Cheating AI.......

[Spec]

God I'm tired of hearing ppl complain about a cheating AIs. Is there one game in the world where the AI doesn't cheat?!?!?
Personnaly I never saw one, may it be on a PC game or a platform game. Let me explain:

Racing games: The harder the level the harder it is to win. Why? Not cuz the AI is suddenly a Michael Shumacher, no! Cuz the AI has a catch up!! Cuz you learn to get better, not the AI so it has to have an advantage or there's no reason to call it "level HARD"

First person shooters: At hard levels, the AI either has wallhacks (CS bots), Increased energy and armor, increased damage, increased reaction time (Halo, Half-Life, Soldier of fortune....) and kills you with one shot compared to 15 for you to kill it. (that's Halo for you...)

Strategy games. Of course the AI knows were you are all the time. If anyone has ever played Starcraft here, you just know the AI has a map hack! It has 5 islands it has to check before finding you but somehow, it always does it on the first try. (Red alert, Age of empires and more, it's all the samething)

And I could go on and on....So just accept it, AIs cheat. That how they get harder and harder. They dont LEARN, they are given advantages over you. And this is not specific to Civ3!!!So suck it up!

Spec.

[The Andy-Man]

yeah, but some AI advantages just piss some ppl off cos they are just TO unfair (like in Civ2, triremes could sail anywhere, and in Civ3, the AI goes straight for your week cities even though it dont know where they are.)

of course the AI knows the mao already, but it would be nice if it didnt abuse the fact the way it does...... and production bonuses suck, aswell as the fact that i have never notice the AI get war weariness.

[Spec]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man

of course the AI knows the mao already, but it would be nice if it didnt abuse the fact the way it does...... and production bonuses suck, aswell as the fact that i have never notice the AI get war weariness.

Cheesy advantages just like in anyother game. The most annoying AI cheat I ever saw is in Starcraft. It knows the map and where any of your units are. That makes the game a lot harder but I like it anyways. And of what I know, artificial intelligence is not yet available for video games so we have a long wait until it is.....


Spec.

[Encomium]

I guess some of you wouldn't mind if you started playing Chessmaster - and the AI decided to suddenly give a bishop the power of a queen so it could put you in check! I WOULD mind.

Rules are rules, and common sense and reality should not change. If the AI beats me by some outrageous cheats it has achieved nothing, except to encourage me to find ways to cheat back.

I want a SMARTER AI - not an AI that cheats more and breaks its own rules.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Encomium

I want a SMARTER AI - not an AI that cheats more and breaks its own rules.

Be my guest OH MASTER ENCOMIUM, please develope the thecnology that every company has now failed to achieve!! Surely you can help us OH MASTER KNOW IT ALL!

Every AI breaks it's own rules. As I mentionned above, Map hacks, Wallhacks, Catchups, bonuses, name it! If you dont get that than I can't help you.

And btw, I never saw an AI suddenly change a Warrior into an ICBM or whatever. A chess games is composed of 36 squares only, you dont have to irrigate/mine, build cities/units, control an empire for crying outloud!! And the AI in a chess game only works with mathematical strategies. Nowhere NEER the kind of AI for a videogame. And by videogame , you know what I mean.
This is not a chess game you...............


Spec.

[The Andy-Man]

i've mever seen the AI in Europa universalis 1 cheat... i dunno if it does, but i never seen it do anything stupid and unfair, also, it dosnt seem to know where the best provinces to colonize are straight away and so on. the AI dont even gang up on human unless he get taking provinces.

and there are plenty of games where the AI cheats, but not to the extent of destroying gameplay.

[woody]

Originally posted by Encomium
I want a SMARTER AI - not an AI that cheats more and breaks its own rules.

Then why don't you just code one up, and make yourself a million bucks, genius?

[Ironikinit]

Europa Universalis. It is said by some that the AI doesn't cheat in that game. The AI is a pushover IMO, but supposedly it doesn't cheat.

There are other games I'm pretty sure didn't have the AI cheating, but EU is the only game with complexity comparible to Civ.

Personally, I have no problem with the AI cheating. It can't save the game and reload, that's all the philosophical justification needed right there. Saving the game is the biggest cheat of all. Well, other than playing in god mode or so.

Someday maybe programers will be able to run code strategy game AI that doesn't have to cheat to challenge good players. In the meantime, pity the paranoid types such as Enco. He thinks Firaxis pays people to make favorable posts here and at CivFanatics. Imagine what he thinks the AI is up to.

"I didn't get that big promotion at work and it's all because of that no good cheating AI in Civ 3!"

"My candidate lost the election. Damn you, Firaxis!"

Etc.

[Grumbold]

In EU1/2 the AI follows almost all the rules exactly like the player does. There are a couple of notable exceptions in EU1 which I *believe* they ironed out in EU2. This does partly mean that the AI is predictable and can be beaten in the long run. This doesn't mean that you can win every game though. NPC France is still quite capable of whooping player England simply because its so much bigger and stronger in 1492. You have to play the diplomatic game well to avoid destruction as a weak country. Become too powwerful and almost everyone will declare war against you when they see you've got your hands full. Try to fight an army led by a superlative historical leader and you'll get whupped even if you outnumber them 4:1. Much like Civ once you own a third of the world the hard part is over.

[Rimpy]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
Someday maybe programers will be able to run code strategy game AI that doesn't have to cheat to challenge good players.

I think that this is probably the Holy Grail of AI programming in video games. Ideally, the AI would be as smart as it could be at the highest difficulty level, and purposefully dumbed down at lower difficulty levels.

The only "bonus" that the AI should get is the fact that it can make a million calculations per second and it's able to consider every piece of information that it has. The human, on the other hand, can only reasonably consider a limited amount of future scenarios, and he/she can't process the huge amount of data that's available. In other words, the AI can micromanage to a degree that's just not feasible for a human to do.

The ideal AI is like that usually found in chess games. An increase in difficulty levels simply means that the AI gets more time to play out future scenarios. At lower difficulty levels, it only gets a limited amount of time to try out these different scenarios, and ends up making dumber decisions.

Unfortunately, because the universe of future scenarios is so much more complex in a game like Civilization than in Chess, we're stuck with hacks like research and production bonuses. I don't blame the AI programmers for resorting to hacks. It's the only option that's feasible given current computing power.

Rimpy

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Encomium
I guess some of you wouldn't mind if you started playing Chessmaster - and the AI decided to suddenly give a bishop the power of a queen so it could put you in check! I WOULD mind.

Rules are rules, and common sense and reality should not change. If the AI beats me by some outrageous cheats it has achieved nothing, except to encourage me to find ways to cheat back.

I want a SMARTER AI - not an AI that cheats more and breaks its own rules.

The AI plays by slightly different rules to make up for its supposed intellectual inferiority. Now if you are having trouble .....

[Leonidas]

Perhaps a way around this is to design an AI that "learns" from the strategies of the human player.

I know this has been tried before in one other game I know of using a neural grid path.

I'm not sure if this can be done, but it would work something like this:

1) The player pillages the AI terrain, the AI then starts to pillage. This strategy is added to its database.

2) The player uses a ship to load units behind the lines. The AI starts to do the same thing.

Even though the AI would have built-in strategies and decision-making, it would continue to "learn" from the human player.


Another possible method, would be to have the very best players' strategies for the game in question be designed to be used by the AI. This would work well in a game that has many sequels like the civ series.

In this instance the very best players in Civ3 could have all the loop-holes/strategies they have devised to be incorporated into the AI decision-making tree. . .

Not sure if this is possible, but just a couple of ideas to kick around

This would involve a lot of playtesting though, so the early release of games would be a no-no

[Alex]

"Anti-Encomium"? You are a DL, aren't you?

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Alexnm
"Anti-Encomium"? You are a DL, aren't you?

Double Login? No. I just never bothered to post here before. If you go visit civfanatics.com, there is a poster named Zouave, who I am 99.999999% sure is also Encomium. Either that, or one of them simply cuts and pastes posts. Anyway, the repetitive and unconstructive nature of his posts have managed to infuriate me enough to flame him on another forum.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Anti-Encomium


Anyway, the repetitive and unconstructive nature of his posts (Encomium) have managed to infuriate me enough to flame him on another forum.

I understand and agree withyou all the way.