cheating

The AI gets no advantages besides knowing where the yellow stars are until Genius and Incredible difficulty. In fact, at all levels below intelligent they are penalized.

~SDC~

it doesn't cheat the game rules, no. What it gets is a *slightly* more efficient economy and higher starting abilities. That's all. But it still plays the same *game* as you, and it's still hurt if you poke it.

Astro

~SDC~

" What it gets is a *slightly* more efficient economy and higher starting abilities."

No, it doesn't, not until the aformentioned highest 2 levels. Then it gets a slight economic advantage, I'm not even certain about higher starting abilities.

But below these levels, they get no bonus of any kind, other than starting out with stellar cartography (seeing yellow stars, which isn't really a huge advantage, imo). At 'intelligent', they are equal to you in every way except the cartography.

But the point of the 'not cheating' is that it doesn't do what prior games do. For instance, in Civilization, other civs could apparently get wonders even if they didn't meet the criteria. If by turn 'X', they hadn't built it, and you hadn't either.. *poof*.. it just appeared, completed. Therefor any strategy based on making it so they couldn't complete a wonder would be moot, since the AI would disregard the rules the player must follow. That is the real coolness of this AI, imo.

fleabitfox

The AI seems to diplomatically treat the human different than the other AIs, i.e. accepting deals from other AIs that it would never accept from humans.

Emphasis on the "seems to". I documented this to an extent but gave up because no one else seemed to think it was an issue worth addressing.

Thongor, I would guess your playstyle has more to do with this than any "cheat" in the AI. I often try the diplomatic approach - high dip ability, peaceful behavior - and I find the exact opposite of you, AIs will make deals with me that they would never make with one another because of their relation status.

fleabit, for the record, I WAS talking about the two higher levels, since that's what he asked about

Astro

~SDC~

"Thongor, I would guess your playstyle has more to do with this than any "cheat" in the AI. "

Well, actually, I went out of my way to demonstrate this as early as possible, rushing to get Universal Translator on a Tiny map.

I think it's fair to say that it's not a priority issue, but I don't think my playing style has much to do with AI decisions made at first contact before Turn 15.

No, but then I've not seen any evidence of much AI-AI dealing before T15, either. Sorry, but I've had no problems of the sort you describe so whatever issue is going on is your playstyle, your diplomatic ability, or alignment issues, not some deliberate "cheat" of the AI.

Actually, I think there is a 'cheat' in the diplomacy. It's been mentioned in the fixes that they've been nerfing the human/AI deals. I haven't seen anything about them nerfing AI/AI deals. Maybe I missed it? It is one of the few points where dealing with the human is different then dealing with the other AIs.

Most 'cheats' of the AI are actually bugs. Not intentional design. (Bug, wonders being repeatable, for instance.) But there are a few places where there is a difference between Human and AI. One is the economy/production (AI's being set by its difficulty). There are a few rare others.

On Incredible (and possibly on Genius, but I don't think so) the AI gets more than an economy bonus. They get PQ bonuses, and bonuses to just about every major stat. Use Espionage on the AI on Incredible and you'll see what I mean. I'm not sure if the PQ bonus shows up with their other stats, but I can confirm that it's present. I haven't really paid that much attention on Genius, but I can say that I found Genius to be much, much less difficult than Incredible.

How is it cheating if it treats the human player differently than the AI players in diplomacy? You also have the right to treat each race differently in trading.

Or are you saying if I don't trade a tech to everyone I'm cheating too?

I don't think they're *nerfing* anything about human-AI deals. They are trying to, one, get the AI to trade with other AIs more aggressively and, two, get it to stop going for every deal you offer it if it's going to drive them into bankruptcy. That's not a nerf, that's just improving the AI.