Victim of AI cheating??? Read this for an eyeful.

[Diety]

First, like previous posters said, a good AI is still years away. Believe it or not, even the dumbest players are smarter then the AI. That includes even a november 2001 newbie

Second, also like others, I don't like the fact that AI cheats. Somehow I consider it unfair : you have to fight with the same weapons. But even though I don't like it, I accept it because the alternative would be booooooring because too easy.

Thirth, I think the AI does a pretty good job as it is : sure he needs to cheat, but his tactical decisions are pretty nifty. I think he only trades too cheap sometimes. Yes that's right : too cheap. I'd never, ever, ever trade luxuries away !

[cassembler]

HiTS KEYBOARD!!!! FUK!

Whoa! Chill out dude. If the game wasn't challenging, they might as well call it "Warfareless History."

I like the idea of the AI being able to "figure out" my weak spots. As humans, we can take pretty decent guesses at an AI's weak spot, right?
Of course, intelligent AI would be better and we all know that, it's just not really possible yet.

[GodSpawn]

I'm pretty sure that Civ2 also "cheats" in this fashion (i.e. it "knows" how many units are in each of your cities).

[ChrisShaffer]

Originally posted by Stromprophet
I think it may have cheated more than that. As with AoE, C&C, WC, SC all use the same tactic of counters. Which is gay.

Hey Stromprophet, how about leaving out the homophobia next time, eh? It's in violation of the FAQ .

[Rasputin]

maybe he meant its happy !!!!

[kittenOFchaos]

People really think that Firaxis should have put together a fully sentient A.I to compete...at present it is all blind routines etc, you need to give the A.I alot more information to "understand" what the situation is...

However a A.I devils advocate...

Had you swapped map info with any other A.I? Are you sure you never had Russians spot the city before...

In civ2 (will have civ3 soon) you could tell garrisoned and ungarrisoned cities even if you couldn't directly see them...If the A.I had gained by swapping maps with another A.I it could properly legally see if the city was empty.

[Slunko]

AI Cheats

Well I've noticed the AI cheats a little too much.
The major cheats I've seen so far (on warlord level):

1- There MUST be some kind of cheating going on with the AI expansion; the AI can keep up with you no matter what and still produce 20-30 military units (while you have to focus on just building settlers (you can actually sometimes produce a warrior while waiting for pop 3)

2- The AI always knows where your defences are weak (as in first post)

3- Production of units and wonders seems to be really cheap for the AI. Sometimes when racing for wonders the AI can beat your pop 10 city with monarchy, fully developed infrastructure (mines, etc.) with his underdeveloped pop4 city (It's not using piled up shields either 'couse I've seen it produce stuff some turns earlier)

4- I guess there's cheating going on with the science as well, but I haven't found any real evidence ; ) (They might have traded etc.)

Someone mentioned that it would be (almost) impossible to create a worthy opponent without cheating. I have to disagree. The computer can keep track of everything you find to boring/time consuming to tweak every turn, like optimized usage of infrastructure, optimal placing of cities, perfect mix of science/luxuries etc. etc.
I know it would't be easy (I'm a researcher in the computer field and I know that it's hard to do this solidly), some cheating might even be forgivable, but NOT this much!!.
And I haven't even tried the harder levels.

[peckham]

Had you swapped map info with any other A.I? Are you sure you never had Russians spot the city before...

No, and yes, respectively. My only dealings with the Russians at this point were to declare war on them when I discovered they'd suddenly popped up and built a city. No swapping, no trading, nothing. And the Galley dumped its warriors off far enough out to have made it impossible to be spotting anything.

It was clearly cheating, no doubt about it.

[peckham]

*** Had you swapped map info with any other A.I? Are you sure you never had Russians spot the city before... ***

No, and yes, respectively. My only dealings with the Russians at this point were to declare war on them when I discovered they'd suddenly popped up and built a city. No swapping, no trading, nothing. And the Galley dumped its warriors off far enough out to have made it impossible to be spotting anything.

It was clearly cheating, no doubt about it.

[yavoon]

this is of course to no1 in particular, as I know ne one person would get deeply offended by it. so instead I address the wind. but weren't we complaining forever on how it was too easy? now the game is out a week and we all want it patched to make it EASIER. seems a lil fickle to me.

[Urban Ranger]

I don't know how good you complainers are at Civ in general. If you are new, the computer players will seem quite god-like.

[Slunko]

I must admit I'm no god at civ, I have never beaten civ2 at diety for eg and never played any serious mp. However I own and have have played civ, civnet and civ2 to death. The toughness of the AI opponent in Civ3 is managable I guess (at least in warlord) but It's kind of boring with all these obvoius cheats (yeah, there's alot of cheating going on in civ, civnet and civ2 aswell, but It doesn't annoy me this much)

What's worsening my frustration is the incredibly sluggish UI ( 1 sek+ to open any dialog on a dual cel 550Mhz, 256 mb ram, w2k and gf2 mx ). The overall impression is that this whole game is rushed and any serious player should consider going another round with the older civs or find a completely new game.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I don't know how good you complainers are at Civ in general. If you are new, the computer players will seem quite god-like.

You were nice in your assessment but I'm not going to be.

I'm going to say waah, boohoo, crybaby, whine. Go play tic-tac-toe or something. Obviously Civ is beyond your comprehension.

[Transcend]

If you can't beat Civ2 on Deity level, then you are going to have big troubles with Civ3 AI. Even the SMAC's AI, which was light-years ahead of Civ2, doesn't come close to Civ3.

[MxM]

I do not think that this is AI cheat!!!
If the city is in visual range than you DO SEE the best defender unit (in CIV II you see flag). Would you do the same if you see undefended city? Sure! This is very logical, and the fact that AI did so, means that this is reasonable AI, and that’s it.

Also AI expands very fast, but not faster then me, only at the same speed! Again, this just shows that AI is good, I do not think that it is cheating here either.

The "problem" of this game is that AI is much better than in CIV II, so people start suspect some cheating when they see that they cannot win on regent difficulty in CIV III as easy as on prince in CIV II. But this is only good - the game is actually makes you think. And it is always possible to adjust game difficulty setting.

I already played 3 games on regent setting. One of them I lost. And right now I am not in a hurry to try higher difficulty setting.