Does AI cheat financially on hard difficulty?

**afrit** · 03-02-2005, 01:57

In my current Gaul campaign (hard/hard), the SPQR bribed away a couple of my cities. Now, when I play SPQR myself, I immediately run into negative money. So I was a bit surprised they had money to bribe with. So I looked at their finances with the graph bar, and they seemed to be doing fine!

No I know there is NO WAY they could be generating so much money under normal rules. Their Rome stack should bankrupt them in a couple of turns. So they must have a bonus of some sort.

Anyone studied this? and does the AI cheat on medium?

**Khorak** · 03-02-2005, 02:13

Far be it for me to bitch bitterly like a world weary old crone...but yes. It cheats like a bastard! And no, you can't escape it on medium.

**Kraxis** · 03-02-2005, 03:06

Well since Rome is a cornerstone in the game, and the Senate has to hand out those moneytreats now and then as well as keeping the army it has to cheat.
How fun would it be if Rome had three units of Town Watch and an underdeveloped infrastructure?

**Khorak** · 03-02-2005, 03:09

Originally Posted by Kraxis

How fun would it be if Rome had three units of Town Watch and an underdeveloped infrastructure?

Well the challenge would be about the same, but it'd be a whole lot funnier.

**Es Arkajae** · 03-02-2005, 03:48

The AI cheats like a bastard on VH and thats the way I like it.

Facing multiple full stack armies, actually facing war elephants in battle for a change.

As the Scipii at the moment after taking Sicily and Sardinia I signed a ceasefire with Carthage so I could build up an uber army of princepes etc. to take Carthage with.

Anyway I'm finally ready and I invade and take Carthage with little opposition, I'm puzzled, wheres the enemy army?, so I lift the fog of war and lo and behold Carthage has almost completely conquered the Numidians, whats more it has multiple large armies running around.

Looks like I'm going to have some fun

**The Stranger** · 03-02-2005, 09:32

just like protectorates, now way anybody can come up with 100,000,000 a turn

**Mikeus Caesar** · 03-02-2005, 21:36

AI cheats all the time, on VH more so.

**HoreTore** · 03-02-2005, 22:03

The point of Very Hard is to make it challenging, and it's far easier to impose penalties to human players and bonuses to the AI than to make the AI smarter. No, it's not an ideal solution, but it's a practical solution, and we live in a practical world, not an ideal one.

**afrit** · 03-03-2005, 04:03

That's very disappointing. If the AI is not limited by money, then any mod that gives it extra denarii will not make the game any better.

**hung41584** · 03-03-2005, 06:59

vh is pathetic. all you need is one good stack of units and a budget surplus of at least 1000 per turn and it goes uphill from there. The problem is that even though the ai keeps sending large armies and reproducing them at an alarming rate is the fact that they will always get annihilated by that one good stack of units you have. I play on vh/vh and i seem to always be destroying a large army every 5-10 turns. I think that the ai gets financial cheats so that it would offset this serious lack of fighting skill. And the sad part is that the ai doesn't do what humans do and build a gigantic army and THEN actually waging war.

**joert** · 03-03-2005, 10:13

Originally Posted by Khorak

Far be it for me to bitch bitterly like a world weary old crone...but yes. It cheats like a bastard! And no, you can't escape it on medium.

are you sure it cheats on medium? as the juli on medium/ medium, i got fed up with having no challenge conquering gaul, so i boosted their money to 50000 instead of 5000 and i had full armys evry 10 turns or so

**Khorak** · 03-03-2005, 13:50

Gaul is a vast territory with concerns that span across all of modern Europe and rebel provinces around for it to conquer. It's too big to notice messing you around.

Try playing as Gaul, and wonder how the Julii are doing all the things they're doing to you when they only have four provinces. Two of which, will be crap. Obviously, don't crush them with laughable ease because the AI fights like a retarded child, just....concentrate on Spain and Germany or something.

**brutii_warrior** · 03-04-2005, 19:37

the ai doesn't cheat on medium but it does on hard.

i have to agree the ai fights like a retarded child.
my little sister is 15 and she can kick the hell out the ai and she doesn't even like total war.

out of the 319 flat land battles i have fought in i have won a total of 296.
dumb ass ai.

**McGowan** · 03-05-2005, 01:08

I don't know... I've seen the AI do some fairly successful and complicated maneouvers in battles. Not often, but sometimes it really does do well, which makes me wonder why it's usually so dumb. I've won probably 95% of my land battles as well. But there have been several times where I've been confident of victory, only to be totally crushed by a perfectly executed flanking attack, or even a tactical ambush.

This I enjoy, and only wish it happened more often. Harrumph.