Cheating AI

[Shadow Aimai]

Ok, I was playing in one of the one step beyond normal difficulty, and crushed the CPU's army with only 3 units, leaving only one sentinel at their capital. I was not interested on a long campaign and didn't want his city, so I accepted the peace treaty it offered. Like 15 turns later, the CPU returns again with an even bigger army, despite having just lost everything. This is obviously cheating.

My question is: How do I make the CPU become harder to beat without it resorting to cheap tricks?

[Cryten]

If by cheating you mean spontaneously spawns units then no it does not. If by cheating you mean gets resource bonuses to keep up then yes it does. As to how to make diffculty harder without giving it advantages you need to get a advanced degree in autonmous ai programming and make your own game. No developer is going to design a completely new ai just to add anouther difficulty level, it costs half the game development programming budget just to build 1.

As a minor programmer I would just like to say just programming a pathfinding ai that doesnt get hung up on choke points or make immersion breaking detours is apocalyptically hard.

[CidDaBird]

Originally posted by Cryten:

If by cheating you mean spontaneously spawns units then no it does not. If by cheating you mean gets resource bonuses to keep up then yes it does. As to how to make diffculty harder without giving it advantages you need to get a advanced degree in autonmous ai programming and make your own game. No developer is going to design a completely new ai just to add anouther difficulty level, it costs half the game development programming budget just to build 1.

As a minor programmer I would just like to say just programming a pathfinding ai that doesnt get hung up on choke points or make immersion breaking detours is apocalyptically hard.

You have a point Cryten, but I also help program games myself on my spare time but what I think he means truly (if the op didn't already know) is that the beginning of the game the ai does have a leg up over you on prince difficultly and up. Since on prince *blank* civ has* a extra settler if I am correct and one worker on turn one, so of course this could lead to the belief of cheating ai.

[Shadow Aimai]

So the only way for an AI to keep up with your average human is to cheat. Pity.

[Broken War Horse]

Very true.

[StoryTime]

when an AI for a stragtey game like this can be easly installed on computers that can whomp a human player you have biger problems... :)

[Elliott]

I dont play any higher than vostok because all the free stuff the AI gets just annoys me I dont mind the reduced maintinence/improved production that sort of thing but getting extra techs and settlers at the start is a huge leg up.

[Cryten]

Yes exactly, its increasing the difficulty by giving the ai an advantage.

[KingKull2112]

I had a game with the AI somehow magically having 200,000 energy out of the blue when it tried to get peace with me

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Shadow Aimai:

So the only way for an AI to keep up with your average human is to cheat. Pity.

Welcome in reality. The human brain and its processes that help to quickly come to good solutions, it's capacity to understand Mistakes it made and to learn from them cannot currently be replicated in artificial intelligence, so yeah especially in a game with many variables, a game that puts you into a different starting position every time, an AI will have to resort to "cheats" to keep up with a human player.

That's not to say that the current AI for this game is "good" though.

[Drinkcup]

Originally posted by Shadow Aimai:

So the only way for an AI to keep up with your average human is to cheat. Pity.

weak.. .there are lots of games that do proper AI. Shame that this isnt one of them. I'll steer clear of this title.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Bonder:

weak.. .there are lots of games that do proper AI.

Like for example?

[KingKull2112]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Bonder:

weak.. .there are lots of games that do proper AI.

Like for example?

Age of Empires HD Edition

[Ryika]

Originally posted by FUBAR KingKull2112:

Originally posted by Ryika:

Like for example?

Age of Empires HD Edition

You're comparing a Real Time Strategy game in which the human player is mostly limited by his ability to do many things at the same time with a Turn Based Strategy game in which the player has all the time to use his brain to make clever decisions. That's not a fair comparison. Aside from that it's not even a "good" AI in the sense of being able to play and adapt to tactical situations, it merely has good, predefined build orders and the ability to do an insane amount of actions at the same time.

[KingKull2112]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by FUBAR KingKull2112:

Age of Empires HD Edition

You're comparing a Real Time Strategy game in which the human player is mostly limited by his ability to do many things at the same time with a Turn Based Strategy game in which the player has all the time to use his brain to make clever decisions. That's not a fair comparison. Aside from that it's not even a "good" AI in the sense of being able to play and adapt to tactical situations, it merely has good, predefined build orders and the ability to do an insane amount of actions at the same time.

Good point. I don't play many 4X games, so I don't know any to compare this with that have "good AI"

[I Am Atomic!]

the answer to this post is you cant, cheating is the only way ai is at all competitive, nearly all 4x games do it to some degree, and in BE the ai is especially bad, so probally cheats harder to make up for it, but it doesnt, the ai is still bad. its an issue alot of 4x games have but some pull it off nicely, this game isnt one of them xD