Does the ai cheat?

[orangat]

I'm just curious if the AI cheats by toggling_fow, giving itself money, not gaining bad traits for its generals, governers, diplomats etc?

[dkdnt]

i dont know if i can call it a cheat, but something is realy wrong with ai generals. i dont remeber if i ever saw i enemy general with as many bad traits as my best general. they usualy have 3-4 traits, and rarely one of them is bad.
considering money income for enemies is even worst subject.
for example, pontic cities. those guys just like armenians have so many units, that i dont know how they suport them. few times before destroing them, i put my spies in theirs two last cities. one had a minus of about 3000 denarii, and other about 1000 denarii, since they was under my pressure from begginigm there is no way that their cash could be more tahn few thousands denarii, and if u calculate they should be losing about 4000 denarii per turn. now i just wait few turns, so they lose all money, and ability to retraine forces. it just didnt hapened, they allways had new forces, and allways lose money. i mean with Ancyra and Nicomidea u can not support any army, especially not a few full stack armies(hillmans, heavy ontic cavalry and east infantry, even some mercs). but pontic just keep on pumping his army. i mean i had no problem defeating them (with catapfacts u heve nn problems anyway), but this shitng is realy anoing. might be that im mistaking, that their cash reserve was bigger but i just cannot figure out how is that possible?

[red comyn]

In my opinion yes it does. Got in a bit of a bad habit for a while after patching up too 1.6 in RTW of queing up rows of ships in the constuction window to "hide" my excess income when i didnt need it that turn. But being a forgetful kinda guy more often than not forget to take them off again. This left my appraoching the civil war with a huge navy, I know what thought me... and split up the ships to every port the other two roman factions had.

Stay with me here it gets to the point soon . So couple turns later, ships in place, and a couple BIG fleets cutting about to do the fighting, attacked rome and started civil war. So all in one mighty rush blocked every port the AI had, didnt seem to do anything to the amount of stacks they threw at me over the next 30 years the ports were blocked, so yeah they cheat.

If you need anyother proof try to match what it does in some of its cities. Huge city, population 30,000-40,000+, no gov', three units garisson. Not a chance you could do that.

[professorspatula]

Well it definitely seems to get a bonus when it comes to maintaining public order as the last poster said. There's also the theory the AI gets extra income every turn depending on the difficulty level. Playing on VH or H, I don't mind the AI getting bonuses - it needs them. As to the FOW thing, well the AI seems to know if your ships have units on them, and it has a strang knack of walking into hidden ambushes for no reason whatsoever. It probably gets some vision bonus to help it co-ordinate its forces.

[orangat]

hmm... I had a feeling the AI had some help with money. Maybe the campaign difficulty level has something to do with it as well. I might bump it down.

I makes the game less fun when all the battles and strategic work you did to stump its growth means jack.

[rory_20_uk]

Pleased to hear it wasn't just me that had this problem! I'll stop trying to starve the buggers out in future :)

[TinCow]

i dont remeber if i ever saw i enemy general with as many bad traits as my best general. they usualy have 3-4 traits, and rarely one of them is bad.

No AI generals with bad traits? I ran across this WRE guy in the Alemanni PBM. His cumulative morale bonus was -12.

[orangat]

Gratanius the lily livered - Do traits modify names of generals? It looks like the character is some sort of joke hardcoded into the game.

[Ludens]

Gratanius the lily livered - Do traits modify names of generals? It looks like the character is some sort of joke hardcoded into the game.

There is a number of traits that will alter character names, both for the A.I. and for the player. Examples are Decius the Mighty, Brennus the Attacker, Antigonus the Infantry man and Marcus the Lewd. They occur when the character reaches a certain level of a trait (and you can pretty much guess which traits are required for the above nicks).

At higher battle difficulty, the A.I. get a stat boost, while at higher campaign difficulty, they seem to get more cash. That doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to blockade them, just that is helps less. Also, they get a bonus in auto-calc (why this is adjusted by campaign difficulty and not battle difficulty is everyones guess). Lasty, the A.I.'s cities often have low loyalty without revolting and the A.I. gangs up on you. I suspect the A.I. also gets to see the entire map.

So, yes, the A.I. does cheat, but almost all games have some sort of A.I. assistance.

[dkdnt]

@TinCow
oh boy, that guy looks same as my generals. but this is first time i see something like that. -13 on morale???!! my generals dont have such morale penalties but 100% penalty on tax income is really common thing among them. they eat money, eat it, i dont find other way to do so.

is that from vanilla rtw? sorry i must ask, i say again i never saw ai general with more than two or three bad traits, and all of my generals are usefull for managing cities like tits on breastplate.

[econ21]

I suspect the A.I. also gets to see the entire map.

I am not sure it does - at least, I act as if it does not. I used to make a point of flogging my map to the AI for cash, but then I worried that it might be giving away the location of my cities. In a recent WRE BI game, I was careful never to sell my map. As a result, the hordes kept hovering around my (well defended) frontier cities and did not head for (essentially undefended) Rome or the juicy interior cities. I'm not sure if people who have sold their maps have the same experience.

BTW, Gratanius the lily livered is a starting WRE general, available to the human and the AI alike. Superficially he looks real good, with his 5 stars at all, unless you are the kind of person who looks at the fine print (or takes monikers seriously!).