Biggest AI cheat

[Captain Pugwash]

What do you reckon is the most outragious AI cheat.
In reverse order.
3. The super ballista that seems to have twice the ammo and power of your conventional ballista and hence can knock down walls you cannot or punch multiple holes when you cannot.
2. Going bankrupt does not stop you recruiting armies or building.
1. Crusading. Can be either joining after the cut off time, and then remaining stationary for years without moving, suffers no desertion . Finally it gets a stripe as a bonus when someone else does the job.

Any views

[RickooClan]

Call them special AI moves!

[Cheetah]

Handling the retreat of your own troops after you lost a battle. For example, putting them on a ship which then is attacked and sunk by a large AI fleet waiting nearby ....
Same for fleets, once you lose a single naval battle the AI will play pinball with your fleet, always retreating it towards the nearest larger AI fleet till your fleet is gone ...

[marrow]

My favourite are merchant aquisitions.
Four times now I have tested it and I'm sure that AI takes the mick.
Say I try to eliminate a merchant with 4 finance and mine has 7 finance, AI quotes chances of succesful takeover as, say, 74%. I attempt to seize my victims asset, but acquisition backfires. Reload, try again, same thing happens. All in all I reloaded the game 20 times for each of those 4 scenarios and each time acquisition backfired. How accurate is AI's estimation of success then?

[_Tristan_]

My favourite are merchant aquisitions.
Four times now I have tested it and I'm sure that AI takes the mick.
Say I try to eliminate a merchant with 4 finance and mine has 7 finance, AI quotes chances of succesful takeover as, say, 74%. I attempt to seize my victims asset, but acquisition backfires. Reload, try again, same thing happens. All in all I reloaded the game 20 times for each of those 4 scenarios and each time acquisition backfired. How accurate is AI's estimation of success then?

you could have reloae a hundred zillion times and still got the sme result if you didn't reset the seed (I mean the calculation basis of the AI) by doing something different, saving and then trying again...

But I agree that merchant acquisitions are a big AI cheat as the AI one-star merchants generally succeed in buying out five-stars and over merchants from the player, time and again... where your chances of success in such situations would be a mere 5% (discouraging even to the most dauntless of players...)

[TinCow]

Outrageous? I think it doesn't cheat enough. Yes, the Campaign and Battle AI certainly can and should be vastly improved, but I have never seen a strategy game AI that can come close to beating a good player on an even playing field (excluding games like Chess). The most challenging strategy AIs always cheat because they need to do so in order to win. That doesn't mean that it's bad. The Civ 4 AI is one of the most difficult I have ever seen and it relies exclusively on cheating at higher levels to achieve this.

[FactionHeir]

Hmmm the worst AI cheats?
Getting free family members in the field with a captain-led stack (i.e. not in a settlement)
AI can be a night battle attacker with a captain-led stack
Withdrawing AI horse missile units can fire at your troops on the field that are unable to pursue them off the field
AI doesn't suffer from retraining bug

I think the AI cheating in general is bad and a better AI should be coded rather than just letting it do things that a human player cannot, leading to a very unfair advantage. Right now, the TW AI is the poorest it can be and only compensated slightly by massive cheating.

My feeling is that the only cheat the AI should be allowed to have in games is a resource advantage, and not being able to do something a human player cannot.

[Abokasee]

What do you reckon is the most outragious AI cheat.
In reverse order.
3. The super ballista that seems to have twice the ammo and power of your conventional ballista and hence can knock down walls you cannot or punch multiple holes when you cannot.
2. Going bankrupt does not stop you recruiting armies or building.1. Crusading. Can be either joining after the cut off time, and then remaining stationary for years without moving, suffers no desertion . Finally it gets a stripe as a bonus when someone else does the job.

Any views

That one seriously *twinkles* me off!, Poland should have there armies rebel and not churning out polish nobles like a 1p prosse produce children

[Rhyfelwyr]

It also seems to get vassalls that are powerful and often have many provinces.

[TinCow]

Hmmm the worst AI cheats?
Getting free family members in the field with a captain-led stack (i.e. not in a settlement)
AI can be a night battle attacker with a captain-led stack
Withdrawing AI horse missile units can fire at your troops on the field that are unable to pursue them off the field
AI doesn't suffer from retraining bug

I think the AI cheating in general is bad and a better AI should be coded rather than just letting it do things that a human player cannot, leading to a very unfair advantage. Right now, the TW AI is the poorest it can be and only compensated slightly by massive cheating.

My feeling is that the only cheat the AI should be allowed to have in games is a resource advantage, and not being able to do something a human player cannot.

I tend to agree with you, though I don't think most of the AI cheats really help it much at all. Things like captain night battles and withdrawing horse archers strike me more as bugs than cheats. The free family members thing is certainly an advantage, but one the AI needs desperately given its tendency to suicide generals. It has already been massively useful to me in the KOTR cataclysm, since several of my triple gold stacks have spawned generals (which I like).

Let me again emphasize that I think the AI should be massively beefed up. However, even with a good AI, there should be harder levels available to the players above and beyond that. These should be simple and direct cheats and should be specifically listed when you mouseover the difficulty option (or at least in the manual). Even if the AI was exceptionally good, I would still find benefits from increased difficulty levels with varying levels of the following cheats:

More Income (already implemented)
Cheaper Recruitment
More Recruitment slots
Morale Bonuses (already implemented)
Stamina Bonuses
Penalties to relations (already implemented)
Higher Public Order
Higher Population Growth (already implemented)
Faster Building Construction
Cheaper Building Construction
etc.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Infinite ammo. I was besieged by the Russians. One of their javelin cavalry units was throwing javelins over the wall. My towers were killing them until one was left. All the time they were firing javelins. When that one was left I started counting. He fired sixteen javelins until the game ended. He was supposed to have eight javelins and not a zillion.

[TinCow]

I don't think that's a cheat, because I believe it applies to the player as well. The game gives the entire unit (not each archer) a full amount of arrows and the unit keeps firing until those arrows are gone. If the unit loses men while it is fighting, the number of shooters drops (and thus the number of arrows fired per volley) but the total available to the unit remains the same. What is essentially happening is that the archers are firing the arrows that their dead brethren have dropped on the ground. This is realistic and simulates scavanging fallen bodies for extra ammunition.

[RickooClan]

The Civ 4 AI is one of the most difficult I have ever seen and it relies exclusively on cheating at higher levels to achieve this.

I think you couldn't say the Civ 4 AI is one of the most difficult but Civ 4 is difficult, beacuse the AI cheat.

The AI itself is not difficult but the game is, because it cheats.

[ReiseReise]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

More Income (already implemented)
Cheaper Recruitment
More Recruitment slots
Morale Bonuses (already implemented)
Stamina Bonuses
Penalties to relations (already implemented)
Higher Public Order
Higher Population Growth (already implemented)
Faster Building Construction
Cheaper Building Construction
etc.

Great ideas TinCow. The idea of the AI being given many small campaign advantages would be easier to swallow rather than simply just giving it infinite cash.

As for Morale Bonuses, it was my understanding that they did not exist in M2 as in previous games. I always play VH battles and have never noticed militias with ridiculous morale or anything.

[TinCow]

I think you couldn't say the Civ 4 AI is one of the most difficult but Civ 4 is difficult, beacuse the AI cheat.

The AI itself is not difficult but the game is, because it cheats.

That's a good point. However, after the BTS expansion pack, even the non-cheating AI is very good. It has a rational diplomacy system, it defends its cities well, develops its cities well, and attacks appropriate targets with sufficient forces to take and hold them. All the things that the TW AI should be doing. It's no match for an experienced human player, but that's not so much due to the AI's flaws as its inability to grasp most of the very advanced strategies that humans can come up with.

[WhiskeyGhost]

I'd personally settle for a battle AI and a Auto-resolve AI that isn't completely dumb. If they followed some REALLY basic rules, like flanking (cavalry aren't supposed to charge stakes in the ground, i mean really, thats just stupid), tactical positioning (yes, let's sit at the bottom of this hill, so the enemy archers can pepper us for a while before we can engage them), and a semi intelligent town/castle tactic (yes, we are at war with them, but instead of having a garrison of troops on our border, lets leave a unit of peasants there), then i'd be happy.

AI cheating only relieves the symptoms of the problem, much like taking cough syrup. It doesn't address the problem, it merely covers it up, and hopes nobody notices. If it were an applicable handicap (as in a choice, since a level playing field doesn't prove a challenge to some more advanced players), then AI cheats are fine, but when it's applied just to make the playing field even, then something is seriously wrong.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Outrageous? I think it doesn't cheat enough. Yes, the Campaign and Battle AI certainly can and should be vastly improved, but I have never seen a strategy game AI that can come close to beating a good player on an even playing field (excluding games like Chess). The most challenging strategy AIs always cheat because they need to do so in order to win. That doesn't mean that it's bad. The Civ 4 AI is one of the most difficult I have ever seen and it relies exclusively on cheating at higher levels to achieve this.

Yeah... I was very, very upset when I saw how blatant the cheats were.

Starting with 3 cities, advanced armies, multiple scouting units, etc...

Not even remotely close to substituting a better AI... just give them more cheats.

As if they weren't even TRYING to make a good AI.

CIV 4 is a bad game in my opinion. I tried very hard to get into it. Civ 2 was much, much better.