"tough" difficulty does not cheat, right?

When something like this happens it is most likely that this specific ai has some resource starbases

Well if you consider any AI bonus as "cheating" then I guess you're technically correct, however personally I don't consider AI bonuses to be cheating.

Cheating is a particularly strong word that I don't believe really applies to a mere bonus. Cheating to me would be if the AI plays by an entirely different set of rules, which as far as I know isn't true, regardless of the level of AI bonuses. Bonuses are merely equivalent to a golfer's handicap. Both golfers play the same rules, you're just adjusting for differences in skill level.

Instead of your use of the word “cheating” and its negative connotation you can simply say that Tough is the highest level that the AI receives no bonuses. IIRC Brad has stated a number of times that the level of AI-human parity is Painful where the AI gets a minimal 5% bonus to offset inevitable AI inefficiencies.


As to why this is happening, there could be any number of reasons. You should probably give a few more specifics as to the version of the game you’re playing or whether it’s the same or a different AI each game. As Tesb mentioned, one of the most obvious reasons for an AI to become overly powerful is by owning a preponderance of the mining resources in the galaxy. But again there are dozens of potential reasons for this and it really requires a bit more information to come up with a definitive cause.

This is another instance of the phenomenon I have dubbed "Super Race". They are off the charts and for all intents and purposes shouldn't be.

I'm playing the latest version of TotA, 1.96 I think.

I play with the same setting each time except I may choose a different race and the 4 AI are randomly chosen.

As far as resource bases go I've never seen any one race own a "preponderance" of them but I'm not sure what is considered”preponderance" as far as base ownership goes.

If I look at the graph at the end of game they're stats are 5x more than anyone else's for no apparent reason.

Also are anomalies supposed to respawn? Kind of defeats the purpose of have a rare option if they just continuously respawn.

Anomalies respawn since late DA; it was put in the game because there wasn't a point to survey ships after the initial round, which was largely eaten up by the flagships. At least, that's my understanding.

Admittedly, running on rare anomalies now doesn't work so well.

Which makes me wonder why we don't have an Anomalies Respawn checkbox...hmm.

Actually you can upgrade your flagship and w/ all the XP bonus anomalies it would be well worth it.

So yeah, a checkbox would be good.

For me every single time, without fail, its the Krynn. They are always the "Super Race" in any games they are included in. I don't know how or why they are able to do it but it happens every single time. It might be because of the kinds of games I play (larger maps with lots of planets) on the high difficulty settings (obscene or suicidal) happens to be where they tend to shine, I don't know. I think I'm going to stop including them in my games though. It was fun tearing them down piece by piece the first couple times but its starting to get old having every game go the same way.

By that I meant if a particular AI had 4 or 5 econ resources for something like a total 200% econ bonus then that would be an obvious reason for that AI to have an economy greater than any other AI.


Perhaps this is just indicitive of the best AI in the game. For example in every game I play my stats are certainly higher than any AI's stats in *every* category, but there's nothing mysterious about it. I have the best stats in everything because I have the most planets and therefore it's only natural that I have the highest pop, the highest income, the highest military, etc. etc.

If you're saying that every game a different AI ends up the strongest AI by a significant margin then I see nothing unusual. This just indiciates that in one particular game one AI happened to outcolonize the others for whatever the reason.

If you're saying that it's always the same AI the ends up in this position then I would simply guess that that particular AI is the strongest, at least based on the game settings (i.e. galaxy size, number of opponents, planet count) that you normally select.

However if you're saying that you have one AI in the game that has significantly higher stats than all the other AI's in the game and that AI has no noticeable advantage in pop, planet count, mining resources, super ability or any other reason that would otherwise explain the difference then either you've found some bug or there's some difference that you're not noticing.

The thing is that you're not supplying enough information by which to make this determination other than saying "they're stats are 5x more than anyone else's for no apparent reason."

There's always a reason if you dig deep enough but without the explicit details no one can really hazard a guess.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that there have been many times in the past where I've seen the AI able to do certain things (like achieve a rate of colonization that I couldn't achieve) and it's natural to think that if they can do it but you can't that the AI is somehow "cheating".

However every time I've looked at such a situation closely enough I've eventually been able to figure out how they did it and how I could do the same. It could be something unique in their tech tree. It could be a particular super ability or a particular combination of racial abilities. It could certainly be mining resources. It could also be economic starbases around their planets giving them a production and research bonus. It could be many other things that I've not even considered here.

But the bottom line is that if your espionage enables you to see the production levels on their planets as well as their specific bonuses in each category then you will inevitably see that these are consistent and there is some combination of abilities, tech, SB's, etc. that allows the AI to achieve these levels and you could inevitably do the same by doing the same things that the AI did.

And if not then you must have found a bug, which if sufficiently documented should be reported as such.

The main advantage the AI has over the human player is its ability to micromanage every asset on every turn. Most of us don't have the patience to do that. With a fully "optimized" empire the AI will usually be able to grow population, and hence income, faster than the human player - giving it an edge in the colony rush phase of the game. I put "optimized" in quotes because the AI doesn't make very good decisions about what to build on its colonies. All else being equal the human player should have a much stronger economy by mid game. Of course, all else is rarely equal - location matters. Some regions of the galaxy are more fertile than others.

If the AI is consistently getting ahead of you and you don't want to back off to a lower difficulty level, you can "tilt" the playing field with the CTRL-N key. Prefer an isolated cluster where you have time to establish yourself before meeting the other civilizations? Just press CTRL-N until you get it. Want a home world with a nice manufacturing bonus so you can build colony ships faster? CTRL-N to the rescue. Some will consider this cheating, but the game is supposed to be fun and I assure you the AI won't complain.

When using a spy to check enemy planets the shown stats for production/reserch are "wrong".

Get espionage rating to high and view the enemy colony the normal way (without using a spy) and the production/research stats will be drastically reduced to realistic levels.