AI cheating?

[VenomousFangs]

Quite early in the game had some other empire on the other side of the galaxy which had decided to declare war on me previously for no apparent reason.

Noting due to distance there was no visibility of any detail of the enemy empire, even with espionage I didn't get much detail, certainly not their fleet disposition or activity on any star systems. Only knew we were equal in tech, fleets etc.

Wasn't too concerned early / mid game as there were a few empire dividing us so no way to actually encounter each other.

After spending many hours meticulously building my empire, there were two wormholes in my empire which ended up been linked to their empire so I started to upgrade the star bases to create defences, guarded by 1/2 my fleet on each wormhole. The moment I did so the enemy empire flooded one wormhole with masses of fleets and overran the system.

OK reload and concentrate on upgrading one worm hole at a time with my entire fleet there so I can stop them, no joy they just appeared at the unguarded wormhole.

Reload and switch wormholes, they again attacked the unguarded wormhole.

Clearly the AI had the advantage of knowing;

1) When I started to upgrade the star base defences. (I had no such visibility of what the AI empire was doing, despite espionage with superior encryption), and to attack before I can prepare the defences.

2) The location of my combined fleets, so avoiding them regardless of where situated.

Needless to say this ended the game giving me the only option of reloading a manual save 20 hours of game time back before those systems were even occupied, as there was no possibility of me stopping them flooding and destroying my empire.

Hence I find the game unbalanced due to AI knowing EXACTLY what the player is doing as to make it unwinnable, at least without back loading 20 hours and preemptively setting up star base defences hopefully before the enemy AI get wormhole tech. Assuming that is the case, might have to back load another 20 hours again if the same stunt gets pulled by the AI at that save point.

Pretty boring having to keep backtracking so many game hours of play to compensate for AI having such advantages over the player, ruins what is otherwise a very good game.

[Kufesska]

ai could just have intel about your empire
or use cloked science ships as scouts
all the time i reveal and send to mia ai's cloked science ships in my borders

[Immortalis]

Sorry but no.

Visibility over systems depends on a lot of things but there is nothing that outright prevents the AI from getting vision of your system; indeed, since you appear to be in the late game, it's not that difficult to imagine that they do get vision over those.
And once you see that the empire you're going to wage war against is building up its defenses would you realistically wait until they finished building them, making your job harder than it is right now?
And having decided for war, would you send your fleets through the system that is wide open to attack or through the one where your enemy has massed its entire fleet?

That being said, having an impregnable border and preventing the enemy from ever passing through your very first line of defense is eaier said than done since fleet power can overcome starbases defense rather easily (particularly in the late game) unless you've designed your entire game towards that objective - and even then it requires a bit of luck since such strong defenses ought to be placed in very specific systems and the like.

Having the enemy pour in behind your frontline and occupying a handful of system is not the end of the world.
If they're smaller than you and/or their home territory is more lightly guarded than yours, bring war against them and simply conquer them before they can conquer you.
If they're sending several smaller fleets (with a combined power stronger than yours), follow them, wait for the moment they separate and pounce on them one by one; or wait for favourable trading terms, possibly after their fleets get damaged by your starbases / are already fighting starbases and other entities (for example, you might consider the thyanki neutral but they would need to fight them etc).
Hire mercenaries, retake their starbases after they leave the system to prevent them being able to repair their ships and so forth.

There a lot of ways to deal with this situation and we've not even got to the part about ship design so...

[HappySack]

It plays by the same rules you do assuming you're playing on Ensign difficulty, the best way to confirm your suspicions is to use a console command to see from their point of view on why they knew about where to attack.

But as said already, having intel on you is the most likely way.

[RCMidas]

The intel level on systems and empires, including on the location of ships and defences (cloaked or otherwise), is something that takes a long time to build up. You may well have superior codebreaking, but if they've been devoting an envoy for longer just building up their information on you, that's not going to help you. Further, there are many ways to boost the Base Intel level which applies passively without the use of a single envoy.

Everyone starts at +10, there's an Edict for +10, two technologies for +10 each, and then things get interesting. They may have councillors with the Blabbermouth trait (+5/10/20) or the Tactical Algorithms Civic (+20) or using the Uncover Secrets Agenda (+5/20) or be going down the Psionics Ascension path (+10) or lucked out into finding a ruined Sentry Array that they then repaired having rolled Megaengineering early as a result.

More prosaically, they have a cloaked science ship or two wandering around to keep an eye on you.

Whilst the game does know the status of your empire at all times, it's generally pretty good about having its empires not act accordingly. That's why players can still make use of cloaks, chokepoints, espionage, specialised counters in their ship designs etc.

[Ryika]

Yes, the AI cheats with vision to an extend. It's not that they know what's going on in your empire in general, but the tactical AI always knows how much fleet power there is in a system, and will assign fleets appropriately. So if you have weak points, the AI will try to exploit them even if they should not know about them.

[argrond]

AI tries to find out your weak spots and attack there. Rarely doing that wisely btw.
If AI thinks it can win over your fleet, they will attack upfront, if not - will avoid your fleets and look for backdoors. Wormholes in particular.
So It most likely has some intel over your empire, but attack is most likely is just reflection on your actions.
From what I've seen countless times I can say with 99.9999(9)% probability that AI has no "additional" intel about your empire, its instruments are the same as yours. Sometimes it even does not see what's going on 2 systems from its fleet where my counter-fleet approaches, and reacts at the very last minute, trying to withdraw its fleet back (rarely with any success).
AI is dumb as brick about space war tactics, you just need to properly use your fleet power to outsmart it.

[VenomousFangs]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Yes, the AI cheats with vision to an extend. It's not that they know what's going on in your empire in general, but the tactical AI always knows how much fleet power there is in a system, and will assign fleets appropriately. So if you have weak points, the AI will try to exploit them even if they should not know about them.

Thanks everyone for the advice,

I think Ryika has the most accurate appraisal, the AI clearly knew where my fleet was, hence was able to circumvent it by attacking the other wormhole system. As also noted this is not something the human player inherently has, which was my main point in the post as I was playing expecting the AI to have the same limitations which it didn't.

The intel angle looks to be a main factor as well, not much to do about that it seems despite priority research into encryption/decryption.

Note there was no way I was going to be able to stop them overrunning my empire, did try but herding cats will have been an easier prospect.

Looks like a new restart, knowing what is likely to happen 20 game hours ahead is also a form of cheating, only by the human this time!

Cheers everyone

[xycotta]

You don't put your fleet at the choke point, you put it at the border of the next system over. That way your fleet jumps in when they attack.

[VenomousFangs]

Originally posted by xycotta:

You don't put your fleet at the choke point, you put it at the border of the next system over. That way your fleet jumps in when they attack.

Good idea!