AI Cheats - Facts and misunderstandings

[Wizzington]

EDIT: This list has now been updated and is current as of 24/09/14.

I've seen a lot of misconceptions here and elsewhere about what advantages the AI gets over the player (besides the ones rolled into 'Bonuses' and 'Lucky Nations', which are explained through tooltips in the game options menu), so I thought I'd make a post and clear up in which exact ways the AI 'cheats'. Some of these cheats are crutches that it is my goal to eliminate, while others are more or less necessary for gameplay or performance reasons (for instance the +1 diplomat is necessary because the AI only handles diplomacy about once a month and therefore can't do the cancel diplomat, use diplomat, resend diplomat thing players do).

First, let me dispel some common misconceptions:
- The AI does not cheat with dice rolls, not even Lucky Nations. If you believe this to be the case, you are experiencing confirmation bias (ie you notice the times it rolls well a lot more than you notice the times you yourself do).
- The AI does not cheat with land attrition. No, really. Not even a little bit.
- The AI does not get extra manpower or free units.
- The AI does not cheat with sieges.

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 gets less native uprisings, because it is less than optimal at keeping its colonies garrisoned.
- AI does not pay diplomatic points for military access relations, as the slowness of ai diplo ticks makes it unable to request/cancel access the way a human does.

Finally, for the sake of fairness, here is how the human cheats:
- Humans cannot get inherited by other countries, in a PU or elsewise. They can still end up in a personal union under another country.
- Humans can save and reload when things go badly (unless you're playing ironman).
- Humans have a human brain.

On balance, AI isn't that big a cheater is it?

 

[rizla7]

- 'lucky nation' can be disabled in options. it used to be a cheat though. russia with 4 generals, all 3 stars, france same thing :\ it's been toned down though. rolls on generals have been improved in general. used to be able to roll all zeros and 1's with 100 tradition... now it's imposible. rolls on rulers also slightly improved, but still...

- it does cheat with land attrition. i've watched 40-60 stacks sit in harsh winters for 3-4 years with 4-5 generals, none of them ever dies. i've watched them fight battles with 100+ stacks with 6+ generals, none of them ever die. ever. i've done this dozens or hundreds of times to confirm it is the case. in once case, a swedish ruler/heir died. but i'd have to check which army he was assigned to. and in any case, it could just have been a random event not associated with attrition. (although it could be the case, the way probabilities go, that in all my hundreds of tests, i just didn't manage catch one/spot it)

final note: how does the ai cheat with attrition?

it parks a 60 stack on your 50, causing you 5% losses (i've lost several generals this way, yet theirs never seem to die, ever). some ally...

 

[flammable888]

the AI does cheat.it practices on observe mode when you leave it to play when you go away to make dinner.

 

[JaredThinks]

AI has a severe disadvantage. It's very easy to create a massive empire, but there's players who are too unfamiliar and too impatient that they displace blame onto the AI for cheating when it's their own faults that they are incompetent at outwitting artificial intelligence.

 

[asg0noir]

How about coring?
I have given the AI land in pretty remote places quite a few time. They still start coring it almost immediately.
If i did the same, i would be unable to core it.

 

[grommile]

How about coring?
I have given the AI land in pretty remote places quite a few time. They still start coring it almost immediately.

Excellent! Conceptually, the AI should always be able to core land that the player has forced it to accept.

 

[chrnno]

Excellent! Conceptually, the AI should always be able to core land that the player has forced it to accept.

That or sell it like they always do when they can't core and there is a buyer. I know I have made use of that when I had allies siege provinces I wanted and waiting it out would take too long, feeding Lithuania by giving provinces to Pomerania is bizarrely funny.

 

[CheesySnake]

That or sell it like they always do when they can't core and there is a buyer. I know I have made use of that when I had allies siege provinces I wanted and waiting it out would take too long, feeding Lithuania by giving provinces to Pomerania is bizarrely funny.

I've never seen the AI sell provinces before. What circumstances does it start to do that under?

 

[grommile]

I've never seen the AI sell provinces before. What circumstances does it start to do that under?

Any province it cannot core, it will seek to sell.

 

[chrnno]

I've never seen the AI sell provinces before. What circumstances does it start to do that under?

When it can't core the province due to being out of range basically, if it a colony(thus not giving OE) I presume it might hold onto it. Not sure it uses same logic we see for selling provinces and how player is treated but it is straightforward enough the few times I tried I could consistently trigger it.

In the game I mentioned I first noticed it because I accidentally gave Pomerania two Hungarian provinces due to not checking I was the one who had occupied. It held onto them until I cored my provinces then promptly offered one after the other. Do keep in mind I had Hungarian as accepted by this point and was catholic. For the Russian ones I gave the first to them on purpose thinking they would sell to me but Lithuania bought it while having Russian as accepted and the province was orthodox.

 

[jagd_ucsc]

How about coring?
I have given the AI land in pretty remote places quite a few time. They still start coring it almost immediately.
If i did the same, i would be unable to core it.

- it does cheat with land attrition. i've watched 40-60 stacks sit in harsh winters for 3-4 years with 4-5 generals, none of them ever dies. i've watched them fight battles with 100+ stacks with 6+ generals, none of them ever die. ever. i've done this dozens or hundreds of times to confirm it is the case. in once case, a swedish ruler/heir died. but i'd have to check which army he was assigned to. and in any case, it could just have been a random event not associated with attrition. (although it could be the case, the way probabilities go, that in all my hundreds of tests, i just didn't manage catch one/spot it)

final note: how does the ai cheat with attrition?

it parks a 60 stack on your 50, causing you 5% losses (i've lost several generals this way, yet theirs never seem to die, ever). some ally...

I think there may be a few more cheats that weren't mentioned here, although they are mentioned on the wiki, but the wiki is not always right.

<http://www.eu4wiki.com/Artificial_intelligence>

Here are two cheats the wiki mentions that are relevant to what you guys are talking about. According to the wiki:
--The AI gets +25% bonus to colonial range, because it does not know how to colonize provinces as staging areas for future colonization like Humans do.
--The AI also only suffers land attrition from its own units, whereas the player suffers land attrition based upon all units in a province.

Colonial range is tied in with coring range, which explains why the AI can core provinces you wouldn't be able to.

Also, the AI only suffering attrition from its own units is why you will notice your armies taking 5% attrition damage while five separate AIs attach their stacks to you. If the supply limit of a province is 10,000, and you have 10,000 men, but your three AI allies have 5,000 men each, you will take attrition damage while they will take none.

 

[ChildeR]

Here are two cheats the wiki mentions that are relevant to what you guys are talking about. According to the wiki:
--The AI gets +25% bonus to colonial range, because it does not know how to colonize provinces as staging areas for future colonization like Humans do.

It used to get that, but it was removed a few patches ago.

--The AI also only suffers land attrition from its own units, whereas the player suffers land attrition based upon all units in a province.

That was just a bug and should be fixed.

 

[Issac1709]

The AI cheats by being able to mirco manage armies across the globe simultaneously while the player gets bored and gives up.

 

[TheChronoMaster]

The AI cheats by being able to mirco manage armies across the globe simultaneously while the player gets bored and gives up.

The player cheats by pausing the game when they need to think, and not letting the AI do the same.

 

[Issac1709]

The player cheats by pausing the game when they need to think, and not letting the AI do the same.

The AI causes lagto give themselves time to think and gives me a great 10fps

 

[celethiel]

how about Venice Sailing it's Galleys around the cape of good hope to siege up zimbabwe that you own as a European nation in 1523... that's covered under the No attriction/I can see through fog of War thing, right?

 

[Issac1709]

how about Venice Sailing it's Galleys around the cape of good hope to siege up zimbabwe that you own as a European nation in 1523... that's covered under the No attriction/I can see through fog of War thing, right?

they should still have ti

 

[FLESH HUNTER]

how about Venice Sailing it's Galleys around the cape of good hope to siege up zimbabwe that you own as a European nation in 1523... that's covered under the No attriction/I can see through fog of War thing, right?

Still not covered in TI...

 

[Fluffy_Fishy]

how about Venice Sailing it's Galleys around the cape of good hope to siege up zimbabwe that you own as a European nation in 1523... that's covered under the No attriction/I can see through fog of War thing, right?

They could potentially have basing rights?

 

[KaiserCREB]

"AI only suffers land attrition from its own units, while the player suffers attrition based on troops from all countries. Furthermore, attrition for AI units is calculated by each individual unit as opposed to the sum of all units on a province; so as long as all AI units on a province remain below its respective supply limit, then all AI units on that province will not suffer attrition."

That is on the EU4 Wiki, is it accurate?