At what level does the AI cheat?

Below Intelligent, the AI suffers economic penalties (so the player has an advantage).

At Intelligent, the game is even: no penalties or bonuses for either side.

Above Intelligent (i.e. Genius and Incredible), the AI receives extra income from it's colonies.

So the answer to your question is "Intelligent".

- Ash

~SDC~

actually, "genius" is the answer; he asked ">= x cheat?" not "> x cheat?". but I'm being picky and pokey.

~SDC~

Actually, deary, if you read his post, you'll see that the last sentence is "What's the hardest difficulty that I can play at where the AI has the same rules as I do?"

Now, if you want to nitpick, deary (I think I like this nickname for your nickname ;)), at least nitpick about something you're actually right about...

- Ash

~SDC~

Actually... he asked both of those questions. you are both right BAHAHAHAHA.

~SDC~

Actually to answer the question asked The AI always playes by the same rules you do it just gets a small amount of extra cash at the highest difficulty level.

I have noticed in the past that people are very hung up about a little extra cash, but compared to some 4X games this is very small beer. If you want a comparison just look at the advantages the Civ3 AI has, cheeper research, production, extra units when a new city has been founded (and it still can be beaten).

In one of the demo games Brad played he hit one of the AI's where it hurt and it never recovered (IIRC he destroyed a number of starbases which hit the production on its major worlds)

At the hardest difficulty, the AI gets a 40% cash bonus.

At the second highest its 5%.

At the lower levels it gets a cash penalty.

There a post by Brad explaining it somewhere.

Here it is:

Intelligence

One of the things we did do during the release candidates is make the game much easier to win on the lower levels. We found that experienced strategy gamers would get creamed even when the AI was set to "fool".

But at the same time, at the medium to higher levels, the AI is much more intelligent than it was in the betas. In fact, the beta GalCiv AI was, well pretty crummy compared to the gold version in terms of intelligence (not saying the gold is "harder" to beat, but that the AI is more intelligent in how it behaves).

In the betas, each AI level simply increased the intelligence rating of the player by say 15 points. Here's the problem we had with that:

You'd play on "normal" and get a challenge and then you'd up it a level and get creamed. So a lot of the extra month of development was spend play testing and adding more difficulty levels.

So now each computer player can indvidually be set to the following difficulty levels:

[IntLevel0] 4 Fool
[IntLevel1] 14 Beginner
[IntLevel2] 36 Sub-Normal
[IntLevel3] 42 Normal
[IntLevel4] 50 Bright
[IntLevel5] 60 Intelligent
[IntLevel6] 65 Genius
[IntLevel7] 100 Incredible

With the corresponding intelligence being 4, 14, 36, 42, 50, 60, 65, 100.

We may tweak these or add more after released based on what you guys say.

So now, you have sub-normal, normal, bright, intelligent and genius quite close together. I have not personally won with all the AI's set to genius on a medium sized map or higher. And incredible is just, well the AI gets lots of extra stuff.

Speaking of extra stuff, how do the resources get handled?

The intelligence ratings do two things: 1) They determine how much money they get from colonies.

So in pColony->CalcTaxesCollected() at the end it gets:
ulTaxes = ulTaxes * (40 + ulIntelligence);

So at intelligence = 60 (intelligent) it's getting the same from a colony as you. At Genius it's getting a bit more. And at incredible, all bets are off.

The other way intelligence matters is that it determines whether the AI is going to a) Do a thorough analysis on what players are doing Which AI scripts are available to use, and c) Determines whether the AI is going to do anything about it.

Example:
An AI with intelligence 60 will be able to check out its sensor areas and see if you are building up for an attack, fortifying starbases, trying to culturally dominate it, etc. It will then have to roll to see if it is going to do anything about it. I.e. "Do I recognize this as a threat or am I too dumb to see this?". If it rolls that it is going to recognize the threat then it has to roll whether it's goign to actually do anything about it. And if it is going to do something about it then it rolls to see if it will tell the human player about it (if it's a human player that is the threat).

IF the AI FAILS the roll, the human player gets a message from the AI letting it know it's on to what it's doing. Otherwise it quietly lowers relations and prepares for a war.

If you play on say Genius, and build up star bases and ships in a sector you're planning to attack you'll notice ships from other sectors quietly coming in to fortify. Fighters shadowing your transports. Etc.

But on lower intelligence levels, none of this happens. Which is one of the changes. So when you get the game, on Fool and Beginner you should be able to play the game without getting creamed now. This is different than it was in the beta when fool was = Int 15 and the next one up was 30.

by Avatar Frogboy - 3/5/2003 4:02:14 PM

As far as I have understood, then A.I also cheats in that it get HUGE bonuses to their initials stats. (E.G morale, defense, offense, hitpoints etc) In my current game the Torians set to intteligent, had all skills at almost +50%!! They had SO MUCH bonuses there was absolutely no way they could have researched or accuired those any other way because it was in the early stages of the game. Of course, they still did very poorly but the A.I in Galciv is not THAT much better than in other TBS games. Just something we will have to accept. (:(

-Elkku

Not sure where you got that idea from. Haven't heard or read from anywhere that it gets any bonus' other than the economic ones at the highest 2 difficulty settings. Other than that, it's all the same stuff.

I remember that Brad mentioned somewhere that the AI does get extra ability points on incredible. I'm not sure about the other levels.

Also, for the sake of completness, you should also mention that the AI does know the location of the good planets at the start of the game, and perhaps the resources.

True, that is extra information that the computer has that you don't. However, because you can see the location of planets on the map I haven't found it to be annoying. My initial grab tends to be only a few planets, preferably (obviously) with multiple decent planets in system.

Yep he asked both questions... hehe.

And from what I've heard it does NOT kow where the good planets are, just the yellow stars. I've been able to find 20+ planets around white and purple stars before.

~SDC~

Elkku,

When you mention the Torians having high stats
on Intelligent, how far into the game were you?
I am quite certain that the AI doesn't get any
statistic advantages on Intelligent. Is it
possible that the Torian's statistics in your
game are do to the fact that Torians have
acquired galactic resources? (Or have researched
additional techs?)

[Note: I also believe that the AI doesn't
get stat bonuses on Genius, but I could be wrong
here because I've never actually played against
Genius AI ... I generally get beaten when I
play Intelligent AI, but I've seen no evidence
in those games that the AI gets any bonuses]

- Matt Lepinski :->

AI doesn't know the location of the resources - i checked this.

~SDC~

Ellestar,

From my "piss off frogboy post"TM

Waright "3) Ability to see specials and send constructors to them without a visible ship scouting."

Frogboy "3) This is part of the plot."