I've caught them cheating again. Have you?

[Will9]

Recently during a war with Rome my workers were a good distance within my borders reparing damage. Once one worker was three squares behind my border and he is not on the coast. So there was no way they could have seen it and a gunship goes in my land and kills my worker. They had to have cheated to know were my worker was.

[Qwertqwert]

He could have just been checking the area and seen your worker and decided to kill it.

[Will9]

They had no unit my land and their fighters were all attacking my units in their land.

[Metaliturtle]

I think the AI is working exactly as programmed, and thus it did not cheat

[Tattila the Hun]

Target of opportunity.

Stupid workers doing stuff by the border during war.

[rah]

Maybe the gunship was scouting and got lucky.
I do it so it's not so unbelievable that the AI did.

[DrSpike]

Except that it's been shown that the AI knows where to look.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Metaliturtle
I think the AI is working exactly as programmed, and thus it did not cheat

Quite simply, the AI is prgrammed to be able to accomplish things that a human player cannot do in order to keep up with the human's ingenuity.

[Dauphin]

When judgement day comes and AIs, computers and robots attempt to take out humanity in a global war of extermination they will be in for a big shock when they come across the alien concept known to many a gamer as 'fog of war'.

[DrSpike]

They will also wonder where their production bonuses went.

[Blake]

Yup. The AI cheats.
Mostly it tries to hide it though.

[Badtz Maru]

We don't know nearly enough about this scenario to know if it was truly cheating. There's several possible explanations.

The gunship might have had the promotion that increases visibility range and been on a hill.

The worker may have been within the visual range of a city with a religion the AI founded.

The worker may have been within the visual range of a spy or a submarine.

The gunship may have been heading that direction anyway and saw the worker after crossing the border (probably the most likely).

The only thing I've seen that makes me think the AI may 'cheat' is when it suggests what appears to be an inferior city site that turns out to be the perfect site after later resources are discovered. I've also never seen the AI recomend a city site on a square with a special resource that turns up later. That's not quite cheating, though, as the human has the benefit of this too.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by Blake
Yup. The AI cheats.
Mostly it tries to hide it though.

I've seen it do a couple of curly things before, but nothing that really distracts from the game.

I do think that the AI "knows" where your troops are though.

[Badtz Maru]

I thought of another way the AI might have known the worker was there - the AI might have had an air unit perform a recon flight over the area - that reveals a LOT of area.

I don't understand why everyone is so quick to assume that the AI had to have known the worker was there before crossing the border, though. Workers usually build improvements near cities. Gunships often head towards cities to pillage improvements near them. I think the most likely option is that the gunship was heading that way already...there's been MANY times when I sent a fast unit into enemy territory and then saw a target of opportunity like that.

[Dauphin]

If it was an isolated occurence, sure it may have been scouted out. However experience has shown time and time again that the AI always knows exactly the best place to go to get the undefended city or worker units.