Cheating AI or GalCiv

Few days ago Ive read an article about cheating AI... the GalCiv2 guys demented this and said the AI depends on the difficulty setting... well, how comes when I start a game in challenging diff level (or above) the other civilizations have pointdefense, but not ecm techs researched (example - I have checked few more techs, but this was the one I found out very fast )? There are races who have no ion drive, but fly around from the very beginning with hyperdrive

Today I checked another "challenging" game, within the first 3 months the other races in my "giantic" universe colonized 75% of the whole galaxy, heck I was happy to get 6 colonies in this time. Im quite a good player, but this is just amazing. There is no difference in the difficulty setting and it seems there are "internal" undocumented changes as well. Normal is too easy, challenging is already impossible (well no impossible, but not fair). Regulaly 50% of all other civs produce tech and ecomonic capitals in the first round of play (hahaha - the problem is not they buy it, but that they got the techs from the very beginning). One more thing: at normal level I never got any cash problems, I can leave tax rate and any other inner political settings at default and everything runs smoothly. Challenging upwards the game seems to suck up the cash and I get far less then normal. By the time I finaly begin to receive some cash, its like 3 years later and the first civ is going to war with me with like 10000 ships which I cant conter, because of the lacking money. Maybe Im doing something wrong, but no idea what...

So either the AI is cheating, or the devs gave them too much to begin with in higher difficulty levels. Thats very stupid. I play for fun with limited time. I want challenging games, not unfair ones. I know the "bonus" system other civs get in the civilization games, but none begin with more units, more cash and already developed techs. I want better challenging AI but without all this unnecessary extras they get, is it in any way possible?

I tried to modify the game a bit but without any luck. Any changes to the various xml files stay unaccepted. Example: I changed the raceconfig.xml and customplantes.xml. I tried to give me some more extra abilities and 20 points to distribute and increased the homeworld a bit, but when I start a new game, nothing happens. My homeworld is still 10in size and my custom race have its default abilities and the regular 10 points. On the other hand, I dont like to cheat the game in this ways and would prefer it to make some changes in the difficutly settings (keep the better AI, but remove the civ extras).

Any sugestions and help would be great.

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Well, from checking out the races on each level of difficulty their intelligence are a combination of...

Challenging - Normal / Bright
Tough - Bright / Intellignet
Crippling - Bright / Genius
Masochistic - Bright / Incredible
Obscene - Bright / Incredible
Suicidal - Bright / Incredible

From the Manual

The computer player has several different levels of intelligence which can be described as follows:

Normal: The AI's economy is run at 75% of normal, AI evaluates common human tactics
Bright: The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal, AI evaluates most known human tactics
Intelligent: The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal, AI expertly picks abilities and all known human tactics are searched and countered.
Genius: The AI's economy is run at 125% of normal, all AI algorithms in place (same as above)
Incredible: The AI's economy is run at 200% of normal, all AI algorithms in place (same as above)

"Your AI is cheating"...This is because players don't understand how the AI is able to do something. What's going on here is that the computer players never get tired; they can optimize things that no human would bother with.

Higher levels the AI will buy things right away if they have the money. They will measure leasing very carefully. Computer player will optimize taxes and manufacturing on a per turn basis.

That's the gist of it anyway...The AI's cheating in any game will always be a debate. There is no way to make a game challenging to "power gamers" without the AI cheating to some degree. There will also be those who use exploits against an AI and claim the game is too easy while at the same time complaining when the AI "cheats" at higher levels. It is a never ending debate...

You say you want it to be a challenge yet you said you tried to bump up your stats to be "equal" when all you have to do is play on Tough. Actually just find a level that you like. One that will give you enough of a challenge to fill in the limited amount of gaming time you have. Although it is solely my opinion, I play games to take a break from the stress of life going on around me daily, I don't feel the need to worry if a game is cheating or not as long as I enjoy myself while playing it.

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At challenging, the AI does not cheat.
This topic has been discussed unto death, but here goes.

AI on gigantic maps can be easily beaten in the colony rush phase.
From Tough to Painful (forgot that one Norad), I can beat the AI in colony rush and beat them in research even though they get a bonus in Painful - yes I know a small bonus.. working my way up slowly, no time to play

From your comments, you want to play this game on Tough.
Suggestions, practice...practice...practice.
Learn to control the tax slider, spending slider, specialization of planets, Social:Military:Research sliders, morale, diplomacy, which research to go to in what order, ship design....etc.

You can not expect to keep the sliders in its default settings and expect to beat the game.
That will work in normal and even challenging but not in tough or higher.

Start of game, build a colony ship with 2 engines and colony pod.
This gives you an unfair advantage to the AI since they design new ships once a game year.
Using the tax slider and the spending slider, you can build the colony ships fast enough using direct purchase at key times controlling the amount of gc in bank and if lucky enough to get more gc via anomalies.
Expand, expand, expand....you should easily beat out the AI in expanding unless random chance reduces star options in your immediate area.
Go for anomalies...get the bonuses from them.
Research the proper techs in order - depends on the game - get the higher engines if you need more speed, at a certain point it adds +1 speed to all ships that you have...look at the research chart to find out which ones do.

Please dont make the assumption that the AI cheats without at least some basis of understanding the game mechanics.
It seems simple and to a degree it is, but the interactions of all the simple mechanics make it complex.
This is soo true with economy.
I dont think anyone really understands how it works except to say - population!

Hope this helps

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ack, I did...teach me! I can't read my own writing at times.

Painful - Gifted (the manual does not list this one) / Bright

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Thanks for the answers. First off, Im not assuming the AI cheats, it was a question, but for some reason this forum did not want to accept my post with an ? in the thread title.

So actualy, Im asking if the AI cheats or made the devs some bad "settings". Problems... :

Difficutly level
below to normal: the AI is super dumb, they actualy do nothing, by the time I got like 50% of the galaxy, they run around still with just 5 colonies. The larger my empire becomes, the friendlier they are, even when my military rating is at 0. They also do not compete with each other, they do, as said, absolutely nothing. From time to time the AI gets a bright start and the games become somehow interesting, but still boring.

challeging upwards: now it becomes nice, I realy have to do my best to keep up with the "colony rush" as you name it. (note: Im not a powergamer, so Im not interested in the highest difficulty levels)

What happens exactly at challenging games:
1) 80% of the time the most races build up a tech or production capital in the first round. Actualy, they should not have such techs at this time. Any time I start a new game, another civ buils up this capitals. I checked the civs and noone have the techs, so the AI must be doing something, or the devs modified it.
2) When starting a new game (not scenario), any civ starts with its own few techs, but have to research all the others. I checked it now about 20 times in 1on 1 or 1on2 games just to approve this. The AI have techs, nut not the prerequities. Most common was the ECM / PD tech. The civs have PD, but not chaff or ecm. Another good one: they have warp drive, but not ion drive. How is that possible? I checked it in 1on1 games just to see if they would exchange the techs, but nothing, nada. They just have it this way.
3) At some point my homeworld have no citizens and I have no cash to support more colony ships, at challenging, when the AIs ecomony is running at 100%, they should NOT have more money then me. Maybe they got some luck with anomalies and bonus ressources, but in more then 20 games ? You know, in 3 months of play, I have about 10 colonies but the AIs all have 20+.

What I wish / want is that Stardock gives us the option to classify the difficutly. AI separated from starting and game conditions. I want that high lvl algorythm AI, but not at the cost of giving the AI civs a head start and some extras. Hardcore players could still choose their sadistic settings, but someone like me would not

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The AI get no head start in any setting. The only cheating they do is in the economic bonuses above Tough level. Tough levels puts the AI as smart as it can get, but on a completely even playing field.

AIs can 'skip' techs by echanging techs in the diplomacy window. If another civ has Warp and they are only on Impulse drive, they can still swap techs. Similar rules apply to techs stolen from espionage or planetary invasion. Some races also start of with a tech, but not its prerequisites.

Some AI do start off with the capital techs. The Yor certainly have Manufacturing Capitals. Even so, I don't think I've ever seen the AI build them on the first turn except in scenarios like Battle of the Gods. I have no idea what's going on with your game.

If the AI are beating you to colonies, they're probably managing their economy better than you! Try to keep your tax rate low enough to get 100% morale on your homeworld, to get a big boost in population growth. And keep economic spending at 100%. You'll loose money fast, but you don't need to worry about balancing your budget until you're in danger of running into dept. This way, you should have plenty of population for colony ships.

Concentrate your budget where you need it. To start with, you need factories on your homeworld, so put most, if not all, of your spending into Social until you get a couple built (or just rush buy, though I tend to avoid doing that). Once you have two or three factories built, switch your priority to Military and build some colony ships, customised to maximise speed. Prioritise high quality planets. Once you can't see any unoccupied planets, you'll probably be behind on research, so start concentrating on that. Start building construction ships to claim any resources, or get some economic starbases around your homeworld.

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Actually, each difficuly represents a single intelligence, but if you add players AFTER changing the difficulty, I don't think they pick up the new intelligence setting correctly.

Actually, the latest patches changed that so the top AI intelligence starts with Basic Miniturisation.

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