AI Knows Where Your Units Are

[Ka Plewy]

I'm not defending the game, so much as I'm observing the flaw in your methodology.
While I agree that you have presented evidence, two games does not constitute proof. I'm just saying that you need to present more to make the developers take notice and fix it or take notice and explain it.

[smellymummy]

in my last game, the AI founded a city behind my capital, on one tile, sort of a tip of peninsula. turned out that tile had oil, and 2 tiles away in the ocean, more oil. in other games i've seen AI cities oddly well placed for resources that show up later in the game. especially those near my cultural borders.

just seems a bit much to be plain luck.

[Ka Plewy]

Originally posted by smellymummy
in my last game, the AI founded a city behind my capital, on one tile, sort of a tip of peninsula. turned out that tile had oil, and 2 tiles away in the ocean, more oil. in other games i've seen AI cities oddly well placed for resources that show up later in the game. especially those near my cultural borders.

just seems a bit much to be plain luck.

You made the same mistake I did, that this was about resource knowledge, it isn't, it's about unit location knowledge.

[smellymummy]

i just think they are both tied together (weren't they in civ3?), thats why i posted that observation

[Aro]

Originally posted by Solver

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

Whaaaaaaat?

Ops! Are you?

[Bhruic]

Originally posted by smellymummy
in my last game, the AI founded a city behind my capital, on one tile, sort of a tip of peninsula. turned out that tile had oil, and 2 tiles away in the ocean, more oil. in other games i've seen AI cities oddly well placed for resources that show up later in the game. especially those near my cultural borders.

just seems a bit much to be plain luck.

I've often seen the AI do the same thing (build cities on the tips of penisulas) when there wasn't any resources there.

I think this was a case of "the phone always rings when I'm in the shower", more than anything else.

Bh

[marvinkosh]

What you have to remember is that the aquatic resources are all found near the coast. By plonking a city on any coast, but especially on a peninsula, a player (human or AI) has a good chance of controlling oil later on.

Again, on land the oil has tended (though I can't say for sure yet) to pop up on tundra, ice, and desert squares. If you want oil then having a city near these kinds of terrain is a good strategy, but it's not cheating.

The other strategic resources in the game aren't quite so picky about terrain, but you can still wind up going out of your way to secure them.

[spa]

I'm not arguing that the AI knows where resources are. I personally haven't seen anything to suggest that. The AI does try and fill every square of the map with cities so it's not too surprising that sometimes these filler cities hit a resource. This would be a hard one to prove. What this thread is about though is proof that the AI knows when sea units are protecting resources and when they're not.

[ghen]

The real question is.. Do the settler's blue circles take future resources into account for the human player?

[Tuberski]

I believe that they do. I've had automated workers build a road out to nowhere that, later on, contained a resource.

ACK!

[Makahlua]

I'm fairly confident the blue circles know, too! Many a time now, I've had it want me to build on either side, but not directly on a particular square. Not everytime, but say 3/4 of the time, there's a resource in the square I built on.

The circle knows all ....

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I am pretty sure, that the AI does not only know, where your units are, but it can see the whole map through the fog of war also, just like in Civ3. I started a thread about this a while ago and also posted a savegame in it:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142303

I did not load up your savegame yet (still at work), but in my own game I can not see a single reason (not religion, not direct unit sight), where the AI could gather the used data in a regular way.

Unless such explanations can be found, the repeatedly used statement of Solver and other beta testers, that the Civ4 does not have rule cheats (only boni) can hardly be considered true anymore. It is not a big deal and I can live with it, but why telling us it does not cheat if it does?

Because this is a bug, not the intended behavior of the AI.

[spa]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Because this is a bug, not the intended behavior of the AI.

We don't know that. We don't know anything about why the AI knows when your ships are on a resource. We just know that it happens. They might have taken a shortcut in the programming when it came to the naval game. Then again, maybe they made a change and it caused this and it's a bug. We don't know one way or the other and we won't unless someone official comments or if it gets fixed in the patch. I'm keeping my save file stored separately so that when the patch comes out I'll be able to run it and see if the AI's behaviour has changed. I'll definitely report back here with the result.

[Harovan]

If we take Arrians post into account, it looks like unintended behavior indeed. Since Arrian posts first-hand information, which I trust, and is not just parroting like others, I take a wait-and-see stance on this matter and would not be surprised, if it got fixed.

[Arrian]

To clarify... I'm not sure the AI can handle playing "truely blind." It will probably continue to "see" things it "shouldn't."

But the examples provided by you and others indicate that the behavior that results (now, anyway) is exploitable, like it was in CivIII - particularly at sea. That's a problem Soren has said publicly (in the manual afterword) that he wanted to fix. Thus, I expect it to be worked on. I know that your thread, SR, was pointed out to Soren.

Beyond that, I don't know. I don't know where it falls in terms of its priority vis-a-vis other things, and I don't know if fixing it will be possible w/o breaking other things. We'll have to wait and see.

-Arrian