Is AI cheating ?

[Taqwus]

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).

[SurvivalistMerc]

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?

[PvK]

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! 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 ]

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:


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?

This is already known... everyone knows and agrees with this. We've all seen this while playing.

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?

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 ]

[SurvivalistMerc]

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....

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
An assassin never sees unguarded territory except for the first turn he arrives.

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.

[licker]

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 ) 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

[HJ]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
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.

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 ]

[Psitticine]

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.

[Psitticine]

Originally posted by HJ:

quote:

---

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
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.

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.

---

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.

Originally posted by HJ:
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?

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.