List of known AI cheats

[Mediator]

I just try to make a summary of known AI cheats in this thread:

1.) Unlimited range for air and naval units

2.) (this might be connected to the first point): AI ground units don't loose org during movement or leader change (at least this happens when you control military units of your AI puppets, so my guess is this works for all AI countries.

3.) The AI underspends consumer goods in war times without suffering the dissent penalty.

any more?

 

[unmerged(35838)]

Artificial Stupidity,errr I mean AI can take provinces and get 100% of production I believe

 

[Permanganate]

AI cheats are:

• Extra industry, resources, manpower, and organization, faster research and movement speed, combat bonuses, less CG use, and better diplomacy and intelligence on the Hard and Very Hard difficulty levels. This is all visible and changeable in \db\difficulty.csv.
• Permanent nofog - they know where all units are.
• No air stacking limits.
• Unlimited range for ships.
• Corps don't lose org when they change leaders.
• AI does not pay IC for its brigades (it does pay MP).
• Ability to steal expeditionary forces given to them - this is technically a bug but it's been in all versions of HoI1, Victoria, and HoI2, so maybe it's a feature by now.
• AI can Strategic Redeploy even when it doesn't have the tech for it.
• AI can deploy ships in occupied naval bases - the player must deploy them in owned naval bases.
• The AI can Air Supply even when they don't have Improved Air Transport.
• AI does not pay Money to cancel trade deals.
• AI doesn't have to wait seven days before the next diplomatic action - the player can only do Send Expeditionary Force and Cancel Trade Agreement more than once every seven days.

If anyone can think of others I'll edit them into this post.

The HoI2 doesn't cheat all that much considering that it's reasonably effective. Other games, such as Civ3, rely on massive AI cheating on every difficulty level just to keep the computer within shouting distance of a human player.

 

[unmerged(41840)]

You can also edit the airstacking so you can use huge stacks just like the AI (and you can modify the penalty that huge stacks give you as well), so this cheat can be matched by human so it isn't much of a cheat IMHO (I haven't changed it in my games and usually have no problem).

 

[Ex Mudder]

Another cheat:

AI gets free brigades. When it queues up a 4 inf build queue, the Inf may be brigaded. Takes the same MP as brigaded inf, but costs the same as vanilla Inf. This is counter balanced by it's inability to build brigades or swap them around.

I'm not sure if this is a "cheat" but the AI plays fast and loose with it's ICs - it can keep serial builds going despite IC shortfalls, and spending on CGs and repairs just have to be near the actual need, not exact. This is more of a granularity issue, I feel. The AI isn't sophisitcated enough to micromanage ICs the way a human is, so it's allowed to ignore exact numbers.

 

[unmerged(45808)]

Why should you care that the AI cheats? You can simply countercheat by editing the HOI2 data files to be in your favour!

Ticked off about unlimited AI ship ranges? Simple, just set all the ranges in the ship unit files to be astronomically high. Now you and the AI are on an equal footing!

About to throw a fit because you learnt that the AI gets brigades for free? Keep your cool: just edit the brigade unit files so that you too get them for free.

I for one have had a hell of a fun time editing the difficulty.csv files. In one game I set the AI and human manpower difficulty bonuses to be 1000%. It got to the point where my 100-div Liberian army was scrapping with a 800-div Japan over Shanghai.

The AI cheats? Then countercheat!

 

[unmerged(46014)]

Why Cheat?

Why should you care that the AI cheats? You can simply countercheat by editing the HOI2 data files to be in your favour!

Ticked off about unlimited AI ship ranges? Simple, just set all the ranges in the ship unit files to be astronomically high. Now you and the AI are on an equal footing!

About to throw a fit because you learnt that the AI gets brigades for free? Keep your cool: just edit the brigade unit files so that you too get them for free.

I for one have had a hell of a fun time editing the difficulty.csv files. In one game I set the AI and human manpower difficulty bonuses to be 1000%. It got to the point where my 100-div Liberian army was scrapping with a 800-div Japan over Shanghai.

What fun is it to cheat because your opponent is.
You should not wast your time playing the game

 

[AzJeff]

The AI omniscience (permanent NOFOG) is pretty annoying.

Once, playing as Germany, I thought I would do a little mid-Atlantic convoy raiding with the Gneisenau and Graf Spee (plus a couple other cruisers).
So I rebase them to Reykjavik (acquired when I annexed Denmark) - they encounter no enemy fleets on the way.
A day after they reach their base, two huge French and British AI fleets show up in the sea province next to Reykjavik and conduct a 'port strike' - sinking my entire raiding group.

WTF?!?!?!?

- j

 

[unmerged(41139)]

In all honesty, the AI needs all the help it can get.

Hopefully, this will be less true with the 1.3 patch.

 

[unmerged(16676)]

The stealing of forces probaly annoys me more then anything.

I had a puppet Ukrane with my Romania, badly needed help in the south, and every month the damn Germans had stolen my Ukrane puppet divisions, and placed them on anti-partisan patrol, as my front was caving in!

This REALLY needs to be changed, there is no reason the AI should be able to steal your puppet troops.

 

[Permanganate]

This REALLY needs to be changed, there is no reason the AI should be able to steal your puppet troops.

Ukraine was giving them as expeditionary forces; generally puppets will do that to anyone in the same alliance that their troops happen to walk through. Of course, the reciever will never give them back. Try adding your allies to the no_exp_forces_to line in your puppet's part of the savegame, which fixes the problem.

I also added a new AI cheat that I just noticed - CHI is strat redeploying in early '36 while researching the tech for it (Rear Area Supply Dumps).

 

[unmerged(20077)]

I always suspected the AI had permanent nofog - whenever I forgot to renew my airforce's Air Superiority missions, the enemy bombers would show up in that province within hours...

 

[unmerged(48134)]

Other games, such as Civ3, rely on massive AI cheating on every difficulty level just to keep the computer within shouting distance of a human player.

All too true. Actually, this is a darn good AI. I only have to set up a little bit of handicapping to have a decent tussle, at the highest difficulty I can conjure. Maybe I'm the Artificial Stupidity.

 

[valisk]

perhaps we could add, giving all allied exp. forces to France, who then indulges in sitzkrieg, never counter attacks, builds up 30+ Div stacks when facing 5-10 enemy Divs. All leaving the poor old UK to do the heavy lifting. B*stards.

 

[unmerged(48134)]

perhaps we could add, giving all allied exp. forces to France, who then indulges in sitzkrieg, never counter attacks, builds up 30+ Div stacks when facing 5-10 enemy Divs. All leaving the poor old UK to do the heavy lifting. B*stards.

In about 7 years there'll be an AI that'll truly and fairly kick the internal stuffings out of the player

 

[unmerged(46637)]

perhaps we could add, giving all allied exp. forces to France, who then indulges in sitzkrieg, never counter attacks, builds up 30+ Div stacks when facing 5-10 enemy Divs. All leaving the poor old UK to do the heavy lifting. B*stards.

In about 7 years there'll be an AI that'll truly and fairly kick the internal stuffings out of the player

Call me a pessimist but I don't think the AI will ever been better than the human mind.

 

[unmerged(48134)]

True.

 

[AOW]

Call me a pessimist but I don't think the AI will ever been better than the human mind.

Tell that to Kasparov.

 

[unmerged(48134)]

A-ha! The perfect example...but's that a new thread and OT, to boot. In a nutshell, chess is what a mathematician calls 'well-defined.' It's a small ruleset and can be easily defined in 0's and 1's by good programming. It took 40 years to get the number-crunching, heuristic searches, etc. fast enough to look down a million decision tree branches at the same time.

An AI for a strategy game that attempts to model something like WW2 is a different kettle of fish. The programming techniques are the same, but what you want the program to do comes out of meetings in a commercial company, not a 1500 year old ruleset that is well understood by all your users.

 

[AOW]

A-ha! The perfect example...but's that a new thread and OT, to boot. In a nutshell, chess is what a mathematician calls 'well-defined.' It's a small ruleset and can be easily defined in 0's and 1's by good programming. It took 40 years to get the number-crunching, heuristic searches, etc. fast enough to look down a million decision tree branches at the same time.

An AI for a strategy game that attempts to model something like WW2 is a different kettle of fish. The programming techniques are the same, but what you want the program to do comes out of meetings in a commercial company, not a 1500 year old ruleset that is well understood by all your users.

Apologies for off topic.

You are correct to point out that HOI is incredibly different from chess. I think an AI comparable to a human mind (at least for games) is perhaps 15-20 years away. Some very clean code and a computer at least an order of magnitude faster than current models need to occur in the same space.

Cheers,
Mike