What is "an FA"?

The AI does not cheat.

The starting game set-up is defined by the difficulty setting. Depending what you picked the AI may have slightly more orders than you and may start with a significant city and research lead over you.

The AI does not follow events the same way as players do. Instead it gets random rewards of the type players get from events.

You don't indicate how far into the game this is but getting 70-100 orders or so per turn is fair for mid game (before you get Elites and can cache 100 orders between turns).

FFA*

Originally posted by Eyeless in KZ:

FFA*

Nope, you already said FA.

The AI does not cheat, but it is good at the game, much better than you would expect for a mainline Civ game.

Originally posted by CupCupBaconBox:

Originally posted by Eyeless in KZ:

FFA*

Nope, you already said FA.

bro, you have 0 hours in game... (like 0 hours in humor)

There are 3 things in game a player might consider "cheats" when in reality they aren't:

- starting development:
Based on starting development settings, the different a.i nation will start with a random number of cities equal to the average of all computer nations in the game. So the lowest development setting is 2 cities, which means some nations could have 1 city, others could have 4. The number of cities distributed will always be equal to the average (so 3 nations will split 6 cities between them) and no one single nation can ever have more than twice that average (so 4 nations could have 3, 2, 2, 1 cities, but never 5, 1, 1,1)

The other aspect of a.i. development is free technologies. This is not an average. So the lowest development setting will randomly distribute 2 starting technologies to each nation. These technologies are based off of the deck each nation has available to them, and it's random.

Reasons why this isn't really cheating:

Well, for starters, as players increase difficulties what they're really doing is increasing the level of handicaps between themselves and the A.I. for example the A.I. economy essentially never changes as you move up in difficulty level, but the player economy becomes tighter and tighter.

The second reason is assymetry. Starting nations don't get any of the "on founding bonuses" of any of the families. In their starting cities. So, while a computer nation might start with 3 cities, they also lose out on 400 civics from statesmen, or the free technology from Sages. The player can plan around these bonuses and incorporate them into their strategies, whereas the computer bonuses are just more static.

The other aspect of this is that the player engages with the event system and the computer does not. Overwhelmingly, the event system drastically favors the player, granting each human player a consistent revenue stream of free units, free technologies, courtiers, laws, yield boosts, etc.

If we were to compare in a one-to-one ratio the amount of "free stuff" that each side gets, the player human player would eclipse the computer probably two or three times.

Which brings us to the second thing that some computer nations get that some players may conceptualize as cheating:

Clearing tribes, culture levels, and ruins all provide powerful boosts to the human player through the event system. Since the computer doesn't get events, in place of these bonuses, the computer player will get random yield increases (civics, training) or courtiers to line up with the consistent boosts the players get, just without the flavor or decision making. You can experience something similar but playing the game in no events mode.

The third thing is also a product of moving up in difficulty; the highest difficulty use a setting called "advantage", which will provide some percentage boosts to some of the economy for the A.I. - again this is more to challenge the player because once they're good at the game.

Having said all of that, outside of those parameters, the following statement is true:

The computer player is playing the exact same game, mechanically, as the human player.


If you think the computer has too many orders or units, its just because they built a ♥♥♥♥ load of units and have a better order economy than you.

Order economy is probably one of the trickier skills for new players to master, so you'll probably end up with less orders than your opponents for a while.

Enemy nations will usually have more units than new players, too, since most other 4x games allow players to get away with building a dozen units and phoning it in for the rest of the game. In Old world you typically need to build 30-100 units in a given game and half of them are going to die before the game ends.

Ultimately though, these games are assymetrical. It's not as if any of the computer opponents can force you to not declare war against them because of "good opinion", where any player can make a computer nation friendly and form a peace Treaty to almost guarantee they'll never be attacked. We don't consider this "cheating" for the human player even though you're forcing the computer players to stop playing the game normally and, basically, let you win. Ruthless setting helps with this slightly, but barely, tbh.

Tldr: no the computers don't cheat, they play by slightly different rules which more often than not benefits the player signficantly more than the computer opponents, and there's assymetry around the starting layout of an a.im nation compared to a human nation.

Thank you for the detailed answer! <3

If you're getting attacked, it's because you are weak. Likely, you are playing this game like Civ, which is a fine way to get killed. The AI is very good at scouting for you, analyzing your weaknesses, and exploiting them. It is extremely competent at deciding its own strength relative to you, but like the human players it can only use the information it has scouted for. It can't get at hidden information, and neither can you.

Being attacked means that the AI knows where you are and what your army composition is. It did the math and knows that it is stronger than you. You would do the same, if the roles were reversed. You have to be more aggressive with your own scouting and with building up your own army, even if you only use it as a deterrent or defense.

i played a game where i wasn't even near the assyrians yet they were coming all the way through the core of roman territory to attack me and hiding ranged units inside roman territory that i couldn't melee without declaring war on rome. it's pretty cheesy ai.

I've seen too many stupid things the AI does to consider it much more intelligent beyond Civ. In my current game the AI is defending in areas that are worthless while not doing so where it's important. It's good at calculating how to destroy units but lacks strategic ability in forming front or battle lines properly. Plus a lack of fortifying on the front lines or staging siege weapons too close to the front line because the AI keeps moving them back and forth most turns.

I agree with lauruswoife that having one nation's units hide in the territory of another when at peace to attack with ranged units is a cheesy cheat. Just have to use ranged units to counter.