I've caught them cheating again. Have you?

[LordShiva]

Well, we've already established that he's a dumbass.

[Ennet]

Did the city with no garrison have any units at the start of the war? Had Montezuma explored the site of that city before?

Originally posted by Blake
In short the AI has what is darn near full vision of all grey fog - scouted once, scouted forever.
(...)
Basically the AI pretends it doesn't cheat, like once it has decided to attack a weakly defended target it will commit to moving to that target

[Dauphin]

The AI does not cheat in terms of stealing all the goodie huts because it 'knows' where they are. Fits in with the scouting comment too.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Ennet
Did the city with no garrison have any units at the start of the war? Had Montezuma explored the site of that city before?

The one with no garrison had never had one - I was playing what appeared to be an archipelago map with snakey continents (I was playing the Shuffle map), and that city was isloated from the rest of my empire by a mountain. I never built a garrison there as I was at peace when it was founded and I was working on a lighthouse.

The one with a garrison of one Warrior had been built a long time before, and that warrior had been there since shortly after - it was my third city. It was home to a chariot I built there at one point, but I had moved it out before the war with Monty started.

Montezuma attacked me with two galleys, one with two Jaguars, the other about 5-7 turns later with a Warrior and a Jaguar. My two cities closest to him had chariots and longbowmen in them. I was worried that he might come after my undefended cities and started working on a warrior in the undefended one after he declared war, but he never did...probably because he had not scouted those cities out and wasn't aware that they were undefended.

I think it's pretty good proof the AI is not aware of the defenses of cities in the fog of war, because Monty could have easily attacked either of them but didn't. The one with only one warrior in it was a nice city with access to horses and the Colossus.

[Blake]

I now have an anecdote related to cheating to share. I just quit out of a game where I was in a lengthy war with Montezuma. I had one city with no garrison, and another with only one warrior, yet he kept sending troops to two of my cities that had longbowmen and other good defenders.

If he could see into the fog of war, why didn't he go for the cities he could have taken easily?

The AI is cunning in it's cheating

The programmers have made sure the AI cannot be easily puppeteered. Specifically for large invasions it seems to pretend that it can't see into the fog. It is and was severely harmful to be able to puppeteer the AI's entire invasion.

It only makes use of forbidden knowledge for the raider/pillager lone ranger fast-mover units, such as chariots, knights, gunships etc... it's not nearly so harmful for the human to puppeteer such units, as for a start they move a lot faster and secondly the AI doesn't have many of them at any one time - so only a small percentage of the AI forces can be puppeteered.

It may be that only one unit AI script is bugged and allowed to see into gray fog, I suspect this may be related to Barbarians – since Barbarians seem to be fulltime gray-fog maphackers, as far as I can tell the barbs can’t see into (their) black fog but they sure know what’s going on wherever they have previously scouted.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Blake





The programmers have made sure the AI cannot be easily puppeteered. Specifically for large invasions it seems to pretend that it can't see into the fog. It is and was severely harmful to be able to puppeteer the AI's entire invasion.

It only makes use of forbidden knowledge for the raider/pillager lone ranger fast-mover units, such as chariots, knights, gunships etc... it's not nearly so harmful for the human to puppeteer such units, as for a start they move a lot faster and secondly the AI doesn't have many of them at any one time - so only a small percentage of the AI forces can be puppeteered.

It may be that only one unit AI script is bugged and allowed to see into gray fog, I suspect this may be related to Barbarians – since Barbarians seem to be fulltime gray-fog maphackers, as far as I can tell the barbs can’t see into (their) black fog but they sure know what’s going on wherever they have previously scouted.

I've messed around with the AI files quite a bit, and there are different AI properties that are assigned on a per-unit basis, like UNITAI_CITY_COUNTER, UNITAI_PILLAGE, UNITAI_EXPLORE_SEA, etc. In my attempts to change the way the AI uses it's units, I've changed the weight modifiers for these for the various leaders, and found that it only seems to effect what types of units they build - if you change Montezuma from UNITAI_ATTACK to UNITAI_PILLAGE he's not going to use his units differently, he's just going to be more likely to build units that have that as one of their UNITAI values. For UNITAI_PILLAGE, that includes most mounted units and armor units, but also includes Musketmen and Riflemen.

The units that barbarians use are exactly the same as the ones the AI nations and the player use. The barbarian leaderhead file has no weight to any particular unit type, though they are restricted in what they build. A barbarian horseman has the same AI as an AI civ horseman. No difference. Based on what I've learned about how the AI controls units, I find it highly unlikely that one class of units would have access to more information than others.

I'll eat my words if a developer comes in and verifies that some types of AI units can see things they shouldn't, but it seems very unlikely. Why would the developers give this special ability to one class of units, and then hide the fact that it has this ability so thoroughly? It seems infinitely more likely that people are suffering from observer error and going to great lengths to come up with explanations as to why the AI may cheat when their real reason for this belief is just an erroneous hunch. As more and more holes are poked in the theory that the AI can see into the fog of war, more exceptions come up - "It's only barbarians" or "It's only fast units".

[Blake]

t.t

Don't doubt me.

Because unlike normal people I keep a repository of evidence for winning arguments .

Observe what happens at the city of "York" in the east of my empire.

This is not an AI visibility cheat, it's a far more blatant one - FAR more blatant. You wont be able to doubt that they cheat after watching what happens in this save.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Blake
t.t

Don't doubt me.

Because unlike normal people I keep a repository of evidence for winning arguments .

Observe what happens at the city of "York" in the east of my empire.

This is not an AI visibility cheat, it's a far more blatant one - FAR more blatant. You wont be able to doubt that they cheat after watching what happens in this save.

There's a difference between a cheating AI and a duplicatable bug. What I saw there was a group of units that treated that forest NE of York as a usable road and/or getting an extra move. An interesting glitch, but it doesn't have anything to do with what this thread is about, which is the AI being aware of things it shouldn't. One instance of some units with a movement of 1 getting to move twice does not prove anything other than the existence of a glitch.

I also noticed that if I move an archer into those woods before hitting end turn, one of the Swordsmen units moves south of the forest, then north into it to attack - again, getting two moves when it shouldn't have been able to, but then the rest of the unit doesn't get the two moves - it's like the stack as one move got to be doubled, whether it was one unit moved individually or a stack as a whole. I'm not sure why that happened, but it's not an example of a cheating AI.

BTW, have you posted this before? I'm sure the developers could figure out why this happened.

[eris]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru
I now have an anecdote related to cheating to share. I just quit out of a game where I was in a lengthy war with Montezuma. I had one city with no garrison, and another with only one warrior, yet he kept sending troops to two of my cities that had longbowmen and other good defenders.

If he could see into the fog of war, why didn't he go for the cities he could have taken easily?

That doesn't prove anything. It just means that not only do they cheat, they know when you are looking so they can make it seem like they aren't cheating.

[Badtz Maru]

I played around with your save some more, and when I started this post I thought maybe it was a glitched save or that it had been modified somehow with a hex editor...but there was a simpler explanation.

From your save point, I moved one of the units in that city into the woods, one to the east, and then one two squares to the east (SE along your road, then NE up to the border with Saladin). When I clicked 'End Turn', the French stack that could sometimes move twice disappeared. I went into the worldbuilder and couldn't find it anywhere nearby.

While I was typing that last sentence, I think I figured out what happened here. Napoleon's stack was in Saladin's territory, he had open borders with him. What probably happened was Saladin cancelled the agreement with Napoleon after the end of your turn. This teleported Napoleon's units into the nearest square that it was legal for Nappy's units to occupy, which happened to be the forest adjacent to York. Then, on Napoleon's turn, his units are right next to York and still have their one move. There you have it. I'm going to go back in and verify that Saladin no longer has open borders with Napoleon at the beginning of the next turn, but I'm sure that's it.

EDITED TO ADD: Just went in and verified that Saladin ended his Open Borders agreement with Napoleon after the end of your turn. That's how that stack was teleported into your territory and still had their move left.

[Blake]

Good catch. Now I look silly .

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Blake
Good catch. Now I look silly .

Just took a few minutes of looking at it from a different perspective. That's how it is with most cases where it looks like the AI is cheating...if you look at a situation with the assumption that the AI does cheat sometimes, you'll just assume that's what you're looking at. It's why thousands of people assumed they were seeing canals on Mars when in reality it was just an optical illusion due to the way the human eye perceives things.

I am fairly certain that all the advantages the AI has over the player have been admitted already by those who would know. That's why my first assumption when I saw your savegame was that it was a random glitch or a corrupt save. I went into Worldbuilder to see if I could see more evidence of a glitch, and I thought I did...the whole French stack was gone. I thought I saw more evidence of a glitch when I spawned some tanks in the area to use for more scouting for the missing French stack and they didn't seem to be getting as many moves as I felt they should, but I later realized that was because you didn't have the tech that increases the number of moves you get on roads yet. I got as far as starting a post saying it was a glitched save before I thought of another reason why the stack would be teleported away.

[Gen.Dragolen]

And sometimes the graphics engine just can't keep up...

Well it seems that there may also be limitations to what the game's graphics engine can do with older video cards: the "invisible unit" tactic

Was playing a game where I had an iron mine on a coastal square. Was at war with the neighbours (again) and saw an enemy galley approach and depart. Checked the city since I didn't have a big garrison, only a couple of pikemen, and didn't see any enemy units landed on my shore.

Next turn, the two horsemen the AI's galley had dropped off the previous turn proceeded to pillage my iron mine and one town. Then the "Enemy spotted near ..." message appeared and then the units appeared.

I can't believe that they would have "stealth horsemen" since this was early Renaissance Era, so score one for either my video card (GeForce4-128MB) or the game's graphic engine not being able to keep up with play.

Kinda like getting sand in your shorts at the beach. The most important part being that you are at the beach and not someplace like work... it is just a game afterall.


D.

[DrSpike]

I would like to see the rest of Blake's repository to see whether other examples can be explained away.