AI cheats and strategies to counter them

[Hurry]

Thanks solo. Great post! This means you will have to be even more careful what you trade and with whom.

Now, if Firaxis thinks this is a feature, not a bug, I would really really like to have a few more screens (advisors) telling more about the AI civs. What they are trading, with whom, when the trade deals end, what kind of government they are in, what techs they know and what they are researching. All this was in SMAC and much of it in Civ2, so why not have it in Civ3???

[Marquis de Sodaq]

I have an anecdote that possibly shows this effect. I was trading for Russian furs. Between my France and Russia lay 2 German towns. I went to war with the Germans and got the expected "We've lost our supply of furs!" message, as I was connected to Russia by the road thru Germany. That turn I sacked the two German towns, reconnecting France and Russia directly (now sharing a border). Before my turn ends, I open talks with Catherine, and their furs are not even available for trade! I just shrugged it off, not thinking much more than maybe sacking Russia, too, as the furs were around their nearest city. After reading this thread, I suspect they were pawned to somebody else while my envoy dashed to Moscow...

[Dimension]

I can't help but think that just maybe there's something built into Civ3 to do mean things when you reload too much...

I remember seeing some weird things happen in games where I've reloaded a bunch of times without ever actually exiting and reloading Civ3. Specifically, I'm currently playing my first game with the Aztecs (Monarch), and have been trying several different ancient-era strategies. Out of nowhere, in 10 AD, I get a message about a barbarian uprising near a small recently-captured Boston defended by one Spearman. There was a stack of 24 barbarian Horsemen! This is at a time when I have 10 Horsemen and a single army of 3 Swordsman that has conquered all 3 other civs on my continent. An uprising of 24 barbarian Horsemen is ridiculous! Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I've only seen this kind of thing in games where I've done a lot of reloading.

Also, I noticed another little cheat the AI uses. If you gift them an undefended city, they immediately get a defender.

[solo]

Hurry,

Thanks! I agree about extra information. It shouldn't be necessary to open diplomacy with an AI just in order to see what is what, and where things are. They know everything about the techs, resources and other details about the human player, and take advantage of this knowledge.

Marquis de Sodaq,

I bet you are right about the furs being traded out from under you! I'll think twice of risking a war because this happens, and try to have an alternative such as a harbor to maintain connections to trading partners. Also, I know now that when something becomes available that I'm even vaguely wanting to have or use, I'll trade for it immediately, just to give me a better chance of retaining it.

Dimension,

Penalties for repeated reloading can not be ruled out as a possibility. The handful of reloads throughout my game did not produce anything so unusual, but it could be that the game maintains a counter of the frequency or number of reloads, and if a certain threshold is reached, some nasty tricks are released. By the way, what was your setting for barbarians in that game? A lower setting than raging hordes gives a lot of credence to what you suggest.

solo

[ChrisShaffer]

It's supposed to work that way

I'm reasonably sure that Dan M. said Soren allowed the AI to trade during the human player's turn as part of the patch. The change was made to prevent tech whoring. It's pretty easy to verify that the AI have a round of trading with each other every time the player opens the diplomacy screen.

[gnomos]

Originally posted by Dimension
I can't help but think that just maybe there's something built into Civ3 to do mean things when you reload too much...

Also, I noticed another little cheat the AI uses. If you gift them an undefended city, they immediately get a defender.

This isn't a cheat, if a city defects to you, you get a defender automatically also.

[solo]

Perhaps "cheat", a word with such negative connotations, was a poor choice for one to use to describe what the AI is doing, but when it happens it does seem unfair, as it is something the AI does which the human player can not. Maybe I should change the title of this thread to read "AI shenanigans" or something along those lines. I believe a better way to prevent tech whoring abuses would have been to reduce the payoffs for doing it, which seemed outlandish to begin with.

One question for gnomos. I am curious if you have verfied this by investigating a city before it defected to you? Isn't it possible that the defender was there to begin with, instead of being "manufactured" as part of the defection process? I simply have never checked this. Have you?

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by gnomos


This isn't a cheat, if a city defects to you, you get a defender automatically also.

If an AI *gives* you a city, you automatically get a defender, and I gather that defender is the best available to YOU and not necessarily a unit the AI could have built. So this one is a two-way street rather than an AI advantage. In fact, this opens what is basically an exploit; see Aeson's "The Settler/Defender 'Factory'" thread.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

A defender is automatically added when you give a city. Before I gave away a worthless latrine of a town, I stepped my pikeman out. I gave the city away, and a spearman appeared there for the new rulers.

I'd been "given" the city during peace negotiations. I could build my own pikemen, but got a spearman. (I upgraded him on my own time.) That points toward you getting the unit that is there, or if the town is empty, getting the simplest you can build.

[Aeson]

Using the French I was getting Musketeers, all the cities were hooked up to Saltpeter. Using the Zulu's I was getting Pikemen or Impies, depending on whether Iron was hooked up or not.

[solo]

Hermann,

Thanks for the tip, as I have just checked out Aeson's great thread. Mentioned there was the uncanny ability of the AI to found their cities in locations where special resources pop up later, which should be added to the list here, as many have noticed and/or suspected this is happening.

In one of my own games I had a small island to myself. Just three tiles of it were beyond by borders, one of them containing a horse resource. The AI made a beeline for this but ignored the other two. Just as an experiment, I replayed part of that game, and parked a warrior on that tile early on, but left the other two wide open. None of the AI bothered with those other two. Backtracking again a few times, whenever I left the horse tile open, it was snatched up quickly by one of the AI, instead of either of the resourceless tiles.

In another game, where I was on a small island, I had an iron resource on it away from my borders, and sure enough, that was the unclaimed portion of the island that the AI went after first with their settlers.

[Hermann the Lombard]

<>

You're welcome! I'm in your debt for a lot of tips, esp. in Civ2 Strat. That "preview of coming attractions" idea is interesting. When the AI founds the city in apparently worthless terrain, I guess it's like seeing my cat watching "nonchalantly" from an unusual location. That's a sure sign that the cat expects something interesting to happen there...when I step on the proverbial roller-skate, for example.

-- Ed :P

[Hermann the Lombard]

Solo, it ate my quote; that message was to you.

Marquis, I also got spearmen when I could have built pikemen, so maybe it is the best available to the defender. OTOH, none of those three cities was connected to iron, since I had that monopolized, so "swordsmen" were right out.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Hermann the Lombard
You're welcome! I'm in your debt for a lot of tips, esp. in Civ2 Strat. That "preview of coming attractions" idea is interesting. When the AI founds the city in apparently worthless terrain, I guess it's like seeing my cat watching "nonchalantly" from an unusual location.

The AI will settle all available spaces on the map, including what many may not consider promising terrain. It is important to spread your culture umbrella over every possible square of the map.

[Brundlefly]

I'm reasonably sure that Dan M. said Soren allowed the AI to trade during the human player's turn as part of the patch. The change was made to prevent tech whoring. It's pretty easy to verify that the AI have a round of trading with each other every time the player opens the diplomacy screen.

The day after the patch was released, several people had discovered this tech-trading problem and Soren acknowledged in a thread that this was "a major bug". If Dan M. has come by afterwards and made this comment you are talking about then either he or Soren is a liar.

I don't see how anyone feels they can play a fair game using the patch while this bug exists. Regarding this bug, Soren suggested further down in the thread I mentioned, "If it bothers you then uninstall the patch".

I can't write anymore, I'm so angry...