AI cheating

[Jaholt]

Here is one thing that infuriates me:

The situation: An enemy has a fleet of ships approaching my coast. Some of my coastal cities are defended better than others. What happens? The fleet arives at the coast, doesn't land it's troops and moves on. Why? the city was well defended. The fleet arrives at the next city, does it land? depends again on the defenders. If this city is well defended, off goes the fleet again until it finds a less well-defended city. This is cheating!!
The point is that the enemy Civ shouldn't know if my cities are well defended or not. I don't have this knowledge when I do the attacking. And this happens before Espionage.
Anyone else find this?

[WarpStorm]

Firaxis has said many times that the AI knows the entire map. This is a very well known AI cheat.

[Trifna]

/me dreams of the day AI wont need to cheat to play not-so-idiotically. Makes it act silly and uncoherently

[WarpStorm]

So do I, it's still a few years coming.

[jdd2007]

it may be cheating in game terms, but wouldnt a fleet notice a city filled with musketmen being harder to attack than one with a solitary musketdude?

[Cidifer]

by that logic we should know this also then.

[Jaybe]

So, instead of a "cheat" make it an "exploit".
When the ship approaches the city, EMPTY the coastal city farther down, perhaps reinforcing the "threatened" city. Do the shuffle.

Or just let them land, having reserves standing nearby (not in the city) to rub them out.

[ChaotikVisions]

I personally like it. The AI needs the cheats to make it better. Even though this is the best AI out of all the Civilization games, its still no match for a human player. And besides, he could have theoretically just spied on you, and found troop locations. Execute a few of your ministers, get rid of them spys.

[Cidifer]

he said it was prior to espionoge though.

[miike]

After having numberous problems with this exact scenario. All, I can do is offer some suggestions to use this "cheat" to your advantage. First, in theory it is possible to know where your enemies units are. It is under the espionage menu. Basically, reveal troop locations.

If you are fighting with an enemy that is landing from the ocean. Then have all of your coastal cities defended. But, have one city that is a few tiles away from the water, undefended. When the AI drops its troops off, they will go around your other cities and go directly for the undefended one. If you have railroad, then you can quickly move units to attack the AI units walking across your territory. Also, because it is your terrain, the computer AI is limited by how much it can move in a turn. So, you don't have to wipe them out right away. When I play, I will usually, leave one city purposely undefended. But this city is usually, located away from my border with the enemy. So, they have to go across some of my territory to get there. Meanwhile, my border or coastal cities are well defended. And, as the AI units move across my land, I can see them coming a mile away.

As far as computer cheating goes. I think that the cheat that bothers me the most, is that the computer knows where the resources are before they pop up. If you study closely where the AI places its cities, then you will see that early in the game, the computer will drop cities in some of the oddest places, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. That is because that is a future location for oil/rubber/uranium/ or whatever else, they may want. I think that this particular cheat is the worst one of all.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by miike
... I think that the cheat that bothers me the most, is that the computer knows where the resources are before they pop up.

By the same token, they will still plant cities in "worthless" locations where there are NO resources.

[HazieDaVampire]

this knollage also has a slite problem when linked to AI tactics, sombody mentioned once that you can empty a city of units miles behind the front line and the ai will march men towards that citys forgetting about the rest, when its a turn away from the city, you can fill it back up! and empty a city of units miles away from the front line and the enemy group. Now you can chip away at this attacking force and the AI will stupidly carry on!

[Keeper of Hell]

I would think that you'd be glad that the AI acts in this fashion rather than getting angry about it. You can obviously use this to your advantage- the AI's scatterbrained tactics combined with its knowledge of all your units causes it to do the stupidest things, especially when RRs come along. AI troops will march on (or in this case, sail toward) a badly-defended city. You, using the advantage of your roads or RRs, quickly shift defenders to this city, thus causing it to be a poor target for the AI. So, the hapless invaders set off for another badly-defended city, you shift your troops there, they change directions, and the cycle repeats. I've always wondered whether this of knowledge of troop positions doesn't actually hinder the AI more than it helps, considering how badly the computer puts the information to use.

[vmxa1]

I do not mind them knowing about resources in advance as I am not in competition for that location any most of the time. If it close enough to me to have been mine, I will be getting very soon. What do I care I the civ knows about rubber and they are so far I away I do not even have the area exposed?

[Cidifer]

I would think that you'd be glad that the AI acts in this fashion rather than getting angry about it. You can obviously use this to your advantage- the AI's scatterbrained tactics combined with its knowledge of all your units causes it to do the stupidest things, especially when RRs come along. AI troops will march on (or in this case, sail toward) a badly-defended city. You, using the advantage of your roads or RRs, quickly shift defenders to this city, thus causing it to be a poor target for the AI. So, the hapless invaders set off for another badly-defended city, you shift your troops there, they change directions, and the cycle repeats. I've always wondered whether this of knowledge of troop positions doesn't actually hinder the AI more than it helps, considering how badly the computer puts the information to use.

You know your the 4th person to say that, I think we all get it by now.