How bad does the AI cheat?

I was under the impression that unless you use the Impossible setting or similar, the AI doesn't cheat at all, and on the easier difficulty settings the AI gets some high spending penalties.

As to the colony bit, are you sure the AI *has* to have lower max range on their colony ships? Maybe he just has better life support tech, or more life support on his colony ships?

For the purchasing ships bit, maybe the AI simply has a better economy than you?

AI's start with different techs than you and probably have better range off the bat than a human player- try another race.

aye Brad has stated on more than one occasion that the AI does NOT cheat except in extreme cases i believe and even then i think it wasn't cheating jsut better starting resources. Also dont discount the fact they may have put a Military starbase up in the Fog of War to extend their range. Or they researched life support techs to extend their range.

If you spot a colony ship of theres, you can see it's max range when you click on it.

The AI does NOT cheat. Ever. Period. It plays the same exact game you do... The only differences are, on the lower end of the difficulty scale they have a penalized economy and also lack certain "strategies". (things like escorting transports and attacking weak parts of your empire, etc might be missed by a low AI) The higher end (after Intelligent) gets a boost to their economy and they have access to all the strategies. AFAIK they never "Cheat" it's just they have more money than you.

So with that said, Im curious which level you were playing?

1. Starbases. It's most likely that the AI has dropped SBs to extend its range and you just haven't seen them due to fog of war or have overlooked their significance. It also doesn't take a huge amount of life support to get decent range.

2. You can buy things outright or put yourself into a world of hurt and do leases. The AIs could be doing leases and/or buyouts - and with 5k bc to start you have a lot of purchase power (and so do the AIs) - much moreso than in GC1. I kinda doubt each and every AI is going overkill here - it's probably a mix of AI ships making it look worse than it is.

In my "normal" difficulty games I blow away the AIs for expansion and tech. That 5000bc was meant to be spent, baby! That and I research better drives immediately and redesign my colonizers, constructors, and scouts for better speed (and maybe better range or sensors too, depending on the ship type). Simply bumping them all to 3pc/wks is a 50% improvement that greatly helps your initial expansion. I also make a stripped down el cheapo colonizer for grabbing planets in the same system - no need to have life support or speed to grab those colonies. Maximize. Optimize. Uberize!

We'll see how this goes when I try "tough" tonight against "intelligent" AIs.

You can create a longer range colony ship. I do it. Just take off one of the colony modules, and add life support modules. Add additional engines too, and make it faster!

Just my 2 cents, but it's really frustrating when no matter what I do, I can't even begin to keep up with the computer's ability to spend and expand.

The computer never cheats except on AI settings above Intelligent, and there it only gets extra money and nothing else, as others have said.

I certainly have no problem keeping up or getting ahead of the AI on Tough difficulty; you're probably just playing too high for your current knowledge of the game.

I've not noticed this myself since it seems that I can develop faster than some AI races in all games (and slower than others).

About your first point, I don't understand why their range must be less than yours? A lot of things can influence range, from the abilities you pick to new life support modules to your ship.

For the seconf point I don't understand. I think I remember that you could rush-buy things in galciv one. I remember huge deficits after buying diplomatic translators.

Maybe the AI buy things go to max deficit and then cuts all spending for some turns to recover fast and buy again.

Just my best guess

Hm. I can see all your points, and I'll investigate them more thourghly.

Edit: Nevermind, Voqar already mentioned what I wanted to say. Need to read more thoroughly.

The AI has to follow the exact same range rules as the player does. Period. The game engine doesn't even know whether a given ship is owned by the AI or not.

Second issue: I've noticed through play that unlike GalCiv 1, you can afford to spend money on items early, so I'm buying colony ships like mad to expand as quickly as possible. Now, the computer is not only buying colony ships, but scouts and constructors as well, leading me to believe that the computer can ignore monetary restrictions when purchase units, or starts with far more funds then the player.

The AI RARELY buys ships in GalCiv II.  Instead, it mostly rush buys colony improvements so that it can naturally build units faster.

When I play the game, I almost always out-expand the AI.  It's later on that I have problems.

Brad,

What is the better strategy? Building your ships quickly or building your buildings quickly, right away? I suppose it depends on the galaxy size and number of AI opponents, huh?

Well if you have some bonus manufacturing tiles I'd venture to say go for buildings.. If not buying a couple colonys won't hurt.

I usually buy some factories immediately on my first few worlds to jump start their production - which is something that benefits the colony forever. The first basic factories are cheaper than colony ships too.

You can also dink with your production sliders to go very heavily into military production immediately (at the expense of research and/or social production) to help crank out colony ships quickly early on. I used to do this in galciv1. I haven't done it in galciv2 because I'm playing on smaller (medium) maps so far, so there's less of a "land rush", and because you start with way more BC in GC2 than you did in GC1.

I have a tendency to buy 2 scouts early too, and/or to rush buy partially developed colony ships. Probably not necessary and a less than optimal use of funds but I haven't had a problem with funds or expansion yet.

Tonight I'm gonna try "tough" and "intelligent" AI and I'll probably need to refine my methods considerably.

If I'm not mistaken, this is illegal. I even sat down and thought about it a while, under the pretense that maybe, somehow, it was, and I could do it, too. But no, you can't build starbases within 3 parsecs of each other.

The 3 parsecs rules applies only:
- for starbase in the same sector . The 2 starbases in your screenshots are in different sectors
- for non mining starbase

Of course the AI doesn't cheat. It just has a few bugs that need to be worked out. Like this one.



If I'm not mistaken, this is illegal. I even sat down and thought about it a while, under the pretense that maybe, somehow, it was, and I could do it, too. But no, you can't build starbases within 3 parsecs of each other. Unless something weird happens. If anyone's curious, yes, I have a savegame. Didn't notice when exactly it happened, but there it is.

crickel

I think you should put that bug in a seperate post instead of this post. Good catch btw.

The dev team has previously mentioned redoing the system revolving around Starbase placement limitations... something like a max of 3 per sector... when they implement this change that flaw will be corrected.