GalCiv AI Cheating at all diff levels?

This is part of the setup for the game and the rationale for it is explained in both the manual and the on-line encylopaedia.

Yup.. I knew about this from the manual, and online. No biggie.. makes ya' hustle!

fleabitfox

After months of silence, the government of United Earth came to the conclusion that "hyper-drive" would allow the colonization of the galaxy and what was likely to occur was a race to claim star systems that contained inhabitable planets. It was decided that Earth must not fall behind and the design for a colony ship was developed.

Yep... humanity gave them the hyper-drive and what did they do to thank us... cut off communications and started the race for the good planets without us! Now we have to play catch up and try to find as many good planets as we can before their colony ships reach them...

I hadn't really seen anything definitive about whether or not the AI knew the location of the good systems at the start or not... maybe it would be more "fair" if they only knew about the systems within a radius of X sectors from their homeworld and had to scout the rest...?

~SDC~

Really though, once you get experienced at the game, that advantage is pretty meaningless. Since you know where the stars are, you just send your ships to the clump of them.

Basically the AI starts with stellar cartography whereas you have to research it.

Frogboy, my understanding is that the computer has only what you said, the knowledge of what stars are of what class, not any knowledge of where the 15+ planets are. Is this correct? Just trying to confirm/dispell any rumors before they become urban legend.

i agree. it's a totally meaningless advantage once you figure out how to mass produce colony ships in the first few turns.

cheers

h

Oh, I've never really had a problem with it...

I haven't really seen a use for Stellar Cartography either by the time I actually research the tech. At least on the medium size galaxy most, if not all, of the yellow stars are already colonized by the time I could see them on the mini-map... in fact, I've never seen an effect from the Stellar Cartography because all of the yellow systems were owned and color-coded to their owner. Granted... I never run for that tech because I expand to stars that are only within a reasonable distance and try not to spread out too much and weaken my ability to defend my systems.

I did have a question... how did the humans communicate with the other major races to give them the hyper-drive devices without universal translators? If the major race you're speaking to has a translator device, then why do you need one? Their device will translate your speech to theirs and vice versa when sending messages over the comm systems. Just a thought.....

~SDC~

You can "rush" the Stellar Cartography. I think the Technician advocated that as a possible starting strategy. I tried it in my latest game and it seemed to work. I think it is more useful in the larger galaxies. In any event, it was another tech I don't mind selling to all the computer players.

~SDC~

And for that matter, how do the other races talk to each other when they haven't yet developed universal translators...

~SDC~

Panzer - Selling Stellar Cartography to the AI brings up a question that's been nagging at me... If they're starting with the equivalent of Stellar Cartography already, why don't we just have all of the AI already possessing that tech rather than being able to make a few bucks/brownie points by giving them a reduntant tech. Or at the very least have them seriously undervalue stellar cartography in a trade since it's of no use to them...

~SDC~

AT least there's some explanation now why the AI cheats at all levels.

It's not a cheat, it's a starting advantage. At least the AI plays by the same rules you do which probably makes this game unique in all strategy games.

~SDC~

Over here ---> Starting Advantage

Over there --> Cheating

LOL

I agree it would make more sense if the all the computer civs started with Stellar Cartography. It would also fit the story line. This should be added to the suggestions thread.

~SDC~

Hmm. The Hubble Telescope must've been destroyed or broken at some point between present day and 2178 since we can look at stars all across the galaxy today and see what "type" they are.

Correct, the AI doesn't know, for instance, where a class 26 planet is. It only knows that certain stars are likely to have a habitable planet around them.

Perhaps they could make it where humans at least knew where the good stars were in all the sectors adjacent to their home sector. This would be more realistic since by that time period Humans would have done some research about the surrounding stars.

~SDC~

Hey! I thought you were moving today.

~SDC~

How about just leveling the playing field and letting the AI play ability provide ALL the challenge?

Either give the player the equivilant of Stellar Cartography or make the AI scout out/GAMBLE on those grey star clusters underneath the Fog of War.

What I am forced to do is scout out with my Colony Ships (yes, I can pump those boys out fast as any of you dudes!) to all star clusters while AI punk'boy doesn't sweat it one bit. It doesn't know where the 26 planet is but it sure knows where the MINIMUM 15 planets are and that's what counts.

From frogboy's response it doesn’t sound like the computer does know where the minimum (class) 15 planets are - only the location and color of all stars. Humans too know the location (mini-map), just not the color. So the only advantage the AIs get is the knowledge of each star's color.

If you research stellar cartography before the AI, the human actually has the overall advantage:

Computer > knowledge of each stars color
Human > ability to trade a "redundant" tech (in that the AI already has this ability) for profit

~SDC~

That ability of the AI to know where the yellow stars are, should not kick in till a higher difficulty level. It's such an obvious thing. It makes the gameplay too stiff. Kind of like playing a grandmaster chess program. No human element to it.

Maybe they can patch it down a little. I mean, you set the game difficulty to the easiest level, and the AI is obviously colonizing with 100% efficiency. There should be some slack in that respect on the first 2 difficulty levels. Adjust a different script up a little to compensate. But at least that way, there would be a more fluid feel to the AI.

Other than that, GalCiv exceeded my expectations in the other gameplay elements. The Star Base concept is exceptional, for example. The atmosphere and sense of exploration is awesome.

hmmm, how about if the AI has the knowledge of star colors in a range of systems depending on the difficulty level? Like, let them know the colors for 1, 2, or 3 sectors around their home world.

Anyone?