The AI Flat out cheats.

Kaak · November 10, 2001, 10:35

Take a look at the save I attached...Watch the replay. I had the chinese cornered from the start, I take a city, and they build another the same turn. The captured city is assimilated, but I take it and the other city back the immediately afterwards. Then what happens??? Another city pops up at the bottom of the continent from NO WHERE!!! No settler, no nothing. Then, the very next turn, I have an Archer and a spearman coming at me. You know what happens next? ANOTHER CITY APPEARS!!!

This game is Normal map, Monarch, and random for the rest.

If anyone would like to see more saves, let me know

1625 BC- look here first.

1650 BC

1675 BC

1700 BC

1725 BC

Another interesting note is that after all this, they had a great deal more gold than they did before I took their cities.

tishco · November 10, 2001, 11:25

i dont have civ3 yet as i'm in ingland but want to get opions before i get it next week (or dont) so what is it the AI does?

Zoetstofzoetje · November 10, 2001, 11:26

Yes, it's called an early *something* which makes the AI-player get another free new city somewhere else on the continent, as well as 100 gold pieces.

Kaak · November 10, 2001, 11:30

but two cities? and then what about the units? There should be some way to disable that. Dead is Dead.

kmj · November 10, 2001, 11:43

So this is some kind of cheat added to make the higher levels harder? I don't think I like it at all.

SkinJob · November 10, 2001, 11:57

This remembers me of NHL 00/01 by EA, where on higher difficulties the AI didn't got better, but they weakend your players and made the ai players faster, pass better and shoot more accurate, while your speed, pass acc. and shoot acc. went down.

Sometimes AI just stands for Artificial Idiot, and indeed needs cheating to beat a human counterpart.

Roswell · November 10, 2001, 12:07

It's not just at higher levels. I've seen this happen at chieftain, warlord, and regeant. In my past game (regeant), I killed the germans and the romans, and their cities appeared immediately following the capture of their last city.

It might be like the auto-restart was for early AI death in Civ2. Any speculation on the cut-off date? If it is a date?

Grim Legacy · November 10, 2001, 12:14

Yeah the same thing happened in Civ2. They just get a second chance.

I guess the cut-off date is between 500BC and 1AD.

Deathray · November 10, 2001, 13:00

No, the AI does not flat out cheat. If you kill a civilization early on they can be restarted. The same applies to you if you are killed early on. This feature was in Civilization 2 & Alpha Centaurii, and no-one complained then. In my opinion its a very good feature as it means that when I select 16 civilizations then for most of the game I will be playing against 16 civilizations, not 16 take away a few who got knocked out at the start.

Orlando · November 10, 2001, 14:07

Maybe the following happened:

1. Unit finds goodie hut.

2. Unit enters goodie hut and gets a settler.

3. Settler builds a city.

Though it sounds like the unit should not have existed to find a hut.

Soren Johnson · November 10, 2001, 14:15

If you eliminate a civ early in Civ3, they get restarted. Just like in Civ I and Civ II and SMAC.

Roswell · November 10, 2001, 14:23

That's what I figured... a little too easy in the very beginning to beat the hell out of your neighbors otherwise.

Or be beaten at the higher levels I suppose. :P

gamadict · November 10, 2001, 15:29

Of course, in Civ2, you could turn this off...

ColdWizard · November 10, 2001, 16:41

after what date/turn # do the ai not get restarted? i wiped out the aztecs in 630bc on chieftain

Pyrodrew · November 10, 2001, 17:02

Civs could always get restarted at ANY date. However, restarting & 1500 A.D. with 1 settler while you're trying to relearn the alphabet greatly slims that civs odds of winning. I also think this is a GREAT feature. Although as far as options that was my 1 expectation for Civ3... that it would have more options than Civ2 did... but right now it has less.

Kaak · November 10, 2001, 22:43

Quote:

If you eliminate a civ early in Civ3, they get restarted. Just like in Civ I and Civ II and SMAC.

I don't think it is just like civ2, et al. In civ2, a different civ got restarted. Here the same civ gets restarted, with all of it's techs, 100 extra gold, and extremely fast production if not free units.

ChrisShaffer · November 10, 2001, 23:32

In SMAC (and, iirc in Civ2) they restarted with half the technologies of the leading player and bonus units based on opposing army sizes. There was actually a strategy in SMAC of destroying your initial colony pod which would usually cause a restart with two colony pods.

I think that this is just fine - would you really want the restarted civ to be so far behind they don't have a chance?

dexter4dxm · November 11, 2001, 00:03

all this talk of AI cheating has reminded me of a game i played on a huge map where i sent some scouts out on top of mountains by my neighboring civs. i watched the AI, not once, but repeatedly build improvements INSTANTLY with NO workers. i mean i let my scout there, end my turn, and watch as the AI starts taking its turn, and all of a sudden a road and a mine will both appear in a tile by their city yet they have no workers there at all.

PatriotPlayer · November 11, 2001, 02:22

I also saw a wooden ship (Caravel or Galleon) instantly change into an Ironclad. It was traveling near my shore just looking around and on one turn the wooden ship disappeared and an Ironclad was there, I guess the AI discovered Steam on that turn.

jones · November 11, 2001, 02:45

Not to mention the AI's huge empires, which are relatively corruption free.

Zylka · November 11, 2001, 02:51

Soren, if you could peg the blame on one member of the civ team for how cheaply made this game is, who would it be?

Zanteogo · November 11, 2001, 03:10

On thing I found with the AI was that it always seems to be one or two techs ahead of me.

The reason for this seems to be the unbalanced trading the AI does. It will make even trades with other AI civs but with the human player, demands twice the amount of tech/gold/resorces.

Not only does this give the AI players a huge advantage.. it also ruins the "trading subgame".