AI cheating on first turn (buys more than one social improvement per planet) ?

I just tried to replicate this. Krynn, Huge Galaxy, 9 opponents, suicidal. It's a set-up I would never play, as my computer would probably explode by the later game. But I got a 700% manu bonus on Kryseth! Doh!!!

Anyway, for some reason ctrl-U wasn't doing anything.

Anyone able to confirm or refute this?

Don't you have to have the "cheat" switch included in the shortcut. Also the shortcut needs to directly reference the Galciv2.exe file not the "launcher". See the Wiki article.

Thanks. No, I haven't done any of that. I don't play with cheats, so I probably won't go to the trouble.

I'm surprised no one has tried this out yet, though. People were very interested in the thread on whether the AI cheats by sending its colony ships straight to habitable planets. This seems at least as bad, if not worse, if it is confirmed. My suspicion, though, is that it's a misinterpretation or a misunderstanding.

Two are of course the capital and starport that everyone begins with. I checked and the most the AIs had was one factory built and one started under construction, or two fully built. I believe this is because as soon as the AI is done setting its own orders (at the same time as you take your turn), it can "click its turn button". While its ships don't move until you click the turn button yourself, it appears to get all the other benefits of proceeding to the next turn (production progress, renewed buy option, etc).

Oh well, as advanced as the AI is, it still can't compete with the human brain. I guess the AI does cheat a little.

How do you figure? According to Kryo's account, it makes sense. What you have are a number of "players" (only one human, of course). The AI players hit their turn button before you spy on them, so you're essentially seeing into the future.

If I misunderstood this, someone please clarify.

I can understand two fully built, but to do so would require that one be rush bought and the 2nd be built normally in one turn. This makes sense for the Thalan one week factory super ability but I don't know if it's realistic to be able to build a factory in one week with the starting level of production. I guess it's reasonable if you assume a 200% social production level for suicidal but this supposedly occurs on tough where there should be no AI bonuses.

I don't know if my numbers are correct here so please correct them where appropriate. A basic factory costs 50. The civ cap gives 24 assuming sliders are set to 100% social production. Even if the rush bought factory contributes to the first weeks production (I would guess that it should) that's another 7. So I can see that's it's possible with essentially a 100% social production bonus, but otherwise not. I don't know of any way that the AI could start the game with close to a 100% social production bonus except as suicidal. Perhaps my numbers are drastically wrong for DA.

Actually thinking about this a little more the civ cap also gets 24 research some of which will go towards social production if you use focus. I'm not sure how what percentage of research shifts to production when using focus but perhaps it's not so unrealistic after all. Can anyone quantify this?

BTW not to distract the thread too much but what was the result of the concern about the AI sending colony ships straight to habital planets that Cornhusker mentioned?

After re-reading Kryo's post I noticed "renewed buy option". Does this mean that the AI may be able to rush buy twice before the player presses the turn button. This part doesn't make much sense. It's certainly fine if the AI takes it turn while the player is taking his turn before pressing the turn button, but to do so twice seems unfair to me. It would even makes sense for the AI to take it's first turn while the player is taking his first turn before pressing the end button and then taking his second turn at the same time the player presses end turn. So I can understand having pressed end turn once and seeing the result of two AI production turns, but to see two AI productions prior to pressing the turn button at all has to be wrong.

The AI has only gotten his first turn's normal production, though. The anomaly seems to be simply because the AI is not being prevented from rush buying again after he's finished his turn, rather than being made to wait until you've finished yours too.

Hi!

I just checked: tiny suicidal game, 9 AIs, cheats enabled. I revealed the map and checked homeworlds with my spy. A half of them had already 2 buildings BUILT, another half had 1 building built and another one in queue. Those with 2 finished buildings had the third building finished after I pressed the Turn button for the first time. To repeat again: they had 3 finished buildings besides starting Civ capital and Starport in the second turn.

I had to check another suspiction. I saved the game turn 2, and immediately loaded it gain. Guess what? When the turn was loading, I got the message that the Torians built manuf capital (that wasn't in the queue), and the Entertainment Network, that was in queue on their HW before saving, was BUILT! I saved the game again (still the second turn!), and loaded it. This time Iconians built the Manuf. capital, and most races had built the queued building.

So AI doesn't get just a free diplomacy turn after the game is loaded / started, they also get a free production turn. Every time! ...

BR, Iztok

OK it becomes even more weird.
This is a shot from the beginning of turn 2, right after I pressed the "turn" button the first time. At the end of the first turn the Korx AI colonized the second planet in its home system. So far so good but now look at this:



4 (!) social buildings already built.

I really hope that kind of behavior only happens if a players activates Ctrl-U (which is obviously a huge bonus) and as a result the AI "protects" itself by activating cheats it normally would not use.
Maybe one of the devs can comment on this.

Incredible! Thanks for the investigation, Iztok! And thanks to Sal42 for finding this to begin with. I'm surprised it hasn't been noticed before.

This might go some way to explaining how I see waves of colony ships from the AI very early in the game, when I've barely been able to build two colony ships. I know there are other explanations, but this helps add to the picture.

For now, the moral of the story appears to be NOT to save and reload in the first few turns. At that point you're giving a huge advantage to the AI. Later in the game, it's not such a big deal if they get an extra turn of social production, but early on it can be a game-changer.

Does this mean that the AI can buy twice per turn?

I.E.
AI Buys Factory
AI Hits Turn Button
AI Buys Factory
My Turn
AI Buys Factory
AI Hits Turn Button
AI Buys Factory


This would explain the AI having four buildings on Korx II at the end of turn two:
Turn 1
Colonize Krox II
Buy Factory

Turn 2
Buy Factory
Hit Turn button;Build Market
Buy Building

Edit - I mean buy once before it's turn and once after the turn button...Otherwise if it was a pure two buy per turn, it could manage 5 or six buildings on Korx II.

If it's doing that, that shoots my theory... by what I saw it should only have a one-time one-turn lead, but if it's building two per turn every turn, somethings definitely buggy.

Correction, 5 buildings. I forgot to count the starport.
So it is not "2 per turn" but seems to be unlimited or related to reloading/whatever...

I miscounted as well. With five buildings I can see doing it with two buys per turn plus one natural build....I don't see any way else to do this though.

I can confirm somthing strange as well.... often i will save a game at the start if it is a good map. Later on i may decide to play that game again, however i am often perplexed as to how the AI always seems more determined to claim my worlds the second time round to what i remembered happening the first time i played the mission!

It would be interesting to know whether if you reloaded many times, you could find an AI planet completely developed in the first or second turn. That would prove that this is a bug. Could someone try this and report? I don't want to change my files to enable cheats at this point, as I'm not so good at computers and so am not sure I could easily go back! Lame, but true

I ran a game several turns in and it does indeed seem as I originally suspected; the AI is just finishing its first turn and getting a jump on the second. Everything after the first turn appears to proceed as normal, I didn't see any double-buys or similar in successive turns. Bringing up the issue with Frogboy confirmed this.

I did try starting a new game, then just saving and reloading repeatedly without clicking the turn button or really doing anything at all. And it does seem that the AI gets a round of production each time the game is loaded.

Yea, I looked into this. It's been this way since GalCiv 1.  Basically, at the start of a new game there is effectively a turn 0 which the computer players start but the human players don't have access to because they have the load screen as their UI.

I'm not sure what priority there should be to fix this as it's been in there for 5 years now (literally 5 years) and no one (including us) ever noticed it. It's kind of piddly. Something for a GalCiv III probably.

Hi!

Basically at turn 0 or game load they buy a factory, queue another and "press" Turn --> with suicidal bonus the queued factory is built. At turn 1 (my first turn) I have the chance to look at their planets, so I see 2 buildings. Nothing illegal, but the turn 0 they get at each game load - and starting the game probably also involves game load.

BR, Iztok

So if the AI has a prospering economy and plenty of cash it can fully build up an empty planet in practically no time (providing some saves and loads), is that correct ?
I would call this a MAJOR bug since this "behavior" continues throughout the whole game and can give the AI a tremendous advantage, especially on high levels with bonus economy.
And major bugs should be fixed asap.
Just my $0.02

Another thought: after you have military dominance, additional AI production turns are probably a net benefit to you. Less need to build up newly conquered planets, etc. Maybe you could even do something like give a bunch of minor races the tech for Hyperion Shrinker, save and reload a bunch of times, now the Shrinkers are all complete, time to invade.

Well gee, there's a positive spin on a negative issue! Glad to know about this even if I don't do the save/load stuff. It is too bad that there are THIS MANY problems inherent in this game. Almost makes it pointless to play anymore... Thankfully this game has enough going for it to hold my interest, especially after seeing yet another confirmation of 'problems'.

Incidentally, I did a massive amount of saving and reloading in the course of playing my most recent metaverse game, and my final score broke the previous Medium map record by almost a factor of two. I suspect that my score did in fact benefit, perhaps significantly, from all the additional AI production that occurred. (So if that bug is actually an intentional feature meant to counter players excessively abusing save/reload, it doesn't work well at all.)