Does AI cheat and how much? No urban legends please.

[solamnic76]

(sorry my english. I'm from Finland

To me it's very important to have in same starting line as AI when i play 4X games. One thing i hate most is cheating AI. Also i have trouble to accept if computer gets any bonuses for just being computer.

That's why i never play Civ4 above "noble" level, or never played Civ3 above it's no-bonuses line.

One thing i enjoy most is to outplay, outwit and outlast computer with my brains or actions. This can only be done properly if same rules applies. While computer can optimize and crush numbers, me as human can use different approach and win.

I can understand players who want to beat computer with zillions of bonuses with masochist-ultra-demigods levels, but that's not my style. I use to compensate my superiority with bad starting locantions or something "realistic" non-optimal doings.

So, most important questions:

How much AI cheat in GalCiv2?

I've read Sirians writings about "computer knows good planets from start" and that makes me see red and if so, i'll suffer. Almost gamebraking issue to me. I don't want to do any mindless roachrace and cheat with scouting to match with cheating AI.

It really must be scout-explore-colonize for AI and player alike.

In my opinion, there's is no good AI with cheat. That's cheating AI and therefore something like non-AI. I'll hope that you guys can give me answer. I've purchased this game but still playing sevomod with Civ4 and haven't started GalCiv2 yet. But i do not want to play with cheating AI. Human can cheat, it's our choise if so, but i want guaranteed same level gaming experience with computer.

[Sirian]

Scout-explore-settle only cheats against the AI. If the AI cannot make "reasonable guesses" the way the player can, but must physically scout a world before ordering a colony ship there, it would be handicapped.

The GC2 AI will spend most of its initial bankroll on buying ships and sending them out in all directions. Whether or not it knows where the habitable planets are is almost a sidebar. Even if it didn't, with this strategy it would not have to guess very much to guess correctly.

You as player can do the same thing. You can spend your initial cash on colony ships and send them to every possible nearby planetary system. Or you try other approaches. Which ones work best depend on the map.


There is a setting where the AIs get no economic advantage. You should be fine, there.


- Sirian

[solamnic76]

Originally posted by Sirian
The GC2 AI will spend most of its initial bankroll on buying ships and sending them out in all directions. Whether or not it knows where the habitable planets are is almost a sidebar. Even if it didn't, with this strategy it would not have to guess very much to guess correctly.

So you are actually saying that computer does not cheat, or "knowing" cheat does not really matter on this approach?

But you wrote that there 's evidence that computer won't enter system where planets are already taken, but enters when there is some empty. That's annoying little cheat if true.

But about that reasonable guess and handicap thing is not present on Civ4 AI (or even Civ3). Computer does what it can based on how much it knows.

[Sirian]

Civ is different. Continents are different, land or sea, location of resources, quality of terrain, location of rivers or other fresh water, etc.

Civ does have to scout, but it can also place cities on any land. GalCiv has habitable planets in fixed locations. You settle there or not at all. GalCiv provides information about where stars are located, and this is provided to both player and AI. Planets can only appear at stars.

The only question about the GalCiv2 AI and the habitable planets is whether it goes through a human-like guessing process, or simply takes the shortcut of knowing where the habitables are. I don't know for sure, but all evidence I've seen so far points to the latter, that they do know.

That's the only shortcut I've seen, though, and the AIs have several other handicaps that player does not.


- Sirian

[bonscott]

At the AI level of "Intellegent" the AI is on equal footing with the human. All AI code is activated and in use.

On lower levels the AI plays more "dumb" by not using all the AI code available to it. And in the next patch the "dumb" AI will come out more by using "newbie" strats and stuff. Outta be interesting. Also on lower levels the AI gets an economic penalty (or human gets a bonus, I can't remember which).

On higher AI levels the AI gets an economic bonus and the AI starts using it's code to fuller potential as you move up, including predicting what a human strat might be. This again is something that is planned to be expanded upon in the next patch.

[ben_sphynx]

Originally posted by solamnic76

But you wrote that there 's evidence that computer won't enter system where planets are already taken, but enters when there is some empty. That's annoying little cheat if true.

Dont worry about this - you can do it too!
If on turns on (on the mini map) the population and infuluence markers, you can see which planets the computer players control.

As such, it isnt exactly unfair that they get to see your ones.

Equally, one of the early techs, Stellar Cartography, shows on the mini map where suns and planets are.
Some races start with this tech, some (humans) dont; you dont have to play the humans, however - you could play a race that starts with it.
The humans have other merits, as a race, however.

[Shadowlord]

Personally I also prefer that the AI not cheat, but unfortunately it's not easy to make a good AI (One which doesn't take long to make decisions, anyways). But it sounds like the GalCiv II devs did a great job with AI - if I remember right, I read that the AI has no cost cheats from the standard to the 'intelligent' difficulty, which is where it uses all of its smarts against you. Then there are some more difficulty levels above 'intelligent', for the really high-level players, where the AI does get cost cheats.

Edit: Hmm, turns out there are two difficulty settings, one for global game difficulty and one for individual AI difficulty. I found this on this wiki page: http://galciv.wikicities.com/wiki/Difficulty_level

The global and AI difficulty level names are different, and there aren't any descriptions of the global difficulty ones, so does anyone know what those do? That page basically says that 'Masochistic' equates to 'Incredible' for all AIs, but it doesn't give details on any of the other global difficulty levels. Does anyone know how those work?

Does the player get any cost cheats on the lower levels, or does it only weaken the AIs instead? I suppose that would make more sense, since then you wouldn't have to get used to different difficulty levels like you do in Civ.

As for Civ IV, the 'noble' difficulty isn't actually balanced. The computer still gets some cost cheats that the player doesn't, I guess because the computer isn't smart enough. Either way, it seems to me like expanding more has more of an effect than the AI's cost cheats. If you, or an AI, can manage to crush and conquer an enemy rapidly (semi-early in the game) on Noble without totally destroying your own economy, that person will tend to get ahead of everyone else technologically. In one game I saw a computer player conquer another, and then go on to win a space race victory in the mid-1800s while everyone else still had actual 1800s-era tech.

Edit: Looked at the GalCiv II wiki page on difficulty level and revised this post a bit.

[Gufnork]

The global difficulty level is simply an average of the individual AI's. So if all AI's are at Incredible, you have Masochistic difficulty. If you lower a few opponents AI, you will get a lower global difficulty.

The AI gets a few penalties on lower levels, but more notably it plays worse. It makes newbie mistakes and will do so even more after the next patch.

[Shadowlord]

Maybe good planets are more likely at certain star types, so it could make guesses? "This star is yellow, so probably it has some good planets."

(According to http://www.galciv2.com/media/mediaguide.html the AI does need to scout, and doesn't know where the good planets are.)