I've caught them cheating again. Have you?

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Dauphin



You think this behaviour is limited to planes and gunships?

I've seen many units beeline for the least defended/undefended city rather than the well defended one, even though the quantity of defence is unknown in both, a disproportionate number of times. It can lead to useful honeypotting.

It's cheating to bypass a strongly defended city and look for easier targets farther in?

[LordShiva]

This one time, I declared war on the AI because he didn't give me a demand for a tech, so he reloaded the save from the previous turn and then gifted me the tech

[Blaupanzer]

You station undefended workers 3 squares from the border in wartime and complain if you are caught, calling it cheating. I don't put workers anywhere near aggressive states' borders without defenders, even when we are at peace!

Someone else complains because the AI bypasses strongly defended border cities "making a beeline for less defended interior ones." The interior ones are much more valuable in most cases.

It sounds to me like the programmers have done an excellent job in programming the AI Civs. Note that barbs self-destruct on archers on meaningless forested hills and yet the civ troops bypass obstacles intent on treasure, and you realize how much effort is put into these programs. We exploit the AIs all the time and don't call it cheating. Learn to play the game given that the AIs have a much better intelligence network than you do. This is really all part of the challenge, the fun.

[Will9]

Maybe I need to re-explan this. We had been at war for while. Once my better troops drove them out of my land my workers came out of cities and started to repare the damage the Romans had caused. By this time my troops were in their land, so the AI usally would send their gunships to destroy my modern armors. Now I have seen many times when the AI attacks your cities instead of attacking units in their territory. Usally they go into my land and find out the odds are low when attacking my cities so they start pillaging, but usally they pillage the squares under them. This time they completly bypassed the squares that were on the border, and went straight passed a city to a square that had already pillaged were my worker was.

[Bkeela]

I still feel there is something odd with the odds. I can't help feeling like a miracle has occurred when I win a battle with anything less than 100%.

50% pretty much means I have absolutely zero chance of winning the conflict.

60%-80% is a very, very grave risk. Pretty much if you are depending on the outcome of a battle with a single unit remaining, you will lose.

90% is fairly risky. 19 times out of 20 you will lose (okay, I'm exagerrating, but that is what it feels like.

In 8 months of solid play, I've only pulled off one miraculous victory with a very low probablity - this is despite sending wave after wave of weak units against tougher ones. Yet the AI pulls such victories out of its arsehole regularly.

[Blake]

Listen carefully.

The AI does cheat

In short the AI has what is darn near full vision of all grey fog - scouted once, scouted forever.

The AI is cunning in it's cheating

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 - the human can't "puppeteer" the AI by shifting defense levels. (Note: The AI makes a new decision upon reaching the target, if it's no longer weakly defended it might pillage instead.)

It's fairly trivial to prove the AI cheats, but only by cheating yourself

By reloading and shifting around defense levels in areas currently fogged to the AI it is easy to change the AI's moves in a predictable way. Without reloading it's hard to prove that the AI wasn't going to "Just do that move anyway" but reloading provides undeniable proof that the AI makes decisions based on things it shouldn't be able to see.

This is true, but you don't have to be bothered by it.

As a human you can generally make much better decisions, you have better means to gather intelligence such as sentry units and pre-invasion open-border shenanigans. The AI decision making is still pathetic even with cheating. The important thing is that the AI can't be pupeteered, the cheating doesn't impair its performance. The cheating also doesn't render any aspect of gameplay unusable for the human player (the AI can't see invisible units or anything). The cheating is really nothing to be bothered by, from the perspective of the AI a much bigger cheat is human planning, which AI's are unable to do. Be thankful you have a brain.

[yin26]

Any thoughts on the whole combat odds business? I've never been bothered by the outcomes. I think people tend to remember the "bad" results and don't really understand what percentages mean. For example, it's entirely possible to lose dozens of 50% battles in a row...over the long run, you'll win 50% of those battles but might not remember the wins.

However, if something is wrong with the battle calculations, that's another thing.

[Arrian]

I've had bad runs of luck in hard-fought wars that really pissed me off, but once I calm down & step back from it I remember the close battles that went MY way. I'm sure it evens out.

I've won battles with very low chances of victory (usually catapults softening cities). Since I typically avoid attacking with a less than 50% chance of winning, I see less of those than I see of the good-odds losses.

-Arrian

[Blake]

The combat system is fundamentally unfair, but there is no bias in favor of the AI.

[Harovan]

The AI does cheat and it has been proven a couple of times, although I have my silent fun to watch how rabidly it is defended by the, erm, ventilator lads.

However, it does little with the information gained this unlawful way. Heck, it does little with the information gained in a lawful way. For example, if I am gathering an attacking stack on a tile next to the border, a blind (hu)man with a stick would understand, that I am going to attack and accordingly raise the defenses in the nearby cities and strongpoints (like hills etc). I have yet to see the AI doing anything rudimentary similar.

That said, even though I know that the AI cheats, it does not bother me the slightest.

[yin26]

Originally posted by Blake
The combat system is fundamentally unfair, but there is no bias in favor of the AI.

Have you written on this elsewhere? Or would you like to share your thoughts on that? I have never been much impressed by the combat system, mind you, though I wonder what the changes could be for an XP? On the positive side, I do like the promotions mechanic.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Bkeela
I still feel there is something odd with the odds. I can't help feeling like a miracle has occurred when I win a battle with anything less than 100%.

50% pretty much means I have absolutely zero chance of winning the conflict.

60%-80% is a very, very grave risk. Pretty much if you are depending on the outcome of a battle with a single unit remaining, you will lose.

90% is fairly risky. 19 times out of 20 you will lose (okay, I'm exagerrating, but that is what it feels like.

In 8 months of solid play, I've only pulled off one miraculous victory with a very low probablity - this is despite sending wave after wave of weak units against tougher ones. Yet the AI pulls such victories out of its arsehole regularly.

I know from reading the boards many agree with you anecdotally. Unfortunately, all proper tests of the combat model have shown that this is not the case. I know which side I'm believing.

[rah]

Yes, the combat odds seem pretty good as a predicter.
I've been trying some queque(sp?) rush games.
So it's usually 2 to take out a city fortifed archer so I'm doing alot of attacks in the 10 to 30% success range and win quite a few of them. (of course then I lose on the next one that i'm 74% on.) So now i just get annoyed when my top experienced units lose going in at over 98%. 00 does get rolled 1 % of the time.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Blake
Listen carefully.

The AI does cheat

Have the developers confirmed this? Considering how many ways there are to gather information without opponents being aware of it (i.e. recon flights, religion, spies, submarines, caravels that dart in and out of range within a turn, etc.), it's pretty hard to be certain the AI is cheating - and it's not like the developers have a record of lying about the AI's cheats. Haven't they always admitted that the AI in Civ3 could see in the fog of war? And haven't they said that in Civ4 the AI can't?

I think a lot of people blow off intelligence gathering techniques as useless and assume that the AI does too. If I have airplanes and I'm fighting a war, I'm going to do recon flights every turn. If I have submarines and spies, they are going to be lurking in enemy territory watching them. I think the AI probably does this too.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru


It's cheating to bypass a strongly defended city and look for easier targets farther in?

It is when you don't know that it's strongly defended. If you noted in my post I did say that the AI goes to the city with the least units, regardless of whether it can see what is in the cities in question or not. It is also worth noting that I said nothing about bypassing, geography is not that important.