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

Eh, highly doubt it. I saw the same behaviour with and without cheat. With pumped up scanner and engines I was able to get into possitions within 4 turns to watch everything the AI was doing.

Oh ok, must be with patch. Before even if another ship had spotted one my survey ship wouldn't go.

AI planet knowledge cheat: Myth Busted

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I always build a sensor-15 drone first thing in my games to get an immediate look at my surroundings. EVERY time there's been an AI in range of me early on, I can see its scouts swarming all over the place before it ever leaves his home system with colony ships. Not surprising at all since Brad posted the code showing it must do exactly that.

Just chucking in some empirical obersation from in my most recent game.

The Torians were on a course for a planet they had definitely seen (they had a colony in that system) I took it the turn before.... that same turn, my scout picked up a PQ 26 planet literally a few tiles south of my new planet, in another system. The Torians, although I fully expected them to b-line to that planet, actually turned tail and went back a few sectors (about 8 game turns) and took a PQ 6 equally far from their capital....... in simple terms, they hadn't seen the PQ 26 planet or they would have taken it as it was only 2 or maybe 3 turns from their colony ship.

Of course, this is just empirical evidence as seen in game, I couldn't possibly compete with the factually decisive statements made above by the proponents of AI cheating!

And, just for the record, there are a couple of real twats on these boards who seem to troll for the express purpose of jumping down everyone's throat who actually likes and enjoys the game and is prepared to stand up for it. If people post erroneous statements that criticise components, arguing against it does not mean you are "a fanboie" but rather that you are correcting the aforementioned erroneous statements. Yes, there are plenty of bugs in the game, but these "AI is teh ch33ter" threads are based upon supposition or badly flawed "tests".

I've definitely seen the AI miss better planets that it hadn't seen and colonize inferior planets instead, even when the better planet was closer. There might be a bug here that causes the AI to see through the fog of war in some games but I doubt it's a common event.

There were problems with the FOW in the early beta, especially regarding games generated with Ctrl-N, you'd often see what you had revealed both in your current game and the previous game.

As a side note, discard any testing you do with the Torians. Their obnoxious sensor bonus means that if you're playing without the latest patch, they will see much more than you do, even with sensor barges.

Okay, so I tested it. Here's a summary.

I started a new game. Gigantic map, frequent stars, rare planets, rare habitable planets. I set the scenario to Accellerated Start so as to get a leg up - you get 10,000 credits to start and a bunch of techs, including Warp Drive, which I needed for my strategy.

So first turn through, I created two classes of ships: The Sensor Bouy, which has 15 sensors and moves at 4. And the Interdictor, a small craft which has a single laser and two warp drives to move at 7. I bought a sensor bouy and set my spending to max out military, completely tossing research to the wind.

The second turn, I launched it and encountered a nearby minor civilization. I sold them all my techs, got lots more money, and proceeded to use the money to buy alternating Interdictors and Sensor Bouys, using them to set up a perimeter immediately around my empire, guarding my borders with the vigiliance of hawks. I also found a second star nearby with a habitable planet, and noted that none of the AIs were anywhere near my civilization. The sensor bouy set up station around the habitable star to the southeast, and I held off on colonizing anything.

Every scout ship that my sensors picked up, my interdictors flew out and destroyed. All of the AI scout ships had 2 sensors, and never got close enough to my home system or the second system to detect the second habitable planet. I made dearly sure of that, even though it meant ending up at war with every single civilization in the game. I encounter four other minor civilizations, each time selling all my techs to plunder their treasury, then destroying their scout ship they'd send to say 'hi'.

So now I'm sitting back, guarding my borders, making sure nothing gets through... and lo and behold, an Arcean colony ship pops up on my sensors, heading RIGHT FOR the single habitable planet in my area that NO scout EVER got close enough to see.

To sum up: It certainly appears like the AI is cheating.

Questions, comments? I have a save-game available if people are interested.

crickel

Edit: As a side note, the 'fog of war' being reversed is both: A. a plausible explaination for what is happening, and B. a plausible mistake. All it would take is accidentally leaving off a single 'not' statement in the code in some IF statement somewhere. If that were true, I would hardly call the programmers, 'the worst coders in the universe ever' or something like that. I've seen mistakes in code like that in place for years of use without being noticed.

heading RIGHT FOR the single habitable planet in my area that NO scout EVER got close enough to see

on minor thing: how are you sure it is heading right to the planet and not toward the star?

Secondly, it is highly unlikely that changing the visibility for the user is going to make any difference at all to the visibility of the AI, especially if that change is "make it work"

Are you telling us that if you remove the FOW for you through cheat code, it won't be removed for the AI? Sure, I can understand for debugging puprose, that if the FOW is lifted for the player, the AI must still have it to test the validity of the exploration process. BUt I don't know what exactl the CTRL+U cheat code do. I know it remove the FOW. It gives also the universal translator. But what does it exactly do to the AI?

As for 'reversible fog of war', I don't think you fully understand how the process of getting a game out works

Perharps. I know that nobody can do full regression tests on the AI. And if you aren't aware about strange behaviors, you may not investigate enough time to see it correctly. The test protocol made by Crickel mean to invest time in testing with a specific way to play the game. Not sure that this kind of test is made on all builds

BTW, my point of view in this topic is very simple: consider that everyone tells the truth about what they have experienced.

I think you all should give the programmers the benefit of the doubt that they have, indeed, created an AI that is smarter than you are (no offense intended).

Strangely, it is my position. But if some people report stange behavior, then tests and investigations are needed in order to have a proof of a buggy behavior if there is one.

except people are going out on a limb and saying "oh, turning on that cheat might all of a sudden cause the AI to do exactly what they are supposed to"... thats sounds more like a plea for an excuse to be correct than anything else, and definately no proof that that could be the case.

Well, maybe I wasn't clear enough: I was trying to point out that enabling cheat mode can cause the AI to react differently. And that maybe, the tiggers associated with cheat code may help to spot the bug. Obviously tests are needed to confirm any hypothesis and I have never told otherwise.

So, assuming that everyones observations are correct, then the AI does things we don't expect them to do, except when we did... expect them...to

Well, the problem is to know if the things the AI do are coded that way or results of a bug. The only way we have to spot is to try to reproduce the strange behavior while carefully discarding all hypothesis.

If you want something added, you should be more positive. The developers are more likely to listen to "I want multiplayer because me and my buddies love to play multiplayer space sims and this one would be great with multiplayer" then "We need multiplayer because the AI is a cheating bastard".

Ok, well thanks for your objective reply. I got to the beginning of the second page of this thread and realized that the majority of the people have negative comments to say about me personally and my "supposed biased" tests. So I just skipped down to the last one and read yours.

I honestly never really meant to be negative. I guess the title really was negative and it should have been a little more PC... but never-the-less I DO like this game and have enjoyed 2 huge galaxy games already (one where I got slaughtered and another where I did the slaughtering:))

Anyway... just to point something out OBJECTIVELY.. here is a well respected game reviewer who just happens to notice the exact same thing that my original post was implying.

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=670112

Final musings There were some problems in the original, the AI seemed to still magically know where the best planets were and ...

Although he goes on to say at the end of that sentence "...the point I make here is that while reviewing the game I haven’t experienced these problems..." I dont know if he meant the ORIGINAL Galciv had these problems and he was comparing this game to that game or he STILL see's that the AI magically knows where planets are.

Anyway... Read it yourself.. its a pretty good review of the game.

PAR

when i dont know where the habitable planet is, I send my colony ship to first star system with more planets, and if i dont find it, i go to the next one, but i find it most of the time...