How's the cheating AI this time around?

[glythe]

I own all the Eugen titles except the first wargame (and I bought this one too). Every time we get the same AI that "knows" you have units hidden in a small patch of forest even when it has never seen them. And yet the arty will rain down on the exact spot that was otherwise a perfect hiding spot.

I know how the spotting works. I have tested this many times in different titles (and since they allowed you to give the AI custom decks it made testing this even easier).

Is it better/worse/the same?

[XRayl]

Ai on medium doesnt cheat. Everything above gets bonuses in income and stuff like that but from what i read in the forums even more difficult ai doesnt "magically" see your units ( but they do see what a real player would see so expect counter fire everytime you fire your at guns or artillery)

[TasteDasRainbow]

The AI on any difficulty does not cheat whatsoever. Higher or lower difficulties only change the income available to the AI player.

The AI does not 'know' that you have units that it has never seen. It does know if you have units that have exposed themselves, it does know if you have arty/AT/AA that have fired at their units, it does know if you have hidden units in a forest and they are actively changing the front line, it does know if you have units in a forest that it saw trucks go near, but it does not know anything a human player could not know.

The only reason the AI often seems to know things a human won't is because it notices anything that is exposed, even if it happens for .1 seconds on the other side of the map, because the AI is observing the entire battlefield all the time. A human player often won't be perceptive enough to see a unit that is exposed for .1 seconds, but the AI definitely will see it and determine if it is a priority target.

[glythe]

Originally posted by TasteDasRainbow:

The AI on any difficulty does not cheat whatsoever.

The AI does not 'know' that you have units that it has never seen.

I have hundreds of hours played through the majority of Eugen wargame titles (including Ruse).

Sorry but that is 100% wrong. I tested this in the last game and you can spawn in trucks in the back and walk high stealth recon to a middle position on the map without being seen (verified by watching the replay). And then the AI shoots at the recon unit with artillery (you can verify via replay that he had no units nearby and you can modify this again by making sure the AI has no planes and doesnt even own recon units in his deck).

The AI has always known where you have units. This becomes readily apparent when you start playing on Very Hard. Moreover in some titles the AI knows the firing limits of AA units he has not seen (this was a huge part of the problem of why I did not like Red Dragon).

If you load up Airland Battle the AI will almost always start with a force to hard counter what you deploy. Is that luck? No. He has vision deployment hax.

[Thurgret]

The AI still fires at artillery that has never fired from its current location.

[Wyatt]

is the AI really cheating though?

If the AI flies a successful recon flight over the battlefield. Unlike human players. It will remember everything it sees where as the human player would forget or not remember all the units revealed.

I think the issue here is you are playing against AI and not a person who is micromanaging things in his brain where the AI simply finds units and counters them.

[fakemon64]

if the ai didnt "cheat" it would never win against a human that completely understands how to play the game. its funny to see these posts about 'cheating' ai in like every strategy games' discussion board.

the ai doesnt actually 'play' the game like you and I do. the ai is there to mimic and emulate what a player would do. at the end of the day, the ai is just a string of codes and operates as such.

at best, devs can make it harder to tell that the ai is 'cheating' and hide the fact that its playing by its own rules in the first place.

[glythe]

Originally posted by Wyatt:

is the AI really cheating though?

If the AI flies a successful recon flight over the battlefield. Unlike human players. It will remember everything it sees where as the human player would forget or not remember all the units revealed.

And yet the Eugen AI is guilty of firing at artillery that it has not seen after it moved (that has not fired again since it last fired but has fired once before). You can see it abuse line of sight in replays where it fires at a unit it has never seen (or in this case has 0% chance to know where I moved artillery after I moved it to avoid counterbattery).

For quite some time you have been able to make smoke markers on the map. I did this all the time when I revealed something and my arty or plane was not quite ready or able to bomb it. With way over 500 hours in the Eugen franchise I can honestly say it works great as a reminder of where to press T for a fire mission.

Originally posted by fakemon64:

if the ai didnt "cheat" it would never win against a human that completely understands how to play the game. its funny to see these posts about 'cheating' ai in like every strategy games' discussion board.

You say that and yet I have played games where the computer is forced to scout in order to see what is on the game map. It takes a lot of effort to teach a computer how to play like that.

Wall hack AI vision is the "better" option in the eyes of most (but not all) game developers. But the truth is that it is just a lazy money/time saving effort.

It is an unnecessary advantage to give the AI in a rts game because the AI will always have the ability for perfect micro with an infinite action per minute score.

[Marcomies]

One really annoying AI behavior that has definitely been fixed since Wargame ALB is reacting to player aircraft. Back in ALB the AI would send interceptors the same instant you called in an aircraft. Now (at least on normal) it waits until actually detecting the plane and then some.

[glythe]

That is another thing that really got out of hand in the past... playing vs very hard AI you would call in your plane and then the AI would call in 2-6 fighters.

[[EUG] MadMat]

AI still not cheating in normal mode, and only has availability & income bonus in Hard & Very hard.
But no AI has omniscience.

So, if it bombard, it means it has spotted a unit. Especially the artillery, which doesn't open fire until it has spotted a target AND consider it worthy enough.

[Marcomies]

That's good to hear MadMat. I didn't play the beta more than couple skirmishes but my impression was that the AI has once again become more "natural" as it has in every subsequent wg/sd title.