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Victim of AI cheating??? Read this for an eyeful.
Rumble time regarding the computer AI:
In order to learn the system (and see how the computer AI works) I'll often 'cheat' and load autosaves to redo a couple dozen or hundred years. I'm playing as the Persians, and doing pretty darned well on Regent level. After wiping out the Babylonians and the Zulus with an unbeatable battalion of Persian Immortals, the Russians (located on a completely separate continent) started sending Galleys loaded with your standard veteran warriors and/or spearmen--no match for my Immortals.
Anyway, I noticed something highly suspect about the AI in the process of beating back the occasional mini-wannabee-horde. Bear in mind for the sake of the argument that I was at war with the Russian when this happened, and they had no knowledge of the continent I'd taken over (meaning they hadn't scouted it).
The Russians dropped a warrior + settler off in a fringe area and built a city. This is not only annoying, it's also not handled as well as in Civ2. Competing Civs--whether they're expansionist or not--tend to build cities in absolutely any square that your culture is not, without regard for the 21 square "rule" on either side (meaning they'll build in any odd spot, even when it's to their disadvantage).
Grumbling aside, the Russians built the city, and I dispatched one of my Immortals from one of my own nearby cities to invade the upstart Russian city. One turn later, a Russian Galley popped up along the coast next to the city from which I'd just dispatched my Immortal and unloaded several warriors. The Immortal had been the only unit defending the city--careless, I know. One turn later, the city was overtaken. I stopped and reloaded an older autosave to rectify my recklessness.
This time, I kept the Immortal in the city and started building backups. Sure enough, on the same turn, the Russian boat Russian boat pulled up to the coast a few squares from my city...but this time it continued on its merry way...
...which brings me to the problem. That's flat out, poker-faced cheating. Without embassies and all the other special agreements, and certainly while you're at war, you're not supposed to be able to play peek-a-boo with enemy cities.
The AI targeted that city from a couple dozen squares out (at sea) based on some kind of internal process that directs it to the weakest spots in your Civ.
That's a serious problem, folks. For me, anyway. It means the AI's tracking your weak and strong spots on the sly.
In order to learn the system (and see how the computer AI works) I'll often 'cheat' and load autosaves to redo a couple dozen or hundred years. I'm playing as the Persians, and doing pretty darned well on Regent level. After wiping out the Babylonians and the Zulus with an unbeatable battalion of Persian Immortals, the Russians (located on a completely separate continent) started sending Galleys loaded with your standard veteran warriors and/or spearmen--no match for my Immortals.
Anyway, I noticed something highly suspect about the AI in the process of beating back the occasional mini-wannabee-horde. Bear in mind for the sake of the argument that I was at war with the Russian when this happened, and they had no knowledge of the continent I'd taken over (meaning they hadn't scouted it).
The Russians dropped a warrior + settler off in a fringe area and built a city. This is not only annoying, it's also not handled as well as in Civ2. Competing Civs--whether they're expansionist or not--tend to build cities in absolutely any square that your culture is not, without regard for the 21 square "rule" on either side (meaning they'll build in any odd spot, even when it's to their disadvantage).
Grumbling aside, the Russians built the city, and I dispatched one of my Immortals from one of my own nearby cities to invade the upstart Russian city. One turn later, a Russian Galley popped up along the coast next to the city from which I'd just dispatched my Immortal and unloaded several warriors. The Immortal had been the only unit defending the city--careless, I know. One turn later, the city was overtaken. I stopped and reloaded an older autosave to rectify my recklessness.
This time, I kept the Immortal in the city and started building backups. Sure enough, on the same turn, the Russian boat Russian boat pulled up to the coast a few squares from my city...but this time it continued on its merry way...
...which brings me to the problem. That's flat out, poker-faced cheating. Without embassies and all the other special agreements, and certainly while you're at war, you're not supposed to be able to play peek-a-boo with enemy cities.
The AI targeted that city from a couple dozen squares out (at sea) based on some kind of internal process that directs it to the weakest spots in your Civ.
That's a serious problem, folks. For me, anyway. It means the AI's tracking your weak and strong spots on the sly.
Still, I'm an imperfect human, not a number-crunching supercomputer. I'll worry about computer AI "equal rights" in a couple hundred years, not now. 
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