Cheatery of the highest order!

[djpsychonaut]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
Not sure what’s that’s about. A guess in the dark is it could be in response to Barbs kicking the crap out of the AI and destroying entire Civs before the game even gets up and running.

I agree with TheArsenal on this... it's most likely a way to ensure that the AI civs are creamed by the Barbarians. In prior versions of Civ, the Barbarians have never been this fierce... Usually early on in the game, the Barbarians are my primary enemy... not any one civ.

[Diplomatic]

Originally posted by djpsychonaut


I agree with TheArsenal on this... it's most likely a way to ensure that the AI civs are creamed by the Barbarians. In prior versions of Civ, the Barbarians have never been this fierce... Usually early on in the game, the Barbarians are my primary enemy... not any one civ.

An alternative solution though, could have been to program the barbarian AI not to attack computer-controlled cities for the first x amount of turns...

No reason it HAS to resort to the current method, even on Noble. There were probably several other ways they could have dealt with the barbarian issue without impacting or "cheating" the human player in the process.

[Drachasor]

I have seen barbarians walk right past the AI to attack me. They seem to prefer human players.

-Drachasor

[Blake]

I've seen the barbarians walk right past me to attack AI's. In fact I've seen several barbarians in a row do it, walking right past my improvements to pillage an AI's dye plantation.

[Grumbold]

Its been discussed a lot in a previous thread and it does look like the AI gets a bonus to its first build in each new city. Its enough to make a big difference when you're right in the early stages which helps to explain the AIs good early performance which you then overtake when it starts playing by th same rules as you do but can't do it as intelligently.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Premek
I should add that this was on the Noble difficulty level, and I'm mad 'cause I thought that the AI wasn't supposed to pull stunts like these any more, but here we are. Boo!

(and the fact that we started so close together might itself be a bug)

You have found two things.

One, there was some effort put in to ensure against early warrior rushes of AI's. I would assume the extra warriors were for that purpose.

Two, a bug. There is no way you should have started that close to another civ.

[notyoueither]

It might not be giving too much away to say that during betas, a cheesy way to win was to find an AI near you with your first warrior. Go in, attack, win, and have two start positions (which tend to be richer than most other sites). Or lose and quit.

I am not shocked to see the AI get a defense against this, since it was identified as a problem. I would challenge any of you players out there to lose a game where you had two starting cities by the end of turn 10 or 20.

[Grumbold]

Having had one game where the first two camps popped a settler each, I'd have to agree

[Tiberius]

But then they (Firaxis) should document this and make it public.
No one would complain (or very few) that the AI starts with an extra warrior, if the purpose is clearly defined.
When they say that human and the AI are even on Noble, and then we find out that the AI gets free units, pays less maintenance and so on, I am not surprised that people are upset.

Keep it secret and you will hear " boo, cheating!" every other day.

Are there any other "secrets" hidden and waiting for the players to find them and cry foul? I'd appreciate to know what I am playing against.

[Gunter]

Am I right telling that from medium to higher difficulty levels civ IV relies only on the amount of cheating made by the pc evading even very basic game rules ?

This is beeing masqueraded by Fireaxians in a very kiddy way


Gunter

[Aileron]

The AIs get 10 hammers in their first city as soon as they found it. I don't know about the math not adding up, or whatever, but this is what I did and what I saw:

- Start a custom game where you're on the same "team" as all the AIs, Noble, Standard size Continents map
- Play one turn
- Look in all AI cities (no need to use Worldbuilder because you're on the same team)
- The AIs have 10 hammers plus something (the something is 1, 2 or 3 depending on terrain and civ traits I think)
- Keep going, they get 1st warrior way before you do, so your warrior rush = bad

I don't know if they get 10 hammers in every city they create, or just the first one.

[Aileron]

Originally posted by Gunter
Am I right telling that from medium to higher difficulty levels civ IV relies only on the amount of cheating made by the pc evading even very basic game rules ?

This is beeing masqueraded by Fireaxians in a very kiddy way


Gunter

There have been a lot of other threads on why making good AI is hard, and why AI needs to get bonuses/cheats, and about the bonuses/cheats that the human gets on low levels too, etc...*but* I also think Firaxis could have been more explicit in their public comments, and the little blurb on page whatever of the manual.

They could have just said something like: We think Noble gives the most balanced game play human vs. AI, but the AI does get bonuses on every difficulty level. We felt this was necessary for these reasons: xxxx (to prevent AI from being wiped-out early, compensate for weakness here or there, whatever, I don't know what their reasons were. I'm sure they debated long and hard over them, and thought their final decisions were good, but it would be nice to know their reasoning).

[Dis]

and btw this was not in civ3. A good strategy in the Sengoku scenario (in the conquests expansino) was to use your King unit to conquer a few nearby civs to give you more expansion room. A bit risky though since if you lose your King unit, you lose the game.

[rockhopper]

HA HA...

Ha Ha...

Originally posted by Diplomatic


An alternative solution though, could have been to program the barbarian AI not to attack computer-controlled cities for the first x amount of turns...

The same people would be screaming about this as cheating as well!!!!!!

[Diplomatic]

So? Yes people will scream no matter what. I don't really see how pointing out an alternative is really that funny...

Ultimately though, Firaxis makes the choice on what and how to implement game design and I am very happy with the game. If other people want to scream about silly stuff, let them! It doesn't affect our lives in the least.