Does the AI "know" what I can see?

[senowen]

I don't know if anyone knows the answer to this question, but I was wondering if the AI knows what parts of the map that I can and cannot see? I ask this because it seems that whenever I'm about to get attacked, the AI stacks troops somewhere out of my line of sight. Even if I keep troops stationed in allied cities, the AI will stack troops within the territory of a neighbor I have no open borders with. Moreover, during war, a few AI units with multiple moves always seem to come out of nowhere to pillage lightly guarded areas. I've come to the conclusion that the AI must "know" what I can see and exploits that advantage. Is this paranoia, am I just not seeing the picture correctly, or am I right? If I am right its not a huge problem, after all the AI needs some advantages, I just want to know if I am making some mistake in guarding my borders from pillagers. I can't seem to afford to both keep a huge force guarding the borders and make a counter-attack.

[Will9]

AFAIK the AI doesn't know where your line of sight ends.

The AI knows where to pillage because once they explore something, the fog of war never sets over it.

[Nacht]

Within your own borders, you can calculate which plots the AI could possibly see, around his borders you can calculate which plots the AI surely sees. For the rest of the map, if you have a unit somewhere you can often be reasonably sure whether or not it's spotted, especially when it is on a hill.

It wouldn't be cheating if the AI used that knowledge, I doubt however that is does.

[senowen]

The AI knows where to pillage because once they explore something, the fog of war never sets over it.

I should have known that one. Even with vanilla CivIV I've had to station ships, with +1 line of sight, spaced out along my entire coastline to avoid suprise attacks. Before I did this I would get suprised by enemy ships coming in and destroying my fisheries. However, to my suprise after I started stationing ships out to sea, no more suprise attacks, at all. I wouldn't even see enemy ships coming in to check out the area. However, if the AI is able know that I have ships stationed there because they don't have fog of war, then they could calculate where my ships can see and avoid those areas. That is a significant advantage both at sea and on land, but not a major concern. I've not really concerned with AI "cheating" to a certain extent, but I do like to know what the AI has that I do not. If you know what your enemy's tactical advantages are, you can avoid them or negative them.

So the answer to my question is that the AI probably does not specifically know where my fog of war starts, but in a way, does know what I can see because they know where all my troops are stationed.

[Virdrago]

The AI knows where your troops are when:

A) It has a religion in a city of yours, they own the Holy City, and have converted to it;

B) There is a spy in your ranks;

C) A AI unit has moved into the line of sight of some (or a lot) of your troops. The AI checks the Powergraph every turn. If it knows what your relative strength is, and knows where most of your units are, they then know where most of your units aren't. So they go there.

D) With regards to pillaging, as long as they have an up-to-date map (map trading), you will see units showing up and pillaging areas out of where the main action is and behind your lines.

I don't believe that they have no fog-of-war. They just calculate things, well, like a computer.

Hope this helps.

[senowen]

Originally posted by Virdrago
C) A AI unit has moved into the line of sight of some (or a lot) of your troops. The AI checks the Powergraph every turn. If it knows what your relative strength is, and knows where most of your units are, they then know where most of your units aren't. So they go there.

This actually makes the most sense in explaining the behind the lines pillaging phenomenon and is probably the correct explanation for most of the suprise attacks at weakly defended areas. If the AI did not have fog of war, they would always attack the weakest defended city they could reach, but this often does not happen.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Virdrago
C) A AI unit has moved into the line of sight of some (or a lot) of your troops. The AI checks the Powergraph every turn. If it knows what your relative strength is, and knows where most of your units are, they then know where most of your units aren't. So they go there.

The AI is by far not that sophisticated, not even in Blake's version.

It would mean taking the powergraph (which is only used to compare strenghts), substracting the population and tech components of it, estimating the average city garrison strength (which can vary wildly in the case of a human player), concluding that most of your strength is indeed in that stack, otherwise it would have to make an educated guess about where the others are and educated guesses aren't really the AI's forte. None of those calculations are done.

All the AI does while trying to reach your city is checking which plots are the least dangerous, ie. plots that cannot be attacked by you the next turn and plots with the highest defense modifiers.

[Virdrago]

I agree that the AI isn't that sophisticated. I should have explained better. I meant that the AI knows in general about where your troops are now, and sends a couple units around to go after the resources/cottages in an area they know has been improved, say, on another part of your border, away from their lands. And your units. So while their main army is battling yours, you have to get some other units to take these new units out, or lose resources.

I may not have explained better, but I hope I did.