Cheating AI

[NovaBlazer]

Ok

So my dad and I are picked up MTW about a few weeks ago. And we get on the phone and tell each other stories about our campaign.

He noticed something that I had not seen and I just kinda blew it off like yeah whatever until of course I saw it happen in my game.

-----------AI Troop Movement Cheat------------------------

First his story (MTW 1.1 w/VI 2.1 - No mods - Normal Level):
He was England and was in complete control of the waterways and has a faction (can't remember which) penned up into one territory at the northern part of the isles. The faction that he has contained has NO ports, NO ships, and NO landbridges yet during one turn the faction throws a few measly troops at him on one of his mainland holdings.

Now how the heck can the AI do that?

My story (MTW 1.1 only - No mods - Normal Level):
I was Egypt. I was beating the heck out of the Byz up north past Antioch and had complete control of the waterways in the Sea. There are no other ships around but mine. All of a sudden the Byz throw a small stack of troops at Egypt.

What the heck?


I have to admit that in the two weeks I have been playing I have only seen it once. But my dad has seen it two or three times.


-----------AI Income Cheat------------------------

We have also noticed that in rare occassions when we have a faction down to its last country and are penned in that they seem to be able to make more troops and buildings than thier income could possible allow.

In my specific case - I had a faction isolated to Edessia. Turks - I think. I was looking at thier income and deciding if it was worth my immediate attention to jump in an take over. I noticed that they had a mere 120 income.

5 years later they had improved farming. Upgraded to the top Fort and produced several more high expense units but still they were reporting only 120 income...


Does the AI get a cash reserve like we have to start the game? Or perhaps a bank like we have?

I would rather not believe that the computer cheats. So please convince me otherwise

[Jacque Schtrapp]

I've been playing MTW since it came out and have never seen the AI hop across a hostile blockade and attack me. There has to be an explanation for this somewhere.

As far as the AI and money, maybe they are better at budgeting than you are. I generally spend everything I make for a while in order to beef up security right away. It's possible that in your case the AI had a large budget in reserve and was using that to build imporvements.

[NovaBlazer]

Quote[/b] (Jacque Schtrapp @ Oct. 22 2003,13:41)]It's possible that in your case the AI had a large budget in reserve...

Do we (the gaming community) know if the AI gets starting funds the same as ours, or less or more?

Do we know if the AI gets to bank its income for rainy days?

Even if so... that little faction must have had built up some seriously cash reserves because I had him penned in for years

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Do we (the gaming community) know if the AI gets starting funds the same as ours, or less or more?

Never even considered it b4.

Do we know if the AI gets to bank its income for rainy days?

If we don't spend it, it doesn't go away. I'd assume it worked the same way for the AI.

Even if so... that little faction must have had built up some seriously cash reserves because I had him penned in for years

Could be. Factions like the French, Spanish, and Byzantines start off with very rich provinces. It is posible that faction made a killing to begin with and squirreled it away.

[motorhead]

Only time I've ever seen strange troop movement is with enemy ruler's unit. I've seen an enemy ruler move 2 provinces from his start province, escaping my forces which should have trapped him. As for moving across oceans w/o port&ships, never seen that. Are you sure those troops didn't originate from another province? Some provinces are accesible from 2 different seas. Port may be in one sea, but as long as any of it's border is in another sea an enemy faction (with ships) can invade that way.

[NovaBlazer]

Quote[/b] (motorhead @ Oct. 22 2003,15:43)]Only time I've ever seen strange troop movement is with enemy ruler's unit. I've seen an enemy ruler move 2 provinces from his start province..

Yeah That sparks a memory. I have seen that too.

When I was playing my very first campaign as the Almohads I had a turn where I moved my ruler two countries. I went from Egypt to Tunsina in one move. I thought it was odd but didn't really didn't dwell on it.

[Gregoshi]

Hey NovaBlaze, welcome to the Org forums.

I'll have to agree with Jacque about the AI movement cheat - there has to be a logical explanation. Could it have been a loyalist rebellion? You should have gotten a pop-up parchment if that was the case though.

As for the AI income cheating, it has been quite a while since this question has come up and I can't clearly recall the answer. I know Shogun Total War had blatant income cheating that had players screaming bloody murder. After that, I think CA either eliminated or toned down that cheat. What difficulty level are you playing? That may help determining the answer.

[Brutal DLX]

I don't think the AI cheats. This is evidenced by several cases where an AI faction is unable to build anything due to maxed out armies or extra troops it got through a loyalist uprising.
I'm quite sure the AI factions have a treasury just like you do, and if they are still building, then it means they have cash left. Another explanation could be that that faction just recently re-emerged in that province, and re-emerging factions also get some new cash to start with.

About the troop movement, I've never experienced that before, and believe me, I've played lots of campaigns, the closest I have experienced was when I was attacked in Scotland because I didn't have a ship in the most northwestern sea province. It's sometimes easy to overlook that a part of the coastline of your province also extends into another sea zone, thus making it vulnerable to invasion if you didn't place a ship there. If you still have the savegame of that situation, try pressing V , this highlights all shipping routes in the sea zones, if they all are green, then there might be another explanation, if, however, not all are green (close to the province that's been attacked) then you have found your problem.

[Cazbol]

One possible explanation for armies appearing out of nowhere is that the AI may have bribed an army to join its side. It may have been your own army or a third party's army which then moved into your province. The emissaries that bribe armies are not hindered by blockades and can freely travel your lands.

We ran an experiment a few weeks ago where there were three players playing three states in the same game. The game admin edited the file to switch between the players' states so we were in fact taking over the AI's states. As far as I recall we all had about the same starting balance of 8,000 florins, suggesting that the AI does get the same balance of 8,000. It would be illogical if the AI couldn't bank its surplus for it really shouldn't be playing with a handicap. This experiment did however show some unexplained irregularities in the AI's management of money and in my first year my faction lost 5,000 credits without anything being purchased for it. This irregularity may however have something to do with our fiddling with the savegame.

Edit: I can see that the Swiss player only started with a balance of 4,000 florins while I started with 8,000. I do however suspect that starting balance is faction specific rather than player/AI specific.

[Brutal DLX]

Yes indeed, bribing could be another explanation. As for fiddling with savegames... it's always risky business and it's hard to verify any findings...

[HopAlongBunny]

I am convinced the AI cheats

Sometimes after slash and burn tactics, the AI takes about the right amount of time to recover; I have seen building levels beyond the possible though.

I think the AI makes money much the same way the player does. Anecdotal evidence might come from observing AI provinces and incomes; these change with upgrades, ports, trading posts...etc. Mostly faith on this point though

[The_Emperor]

I have seen the AI do very strange things moving armies.

During an Aragon game, The Almohads were cornered in Granada through having a civil War... The Kalifah attacked Morroco and besieged the rebels. I moved in from Cordoba, a message appeared The Almohads have decided they cannot win the battle and are retreating.

Now the Almohads had no Navy, and I had captured Morocco and besieged the Rebels myself, but the Kalifah was not in Granada because I could see everything thanks to my agents... He couldn't have ventured east because Algeria was also Rebel at the time.

How did his vast army escape, and how come I didn't get a ransom or a notification of his capture?

The Mystery of the teleporting Monarch

[King John II]

I am a noob at MTW but have played other turn based strategy games a great deal.

By way of general comment it is quite incredibly easy to overlook the explanation for some unusual events in computer games. And often this stimulates the thought that maybe there is an AI cheat when really there is not.

But there is a problem which all developers in this sort of game face. Once the human player gets firmly on top it is difficult for the developer to keep any challenge in the game. Reaching the end of the game may well take quite a while and preventing the onset of tedium is hard work.

So there are almost certainly cheats built in.

Civ1 2 and 3 are, by common assent I think, the best balanced of the complex turn based strategy games. And there is a thriving community of players - even for Civ1 - who have played and analysised those games for years and years and years. There is a list of conclusively established (and developer admitted) cheats for each of those games as long as your arm.

MTW has one very substantial advantage over other games in this regard, which it gains by reason of the fact that it builds in a real time element - the battles. They retain their interest even once the startegic issues are long settled. Players love to pit their favourite elite units against hordes of the enemy and can set up their own limiting factors to ensure that this part of the game stays fun. And you can go on developing towards particular late game units which prolongs the fun to be had.

But I would still be amazed if there are not a whole slew of cheats which the developers threw in while seeking to balance the game. The way in which all the player's governors suddenly get % vices when a certain point is reached is an illustration (although cheat might be too strong a description of that one).

Whether the two you describe are or are not cheats of this kind I don't know.

In a way it can be kind of fun just trying to get conclusively to the bottom of this sort of thing.

[Loose Cannon]

on different difficulty ratings

the AI factions either have the upper or lower hand o'ver u...

depending on the difficulty settings; in order to give you either more of a challenge of to make things easier while campaignin'... it very much depends

[magnatz]

I think MTW does an excellent job of raising the bar without cheating too much. In all the other strategy games I played the AI either rolled over and died after a while leaving you unchallenged (Sim City and Railroad Tycoon), or else recurred to massive cheating (Civ3, which has been described on its forum as it's like playing against a evil retarded person).

On the other hand some amount of cheating is necessary, since the AI is no way as smart as we are, and if it was then it would use all the exploits we know and love...

[Wild Bill Kelso]

I love how at times rebel armies spontaneously join a faction that is getting beaten down. I was playing the danes and have ships around the iberian coast. I witness the Almohads take over portugal, I didnt like this so I dropped a few spies on it once he moved most of his armies out. Of course there was a rebellion and the almohads were driven from the province. Sometime later (the rebels were still in control), the almohads were loosing out to the french. Once they were beaten down to a few provinces, the Portuguese rebels magically became almohads (they were not bribed, they jsut appeared orange the next turn)

[Mr Frost]

To make and test Mods more readily , I use -ian debugging
mode . It allows me to switch factions {including to Rebels} at the proverbial push of a button .
This is some of the things I've noted :

On normal setting the other {AI} factions start with the same money as you , except the Rebels who only get 2000fl {which seems impossible to mod for some reason , no matter what I set the Rebels starting treasury at the only have 2000fl in the begining of a game} .

The AI often budgets rather well {cnsidering the towering stupidity it often displays} but often to the point of not producing {thus spending} enough to defend its' self . Having a cash surplus is not unusual for AI factions .

When a previously destroyed Faction re-appears it has a large treasury of 20,000fl , but rarely seem to spend it wisely , rather letting their huge army take it all in expenses before they can think to build up the neccessary income gaining resources {like a port , trading post and ships , or even just a big army of the best troops available to conquer enough provinces to remain solvent} .
The Mongol Horde appears with 60,000fl , but the AI is too conservative to use that factions starting situation well in most cases .

As to teleporting units ... no program is perfect perhaps the code just has a brain fart every now and then and goofs up .

Using god-mode to see into all provinces I have seen factions get provinces in some very remote locations and in the case you starte , perhaps they had another province you didn't know of {mabey through bribery or marage of a now extinct faction or the rebels in a province may have just decided to join their cause} that was their second last and got snuffed but the ransomed troops might have been dumped in the wrong province ?
merely speculating