Is AI cheating ?
 

Is AI cheating ?
knowing things AI shouldn't and acting as such?

perhaps I'm not lucky, but well .... AI seems to know where I will be the weakest at the next turn and move consequently

as I suppected this
I tried to 'save' the game (backup of the directory of the game
and replay with different configurations
and well ... if there's a weak point he'll always take it ....

or perhaps I'm not lucky ...

if that's really the case I would like to know to what extent the AI is cheating on each difficulty level

[ November 21, 2003, 04:34: Message edited by: Whismerhill ]

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

Scouts?

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

Most game developers setup the AI opponent to know everything at all times.
(example=location of every unit)
And most games only make AI opponents more challenging on higher difficulties by just giving it more resources.

I've noticed in Dominions_II that any time I take assassins into AI territory there is mysteriously always an army hanging out for whatever territory he is at. And the army is always just strong enough to defeat him and/or his band of sneakers.


Yes... I'm sure there are lots of people still waiting for an actual Artificial Intelligence which doesn't have to cheat. It's been done with chess games on the computer... just have to wait for it to be done with our games.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

scouts is not a viable option as they cannot predict your next move


personnaly I prefer a less strong AI but a little more realistic


the fact that it can know your next move is too much powerful...
commanders are uncatchable ...
unless you have a army sufficient to defeat him in each neighbouring province AND one more to send where he is ....

so imagine is he develops flying units ....
he could tore your entire empire while you can't do anything about it your armies keep moving in your territory and reconquering it as AI still attacks where there is the least defence and no army of too few ...


and well I'm a prefer justice in the world, so if AI is cheating I will too ...
but that's too bad

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

and in fact it's not too hard to AT THE VERY LEAST make AI not know your next move:
simply it could take precedent turn data to make his decisions and adding just a little random in that so that AI could 'guess' where your armies are

that seems not too complicated and furthermore while calculating data of the previous turn could be saved in a 'previous turn file'

Ps: I would like an developper point of view on the subject

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

This is one thing I've noticed. Whenever I try to move in to smash a raider army with a huge army of my own, the computer is no longer there. It annoys the hell out of me.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

the minimum is two armies to intercept one ...

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have seen this in Shogun, and I hated it. But I have never seen it in Dominions.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

well,
one of the best cheating AI I ever seen is in 'Empire Earth'
able to rebuild itself two times stronger totally while you're whiping him out in his main base
and if you put yourself spectator you could see how he generates units out of no ressource ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

but back on Dom2 : someone else opinion ? illwinter ?

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

I am pretty sure the Dom AI doesn't cheat in the Shogun way, it definitely doesn't know _where_ you are moving.

You can easily test this: leave a lightly defended/undefended province next to an AI enemy force & move in from behind your main army...you will likely catch an attacking force.

The AI move is simlutaneous to yours, it doesn't have priviledged info on what orders you have given your boys.

What I believe it does know is where you are, and thus act acordingly if it sees a big force.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The AI doesn't cheat.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wendigo is right... it does know where all your units are.
Yes I've seen this with sending powerful assassins or assassins with sneaking troops deep in enemy territory. Simply take a powerful assassin with 7 sneaking troops deep in enemy territory. Then find a territory which is not guarded. Now move your assassin onto that territory. You can then wait as long as you want.... but you will NEVER see that territory unguarded while your 'hidden troops' are their.
SO... in this way the AI opponent does cheat.

[ November 21, 2003, 08:42: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

From my experience, the AI does not cheat. I have not caught it cheating yet playing on the difficult AI setting.

I find that the AI is somewhat predictable, and moderately sensible in the strategic play. It will not enter a province with a defending army that _appears_ to be superior to the invading army. It will almost always attack undefended provinces, making no assumptions about where the enemy armies move on the same turn (ie., it will not try to guess where your huge army in the neighbouring province will move, if anywhere, so you can usually catch the AI by shifting your army from the province it is in (seemingly heavily defended but actually undefended because the army moves out on the same turn attackers move in) to the seemingly undefended territory (which is actually heavily defended _if_ you move your army here, where it will arrive before the invading army).

As someone else wisely posted in another thread about how to defend borders: don't. Go and lay siege to his fortifications. He will be denied ressources to recruit more troops, and he will try to break the siege, regardless of his odds. Unless you are Ermor, this will probably require good supplies, so nature mages and nature magic items will help greatly. Also keep in mind that his dominion will probably be strong where he has fortifications,.. ah well, I digress.

Regarding using stealthed troops. I don't have sufficient experience with this to really offer some good comments, but examing the actual stealth ability of the units in question. I think there is a big difference between using units with stealth (+0) and stealth (+30). As long as you don't get caught, you shouldn't have to worry about armies that show up. Using some individual scout characters or scrying magic to scout ahead of a stealthy army should work well.

/Rainbow

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

Rainbow.... do more testing with sending powerful assassins or assassins with sneaking troops deep in enemy territory. The AI won't find and attack you BUT it will ALWAYS have troops to match whatever territory you are sitting on.

check out my previous post.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

If the AI sees everything, why does it cast Eyes of God so often? Just for appearances sake?

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

The AI opponent obviously sees hidden assassins traveling deep behind enemy lines. Run that test I mentioned below and you will see.

As for "Eyes of God" the book clearly shows that this spell allows enemy scouts to be detected more easily and it also quells unrest for that Gods domain. So yes this would still be useful for AI opponents.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

well well well
here the test :
1 - create a game,
2 - try to have enough military to encircle one of his armies with strong or weak armies and also have a little gold to buy defence in every region the same amount

3 - save the game by quit & saving
4 - make a backup of this game by copying the folder whose name is the game name
5 - now return to the game and move your powerful & big armies to completely block his army
but only one way, with only defence on it
6 - end turn
7 - have it not attacked the weakest ?

8 - quit the game and recopy your backup over the current game folder in dominions 2 (thus overwriting turn files ...)

9 - repeat step 5 to 9, as much as you wish to
while changing the province that is weak...


10 - notice that the province always attacked is the weakest ?

PS: only tested on difficult settings with aran.map and all AI in the game.


Last note : I have done the test of assassin with a special abysian hero who has a original stealth of +25, the province has no army at all : attack it with your assassin ... oups there enough defence to kill him now !!!...
that's pretty strange isn't it ?

of course there is a limit to this I suppose cause, sometimes there is provinces you take undefended...
and well I suppose if the assassin where empowered to rainbow mage 10 and prophet, maybe it would have won the battle ...

with what said others, I'm convinced there's cheating OR let's say that dominions 2 has the power to read in my mind ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

Another test might be to use the BattleSim (mini.map) edit it to give yourself alot more than the AI. More population, more gold, a couple of extra gem-producing sites, an extra starting army. Now build up for a couple of turns and then attack. Did the AI catch up to you?

Not that it would matter anyway, but it would be a test. Its not really a solo-play game so the AI cheating isnt a big deal. Everything has its pros and cons, everything is in scales. The scale of AI cheating balances the need for AI being challenging. Its still general opinion (including mine since I have tried abit) that you cannont make a human-challenging AI. The more options there are, the harder it gets.

The AI newsGroups generaly consider Galactic Civilizations and Capitalism II to be the games which are most focused on that target in case you are interested.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is because your scouts do not see armies in the neighbouring provinces. Everywhere your scouts go they will only see armies in the same province. And the AI often has armies patrolling/moving through their own provinces. The AI does not know where you have your scouts unless he finds them by patrolling. Turns are hosted simultaneously and the AI turn is not different from yours, so it is impossible to make an AI that has knowledge of your moves.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

Disclaimer: I have no problem with bonused AIs, I expect the AI in strategy games to be boosted if it has to put up a fight vs an experienced human player.

That said, I still insist the my experience doesn't match the one of the OP, the AI certainly fails at 'predicting' or being informed of my moves. Dunno if anything he does in his testing might tip his results (building local def?), but I have one to propose myself:

-Let the enemy AI siege one of your forts, let it build up the sieging force while you round up a massive flying relief force a couple provinces away (or a boosted SC flying pretender). Attack the sieging force & waste them. If the AI knew that your uberpretender was coming, why would it keep its army there mantaining the siege?

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

The AI does a bad job of reacting to my assassins and succubi. *evil smile* I've assassinated Pretenders before, and had assassins seize provinces on their own...
I'm quite sure that it doesn't know troop sizes; it's accepted battles that it otherwise would have had no business accepting e.g. it losing 89 of 91 commanders and roughly 85-90% of a 700+-troop army because of the far higher quality of mine (mages present, equipment, troop types).

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

I don't get the sense that the AI is cheating either.

I've moved forces of archers into an undefended province the same turn he moved illithids in. Would he have done that if he had known that an incredibly cheap missile force was on the way?

I've also assassinated pretenders with empoisoners before. Without items. And no guards. Surely he would have added guards to his pretender if he was aware of my assassination attempt, right?

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

SurvivalistMerc, only if the AI was cheating and programmed to think about those things while cheating, which seems even more far-fetched than what's been suggested here.

Whismerhill, I think you're probably getting paranoid - no offense! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I haven't seen anything that made me think the AI might be moving based on my moves. Quite the contrary. I've seen plenty of cases where the AI has seemed to "guess wrong" (or, not even considering) about where I was going to move, and as others have pointed out, the AI itself seems slightly overly-predictable about always moving its armies around, usually inside its own territory, so that a very strong province surrounded by empty or weak provinces, will probably be weak the next turn (assuming it has commanders to lead the men away). Often, though, the AI has multiple armies marching around, and unless you have scouts behind their lines, you may not see the army that is about to march into a province.

As for catching spies, I think the mechanic has changed since Doms I - I've caught many AI spies and assassins without having any patrols or units in my provinces - just some defense. That's just a sensible change in the game mechanics for both sides, and has nothing to do with AI. (Unless I'm wrong about the cause of more captures on both sides compared to Doms I, in which case the AI is just uses more spies and defense, which would just be an AI quality improvement.)

PvK

[ November 21, 2003, 18:04: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is already known... everyone knows and agrees with this. We've all seen this while playing.

Quote:

by SurvivalistMerc I've also assassinated pretenders with empoisoners before. Without items. And no guards. Surely he would have added guards to his pretender if he was aware of my assassination attempt, right?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Those factors are not factored into the games programming... that's why it happens. And again we've all seen enemy territories be left unguarded... my point is that when an assassin is hidden on enemy territory there is always an army that moves to that territory the next turn and some type of army is always there. An assassin never sees unguarded territory except for the first turn he arrives.

[ November 21, 2003, 19:30: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

This does certainly sound a bit fishy. But it doesn't really bother me. The AI is hampered enough by not building fortresses, etc. that I don't really mind.

It doesn't break seiges when it could easily deal with the force coming at it from either direction but not with the combined force.

Do your assassins see unoccupied territory when they don't have an army with them? Because it isn't unrealistic imo that there would be reports of possible stealth forces in the event that you brought a force of sufficient size. Granted, the player doesn't get such reports....

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Or any other sneaker that can affect the province I think. Priests, spies who can do incites, assassins, etc.

Ive used this against the AI. Sending units into his far territorys so he will build up forces next to another AI. Having large armies on each others borders tend to toss them into combat sooner.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

Are you sure you are not confusing local militia with an army? I've certainly had assassins camp out in enemy territories and *not* see any new armies coming in. There was however some local militia that made it tricky to gauge if I should attempt the province with the assassin or not.

I've been able to take provinces like that with assassins (and occasionally scouts as Jotun). So I don't really understand your complaint. The AI is not 'cheating' in the games I've played, at least not in this respect. You don't always get a fair measure of the local defense though, that's what makes things dicey from time to time. But realistically (and you know how much I hate to invoke that word http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) does it make sense for your one assassin behind enemy lines to take an entire province of several thousand (potentially) inhabitants? No, obviously it doesn't, so lets keep realism out of this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's not what I've seen. They try to break sieges all the time, and I usually have to completely cut off besieged province for them to stop. I've even seen vampire queen and two vampires alone trying to break siege against a huge army of mine when they were cut off completely.

Btw, I don't see how much the fort is damaged when I besiege it. Does the fort's defense rating reset itself if there is an attempt to break the siege, or does it continue to diminish as long as I'm able to damage the walls regardless of the relief attempts?

On the stealth topic: I haven't seen this particular behavior of intercepting your stealthy units. I've had my scouts and preachers in empty provinces for many turns. And also I've seen enemy assasins doing their job after crossing many many of my provinces on which I've spent a fortune for local defense and whacking my researchers in the capitol... Bottom line is, you don't know whether the AI would move its army in that province regardless of your assassin, i.e. maybe they were just going in that direction for some other reason. Only the devs would know an answer to that.

[ November 21, 2003, 20:39: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

The official word, from way back before the game was actually released, is that the only knowledge the AI has that the players don't is the awareness of provincial ownership. As Johan (or Kristoffer) pointed out, that's not a big leap as it is very easy for a human to intuite provincial ownership anyway, and we also have access to the provincial status screen so we always know the relative strengths in terms of numbers as well.

I'd love to say it is a strategy, but I often just forget to move scouts and assassins for awhile. I often come back to find them alone, with no enemy presence about them at all. I've even captured a few provinces with that "tactic," although it was pillage-and-run because I knew my little guy could never hold the place alone.

I realize the results others are getting seem to indicate a certain prescience, but I do firmly believe it is coincidental. The AI tends to shuttle little mini-armies around for whatever reason, possibly for guarding purposes or to avoid supply limits or . . . something. I still haven't figured out what's up with that. Anyway, it is possible that's part of what you're seeing.

Re: Is AI cheating ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's not what I've seen. They try to break sieges all the time, and I usually have to completely cut off besieged province for them to stop. I've even seen vampire queen and two vampires alone trying to break siege against a huge army of mine when they were cut off completely.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've also seen them camp in forts like crazy.

On a side note, in one game I'm playing right now, AI-controlled T'ien Chi has no provinces, 1 fortress, the most research, and the largest total army. The reason for this seeming paradox is because they are staying bottled up safe in their starting fortress, researching like mad. Their army level keeps climbing on the graph, so they haven't hit any atrophication due to supply limits. (I think they must be selling gems to buy the new troops, unless they were queued previously.) When they bust free with all that lovely new magic, I pity the fools trying to hold them in check.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not sure if you can access the damage numbers for an enemy fort. You can check your own, as you probably already now, via the Fortress button on main map.

The way it works, as far as I know, is that the defenders repair and the attackers siege. The difference represents the relative change in the fort's defense. You get appropriate Messages to tell you of the status of this situation, obviously. There are also some special factors (mindless units count only 1/10 for repairs, sappers siege like madmen, etc.) but that's the basics.

The damage to the fort is only repaired automatically if the province falls back into friendly (to the fort) hands. In that case, the damage is removed completely.