is here for all to see makes three. That's a pattern. You know it's okay to find flaws. Finding them is what gets them fixed. Ignoring them and excusing them doesn't change a thing. Imagine where we would be if no one spoke up after Civ3.