AI cheating hero items

[Gigasittich]

Today I did a small game with 3 other AIs. While I was fighting an enemy nation I killed 3 heroes which all landed in my crypt and they all had a staff of polymorph and a ring that lets them respawn once when they hit zero hit points.

Pretty akward that they have both items 3 times but I just sold the corpses and took these items for myself. After I fight the same AI about 10 turns later when their leader respawned and they bought new heroes, all of them had the staff of polymorph and the respawn ring again.

How is this possible? Is there a trait which lets you create specific items because I dont believe that the AI found these items randomly.

I used "generate new rulers" in the realm settings if this causes this for some reason.

[CrUsHeR]

Normally i'd be careful about the cheating accusations.
However, one time i was playing against some Dwarf - industrial custom faction.

Killed / captured some of their heroes, got two "Breastplate of the Champion". First i thought, "well he's probably been lucky to find one extra", because this is normally only once per game from the non-repeatable Materium Rite.

Though the next 10 Heroes i killed also had several instances of this breastplate.

Really lucky RNG?
Or a bug with item duping?
Only other explanation would be cheating.

[Chthonic Guardian]

They definitely just Dup items.
I defeated around 8 heroes of one AI faction and they all had same items. Including "Spider Bell" (not sure if it was meant to be Bell or belt) but it spawns a spider in battle, and wands of Webbing for everyone.

[Isidorn]

These kind of games are rather notorius for letting the AI do things that human players simply can't, to make up for weak AI not being able to keep up with the superiority of the human brain.
Higher difficulties are usually just giving the AI more advantages rather than making the AI more "intelligent".

In AoW4, hero equipment seems to be one of the things AI gets for free. I've also seen a lot of people talking about how AI seemingly can procude full army stacks out of thin air. So yeah, the AI isn't playing fair.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Yep.
Part of the reason i love animating enemy heroes.
All those free levels and gear without paying for it.
Only reason to take tomb of souls.
To save up souls to animate defeat heroes.

[TriumphJordi]

HI, I've actually explained this before elsewhere but I don't mind explaining what's going on. The AI doesn't actually duplicate Hero Items as such. AI Ruler/Hero equipment is upgraded over time in accordance with their Archetype. Each Archetype has a couple of Items sets that it can use/get which is why dependent on the Heroes you capture/collect you might see certain items more ferquently.

[Gigasittich]

Thank you for your answers. Then the game probably generated a ruler which somehow gets these items on mass.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Anno:

Thank you for your answers. Then the game probably generated a ruler which somehow gets these items on mass.

How do you figure?

I think its rather that the game just happened to roll the same archetype for a bunch of the AI empires heroes (thus they have a chance of getting then same items when they level up). Depending on how many archetypes there are this would logically happen from time to time (if there is a ton of them with somewhat equal change to be chosen it would be less often, but could still happen).

[fja12856]

I've also noticed this, it happens way to much to be a coincidence.

[Hine]

I noticed AI getting so many high tier items that I don't want to declare war on them for fear of missing out on trades.

[Cryten]

I mean the dev did just say they get a free equipment set that enhances as they level up. So the Ai is getting free stuff. And it is very clear from any gameplay that those AI heroes all get kitted out the same stuff.