Hard (Old Normal) AI Cheats?

posted on June 26th, 2009, 2:14 am

I was under the impression that only the Merciless AI cheated, or at least cheating noticeably. Two recent games have seemingly disproven that believe, leaving me to wonder if the FO team decided to change the hard AI when they renamed it from normal. If so, I have no problem with that, I just want to know if this is expected behavior or not.

Here's my evidence. First game, 2 AIs, random, both ended up as Borg, but we didn't scout till late in the game (map had turrets at the pass, 4 player one, can't remember the name). When the assaulted us I was just building my first cube, they arrived with 2 and a massive fleet. Not that big of a problem, I didn't have enough connections research. The problem came when we took a careful look at the fleet, which was large enough to be dubious for both borg AIs, but all belonged to one AI. We never saw the other AIs ships outside of its space (when we finally did scout). That was odd, and became horrible when they attacked with 12 cubes. Needless to say, we were wiped out. No chance at all to survive, I built 5 cubes over the course of the game (one every time I had connections, with max research after the attacked started) but the AI just rolled over them with cubes, pyramids, torp assims and the like. The end tally showed that he had built 24 cubes over the course of the game. The game was just about 1 and a half hours long. That seemed like way too large of a force, but it was late so I never got around to tallying the connections used (in addition to the 24 cubes he had a lot of little ships).

The second game, however, I went ahead and tallied some stuff up. 1v1v1v1, me as the feds, rom, klingon, and dom as the AIs. As soon as I had warp-in I sent some excelsiors to scout the base across from mine (central point map), there were dominion ships all over it, so I assumed it was dominion. Later I found out it was the Klingon base, and they were already being wiped out. Not so bad, except the fleet wiping out the Klingons was smaller than the one at their base. I was forced out not too long after, so I went to the stats and did some calculations. According to the stats the dom player spent 36658 dilithium, a reasonable amount compared to the others in the games. He had 65 A20s, 31A26s, 15S2s, 25 Breen Cruisers, 26 T15s, 15 Breen Battleships and 19 V13s, not to mention a ton of buildings (3 cloning facilities, 6 heavy shipyards, etc). That fleet costs about 66250 dilithium according to my calculations, and more tritanium than was reported spent as well.

Thus I am forced to conclude that the AI cheats, but does so oddly. In both games I've seen this it's been 1 AI cheating huge while the others do nothing, in the second game neither the Klingons nor the Romulans ever had much of a fleet, nothing that would even have slowed my ships down. It was only the Dominion that had a big fleet, and they had a massive one.

Is the Hard AI (not merciless) supposed to cheat and if so is it supposed to cheat that much? (Double the ships the resources could have bought)

posted on June 26th, 2009, 2:38 am

The AI doesn't use resources so it does whatever the AIP stuff tells it to do 
Don't worry, a revamp is coming

posted on June 26th, 2009, 3:05 pm

You sure the AI doesn't use resources? If you look at the starbases, there is a weapon on every one of them that triggers only if the AI owns them. The weapon gives the AI a constant stream of supply.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 3:10 pm

Positive 
Make a map with no moon pairs (or one moon pair) and watch it pump out ships like nothing else. The only reason it makes mining stations is to look pretty for us (it's part of its repetoire, so if you destroy them, it'll rebuild). Ever wonder why the AI can pump out tons of ships on a 1v1 map when you can barely get 5 ships out in the same time? Normal, Hard, and Merciless all "cheat" it's just different levels of "cheating". Normal doesn't build as much as Hard, and Hard not as much as Merciless etc.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 3:54 pm

the borg uses only one how does it called...think to contruct ship, i saw a hard borg spamming assimilator without building a new contruction whatever....

Finally Weekend

posted on June 26th, 2009, 3:58 pm

The fact that the Borg use the Uplink like a regular shipyard doesn't really effect the game too much. Uplinks can be built almost immediatly (the AI only gains a couple of seconds on each ship) and they take as long to build a ship as a human would (minus the time taken to select modules).

posted on June 26th, 2009, 4:42 pm

Hehe, doesn't the AI also build Klingon Field Yards fully expanded?

posted on June 26th, 2009, 4:48 pm

As far as I know.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 4:52 pm

the borg, build mining stations too.  The AI is messed up, but I think they are planning to re do the AI soon. 3.0.9, I think.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 9:52 pm

What's odd is that there is no reason that the AI should build a klingon yard fully expanded. To my knowledge, it acts like any other research station and you should be able to order it to "research" a yard addon.

posted on June 26th, 2009, 9:54 pm

like I said, It is an AI problem, not that the can't do it rightm but that have been told to build it hole, atleast as far as I know.

posted on June 27th, 2009, 3:41 am

I did some messing around with the Ai actually today....I removed the mining vessels and stations from the feds to see what impact it would have on the Ai....It seems that for some reason they were not able to get past their 3rd techphase...all I did was remove the mining infrastructure from their Aips and for some reason that broke them....they still build atares yard vessels but even that stoped after about an hour....they never got to building anything from the eraudi yards even though they had 3rd chasis researched....strange....Im glad the AI is getting redone soon....hopefully they can also fix the issue with where the AI builds its defenses in dumb places....

posted on June 27th, 2009, 1:13 pm

No resources needed is only one method of cheating the can AI use. There are several ways it can work, from starting with more than the player, to greatly reduced cost all the way down to a combination of all.

This page lists the many ways an AI can cheat: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

posted on June 27th, 2009, 2:41 pm

Hmm... What modules do the Borg AI use?

posted on June 27th, 2009, 3:13 pm

Shouldn't that depend on the AIP files Funnystuff?