Is it me, or does AI cheat??

Is it me, or does it seem like after i make my moves on strategy map, the AI counters.

COuld be coincidental, that it always moves into provinces that i do to defend, but it seems amazing.

It does Cheat. I decided I wanted to play the Scicilians one day just for the fun.
Guess what, all my ships were built in 1 turn.It would say it would take 3, but then the very next turn there would be my ship.

I'm skeptical. I've conducted some tests, reloading and either changing a few moves or not changing anything, and the AI reaction seems pretty consistent and predictable based on what I do. If I move 3000 troops into a province, he moves 5000 in to defend it, 10 times out of 10. If I leave my troops be, he fails to move his troops to defend, 10 times out of 10. Either he's incredibly lucky about which times he "randomly" chooses to defend his province, or he knows what's going on. What's more, if I move only 1000 troops in instead of 3000, he moves only 1500 or so of his 5000 in to defend. 10 times out of 10.

Also, I wouldn't be convinced by a "debug mode" walkthrough. There are a lot of variables that can be environment-dependent, and things can very easily work one way in "debug mode" and quite differently in a "production" environment, even with no code changes.

There is a built in awareness by the AI of what is happening in adjacent provinces which enables it to send in little helping armies when allied to you. This it certainly does not do if you do not attack and looks to be a needed fudge to allow the fun many sided battles and allow alliances to seem more alive. It would be surprising if this was not in some ways a by product or enabling tool to avoid the AI being utterly stupid when the player attacks.

If your building up across his border I can see the AI building up too, but it does seem rather intuitive about the exact turn you are going to attack.

As I said above, I don't think it's coincidental.

But just so nobody gets the wrong idea, I'm not complaining. I think the AI needs all the help it can get, and will never beat an experienced human consistently. If I had a complaint at all, it's that it's predictable. And if an AI is predictable, a human can exploit it to his own advantage.

And how about those AI agents (emissaries, priests, etc.) who have a sixth sense that triggers a Europe-wide tour of all provinces with Border Forts as soon as you sic one of your assassin on them ?.

I don't see this as a problem though - a bit of a game-balancing 'feature' to even things up between player and the AI.

Yeah it cheats. If you cant do it. Then its a cheat.

Thats my rule of thumb. Or thumbs.

Id give you my 2 cents but all I got is a nickle.