Huge AI Cheat! =(

[padillah]

Originally posted by MxM
Or another option: express you view here and hope that Firaxis understand our frustration and improve AI, so that it does not need to cheat on normal level.

That's what I am trying to communicate: in this day and age you are not going to make a "true AI" that can honestly compete with a human.

There is no such thing.

Your statement above is akin to complaining that the spaceship you build is not truely space-worthy. Well, no kidding. There are no ships currently in use that can reach Alpha Centari. Yet this bit of fantasy no one has a problem with.

Unless you guys really thought you were playing against a real person? Do you really think there exist, anywhere on this planet, AI's that can compete intelectually with an adult human?

I'm begining to think you really believe all the media and movie hype about computers gaining consciousness and taking over the world.

This is as good as it gets. Which, in my humble opinion, is pretty dang good.

Tom P.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Kel Valis
I see what you guys are saying.
I guess for me I just thought if they told me exactly what the AI bonuses were it would be that much easier to counter them.
I've achieved victory on Noble (normal) and lost a space race by 3 turns on Prince. I have also read post by people who have won on Monarch and Immortal, so I don't think it makes it impossible, just harder like its supposed to.

Yeah. On Noble you can afford to make a mistake in the build order. Send your workers clear across the country to do something then drag them all the way back.

On Diety: NO.

Tom P.

[Gutz]

Been a while since I posted but here goes!

If these were real civs would they know exactly what their neighbors had? I personally prefer to not know what bonuses the AI has over me as that is part of the challenge. In fact I think they should randomize several bonuses based on civ and leader traits to make it that much more random (if they aren't already ) I don't think of it so much as a bonus as I think of it as my civ starting out a little later in time and them having a bit of a head-start on me (as in real history) and my having to play smarter than them to make up for it.

[Gunter]

Originally posted by LzPrst
@ padillah

if youve read the posts about the civ4 game from the producers, one of the things they've done is make the AI better, for example by removing obvious cheats. we are now discovering that this is not really true, except on the lowest levels and therefore WE RANT! maybe you like being lied to, but personally I find it slightly infuriating. this was a quality of civ3 that most people hated, and we were promised that the days of obvious AI cheats were over and done with. and what do we find?

one thing I discovered recently is a strong difference between older games and newer ones. I decided to be a little nostalgic and play an old sid meier classic. Railroad Tycoon. what I discovered was that the AI was quite crappy, but the game itself was quite hard. also, a look at civ1 made me realize that the old games were harder to succeed at on your own, not requiring too much from the AI. if keeping your civ afloat was the most difficult aspect of civ4, there would be no need for the AI to get free units and food. and it would also make the game more interesting.

i think a lot of the frustration of gamers today is exactly that games have become too simple and too easy, leaving the AI to be overrun by the superior human intelligence. games today rarely keep my interest for more than a few weeks, even MMORPGs havent been able to keep me interested for more than a few months. the reason? too easy = quickly boring.

make civ harder!

Exactly ! Firaxians are publishing the fact that the AI doesn't cheat in a dramatic way.... et voilà...the situation seems worst than civ 3, the AI now seems to double fishes and bread like Jesus was supposed to made during his miracle period.

CIV IV players are supposed to play against miracle man ? What'an interesting challenge


Gunter

P.S. : Railroad Tycoon ? Those were real games

[padillah]

Maybe I'm just jaded but I can't see how you ever expected the AI to play without bonuses.

Did you really think there were 9 different AI's? I'm sorry, 9 AI's for each Civ that's... 162 different AI's?

Com'on guys. You're talking about a $50 game. Are you still pissed about the Easter Bunny and Santa?

And who made the statement that the AI doesn't cheat? I never saw that from anyone but a person complaining.

Firaxis said that it doesn't see through the fog and doesn't see "hidden" resources until it's time. That is NOT "Doesn't Cheat". That's "Doesn't cheat like it did before". Those are two different statements.

Tom P.

[Gunter]

I understand your point of view, an AI must be simulated and the only way is to cheat.

There are anyway several ways to cheat, knowing in advance resources was the worst one but also producing almost three times what a human can afford is the same IMO. Scandal !!

How can you FEEL playing against a tricked calculator ?

Maybe like Kasparov against a Deep Blue that play chess with its own rules


Gunter

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Gunter
the AI now seems to double fishes and bread like Jesus was supposed to made during his miracle period.

Are you referring to the screenshot above? If so, I think Arrian just demystified that one.

Maybe like Kasparov against a Deep Blue that play chess with its own rules

People have said that Civ is 100 times more complex than chess. I expect it's 1000 or 10000 times more complicated.

[Dubhghlas]

A couple of thoughts:

1. You will notice that the original poster, after claiming how wrong it was to allow the AI to "cheat" without telling us that it does, shut up once it was pointed out that the manual DOES say the AI gets advantages. He hasn't posted since. He got the message.

2. You simply are never going to get game AI's that are able to compare to human decision-making. Chess is an unfair comparison. Not only is it a relatively simple game by comparison (only 6 different types of pieces, limited move options, and a 64x64 board, not to mention limited to two players, etc.), but it has had a whole host of people working to program an AI for it for the last 50+ years. I remember the first chess programs; they were abominable; relative newbies could beat them. Now, if the computer had started with TWO queens...

We don't have the resources to produce AI's that can compete with humans, yet, for games like this. So, to make them competitive, you have to let them "cheat." The Civ games have done a better job of this than most; by comparison, a game like Europa Universalis is easy to beat in single play mode once you have any decent skill at all, no matter what hardness setting you have it on.

[-Ab-]

Com'on guys. You're talking about a $50 game. Are you still pissed about the Easter Bunny and Santa?

but then i dont beleive either of them took $50 off you

[-Ab-]

if civ is so much more complex than chess why is it that when somebody plays chess they sit and ponder every move sometimes for quite a while
where as in civ you breeze thru it in no time
once you have learned the path thru the game very little thought is required

[padillah]

Originally posted by -Ab-
if civ is so much more complex than chess why is it that when somebody plays chess they sit and ponder every move sometimes for quite a while
where as in civ you breeze thru it in no time
once you have learned the path thru the game very little thought is required

Are you honestly asking "Why, if the computer can't think better than I can, is it easy for me to beat it"?

Chess on a computer is harder for most people (and believe me, grandmasters are not part of that group) exactly because it is simpler and the computer can get closer to simply "forcing" itself to know more about chess than you.

It doesn't use an AI, it uses a weighted point system developed by chess masters over the last 30+ years. It simply thinks of all the possible moves it can and takes the "best" one, point-wise. It's not trying to "fake you out" or "make you nervous about your queen".

It also is not wasting time breathing, looking at the board, translating visual stimuli into a representation of the board, trying to visualise the board "in it's head", thinking about where to get lunch when this is over, wondering if that lady in the third row... but I digress.

The chess processors are so good precisely because they are relating to a simplistic set of rules that can be followed unerringly. In CIV it's not that way, no given move can be said to have lost a game for someone.

I have a post around here asking why the path findder sent my warrior halfway down the map rather than have him simply walk across. The answer was that the route picked squares with trees so as to take advantage of the defensive bonus. Now, if I had simply moved them across, in the non-tree area, would I have been wrong? No... unless a barb came up and killed me.

Tom P.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by -Ab-
if civ is so much more complex than chess why is it that when somebody plays chess they sit and ponder every move sometimes for quite a while
where as in civ you breeze thru it in no time
once you have learned the path thru the game very little thought is required

That depends on the player, their playstyle, and the difficulty level. Some people finish a civ game in a few hours, others in a few dozen hours. Many civ players spend ages checking and micromanaging every city on every turn, checking diplomacy, checking the stats screen, studying graphs, analysing the map & tech tree, formulating strategies ...

[padillah]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
That depends on the player, their playstyle, and the difficulty level. Some people finish a civ game in a few hours, others in a few dozen hours. Many civ players spend ages checking and micromanaging every city on every turn, checking diplomacy, checking the stats screen, studying graphs, analysing the map & tech tree, formulating strategies ...

And some, like me, are simply so bad at it they never get a chance to finish a game.

Tom P.

[vulture]

Originally posted by -Ab-
if civ is so much more complex than chess why is it that when somebody plays chess they sit and ponder every move sometimes for quite a while
where as in civ you breeze thru it in no time
once you have learned the path thru the game very little thought is required

You're mixing up difficulty for humans with difficulty for computers.

Computationally, chess is vastly simpler than civ, and so is susceptible to brute force approaches to analysis. Civ is far too complex for that, so a different approach is needed.

Humans simply don't work like that. When they do try and search through the possible permutations, they are expectionally bad at it in all but the simplest cases. What they do very well though is pattern recognition, abstract reasoning, and common sense. We don't need to look at every possible outcome. It is blindingly obvious to even the most dense person that some moves are just stupid. We can make long term plans simply by virtue of understanding what is relevant to that plan, and what can be ignored. It is something so intuitively simple to us that most of us just can't understand how insanely difficult it is to program a computer to do the same task (or just how much 'procesing power' our brains use to do this stuff).

Computers make a good match for chess simply because humans and computers, using their massively different approaches and strengths, happen to be able to play at about the same level. This isn't the case for civ - tactics for the game are easy for humans to reach, and incredibly difficult for computers.

[vee4473]

I think the original poster, and rightly so, meant that he was on the so called "even playing field" difficulty level, right?

and found out that it isn't so even.

arguing about this is a bit moot, since I don't think he meant that the ai shouldn't get bonuses on the higher levels, just that it was a surprise to see them get the bonuses on the supposed "even" level, hence the disgust.

Had he been on deity or something, I doubt he would have found it to be a surprise, and therefore wouldn't have posted anything.

i could be wrong.

edit: nevermind, i forgot this example was on prince, i thought he meant noble.