How does AI work - do they play by same rules as the player?

[troche58]

I thought I would try playing the game again but I'm frustrated by a few things that make me think the AI just plain cheats (i.e. don't play by same rules as the player).
Evidence:
* huge hordes of armies. How can they afford that when I can barely afford half that army size
* cities/vassals all over the map - leaving no room for their main cities to grow - and would leave them with very few culture points

Does anyone know how these mechanics work for AI:
* improvement points
* culture events (create new town, local reforms, eureka, raise army, etc). Seems with all the crazy expansion AI does they would be way behind on these
* money - (if they have so many towns how can they use improvement points to generate revenue generating improvements? And do they pay for troops same way as player)

If they play by same rules as player but can get buffs depending on difficulty that's one thing. But if they play be completely different set of rules I would like to know

Thanks

 

[CaesarVincens]

As far as I'm aware, it's just modifiers. The only other differences would be certain mechanics that are not enabled for the AI, but I'm not aware of any such.

 

[Egodeus]

My understanding is also that they play by the same rules (although not sure about visibility into where enemy units are, that is usually one that AIs cheat on for technical reasons).

They do have a lot of units, but paying for units is possible as long as you start focusing on money. As for culture, vassals don't increase the cost of culture powers, but can even generate culture instead. I usually see the AI running similar number of fully integrated cities as what I'm doing.