Fed up by AI cheating » Forum Post by Cruelsader

Not sure what was supposed to be shown, but in what way do you see the AI as cheating?

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I am fed up that AI "knows" the location of nearest habitable planet without scouting. (The same way as it knows the location of nearest resource, nearest anomaly and nearest asteroid field without scouting. However, the last three are not issues for me. The AI does not use the knowledge of location of resources aggressively. As regards the location of nearest anomaly and asteroid field then the human player also has access to the information by automating the survey and mining ships)

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I wasn't aware that the AI was privy to that information.

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Yeah im sick of it to...They need 2 make a Update Fixing that

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KzintiPatriarch

Join Date 05/2007

+95

I think it's the only way they could get the AI to compete if the player has a decent colony rush strategy. One way in which this "cheating" is sub-optimal is that they seem to disregard planet quality (size), so they'll end up with more low PQ planets than the player.

If you want to alleviate this, start your game, save on turn 1, play a number of turns in which you explore the area around you, then reload to turn 1. You'll know where everything good is located.

Sentient species taste better...

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Drop down a difficulty level.

And IIRC the AI does indeed know the location of all the resources in the game but i have never heard of it knowing the location of all the planets.

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Yeah im sick of it to...They need 2 make a Update Fixing that

No. there's nothing to fix. This is how the devs were able to do away with MP by having an AI that is able to favourably combat the human player and thus make the game challenging.

If you cannot hang with the AI on the difficulty level you are on just lower it.

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Quoting KzintiPatriarch,

reply 5

I think it's the only way they could get the AI to compete if the player has a decent colony rush strategy.

Sure. I guess this is the pupose of most "cheats", i.e. to make AI more competitive. However, this particular advantage has disproportionate effect on the game.Especially in some settings (like abundant stars, abundant planets, habitable planets rare)

Quoting KzintiPatriarch,

reply 5

One way in which this "cheating" is sub-optimal is that they seem to disregard planet quality (size), so they'll end up with more low PQ planets than the player.

Yes I agree, although it makes the AI to appear dumb. Also it does work only when there are low PQ nearby (often not the case)

Quoting KzintiPatriarch,

reply 5

If you want to alleviate this, start your game, save on turn 1, play a number of turns in which you explore the area around you, then reload to turn 1. You'll know where everything good is located.

Certainly I could do that but this isn't fun -it kills the tension. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Quoting Stallingsboy,

reply 4

Yeah im sick of it to...They need 2 make a Update Fixing that

Yes they should. Although I doubt they have resources or skill to make the AI competitive without it. However, they could and should stop misleading players about what the AI does or does not. I distinctly remember the claims by Stardock that AI does not have the knowledge of the nearest habitable planet. I even bought it in the beginning because Stardock has a record of being very customer friendly.

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Quoting Neilo,

reply 6

Drop down a difficulty level.

I could do that but this makes game too easy after colony rush.

It is not big deal. I just have to accept the game as it is or stop playing. I just had forgot how the AI works, got frustrated and needed to vent it.

Quoting Neilo,

reply 6

And IIRC the AI does indeed know the location of all the resources in the game but i have never heard of it knowing the location of all the planets.

There is ample evidence that it does know the location of NEAREST planet. For your refrerence here is a part of a post I made about a year ago:

Quoting Cruelsader,

reply 20

AIs build much less scouts in ToA (probably because small hulls are not immediately available). I have started a number of ToA games by now and AIs were just incredibly lucky with their colony ships in each of them. It became harder and harder to believe that AIs do not have prior knowledge of habitable planets.

I decided to run a little test. The test had the following parameters. Size: medium, scenario: normal, all victory conditions checked except alliance, all game options checked except blind explorations (note that according to Stardock AI explores blind regardless of whether this option is checked), Habitable planets: rare, Number of planets: abundant; number of stars: abundant; star density: tight clusters, anomalies: rare, number of asteroids: rare, tech-rate: very fast; number of minors: 0, my race: Altaria, AI opponents: Terrans, Drengin, Korath, Arcean, Torian; difficulty: tough; all AIs set to max CPU;

I started close to one corner. There were several star systems approximately behind me in the corner. All AIs were relatively far away. I scouted my corner and discovered two planets habitable without a tech and two anomalies. Mindful that AI may see what human player can see (a suspected glitch) I reloaded the game. (The save I made the first turn before making any moves). This time I was careful not to reveal the habitable planets. I "harvested" the anomalies to avoid drawing AI survey ships to the area. Then I set up a perimeter so that I could see any ships moving to "my" corner. Since I took max sensors as my racial ability and used space miner and colony ship for scouting I was able to set the basic perimeter up in three turns. Then I built some warships which I used later to destroy "invading" AI scouts. I colonized Wisp (the other planet in my home system). Then I waited. AIs colonized all habitable planets near my perimeter. Not very long after that Terran and Torian AIs sent a colony ship almost simultaneously towards "my" corner. I did not interfere. Both ships went straight for the habitable planets and colonized them. I reloaded the game (the save I made when the first AI colony ship made the appearance). This time I colonized the two planets before the AI got near. AIs made one full move towards the planets but then turned sharply and left the perimeter.

Conclusion. The only way I can explain AI behavior is that AIs know the location of habitable planets without scouting.

P.S. There is a very slim chance that an AI's survey ship jumped to my corner through a wormhole and left before I could set up the perimeter. However, the chances that two AIs survey ships (Torian and Terran) managed the same is virtually impossible. This can be further tested by destroying all Terran and Torian colony ships and observing whether other AIs would send theirs.

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Interesting test. There are certainly drawbacks to the AI being so challenging and having them have this advantage is one of them.

The equalizer being though that as Kp said the AI fails to differentiate bewteen high and low PQ worlds, by design too i suspect. If it was a case of the AI knowing where all the +14 worlds were and ignored other planets and colonized those exclusivley, then i suspect SD would have had a riot on their hands.

Like you said, its an aspect one eithe must accept or shelve the game. It's easy enough to overlook i think, but by all means vent. Personally since i am no fan of MP gaming, if this is what it takes to give me an AI capable of whopping my ass, then i'll take it.

You at least vented without the normal "this sucks" or "i hate this" tag lines that accompany all to often the rants and vents on here.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

If you can't out-expand the AI (by producing colony ships faster and getting them to planets before they do) then you'll have to either start with some early weapons and annihilate those colony ships before they get to the good stuff, or flip/invade those planets later on.

In the early game you may not quite have the production capacity to turn out cargo hulls with colony modules and engines at a fast enough rate. Smaller hulls will only just about fit the colony module and maybe some life-support depending on how much miniaturisation you have, but they cost a whole lot less to build so you can make more of them in the same time.

To my knowledge I've never seen the AI take advantage of smaller hulls for colony ships, so it's something worth trying if you want an edge to make their cheating useless.

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I use the small the colony ship design. Rush to Enhanced Miniturization and your golden.

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It's cheesy. The AI not cheating was ALWAYs a key part of why GC was/is good. The reality is the difficulty knobs have become a crutch for the weak AI. Rather than dealing with an AI logic issue, we're told to jump the difficulty level.

The biggest problem with the difficulty level solution, is that the AI spams ships out later in the game. It fixes the early game, but then makes the later game annoying.

Me personally, I wish they'd have stopped adding complexity and cleaned up the AI about 2 years ago. There are so many silly things the AIs do. My biggest peeve is they are incompetent as far as designing ships. (engines, proper attack, and if/how much defense). However, if that was fixed, then that late game issue would really turn into a nightmare.

Once you start using a crutch, the consequent problems just spiral.

Knowing where the resources are, is pretty annoying as well. Especially on larger maps. It takes a player forever to scout them out, and the AIs just "know" where they are. There's really no point to this, because it's not going to change.

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My biggest peeve is they are incompetent as far as designing ships

+1

How the AI uses PI and the bonus tiles is what gets me even more so. I am so sick of getting PQ20+ worlds of the AI with nothing but power plants and research co-ord centers on them, regardless of what bonues tiles may be present.

Of course it is true of any planet you get from the AI but to see such high PQ worlds going to waste shits me.

Imagine if on suicidal the AI were actually able to manage and develop their planets intelligently.

Like i said...you need to imagine it....

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

Quoting Neilo,

reply 14

Imagine if on suicidal the AI were actually able to manage and develop their planets intelligently.

Like i said...you need to imagine it....

Well if you want efficient opponents the likes of which you have never yet seen then i think it would be easier to start imagining a multyplayer!!!

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I disagree. Not saying that a human player is not going to be more challenging, but for me personally, i have little to no interest in multiplyer games.

I want to play on my own schedule without the worry of having to accomodate others.

Besides which, since MP is not apart of GC2, and i'm thankful it isn't, kind of a dumb point i would say.

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and orbital bombardment with tactical combat launched from carriers? woo hoo

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I wouldn't worry too much about the AIs having any advanced knowledge. A good colonizing strat will still out do the AI at all but the Highest levels(and then some peeps can beat them on suicidal even).

Brad had stated that the AIs don't have foreknowledge of where colonizables worlds are, only resources. Hence them sending out scouts before colonizers in a lot of cases. This was said back when DA had first come out or before, so if it has changed in TA I don't know. They(for the most part) do have stellar cartography and will send colonizers to systems in a blind attempt to find planets much like the player does if they don't get scouts in the area first.

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They(for the most part) do have stellar cartography and will send colonizers to systems in a blind attempt to find planets much like the player does if they don't get scouts in the area first.

Really? How do you explain the results of my little test then? Please note that I used abundant stars, abundant planets, rare habitable worlds. There are dozens of unexplored planets but AI colony ship moves directly towards a habitable planet? What a lucky guess!!! How come it gives up its "blind" attempt a turn after the habitable planets are colonized? Another lucky guess? Sry, I cannot believe it.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

Depends if Blind Exploration is turned off; then they will (like you) be able to see where influence is even if they haven't been to that part of space.

This is also why the AI tends not to send colonisers to areas where other civs have strong influence, because their worlds would get flipped soon enough.

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I have a vague recollection of reading a Dev's post that stated the AI does have foreknowledge of where the habitable planets are but there is an algorithm to determine how quickly they go to colonize individual planets. Obviously, that algorithm needs some adjustment in TA with the Drengin and Yor. . .

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I've always suspected that the AI knowing where planets were was a bug. IE, brad intended them to have to scout, but in reality they know anyway. (The AI does scout, but as others have pointed out via experiment, the AI does make beelines to good planets without having to scout them)

As far as AI cheating the colonization phase really isn't important in and of itself. It's the fact that it does so poorly unless you crank the knobs the real issue. (Again, what would a suicidal AI do with all it's bonuses if it actually had a good colonization algorithm?)

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Quoting MarvinKosh,

reply 20

Depends if Blind Exploration is turned off; then they will (like you) be able to see where influence is even if they haven't been to that part of space.

Blind exploration was turned off in the test. Besides, according to Stardock AI always explores blind. Moreover,AI routinely colonizes planets in other's sphere of influence. In short, I still do not see any other explanation to AIs behaviour other than knowing the location of nearest habitable planet.

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Low quality planets seem to have a higher probability of having bonus tiles

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*nod* I agree with Vivian. LQ Planets seem to have the best type(s) of "Bonus Tiles". You'd think the opposite tho.

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