Figured as much considering how exploitable it was.
No joke. It's pretty hard for an AI to carpet you when your stack that's nowhere near it can continually reset the siege timer. On scorched earth.
The naval thing is much worse though.
Figured as much considering how exploitable it was.
- AI gets full trade power from light ships even at 0% naval maintenance?Now, a list of how it actually cheats:
- AI does not get naval attrition. It does avoid going too far out of range with most of its naval operations though, to somewhat simulate it.
- AI can see through fog of war, but pretends it can't in most cases.
- AI gets +1 diplomat that it reserves for non-maintained actions because the diplomatic AI 'ticks' means that it can't do the recall-send strategy that players do with maintained diplomats.
- AI gets +1 free leader pool because it's not nearly as good as a human at planning out when it will need leaders and needs to keep them on hand always.
- AI does not pay hiring costs for advisors, only maintenance, because their hiring code isn't that good and otherwise they waste a lot of money.
- AI can reassign admirals to a fleet that is at sea.
- AI gets slightly fewer revolts in its home owner area (the provinces connected to its capital).
- AI gets less native uprisings, because it is less than optimal at keeping its colonies garrisoned.
AI gets 25% range bonus since 1.4 (because it doesn't make interim stepping stone colonies like players do)
- AI gets full trade power from light ships even at 0% naval maintenance?
where do you see this?- AI gets full trade power from light ships even at 0% naval maintenance?
I didn't really feel like making a new thread for this and I think it fits pretty well here. My main issue with the AI in this game isn't where it cheats, it's the fact that fighting a war against an AI is absolutely no fun at all. Having to pause basically every day to make sure the enemy isn't going to leave a day before you get to every province, having to constantly check every colony to see if they're dropping thousands upon thousands of troops on a single island that will then be impossible to push off due to massive crossing and morale penalties, none of this is fun.
Both of those are listed as being fixed in 1.4. I've not confirmed it myself yet, but they were in the changelog.
Hmm playing as Castille had a male ruler, Aragon had a male ruler but a female heir. The male ruler came to power in 1447 and died in August 1501, he was 75 so less than a year after the Iberian Wedding events span he gets a new ruler? This seems totally ridiculous.
Ha, I wish. I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever in micromanaging troop movements against the AI.
Ah, OK. The two issues the OP mentioned that are listed as being fixed are "AI army leaves province 1 day before you arrive", and "AI keeps piling troops onto worthless islands." You're still seeing stuff like that?
Some other time, later in the game or in another game, the luck will go in your favour and you'll suddenly PU a big nation because their leader died too soon to get an heir, or some such similar event. It all balances out in the end.
The AI does not cheat with sieges.
AI can see through fog of war, but pretends it can't in most cases.
AI gets +1 free leader pool because it's not nearly as good as a human at planning out when it will need leaders and needs to keep them on hand always.
AI does not pay hiring costs for advisors, only maintenance, because their hiring code isn't that good and otherwise they waste a lot of money.
Humans have a human brain.
On balance, AI isn't that big a cheater is it?
You're just making things up here. Confirmation bias? Also, more men does not help. More artillery can, but more men will NEVER help unless you assault.Then why can the AI, nine times out of ten, siege a province quicker with 3,000 men than I can siege an equivalent one with 20,000?
You can pretty much say they always see one province in because (as Wiz discusses throughout this thread in the 19 pages that have appeared since the original post over 6 months ago) the AI isn't as swift with figuring out the likelihood of an ambush. The player with ease can figure this out, and routinely does (unless they player is just really bad with army movement and knowing where the enemy is). I think this is fine, but I will grant that it breaks down with naval AI -- the naval AI seems to be much more likely to see through the fog and seems to be very effective at sniping fleets.Either you're completely lying here, or you have an extremely loose definition of "most cases". In EU3 it was a pretty reliable trick to have a bunch of armies sat 2 provinces away from the enemy, and rush them all into the middle province as the enemy marches to it. Try that in EU4 and the AI somehow magically sees my armies coming every time, without fail. The only way to do this now is to wait until 1 day before the AI arrives and then start moving, thus giving the AI the advantage either of defending or of several days (in some cases weeks) of fighting a battle massively in their favour.
In short, the AI exploits the hell out of being able to see through FoW in most cases.
You forgot to mention the AI somehow seems to get very competent leaders a disproportionate amount of the time.
Actually, I can't think of many games where the AI plays less fair.
Then why can the AI, nine times out of ten, siege a province quicker with 3,000 men than I can siege an equivalent one with 20,000?
Either you're completely lying here, or you have an extremely loose definition of "most cases". In EU3 it was a pretty reliable trick to have a bunch of armies sat 2 provinces away from the enemy, and rush them all into the middle province as the enemy marches to it. Try that in EU4 and the AI somehow magically sees my armies coming every time, without fail. The only way to do this now is to wait until 1 day before the AI arrives and then start moving, thus giving the AI the advantage either of defending or of several days (in some cases weeks) of fighting a battle massively in their favour.
A brain doesn't really make up for losing despite being the defender, having 3x the soldiers, better general and higher morale, just because the AI feels like winning.
You're just making things up here. Confirmation bias? Also, more men does not help. More artillery can, but more men will NEVER help unless you assault.
You can pretty much say they always see one province in because (as Wiz discusses throughout this thread in the 19 pages that have appeared since the original post over 6 months ago) the AI isn't as swift with figuring out the likelihood of an ambush. The player with ease can figure this out, and routinely does (unless they player is just really bad with army movement and knowing where the enemy is). I think this is fine, but I will grant that it breaks down with naval AI -- the naval AI seems to be much more likely to see through the fog and seems to be very effective at sniping fleets.
Lucky nations do get a bonus and it skews the curve for a given army tradition by +1 in both shock and fire. That, combined with the +1 bonus to mil points means they sometimes re-roll leaders more often and so tend to have better-than-average leaders. There have been whole threads on this. However, regular nations get no such benefit. This is strictly NOT an AI cheat, it's a mechanical cheat for lucky nations and doesn't exist at all if lucky nations are off.
This is really starting to come across as whiny. There are plenty of games with very substantial cheats (like Civ5 on higher difficulty levels getting boosts to all tech, reductions to recruitment time and worker speed, lower unhappiness, etc). It's really not easy to compare, and it's really not useful to do so.
Probably, if you're a non westernized African tribe fighting Spain...
People actually still play Civ?
I didn't say I can't think of any games that don't cheat more, I said I can't think of many. Total War, for example, cheats with money in the campaign (or at least it used to) and GTA 5 has rubberbanding in races (though AFAIK it doesn't really cheat anywhere else). Cheating AI is old, but when it's as blatantly obvious as EU4 sometimes is, that bothers me, and yes, I get whiny. CK2 probably cheats in some ways, but it's not obvious about it, and I love CK2. I could love EU4 just as much, I want to, but when I think I'm having fun something will happen that's quite obviously not right.
Nope, I'm definitely not making things up. OK, maybe not quite 9 times out of 10, but very frequently nonetheless. I've seen it a lot of times, even before anyone can actually get artillery, so that's clearly not what's swinging it. On the flipside, of course, it is pretty easy to roll up 3k-strong armies with my 15-20k armies, so only really presents a problem if I can't really get there.
It cheats because it is worse not at math but at intuition. You see enemy units hanging out in favorable defensive terrain just on the edge of the FoW, you think, well, they have 15k units I just saw disappear into the FoW, you think "I'm not a moron, they could be RIGHT THERE hiding." The AI can't do that currently (per Wiz's discussion), at least not without a huge computational burden for all AI nations -- just not practical.Not really sure what you're saying here. The AI is better at seeing what I'm doing because it's worse at seeing what I'm doing? Or it's justified for the AI to cheat because it's worse at maths? Regardless I know what I've seen hundreds of times, and it's very definitely cheating in my book.
People actually still play Civ?
I didn't say I can't think of any games that don't cheat more, I said I can't think of many. Total War, for example, cheats with money in the campaign (or at least it used to) and GTA 5 has rubberbanding in races (though AFAIK it doesn't really cheat anywhere else). Cheating AI is old, but when it's as blatantly obvious as EU4 sometimes is, that bothers me, and yes, I get whiny. CK2 probably cheats in some ways, but it's not obvious about it, and I love CK2. I could love EU4 just as much, I want to, but when I think I'm having fun something will happen that's quite obviously not right.