Does the ai cheat?

[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.

[Mooks]

I remember on this game I used to play "Empire Earth". On some maps you get a island, and it helps alot to build defensive towers all around your island. From the start the AI builds the towers around his island, while your civilation is struggling with gathering enough recources to build 10 (about 1/5 of the island)

Anyway...I think the AI difficulty should be based on AI skill, not bonuses. They should say....Manage theyre cities better, not receive a extra 100k every turn . And someone mentioned above that the AI runs into hidden ambushes for no reason, same here. I can have a ambush on the other side of the map, and the AI sends a calvary unit over there for no reason.

Something should be done with the AI revolts, I had Rome (On RTW) down to 20% , and it never revolted. If that wouldve been mine, it wouldve revolted on 50.

[Celt Centurion]

I used to think that the AI COULD NOT cheat. That is why I don't like to use the cheat codes to grab money or so forth. As for the toggle_fow, I simply see that as a matter of preference. I don't use it to destroy their navies. I am happy to just keep my ports from getting blockaded. By the time of even 300 B.C., the Med was pretty well mapped. "Unknown territory" just sounds silly.

Since I have put in the Barbarian Invasion, as many of you have noted, our own Generals are really bad, definitely not somebody I would approve of my daughter marrying. It amazes me how fast they go from only having 2-3 traits, all of them good, to being like Gratianus the Lily-Livered, or worse.

To have any income at all, I was having to "add_money 40000 as many as 5 times EVERY TURN! When I hit, "end turn" I was right back to -120,000!

Recently I started playing as The Greek Cities in RTW and as usual, have to defend Thermon literally every turn, alternating between Macedon and The Brutii faction. After over 50 turns, (and nearly that many battles for Thermon, and occasionally for Pergamum and Corinth) I have only about 6 territories with only about 10 units at most in most of them, and in Rhodes and Sparta have even less. Most of my cities do at least have a stone wall, but only one has an armorer and archery range. Except for Syracuse, I can only get basic hoplites trained in the Militia Barracks. Most of my cities do not have stables, and I have to rotate men and horses around to retrain. There simply is not enough money to retrain and build unless I take and exterminate a city. I have done that once, retaking Syracuse after a revolt. They deserved it.

Meanwhile, The AI is throwing full stack after full stack at me, and now they are starting to come with armor as well. They seem to have gotten worse since I put in the BI. I haven't cheated back yet, but I am tempted. Somehow, I have been able to hold back full stacks repeatedly, sometimes without being able to retrain them between battles.

Macedon on the other hand has no more territories than me, but they seem to be upgrading buildings and training multiple units every turn.

They have gotten me so ticked off, that when they start to flee, I do go chase them down, and kill as many as I can, hoping that every "last man" I kill in each unit is one unit that won't be retraining.

Still trying to be honorable,

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

[dkdnt]

well, they are thieves, and worse but i feel good when defeat them even as they cheat, i would probably felt better if i pacify them with less effort, but nevermind, as long i can control situation everything is ok, they can cheat as much they like, strenght of seleukids will come for them.

i started thread about populating small cities last day,related to that i noticed last night, that somehow when controled by enemies(ai), cities grow faster. for example, Petra, that city never, but never came near 15000 people while being controled by me. and interesting thing happened, i almost destroy egypt, leaving only petra and bostra to great pharaon. and i left them be, no peace or so, just let them maintain few full armies of nile spearman and pharaon guard bowman (i didnt know that it gets bloody cash bonuses). i waited to weaken them so i can take this last cities with less effort. but egypt buld epic stone wall in petra(yes one u can build when construct imperial palace), and i have no idea how he manage to do that. with some more troops i destroyed it, taken bostra(which btw had only 700 after i enslave them) and petra and couldnt keep any public order becouse it just had to much people, to much for me not too much for egypt.
same picture is with those cities in east and southeast europe(balisora, dacia etc) that grow like bambuses in hands of romans, but in my case they cannot breed neither one citizen.

[orangat]

I used to think that the AI COULD NOT cheat. That is why I don't like to use the cheat codes to grab money or so forth. As for the toggle_fow, I simply see that as a matter of preference. I don't use it to destroy their navies. I am happy to just keep my ports from getting blockaded. By the time of even 300 B.C., the Med was pretty well mapped. "Unknown territory" just sounds silly.
..........
To have any income at all, I was having to "add_money 40000 as many as 5 times EVERY TURN! When I hit, "end turn" I was right back to -120,000!
..............

Are you playing on hard/VH campaign settings? Maybe dropping it down to med might help.

And I though add_money works only once per campaign? Is it different on BI vs non-BI?

[Orda Khan]

Does the AI cheat? Of course it does

........Orda

[Celt Centurion]

Are you playing on hard/VH campaign settings? Maybe dropping it down to med might help.

And I though add_money works only once per campaign? Is it different on BI vs non-BI?

I have it on medium.

As for the money, when I installed BI, the add_money works almost unlimited, but I really prefer to not "cheat."

I never would make it as a crook.

What I am thinking about doing, is instead of constantly adding money, instead, when I win a battle, look at the enemy casualties, and take; say 3 denarius for each one killed. Enemies killed- 2816 means 2816 X 3 = 8448 denarius recovered off of enemy corpses after the battle.

Think about it, on average, surely each of those stinkers had a coin or two or three in his pocket, and the fellow leading them probably had a strongbox full. I still think that there should be some provision made to get money "off of the dead bodies of the enemy" after a battle once we win it.

As it is, some turns there is not even enough after "end turn" to pay for the damage to a city after the battle, and to replace casualties.

As I said, I have to fight for Thermon nearly every turn, and since taking Corinth, have to fight for that one nearly every turn as well.

Strength and Honor.

Celt Centurion

[fallen851]

Does it really matter if the AI cheats?

If the AI cheats it certainly doesn't help it win...

Thus we learn what we already should have known, that the RTW AI is extremely bad, so bad that it doesn't even know how to cheat effectively...

[Ludens]

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.

Exactly how big is your treasury? There are three triggers that active when your treasury exceeds a certain amount (50.000, 100.000 and 150.000 denarii) and will give your governors a load of nasty vices.

I cannot answer your population question. I more often experience that the A.I. depopulates it's towns rather than let them grow. Also, population growth can be a curse as well as a blessing in this game.

[dkdnt]

Exactly how big is your treasury? There are three triggers that active when your treasury exceeds a certain amount (50.000, 100.000 and 150.000 denarii) and will give your governors a load of nasty vices.

I cannot answer your population question. I more often experience that the A.I. depopulates it's towns rather than let them grow. Also, population growth can be a curse as well as a blessing in this game.

my treasory is high enough to triger those bad traits, but there only four or five of them that comes with high treasury, and my generals have more than five bad traits. i usualy have above one million denarii after 50 or so years of game, so money isnt trouble, just u have to hate that kind of things.
and about population, i didnt spoted that earlier, though on h/h and vh/vh campaign with seleukids, egypt cities grows realy fast(not just one with natural benefts, such as alexandria and memphis, but mentioned petra and bostra). but this thing is not so annoying, it can be considered usefull, becouse when u capture thise large cities u can retrain your troops, and train good enough defensive troops.

[Ludens]

my treasory is high enough to triger those bad traits, but there only four or five of them that comes with high treasury, and my generals have more than five bad traits. i usualy have above one million denarii after 50 or so years of game, so money isnt trouble, just u have to hate that kind of things.

I think it is far more than three of four traits, and several "ordinary" bad traits have increased likelyhood of occuring as well. Remember that all three triggers are activated: that's a lot of bad traits. I usually spend all my money on construction projects or armies; I don't know where you get these amounts from.

[dkdnt]

money come and goes, on very hard it is hard to have such treasory but not imposible just need to manage resources carefully. so i dont have large armies, or too many of them, garison units are cheap but high xp becouse of weak rebels, and in most cities i have only stone walls, and i dont have last level barracks and stables in every city, it is good enough to have few cities of different types(for example one with stables, other with baracks) i build blacksmith only in cities with one kind of temple(with seleukids, in those with hephestus temple, cuz this allow +3 on armor and weapons). and lot of things like that.

i use money to suport weak factions(somewhere i described that i dont like to destroy factions) against some other strong faction while i dealing with others. and i try to play with barbarians few times, but it was boring(to me ofcourse) so i quit, and dont know how they can get money.

but fact is that i save money, i try to manage as few armies as i can to uphold empire and to conquer new regions. its not that hard, esecially if u played civ as long as i had. and while im doing this, ai gets free bonuses, to suport whole bunch of armies. better challenge would be if ai build its armies in better way, not like this, creating armies of only infantry, that as good as it is(for example, full stack of urban cohort) is not to match full strike of cataphrakts and companions, not to mention when they are engaded with silver shield pikemans or just phalanx pikemans. they are easy prey, even stronger units that are all alone cannot beat well combined army, that is alpha and omega per tactics.
all im saying is that if ai use similar tactics like combining and training high xp units it would be much better than stupid cash bonuses.

[Ludens]

My point was: I do have large armies and developed cities, as to prevent my family members from becoming corrupt. Money itself does not interest me (when I am not tottering on the verge of bankrupcy, that is ~:D ).

[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!).