Is the AI cheating on Hard difficulty?

[Mayakashiii]

I started playing again a few days ago and I'm bored to death with "Medium" difficulty, also the AI seems to bug out and not do anything at some point in the game.

Tried out "Hard" for the past few games and it feels like the AI is cheating now.

Does anyone know how the AI works in this game? Is it cheating resources? It damn sure feels like the AI is getting free resources.

[JoshSA]

I think they removed all cheating from the AI in HD and DE. It just multi-tasks really well. Especially if you don't attack it early on.

Try rushing the AI with a few units early on a pick off some of it's villagers on gold/wood That will make the game a lot easier. Because on Hard and extreme once the AI has an established economy they spam units like it's unbelievable.

[INk]

The AI never cheats. Try watching a replay and look at what the AI does to get more resources than you

[Lil` Anon]

Me and a buddy just play with hard AI and we easily kicked their ass because they didn't make any military, i feel its broken.

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

I watched the AI in one of my previous games and its early game economics management is just incredible. On Hardest it almost never goes above 100 on any resource (at least until castle age) and it can do stuff that older AIs never could - like lure boars to its town center while keeping one on sheep. It also periodically checks its own villagers to see which ones are stuck while trying to gather, and will attempt to un-stick them by giving them new commands.

[Cryptic]

Originally posted by Psyke:

I started playing again a few days ago and I'm bored to death with "Medium" difficulty, also the AI seems to bug out and not do anything at some point in the game.

Tried out "Hard" for the past few games and it feels like the AI is cheating now.

Does anyone know how the AI works in this game? Is it cheating resources? It damn sure feels like the AI is getting free resources.

no they arent

[Mayakashiii]

Well, Medium is too easy for me. Hard is way too much, though. What do I do, lol.

[-Dare Devil/x/]

Originally posted by Psyke:

Well, Medium is too easy for me. Hard is way too much, though. What do I do, lol.

-Have you tried art of war?

[ilam]

AI wont cheat in DE. They just manage and task faster than you and do not miss any idle villagers

[JoshSA]

Originally posted by Psyke:

Well, Medium is too easy for me. Hard is way too much, though. What do I do, lol.

Try playing with an ally against the AI, like 3v2 or something like that.

[Aldi888]

lol so much specialists... try type woodstock and see what's happen ...

[Forcedge]

The AI can kill all of your mangonels with a single archer. So imagine why it's so hard to deal with when they actually build like 20-30 and perfectly micro every single one of them.

I played a game vs the Franks AI last night on hard. The game lasted 3 hours. Unless you hard- counter every single unit they have, you aren't going to win.

Sure you could rush them early on but that's cheap imo. I prefer macro battles with established bases

[ColdWonder]

There seems to be quite a leap between moderate and hard in DE. I don't think its cheating I just think it plays even more efficiently and executes better strategies.

Moderate likes doing fast Castle and then streaming units at you to try overwhelm you. The stream of troops is not good at overcoming a solid defence and they leave themselves wide open to raids whilst it fast castles.

Left unharassed Hard seems to combine fast castle with a strong Knight attack.
If you do feudal pressure either I've been unlucky or its smart enough to spot it and adapt build to counter.


I'll let you know if I crack it psyke as I'm in the same position.

[Franciscos]

Yes, the AI cheats as soon you are advancing in difficulty, it is simple to see the end of any play they have all the gold, all the stone and all the wood. If you play against players and then vs AI you can see that AI villagers are harder to kill because "who knows"

[Karl Perkins]

The AI is just efficent at managing its income and spendings on hard. You need to counter that in any way. Either be as efficent yourself or hit them. Attack their dark/feudal military to cull the numbers or go slap their villagers. They pretty much shut down after losing a handfull of villagers in feudal age.

Sadly hard AI will almost never even try to deal with early attacks unless they already have some military as you attack.

[Boypp]

New default AI does not cheat for resources. However, it does know exactly where and when you put up a castle. It also knows the size and composition of your army. It doesn't know when and where you put up a castle nor the composition of your army (unless the AI scouts that).