Cheating AI

[BloatedGuppy]

Yeah I had originally stopped reading the thread to reply to the above quote as you can see. After I went back to read some more I noticed the conversation with DoPo.

Probably for the best. As the only thing 5 does better than 4 is the graphics. But as it is newer that is pretty easy to do.

And I'm not a fanatic about 4. I just hate 5 for gutting what made the series' combat even somewhat realistic and good replacing it with the horrid 1 unit per tile. And as I've seen from reviews they gutted the diplomacy from the previous games down to the bare minimum and made everyone a war monger even Gandhi.

Well, to be fair, I need to establish where I'm coming from. I think Civ's combat has ALWAYS been horrible. As in flat out, laugh out loud embarrassingly bad. The hyper-stack system was even worse than 1 unit per tile, which has all kinds of its own issues but at least isn't ugly/cheesy as fuck. The entire series has never done combat well on any level. Or diplomacy, for that matter, it's always been shite at diplomacy as well.

I honestly have a hard time building up many aspects of Civilization, but I'd happily call it one of the better strategy series of all time. It just has a "one more turn" hook and an innate charm that somehow manages to overcome its many, many flaws. I agree that Civ IV was all around the better, more polished, and more balanced experience, but I don't think Civ V is irretrievably broken. I think the heart of the experience is there, and I think once they get religion back into the game and with the abundance of balance mods and game play tweaks available it has more potential at this point than Civ IV does.

That holds true for previous games, but in Shogun 2 every faction (with only a few exceptions) starts with 1 piece of territory, a couple of 1-star generals en a small military force. It's impossible to get such a force together in 5 turns.

Bleh. I've had an extremely hard time warming to Shogun 2 as it is, and this isn't helping. I hate to use the "streamlined" word in a negative fashion but this is one case where the game seems to have streamlined away its charm.

 

[Gabanuka]

Jumping in on the Civ 4 vs Civ 5 debate: with Civ 4 you get Fall from heaven, possibly the greatest mod of all time. Slows down like a ***** later on into games though.

Also: Age of Mythology's AI. Seriously, fuck that guy.

 

[LostCrusader]

Playing Shogun 2 Total War and having an enemy 3-star general with a full stack of units come at me after 5 turns. I call bullshit.

Once I decided to try medieval 2 on hard. I picked Sicily for decent positioning and within 10 turns I was 30k gold in debt because 5 computers decided it would be funny to each send full stack armies to my island without declaring war and just hang out causing devastation. It was kind of like being spawn camped by the computer.

OT: Not sure if this stands for starcraft 1, but in 2 they have replays where you can watch the games afterward. I watched a hard computer and besides them being perfect at micromanaging, they also got extra resources for no reason. Players worker comes back with minerals and get 5, computers workers come back with something like 7 or 8. The same goes for gas.

Also, fighting game computers being able to do any move in their move set in an instant.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Playing Shogun 2 Total War and having an enemy 3-star general with a full stack of units come at me after 5 turns. I call bullshit.

Once I decided to try medieval 2 on hard. I picked Sicily for decent positioning and within 10 turns I was 30k gold in debt because 5 computers decided it would be funny to each send full stack armies to my island without declaring war and just hang out causing devastation. It was kind of like being spawn camped by the computer.

I'm sorry, but that really made me laugh. They were probably just on vacation.

 

[Yopaz]

Probably was. Like you said, cheating AI seems to be a part of kart racers

It's not just kart racers. Many racers seem to have cheating AI. It's virtually impossible to separate yourself from the pack.

You know I was just about to say that Driver: San Francisco had some cheating AIs too. I worked really hard to get one of the fastest cars in the game from the second chapter or so meaning I ended up racing against some really bad cars. I won every round against those bad cars with ease, but they would always be just a tiny bit behind me. However it seems like the same thing happens if I lag behind though so it evens out in a way.

Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie had a few races where you had to do some of the most incredible button mashing I've ever seen in order to win. The secret I learned years later was that the faster you went the harder it became.

 

[LostCrusader]

Playing Shogun 2 Total War and having an enemy 3-star general with a full stack of units come at me after 5 turns. I call bullshit.

Once I decided to try medieval 2 on hard. I picked Sicily for decent positioning and within 10 turns I was 30k gold in debt because 5 computers decided it would be funny to each send full stack armies to my island without declaring war and just hang out causing devastation. It was kind of like being spawn camped by the computer.

I'm sorry, but that really made me laugh. They were probably just on vacation.

I had a good laugh about it too because they didn't even fight each other. It was kind of like they decided to have a party at my house without telling me.

But I still won in the end...
by deleting the save and staring over on normal.

 

[Scabadus]

Star Wars: Podracer on the N64 (we never were a Mario Kart house) had one track where one of the all-time worst pods suddenly took off like a bat out of hell and could literally run laps around the others. It was part of the favorites system, where each track had one racer who was the favorite and performed better than usual at that track, but this particular guy was so noticible because he was so bad the rest of the time.

In a more modern game, from Winter Assault onwards the Imperial Guard in the origional Dawn of War games and expansions have always been able to nail my infiltrated units with their sattelite scan power, even if the unit was just chilling in my base awaiting an assault. This doesn't even work in the game's favor; it's so dedicated to cheating that once you figure out which unit it's targetting, you can keep it safely in your base and it will (almost) never target any other infiltrated unit, allowing them to safely lay into the enemy army while the commander repetedly reveals the one unit they can never reach.

Actually... come to think of it that's pretty much in character for the Imperial Guard: "well sir, there are invisible aliens slaughtering our men by the hundreds, but instead of shooting them let's concentrate on the unit at the top of this list that command sent us."

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Goddamn Phantoms and Banshees in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer: Both have intant kill attacks and do huge damge from half a continent away.

Phantoms' Iron Man palm lasers kill in four hits, and their intant kill attack actually causes you to gravitate towards them like they're magnetic. Banshees do the same thing, except their attack can be interrupted (somehow) and they are much easier to hit.

Now granted, players themselves have the instant kill over-cover grab attack that causes enemies to move slightly closer for the animation to play, but you have to be in cover, and the enemies have to stand still long enough for you to attack. And it doesn't work on Phantoms! Goddamnit Bioware!

 

[wintercoat]

Any and all baseball games, especially those from the 8 and 16 bit eras. Outfielders are always in the perfect spot to catch the ball, and throw back to base faster than you do. The CP pitcher throws perfect fast curve balls, never hit your players, even if their standing on the fucking plate, and hit more home runs than your best batters. The computer never hits a foul, and it takes god-like precision to get a strike on them. Y'know what? Fuck Bases Loaded man, I threw that game at the fucking wall once.

 

[joe-h2o]

Have you ever faced a computer oppenent that you could swear was playing by a different set of rules or knew what moves you were making? I have. I'd decided to break out my dad's copy of Starcraft, and oh my god does the AI in a custom match cheat or at the very least, has an unfair advantage.

The way me and my RTS ethusiest friend figured this out was after a few matches. From the camera angle I thought that there was only one way into my base, which I had fortified with bunkers and missle turrets. Infortunately there was a small path from behind some raised land that the Zerg poured though first try, they never saw the defenses I had set up.
What also raised a few hairs was when I was playing on crystalysis, I was never attacked and made a shitload of defenses, when I roll into the enemy base I see they didn't set a damn thing up aside from the Zerg equivilent to a barracks, because the crystals blocking the path didn't trigger them to make air based units they were simply harvesting resources.
But the worst example came from my latest game. I decided to fight Terrans this time, I had a slight problem with a marine rush when my defences weren't up, but I got my bunkers up. Unfortunately, the AI was aware I haden't build any detectors for some reason (seriously, I haden't been attacked in a good long while) and I kept getting nuked by his fucking ghost. I eventually rage quit when I realized how the game itself helps the AI.

For starters you can only select 12 units at a time and to my knowledge you cannot hotkey different groups, this makes it difficult to use large armies as a human, but the computer shows no issue with controlling large groups. Second of all is the way the computer can do multiple things (IE set up buildings) in what a human could call a single click. Finally it's the way they can use builders, they can set them on different resource nodes in again, a single click. It seems to me that Starcraft was successful for it's multiplayer because the two players have at least the same capabilities as one another.

So what AI in what game to you seems to be cheating or has an advantage a human has no chance of replicating?

Starcraft's AI has to play by the same rules as you, it just has a ludicrous APM since it's a computer. This was demonstrated clearly with Starcraft 2 with the "design an AI that can beat the best humans" contest. Unconventional tactics didn't work, but what did work was emulating the best players, just at very high APM, so while it has to issue commands in strict sequential order, and can only issue commands to the same group sizes as a human, the computer can do absurd micro like separating out flying units to avoid AA splash damage, then clumping them for attacks, then separating them etc so it just wins by sheer speed.

On the topic of a genuinely cheating RTS AI, there was Red Alert 2. In that game multiple factories allowed you to make vehicles more quickly, but for the AI, two factories meant it could build two different vehicles simultaneously. It was a very unfair advantage.

 

[jizzytissue]

TL;DR i'm assuming it's an 8 yr old that fails and then rages at NPC's who are on recruit difficulty on combat training am i right ?

 

[Unsilenced]

The fact that every AI in every game ever has infinite ammo has never ceased to piss me off. How am I supposed to be the greatest warrior of all time or whatever when I'm apparently the only person who has to worry about these little "bullet" things?

And then there's Stalker Clear Sky, in which everyone is a bulletproof megabot 9000 except you.

 

[C2Ultima]

The most recent example I can think of would probably be the combat training in Call of Duty: Black Ops. Try playing on Veteran. There are countless instances when they're aiming at you through the walls, and start firing the moment you're in sight.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

I remember the AI in gears of war 3 blowing my mate up right around every corner when we were playing co-op

for example the zipline part : he'd lob off and get blown up instantly o.o

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

The A.I in crusader kings 2 by the way always happens to just have a doomstack lying around when you're at war with them, but if you switch sides by loading onto the save on their side just before the war you can't actually raise the same army they throw at you

 

[imperialwar]

on everybodies golf (1) on PS1 you had to play VZ to unlock new characters.
The second last guy, i forget his name, would ALWAYS JUST MAKE HIS putts. they would always just trickle in, just when you thought you had won the hole, potentially the match, the ball would trickle in. I think it was a deliberate RAGE inducing AI string to break your concentration so you would screw up and lose.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

oh and seth, everybody knows seth is a cheating AI

he was build like it they admitted it.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

And I'm not a fanatic about 4. I just hate 5 for gutting what made the series' combat even somewhat realistic and good replacing it with the horrid 1 unit per tile. And as I've seen from reviews they gutted the diplomacy from the previous games down to the bare minimum and made everyone a war monger even Gandhi.

What's crazy is that if you make even the slightest aggressive action, the AI will label YOU a warmonger and then hate you; even if you're joining THEM in a war because THEY asked you to.

 

[Evil Smurf]

in tf2 bots can tell is you are a spy just like that *clicks fingers*

 

[BartyMae]

Age of Empires 2: I thought there was something up with the computer's starting resources if you were playing on harder difficulties...so I actually watched a replay to see what they started out with...depending on what difficulty level you're playing on, they can start with like as much as 3x as you.