AI Cheating?

[Maquiladora]

You're comparing an AI that sees everything on the map every turn, gets infinite movement on RR's to defend anywhere at once and only has to attack/defend with one big pile of units, to an AI that gets 1/5 movement on RR, has to build armies consisting of 4 different speciality of unit (att/def/rang/flank) and stack them into 12 units and can only see what its units can see?

[vmxa1]

Well actually the RR is not a cheat as they players have it as well.

As to CTP 1 or 2, they stunk.

[Maquiladora]

Well actually the RR is not a cheat as they players have it as well.

I didnt say it was a cheat, its the taking away of some strategic thinking to help the AI defend.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
I didnt say it was a cheat, its the taking away of some strategic thinking to help the AI defend.

RR is a poor example. The human player exploits the advantages of RR much more effectively than the AI ever could. It actually allows the human player to defend just as effectively with a lot less units than the AI needs.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
You're comparing an AI that sees everything on the map every turn, gets infinite movement on RR's to defend anywhere at once and only has to attack/defend with one big pile of units, to an AI that gets 1/5 movement on RR, has to build armies consisting of 4 different speciality of unit (att/def/rang/flank) and stack them into 12 units and can only see what its units can see?

I'm comparing an AI (artifical intelligence), that heroically defends its cities (even though it often overdos the rushing and drafting), with an AI (artifical idiot), that moves all defenders out of a city in danger and leaves it undefended. And this has nothing to do with the fact what it sees and what not.

What concerns your RR argument... tse... nice deception in a thread about cheats and a discussion about cheats. No wonder that it was caught so quick.

[Maquiladora]

As i said, the CtP2 AI has to deal with a great deal more strategic thinking, moving and stacking the right units together, moving via unblocked roads into threatened cities, or towards targets. You cant compare that to an AI that all it has to do is see your units coming from anywhere build units and move them in one turn inside the city. The fact that Cradle IS equally as competitive as civ3 AI (if not more) shows that you dont need to take away strategic thinking to get a competitive AI, not to mention an AI that attacks where you dont expect it to.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
The fact that Cradle IS equally as competitive as civ3 AI (if not more) shows that you dont need to take away strategic thinking to get a competitive AI, not to mention an AI that attacks where you dont expect it to.

Cradle does this by boldly cheating (much more than the Civ3 AI does). So what exactly is your point?

[Maquiladora]

Which is bolder, getting resources bonuses (as all civ games do) or knowing every tile on the map from turn 0 onwards?

We're going around in circles really.

[Harovan]

Yes. Perhaps you should go and spam your source code cafe, as usual.

[Maquiladora]

You seem to have dropped your handbag.

[Harovan]

I just have to work. You know, that is what one gets money for. If you'd try it too, you could buy a new game now and then, instead of sitting with the old rubbish.

[Maquiladora]

I'm disappointed. Oh well, i'll see you in sourcecode cafe sometime.

[Harovan]

You have enough coders. I do enough coding at work and prefer to relax in my spare time, so participation is out. Therefor all I do is to lurk your forums, at most once a week. You hardly will see me posting there.

[Theseus]

WTF are you guys talking about?

On topic: I was in a meeting today, and a prospective client was describing how throught the use of barcodes and RFIDs, the industrial parts clients of his firm were able to track and automatically re-order parts when hitting a min stockhold, thus never running out. Well, that's great customer value. But better, he said, was that this allowed his firm to have a better picture of upcoming orders, thus minimizing reserve inventory and further increasing inventory turns. IOW, better transparency of information is a huge win-win for them and their customers. (BTW, this is the ultimate goal of Wal-mart's RFID initiative, which will even further benefit consumers). This company, btw, kicks mofo *ss.

So, in the middle of this meeting, where I'm the lead presenter, btw, what did I do?

I thought of Civ3.

Who has the greatest transparency of information? The AI civs, of course. To what end? Well, not to *excel* past its competitors, but to make up for shortcomings against the human player.

Is that cheating? Naw... it's just what the commercial state-of-the-art game developer has to do.

So then, of course, I told the prospect client that they should use the production Pillar to gain a branch lead in Replaceable Parts, and do an Infantry Rush.

[Antrine]

I am lost with all this rambling, however I detect some humor in the last post.

And so to start a little controversy, maybe since these boards have thinned out the last few months, I state, that with all the modding I have been doing and play-testing there from that AI cheating should be institutionalized and brought into the editor as a game design crutch. I know, I know you all just love the idea and believe Firaxis will not overly use it. However, I am speaking here of modders who do not have access to AI routines and therefore hampered as far as improving the AI’s performance.

Players may cry, but hey, they almost always cry…

So I am saying for now let us just put these AI cheating options in the Game Editor and I will simply disclose to prospective players, that AI cheating you are experiencing is the next best thing to Artificial Intelligence.

Sincerely,
I think ….