The key here is that the software will absolutely only perform actions for which code instructions exist. If the code shown by frogboy are the only instructions related to finding or knowing about habitable planets, then it simply can't do anything else. Extra instructions (lines of code) aren't magically generated just to spite people. Test all ya like - I'm going with what the code says.

Oh, and making unpopular statements is always going to make you unpopoular. Would have thought that was obvious.

I also came to a similar conclusion. Not only do I belive the AI know the entire map at start but I also belive the AI starts with certain.. advantages.

Playing a Large Map as the Yor in the beginning on normal difficulty versus 7 AIs. As I am still sending my Colonyship to the first planets I found when all AI civs smack down on their second planet. About 10 turns later all AIs settle on their 3rd planets. This is when I am still buildning my second colonyship. My Flagship hasn´t even found a third system yet!

To sum it up. When I now have settled on 3rd planet moste of the AIs have 4-6 planets. I focused ONLY on building colonyships. Now I´m being attacked by three AIs and I´m desperatly fighting to hold on to my 3 planets. Altough its intersting and fun I think this is a bit off scale for being on normal difficulty...

This also have another drawback. It forces the player to warmonger in order to expand early on at all since most planets are already taken by the AI. Not a problem for me this time since I´m playing the Yor. But many players want to play peacefully.

For some reason I´m terrible behind techwise. Even though I make a new discovery every 3rd turn or so I´m so behind its not even funny. I can´t see any other explaination for this then some sort of "AI boost"....

What the code doesn't say is how the planets are visible to the AI. I would suggest that the observations made by par.002 are worthy of investigation given that another player has noticed similar behaviour consistant with the AI KNOWING what the player sees.

Thats not cheating (although it appears as such), its simply a bug and it should be ruled out and investigated.

Well if the AI knows where everything is I don't know how I could be beating them to systems when I have to check everything out 1st. If Frogboy says it is not happening that's good enough for me. That's like questioning Jesus on the accuracy of the bible. In Gal Civ 1 the AI did know where the systems were on Maso, that's why it was Maso. They were given the Stellar configurary (sp?)tech off the bat. I know I would not be getting the starts I'm getting now, if the AI had that kind of advantage, having played about 500 games against those odds on the old game.

I'll throw in my two cents here, with a direct observation from one of my games.

The situation was thus: it was early in the game, after the scouting rush, during the colonization rush. I, being a research mogul, had already researched a couple of levels of sensors and colonized a pair of planets to the North-west, making contact with an AI to the north-west. There were a pair of very nice uninhabited class 15 planets to my south-east, so I quickly deployed a sensor craft loaded with 15 sensors to keep an eye on them.

I saw the NW AI deploy colony ships from his planets, heading directly for 'my' two class 15's. I immediately purchased a pair of fast colony ships (blowing about 1500 bc in the process) and sent them to colonize them before he got there. They took three turns to reach them. During those three turns, there were NO scout vessels anywhere near the two class 15's.

The turn following my colonization of the planets, with NO WAY of knowing that I had colonized the two planets they were on a direct course for, the two NW AI colony ships changed course, one immediately colonizing the class 3 planet adjacent to my capital (AGAIN, it always does this), the other heading into space I hadn't yet explored to the north.

I would consider this as strong evidence that the AI has access to information it shouldn't. Does the 'IsColonyColonized' function just check directly, or does it check to see if the AI should KNOW the planet is colonized?

crickel

The AI probably knows you've colonized the planets. So can you. If you check your minimap, and turn the areas of influence on, you'll see a bice big blob of color appear around that star when someone colonizes a planet.

My current theory is that (one or more of):

A) Not enough testing has been done to be statistically relevant;
Considering that I almost always send colony ships blind, the AI might do it more than some people expect;
C) Considering the strange behavior of AI troop transports (sometimes being built in hordes and launched unescorted), there is some ship-sending code hidden in a forgotten corner somewhere, with different rules than the function assumed to be in control;
D) There is a bug in AI map knowledge. Another bug reported by Frogboy earlier, in which AIs would surrender to you out of the blue, was because a pointer that intended to point at the AI accepting the surrender some AI was not being reset, and still pointed at the player. Similarly, perhaps the first colony ship to recieve orders on a new AI turn is using the human's map instead of the AI's map.


That said, there is a difference between "bug" and "cheat". Accusing someone of writing a "cheating" AI after he has many times stated that the AI does not cheat, takes pride in his ability to write a good AI that does not cheat, and seems to be honest and skillful, is a vile slur. Publicly accusing people of theft when you drop something and notice that they own something similar is slander, and can land you in jail. This is no different.

Stardock published a good game before all the bugs were gone. THE GAEM HAS BUGS!!!1111!! Note that I can say this and I am not committing slander, or being an ass like the person who started the thread. There is ample evidence for it being true, for example; and furthermore, it is provable and mandatory, considering that the state of the art in software design and verification cannot provide bug-free software of this magnitude, after any amount of testing with modern methods.

I feel that given the rate of bug-fixing, the game should have been released a couple weeks later, as there is obviously plenty of work to be done. That's not slander either - it's an opinion. Furthermore, it is neither deliberately inflammatory nor insulting.

par.002, on the other hand, feels that seeing an AI colony ship beeline to a habitable planet it probably never saw - and then seeing it again and again - is sufficient grounds to publicly accuse a seemingly nice, friendly, caring person, who is seemingly trying his hardest, of fraud - and add the slur "The AI is not very smart" to the mix.

No grounds were ever used to justify the slur. No evidence was presented regarding AI intelligence at all. Therefore, I can only assume it was a deliberate insult to add "flavor" to the ensuing discussion. However, it gives me grave doubts as to the validity of any of par's purported testing, as he obviously has no qualms about making claims for the purpose of hurting others that have no relevance or justification. I suspect that par saw the event. But someone so eager to accuse decent people of fraud in the most insulting way possible will never convince me that he was statistically thorough, since he lacks the motivation or patience; words are free and immediately gratifying.

The alleged fraud, then, is that Frogboy (and friends, but he wrote the AI) developed a game claiming "It does not cheat" while actually inserting cheat mechanisms to compensate for an inabilty to write good code. Given that obviously Stardock DOES write good code, and so has no reason to insert cheats and lie about them; that anyone with half a brain can imagine a dozen other possible causes for this syndrome; and that all of those half-brained causes, no matter how implausible, are more likely than fraud - I think you, Mr. par, should formally apologize to Stardock.

If I had met you on the street, and you had leveled such accusations at me with such little evidence and such an obvious antagonistic, insulting attitude - in front of other people I wanted to impress - I would have knocked you flat on your ass, then slapped a lawsuit on top of it and made you pay for hurting my pride and scratching my fist. Stardock legal and PR lack my adrenal glands, so you're pretty safe sniping away like a little spoiled brat - but here's to hoping you screw up again and get banned.

Hi!
I still suspect there's a bug in the "what AI can see" code. I had several ocassions when my scanner ships (cargo huil, engine, rest about 10 scanners) were sniped by the dreadLord's fighters BEFORE they even get to the front. And there was not ANY dreadLord's ship in vicinity to spot it, I had a 100% visual coverage on that frontline. Te fighter just went from the planet, avoided my fleet of 3 fregates that were providing cover for the rest of my ships (scanners, transports) and sniped the scanning ship.
In another campaign mission I've seen both drengin's defensive fleets all or a sudden move. When I checked their destinations, they were both heading for my scanner ship, that was still more than 20 parsecs away. There was a fight in vicinity of it a turn before (me destroying a constructor heading after a resource), but I'm pretty sure the scanner ship was out of sight of that constructor. Besides, those drengin's fleet didn't target the fighter that destroyed it, but were steadily heading after the scanner ship for next 10 turns! That strange behaviour allowed me to destroy all three drengin's military starbases, that were now without protection, and invaded their only planet.

That said I think Brad should check the "pick appropriate target" piece of code. Two fleets, where a single fighter would be enough, was an obvious overkill. And neither of them was able to catch my speed 8 ship with their speeds of only 2. "Baiting" anyone?
BR, Iztok

Here is an EASY test that anyone can perform. a) Run galciv2.exe with the command line paramter "cheat". There are a few ways of doing this,

c) Press Ctrl-U. (effectively lift fog of war) Now you can see where ALL objects are You will instantly meet all other races in the next turn. But this is because you now see them... (if you are wondering that because we cheated in seeing all activity, then so can they... I disagree due to the results of this experiment seems to show they can't see).

Well, this suppose that the AI works the same way if with FOW lifted for the player or not. If there is a bug, it could be that without CTRL+U, the map is revealed to the AI and with CTRL+U, the FOW is enable for the AI. That would explain different behaviors experienced by various posters

I saw the NW AI deploy colony ships from his planets, heading directly for 'my' two class 15's. I immediately purchased a pair of fast colony ships (blowing about 1500 bc in the process) and sent them to colonize them before he got there. They took three turns to reach them. During those three turns, there were NO scout vessels anywhere near the two class 15's. The turn following my colonization of the planets, with NO WAY of knowing that I had colonized the two planets they were on a direct course for, the two NW AI colony ships changed course, one immediately colonizing the class 3 planet adjacent to my capital (AGAIN, it always does this), the other heading into space I hadn't yet explored to the north.

Well, if they know that the 2 planets where PQ 15 and availabe for colonization, they will know when you colonized it.
Bascally, the code posted by Frogboy shows that when you have seen a planet, you know waht will happen to it
And it works both way.