AI cheats and strategies to counter them

[solo]

It might be useful to have a thread devoted to AI cheats that are discovered by players, along with strategies developed to counter unfair AI play.

I will kick it off with a good example from my latest game, in which I discovered a subtle way that the AI cheats in order to deprive the human player of available strategic resources.

I was playing an OCC game on a tiny map, where strategic resources are scarce, so when I discovered Rocketry first, it was important to see where the aluminum was. I had none within my borders, which was likely, and no surprise. There were 3 AI: the Romans who had 1 aluminum, the Egyptians who had 2, and the Americans who had none (actually they had an inaccessible source on a tiny islet they controlled).

It would seem that the Egyptians had an extra aluminum I could trade for, so I checked with my Trade Advisor using F2, and sure enough, aluminum appeared as a tradable item. So I opened the diplomatic window with the Egyptians to trade for their extra aluminum, and was surprised to see that they no longer had an extra copy. So I exited and checked the trade advisor again with F2, and the aluminum that had been there a moment ago was gone. Mind you, this extra aluminum disappeared during MY turn, and after doing some investigation, I discovered that it had been traded to the Americans the moment I decided to contact the Egyptians.

I’ve attached a save of the game for those who would like to see and verify this AI cheat for themselves. Load it and try the following:

1. Check the Trade Advisor with F2. Also use espionage to investigate the Egyptian and American capitols. Doing this will verify that the Egyptians have an extra aluminum and that the Americans have none.

2. Now open a diplomatic session with either the Egyptians or the Americans. Both will display aluminum(0) under Resources.

3. Repeat step 1 above to verify that the AI have made this cheating trade during the human player’s turn.

There is a way to counter this devious AI cheat. The attached save was made the turn after I had traded the Rocketry tech to each of the AI, so what I did in my actual game was reload the previous turn, to restore the situation as it was before these trades. This time, I traded Rocketry to the Egyptians and Romans, but held it back from the Americans, who lacked aluminum. On the following turn, Egypt showed an extra aluminum, and this time I was able to trade for it in the normal manner. Once I had aluminum it was safe to sell the Rocketry tech to the Americans, but I still had to be very careful for the rest of the game to renegotiate with the Egyptians every 20 turns to renew my supply of this vital commodity.

Anyone else have examples of AI cheats or suspected cheats that they would like to share?

[Darth Sidious]

You always have to be carefull in what you give to who.
When you trade techs, and you are planning to trade them to multiple AI's, you have to trade it to the one that has most tech first, so that other dont have anything to offer him for it. Otherwise they will trade it on to others before you have a chance to speak to another civ.

[Arrian]

I have heard something about this (and have had it happen to me with tech trading). Supposedly, it is activated by using autosave to load the game. Why that is, I don't know. All I do know is that I've had a couple of instances where I go to trade a tech to everyone, and the second I trade it to one, everyone else has it - on my turn! It's a bug in the 1.16 patch. Normally, I don't run into this problem, so I think the autosave thing (something I use very rarely) makes sense.

-Arrian

[solo]

Arrian,

Could be you are right about autosave, which was on during that game. Without it on, I could not have reloaded the previous turn in order to alter the tech trades. It might have been that the original problem was caused by reloading and playing from an autosave earlier on during that game session, as I will reload from an autosave to correct dumb mistakes such as letting a city fall into revolt when this could have been easily prevented. I will try the next few games with autosave turned off and will purposely give the AI cheat described above chances to repeat itself.

[pchang]

This would explain why I have not seen this bug. I don't think I have ever loaded up a game from an autosaved file.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I've seen it with the patch as well. I've also seen communications traded by AIs during my turn. I did not need to revert from a saved game to see this though. I wonder if it one of those bugs that only happens after a buffer overflows or something, that is, well into the game. Has anyone noticed it in the very beginning? Duh, I guess not since the AIs haven't found each other yet!

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Who's cheating?

Well, if it is a problem with the autosave, you could consider it a kind of poetic justice. The AI waits for the human to start cheating -- using the autosave to correct 'mistakes' -- before doing it's own cheating.

[Willem]

I can't be positive, but it looks to me that the other Civs don't have the tile restriction on irrigation/mines that I do in Despotism. I had just set up an Embassy with the Roamns and had a look around. I'm pretty sure he hadn't switched to Monarchy, though I'm not absolutely certain, but he was gettting full production from his tiles.

[Didymus]

Originally posted by Willem
I can't be positive, but it looks to me that the other Civs don't have the tile restriction on irrigation/mines that I do in Despotism. I had just set up an Embassy with the Romans and had a look around. I'm pretty sure he hadn't switched to Monarchy, though I'm not absolutely certain, but he was gettting full production from his tiles.

What you see is the production YOU would get from the tile. This simply means that YOU are out of despotism. There is no way to see what the 'AI' gets out of a tile.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Didymus


What you see is the production YOU would get from the tile. This simply means that YOU are out of despotism. There is no way to see what the 'AI' gets out of a tile.

But I wasn't out of Despotism. I just saw what he was producing when I established an embassy, and had a chance to look around for a moment.

[Arrian]

The only thing I can think of is that the AI city was celebrating "We Love the ___ Day." As I understand it, WLT*D has Civ II-type effects under despotism and monarchy, and maybe communism (I investigated London while Liz was running a monarchy, and it was celebrating. It was getting the republic/demo trade bonus on its tiles. Later, I cut off a luxury I was selling them, and it dropped out of WLTKD, and the trade dropped back to normal monarchy levels). WLTKD lowers waste under republic & demo, but improves tile output under the other governments. I think.

RPMisCOOL - Maybe it is something like a buffer (I confess to having no idea what a buffer actually is or does), not the autosave. I can think of 2 times I've used the autosave, but I've noticed the bug in games where I haven't touched it.

-Arrian

[Darth Sidious]

When you investigate a city you can see right?

Also, you don't have to be in doubt about their government, you can see it as well when you open the embasy and look at his capital.

[dadacp]

I tried the WLT*D under monarchy, and didn't get the rep/dem terade bonus. Maybe it's something that only the AI gets.

[Arrian]

Really? Hmm. Now I'm gonna have to try it. You did wait a turn while in WLTKD for the bonus to kick in, right?

Well, it is possible that, in my example, the English happened to be in a golden age (though I don't recall any shield bonus in London) when I first investigated, and it was over after the trade deal fell through. The reason they were a monarchy was that they had been fighting a long, nasty war against the Aztecs. I wonder if a Man-o-War took out an Aztec ship toward the end of that war...hmm. Anyway, I'm sorry if I was wrong.

-Arrian

[solo]

To test the effect of autosave, I loaded a named save (at 1260 AD) I had made in the game featured in the first post. Then I turned off the autosave option, and replayed the game until the turn right after my discovery of Rocketry. At this time no_auto.sav was created and is attached here. Anyone can load it and follow the steps below, which should verify that the AI trade during the player's turn occurs, even when autosave is disabled:

1) Trade Rocketry to the Egyptians
2) Go to the next turn, 1315 AD, and check with F2, to see if aluminum is available for trade. It is.
3) Now trade Rocketry to the Americans. Right after the trade, you can verify that aluminum was traded from Egypt to America, during the player's turn.

Now reload the save and repeat steps 1) and 2) above, but before trading Rocketry to the Americans, trade for the Egyptian's extra aluminum. If you play in this sequence there is no need to reload the game from any save, let alone an autosave, in order to avoid the AI cheat.

Those who classify reloads from autosaves as cheats are entitled to their opinion, but what about games that are just continued from autosaves or games that are resumed from an autosave after a power failure or a situation where the game hangs up? There is no way to justify the introduction of AI cheats into a game for reloads such as these, which anyone would consider legitimate. If the game's designers want a way to trap or penalize habitual reloaders, there is a much simpler and better way to do it than by using autosaves.