Does the AI cheat? If so when and how?

from Sins Forums
Obvious question but one I didn't see an answer to. If I choose a "hard" AI does it get more resources, play more aggressively or just play smarter?

I would ideally like to be able to choose whether or not the AI should get more resources as well as whether it will be tougher.
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
The AI only cheats on the "Unfair" difficulty setting - Easy, Medium, and Hard only affect how it plays. I don't think the devs have ever said exactly how it changes. You can also set the AI mode independently of the difficulty - Aggressor, Fortifier, etc.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I don't think the devs have ever said exactly how it changes.
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They were asked, a few weeks ago, in a repeated manner, what makes the « hard » A.I. better than the « normal » A.I., and the latter better than the « easy » A.I., and they never gave any precise answer.

A representative from Stardock merely stated, in the abstract, that the better levels of A.I. had access to more « routines » and « sub-routines » in their computational reasoning -- which is extremely vague.

A few forum posters then argued that those « routines » were too complex to explain to non-programmers -- which is an easy & lazy way out.

In conclusion ... I'm very surprised that the Ironclad & Stardock developers & producers remain so secretive about their A.I. levels.

We don't need access to the A.I. code (a trade secret), but it would be interesting to be informed on some major parameters of the artificial-logic differences between the four levels of A.I.

The official line is that only the « unfair » A.I. cheats.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Obvious question but one I didn't see an answer to. If I choose a "hard" AI does it get more resources, play more aggressively or just play smarter?I would ideally like to be able to choose whether or not the AI should get more resources as well as whether it will be tougher.
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The AI cheats in the sense that it has ESP, but that's pretty much true of all computer AIs in every game.

This is especially unfair in GalCiv 2 though, where they have planet-seeking colony ships they can't even know exist, and you have to waste time roaming around for them.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
The AI cheats in the sense that it has ESP, but that's pretty much true of all computer AIs in every game.
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I wonder if such is the case with the non-unfair A.I.s in SINS.

I haven't seen any official info confirming or denying that the comps see the whole map at all times.

Why would they send scouts if they did see the whole map from the start ?!

SINS is not like Heroes of Might & Magic : there are no goodies & treasures lying around that a scout could easily pick up without a fight.

Like I said in my previous post : Ironclad & Stardock have been extremely reserved in what concerns the disclosure of precise info pertaining to the hard-coded parameters of the A.I. skills.  (:( 



Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
A representative from Stardock merely stated, in the abstract, that the better levels of A.I. had access to more « routines » and « sub-routines » in their computational reasoning -- which is extremely vague.
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It's not that vague when you think about it, though. The AI is basically a system for gathering all the different variables, happenings, etc and deciding what to do based on them. It should be fairly understandable that progressive AI difficulties would use better methods of deciding what to do.

Let's take for example economy - between Easy/Normal/Hard, they're better at managing the economy.

Another example (not that I know exactly how it works, but for the sake of an example): an Easy AI might see a planet and say "Hey, I'll attack!", a Normal might see the same planet but realize "Hey, my planet's under attack too, I'll go defend it instead", and a Hard might see the same planet and figure "Well, mine's under attack but I got another fleet closer that can beat them off, I can go attack with this one".

I mean, for Ironclad to answer what exactly the differences are could well be a book :P