What is up with all the cheating by the computer

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by badams52
The one "cheat" I have seen confirmed (and the only one) on this board by Firaxis is that they AI has no "fog of war." If the map is black, it doesn't know what's there, but if it's seen the area then it will always know where all the units are.

Which make maps much more valuable to the AI. Don't give up your map. Buy your maps. Don't trade them.

[vmxa1]

If the AI was not affected by fog of war, why would it want your map?

[Pyrodrew]

Which make maps much more valuable to the AI. Don't give up your map. Buy your maps. Don't trade them.

And the AI will sell its maps for pennies, especially its territory map (often literally for 1 gold). The AI highly underestimates the damage a human imagination can have on a human player (does the AI have new cities? has it founded cities overseas? if so, where?). Sadly, all AI Civs always show their hand for a few gold coins.

If the AI was not affected by fog of war, why would it want your map?

Fog of war is the grey area covering units out of sight. Unexplored territory is the black area never visited/seen/known. You not selling your map keeps the AI with unexplored territory.

[vmxa1]

It does not have to concern itself with the black area, it has none. It knows all of the tiles. As you say the fog of war if the greyed out part. The whole map is the fog of war to the AI except the parts it has "sight of". The map will be in essence a refreshing or a removal of the fog of war. It can not use the knowledge of the tiles to make pathing choices as I understand it.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vmxa1
If the AI was not affected by fog of war, why would it want your map?

There is a distinction between the "black areas" and the "gray areas, " where the black areas are unexplored, while the gray areas have been explored but have no friendly unit nearby -- the fog of war.

The AI have no gray areas, but do have black areas. Despite reports to the contrary, they do not know about terrain features until they have a map of the area. Once provided a map of a specific tile, they are almost omniscient about that tile, including the number of defending units in a city, and existence of resources even when they do not have the technology to utilize that resource.

[badams52]

Peter,

I went through and searched for where I saw it written, but was unsuccessful. I thought it was a Firaxian, but I could be mistaken since I just tried to search all recent posts by Firaxians, though I might have missed a few. The one thing I am sure of is the person used the term "fog of war" but unfortunately, I cannot get the forum search engine to run a search on "fog of war." Always complains that "war" is not a big enough word and I don't know how to make it consider the whole phrase as one item.

But from my expereince, (not including where the AI founds cities, because I haven't tested that) I would agree with Zachriel. It seems that the AI knows where your units are. When I've blocked his ability to settle in the open space beyond my territory, the settler/spearman pair in my territory begin their retreat even though they could have not known the path was blocked.

[Zachriel]

Some of you may be familiar with my previous game report, Bushido, Way of the Samurai. You can read the discussion thread on the CivFanatics Forum here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33126

In the thread, I disclosed a problem where the French and the Germans settled a couple of towns in the culture gaps of the Eastern Lands Across the Sea. This occurred in 190 BC.


I replayed the position from 1025 BC, but traded maps. Not only did France settle its location nearly two hundred years sooner, but the Persians did it from the other side of the world.

I purchased the Persian map in 370 BC and you can see how far they had to travel. They did not travel through the dangerous and unknown seas, but were observed making their way down the Japanese coastline and through the Straits of Japan.



(This is not a definitive proof, as much can occur over so many turns. However, it is illustrative of what I usually see in my games.
)

[vmxa1]

"Straight out of the PTW guide. The only AI cheat is that it knows the world map. It knows the location and content of every tile. It is affect by the fog of war.
It does not gang up on human players and does not know AI form Human.
Remember that the bonus that the AI has at higher levels are not cheats, they are handicaps.
No combat aids."

So no need for any list. Since it know the location and contents of all tiles, it will know you have left a city unguarded.


I posted this before, it is straight out of the PTW strat guide. Unless I miss read it, it says the AI has no black area, it has fog of war. Firaxis as said they same thing on this site beofre, so it is not a case of the book being wrong. If it knows al tiles, it has no black to deal with!

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zachriel


There is a distinction between the "black areas" and the "gray areas, " where the black areas are unexplored, while the gray areas have been explored but have no friendly unit nearby -- the fog of war.

The AI have no gray areas, but do have black areas. Despite reports to the contrary, they do not know about terrain features until they have a map of the area. Once provided a map of a specific tile, they are almost omniscient about that tile, including the number of defending units in a city, and existence of resources even when they do not have the technology to utilize that resource.

Either you are correct or the strat is correct, guess which one I will go with. I mean they said it knows all of the tiles, that does not sound like black area to me.

[vmxa1]

This is from my guide:

"There is one and only one, area where the AI actually has an ablility that you don't. From the the start of the game, the AI knows th entire world map. For the purposes of interaction with other cicilizations and overseas trade, the AI can not see the whole map -- it is still affected by the fog of war. However, the AI knows the location and contents of every terrain tile, including the locations of every strategic resource before it appears."
They go on to say that trading maps to the AI is a freebie item that you can give away with little regret.
"The only thing you're actualy providing is the ability for the AI to trade across bodies of water." The AI must be able to "see" across the water from harbor to harbor through the fog of war in order to have a trade route.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vmxa1
This is from my guide:

"There is one and only one, area where the AI actually has an ablility that you don't. From the the start of the game, the AI knows th entire world map. . . . They go on to say that trading maps to the AI is a freebie item that you can give away with little regret.

Certainly the computer knows the map. According to your guide book (you are not interpreting it wrong), it states that the AI knows the entire map. Hey, I've certainly been wrong before, but I am not convinced by the evidence. It's pretty suspicious when a landrush starts as soon as you reveal your map. Perhaps it is selective memory.

Addendum: A little off-topic. I am still learning this game and though sometimes I may think I know what I'm doing, other times, I'm just glad I can find time to hang out at 'Poly. Thanks to everyone for their help and encouragement.

[Demerzel]

the AI seems to trade techs to other AI at a far cheaper rate than it is prepared to trade techs with the human player. Whilst not a cheat it's a bit disheartening to be thrashing a neighbour who doesn't have contact with a superior AI ( because you wouldn't sell contact with it ), only to suddenly have that neighbour finally contact the tech-superior AI and suddenly surpass you by five or six techs. It didn't have any money either but somehow it got those techs when the AI wouldn't sell me those or wanted a thousand gp plus.

With regards to chess AI, the big supercomputers only beat grandmasters because they use a brute force min-max tree based solution. Basically they use their increasing computing power to get better, i.e. sledgehammer to crack a nut. There is no real finesse in a chess program, just running the numbers faster and faster to get a better solution for the next few moves.

[vmxa1]

They claim the AI does not know you from another AI and treats all the same as it can not differenciate. So in theory it would make the same deals with you if all the circimstances were the same. Of course they are never the same.

[Pyrkaige]

Difficulty level bonuses

It appears that a lot of this isn't known by some posters here, so hopefully this will help clarify a few points. The following is a list of the bonuses that the AI gets in the game based on difficulty level. This is taken straight from the Civ3 game editor, where you can change all these numbers if you wish. This was primarily done in the PTW 1.04f editor, although with a quick glance the numbers looked the same in vanilla Civ3 1.29f. A great explanation of other cheating that the AI does can be found at TheNiceOne's analysis here. The next message contains some explanatory notes, pulled also from the editor and from playing the game way too much at Deity and Emperor levels.

[b]AI Bonuses                                    Chieftain   Warlord   Regent   Monarch   Emperor   Deity[/b]
[i]AI additional starting units[/i]
Number of extra defensive units:                  0          0         0        2         4        8
Number of extra offensive units:                  0          0         0        1         2        4
Number of extra type 1 (usually settlers):        0          0         0        0         0        1
Number of extra type 2 (usually workers):         0          0         0        0         1        2

[i]AI unit support bonuses[/i]
Additional free support for each AI civ:          0          0         0        4         8       16
Bonus for each city:                              0          0         0        1         2        4

AI max government transition in turns:            *          *         *        4         3        2
Cost factor (player is 10):                      20         12        10        9         8        6
AI to AI trade rate:                            110        120       130      140       150      160

[b]AI and player factors:[/b]
Number of citizens born content:                  4          3         2        2         1        1
Number of citizens quelled by military:           1          1         1        1         1        1
Attack bonus against barbarians:                800        400       200      100        50        0
Percentage of optimal cities for corruption:    100         95        90       85        80       70

[b]Optimal number of cities per world size (for corruption purposes):[/b]
Tiny        - 12
Small       - 14
Standard    - 16
Large       - 24
Huge        - 32

[Pyrkaige]

Difficulty level bonuses, cont.

AI warfare unit bonuses: At Monarch and above, the AI civs get extra offensive and defensive units when they start the game. These are the best units that the Civ could build at that time; usually these will be normal units (warrior, with archer or spearman if the civ knows the appropriate tech.) These can be unique units if those can be created at the start of a game by that civ.

AI non-military unit bonuses: The AI gets an extra settler at Deity level, and either one or two extra workers at the top two levels, respectively. (Note that if you look this up in the Civ3XEdit, the help file there helpfully has the actual unit type reversed.) In my view, the extra settler is one of the greatest bonuses the AI has at the Deity difficulty level. This gives the AI a huge jump at the start of the game, where a lot of games are decided.

AI unit support bonuses: This gives the AI civs the ability to have a lot of units without paying for them. At Deity level it's 16 free units to start and 4 extra for each city it has. A large percentage of the time the AI never even has upkeep costs at this level, even once it's a great sprawling Democracy.

AI government turns in anarchy: The AI gets no bonus for the lower three difficulty levels, and has to stay in anarchy just as long as a player would. At the higher difficulty levels it gets a nice bonus; at Deity level the max turns an AI civ stays in anarchy is 2, almost as good as being Religious.

AI cost factor: This determines the cost factor for AI growth, shields and research. The cost factor for players is always 10; the lowest difficulty levels give a bonus to the player, while the top three difficulty levels give a decided bonus to the AI.

AI to AI trade rate: The AI thinks it is getting "better deals" from other AI civs than it would from you, on every difficulty level. If you're playing a Regent game and one AI civ wants something from another AI civ that would normally cost 130, the first civ only has to be able to pay 100 to get it. In the words of the editor, "This rate directly affects the frequency and aggressiveness with which AI civs trade amongst themselves."

AI and player factors: These aren't factors where the AI can get a bonus, but they're on the same screen and deal with difficulty levels so I included them. It's all pretty basic stuff, although the last one is interesting, which determines how many cities you can make before you hit the higher corruption level. Higher difficulty levels lower this number, which is based on the optimal number of cities per world size which is also listed. In short, you have to make do with fewer cities on the higher difficulty levels unless you want to deal with more corruption. This is true for both the AI civs and for players; the number of cities that can be built before corruption kicks in is also raised (by 25% post-1.29, I believe) for civs which are Commercial.

The AI bonuses are quite strong at the higher difficulty levels, apart from the other ones mentioned elsewhere (knowing where all the units are, knowing where all current and future resources will be, etc.) The fun, of course, comes in beating it even with all these bonuses. Perhaps in the next rendition (or more likely by Civ X) we can play against an AI that is adaptive enough it won't need all these bonuses to beat humans. Until then...