AI cheating and supporting AI troops ! CONFIRMED

[FlashXAron_slith]

CONCLUSION OF THAT DISCUSSION : QUESTION for the Devs @Vic

WILL WE EVER GET AN AI, which is able to play with the same rules as the human player ????

----> ANSWER
I am planning to tune down this free dirt roads rule in the weeks to come. I might even go so far as to put it on an equal footing with human players. There has been much rucos about this advantage and I am willing to listen to the player base here.

Best wishes,
Vic


__________________________________________________________________________________________________



Okay after over 120 turns in my "slow" game ...

my troops ... even tried it with the cheapest "foot troops" hate it, when they are more than 7 hexes away from any Truck Station ... so alway have to build one , depending on terrain, every 6th hex or so ... no problem ...
...
BUT that damn AI is driving around with his troops ONLY with dirt roads !
One of the major one, even conquered that way, without any depots, already 40% of the "largest" map ...

so is that damn AI cheating at NORMAL settings ...

as you could see , my red territory needs that red points (truck stations) , when you look at my friend LOL around me (also south and SE ... nothing only dirt roads , so he was a lot faster to grab everything ...
think soon he will crush me , as it seems he also has 10 times the troops ... so there is the next question MONEY to pay his troops ! LOL

[FlashXAron_slith]

... ohh I checked his TRANSPORT capacity , even he has 4 cities around me, each of them has only around 200-400 !!!!!!!!!!

I have 13000 in my capital and 2800 in my young and small territory sector and have problems there ...
both cities are connected with an insane expensive railroad LOL ...


SO DOES THE AI need any functioning infrastructure ? Seems not so, if so that is a joke !

[zgrssd]

You got dozens of dead ends, that split your Logistics capaciy evenly between the two.

Also, 7 Hexes? Maybe into the wild without a road.

Also also, I count 5+ Batallions. No Sealed Roads, one railway wher I do not even know if it leads anywhere usefull. Does that rail even have a couner-station at the end?

[Laiders]

Yeah... um... That AI (the green right; you're red?) could well be me. That's how I play.

So minors and unaligned get to skip on supply entirely for the most part. Majors do not so the major is not cheating. How does it works its magic?

Big truck stations. Big truck stations are your friend. Nationalise your starting truck station and upgrade it ASAP. 4000 LP pushes a lot further, like A LOT further, than 1000 LP. One or two hubs pushing out 4000 LP each with good roads and good network management are much better than half a dozen stations each haphazardly pushing out 1000 LP. Small truck stations frequently can do the job and have their advantages but, from my personal play experience, I am entirely sold on big hubs.

So I count your longest route as about 40 hexes from your capital up to the top right. You should be able to cover that with 1 L2 station, 1 L1 in your smaller city on route and maybe some partial sealing. Not perfectly mind and not with much redundancy or scope for further extension. Certainly L2s in both cities should cover it even on dirt.

The logistics overlays are your friends too. Use them regularly.

Also sometimes soldiers need to experience a bit of privation. It's good for morale and excellent survival training (note effects on morale may vary and this author accepts no liability if your morale tanks as you leave your soldiers starving in the back of beyond). Seriously your soldiers carry reserve supplies, circa two turns, and it takes a turn or two for no supply to really start to bite. You can totally push all your borders two full moves beyond your supply range early game at no real penalty, apart from it being hard to defend this territory if it gets contested.

Finally, the AI used to be able to cheat and double-build stuff. Your AI friend might be double building truck stations in his cities. Impossible to say until you take them.

Seeing that bug fixed in the changelog reassured me that I am not utterly insane (yet) and the AI city I took this morning really did have two L1 BP offices in it!

EDIT: as zgrssd says, your routing needs optimisation for sure. Supply is utterly, utterly dumb in this game. You need to tell it exactly where to go using traffic signals otherwise it will diffuse over a small area inefficiently. You should also build an efficient and direct road network with the bare minimum of branches and redundancy, though this is more for your own sanity than anything else. Otherwise, you end up managing a lot more traffic signals.

[Naselus]

The major AIs do get some free logistics points and range included with their cities. They still need to trace lines of supply etc but are a lot less constrained than the player.

They do have to pay, feed and fuel their troops. I suspect they generally leave their troops unwaged tho (which you can too), and they produce lots of farms and oil wells if left to their own devices.

[FlashXAron_slith]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

You got dozens of dead ends, that split your Logistics capaciy evenly between the two.

Also, 7 Hexes? Maybe into the wild without a road.

Also also, I count 5+ Batallions. No Sealed Roads, one railway wher I do not even know if it leads anywhere usefull. Does that rail even have a couner-station at the end?

Railroad is between the two cities and have Stations ...
and when I attack with the brigades, I have 4 (2 Heavy MP, 1 Light MP, 1 Armor) I use that Traffic signs ...
apart that I have 15 recon buggies (single units) ...

and where I am attacking I only use truck stations and not supply ones ...
so even I have no problem to supply my brigades , when I am attacking, but they need time and rest ...
and have to wait that the truck stations are build ...

that isn't the case for the AI MAJOR nations ... I already expected since start, that the minor and critters , didn't need that, but their units have been scrap ...

but the MAJOR AI didn't build ANYTHING in my game and even my 300 spies telling me, that green one didn't have ANY only that starting public ones ...

This is his Capital City ... there is not really anything inside special no transportation hubs ...



So simple question to @VIC will we ever get a Computer controlled oponent, which has to use the same rules as the human player, maybe in 1 year or so ? Or not possible like in CIV LOL !

At the moment the settings should be changed to HUMAN player against ONLY MINOR AI's , so you have to take over the planet from the babaric hordes, which are living from the countryside [:D]

Yes I know, it is a small developer team and has already delivered a complex gameplay, so the more complex the gameplay is, the worse the computer opponents are and that is reality at the moment ...
"Supreme Ruler" is an example, where you have cool gameplay, but as the PC contolled opponents aren't cheating at "normal settings" you only have to wait 10 years and any nation in the game is broken LOL ... think would be here the same ...

but we will see in one year or so

Anyway now I know it and still have fun, with managing my own hexes to survive ...

[Soar_Slitherine]

I hadn't realized it earlier, but the manual does mention that the AI gets free logistics points and range from cities. Similar things are going on in my current game - one of the majors is up to 6 zones that I can see, or about a quarter of the map, by turn 44 and has built literally zero logistics aside from free dirt roads, the intel reports say it only has the starting transport hub and a second hub it got from a minor it conquered a handful of turns ago. I think I could probably expand pretty well too if I poured all resources into the military while almost completely ignoring the economy like this particular AI has done, but I do wonder how much of it was made possible by the free roads and logistics.

[Laiders]

Ehh... you push over minors with a single infantry (I tend to use MG inf personally because they are better than pure inf and recruitable instantly) brigade and maybe an independent buggy unit plus whatever your militia gives you that's actually usable. Assuming they are easy ones like farmers, hunters or some raiders. With 1 L2 truck station and a well managed road network, you can supply a small force like that over a very long distance. You are more limited in terms of direction though than the AI because the AI can support roving units better whereas you need to maximise supply efficiency so you need your units in one general AO and you need to pump that AO with every spare drop of LIS.

If you've only got a single direction to expand in, you can absolutely do it. Harder if you have multiple areas to worry about.

That's been my experience with my 3 substantial games so far.

All on Regular BTW two Siwas and one Seth. Your mileage may vary.

[Naselus]

Quite a lot probably. Free roads are a huge advantage very early on, since while humans are stumbling about struggling to get 2-3 tiles done without consuming their entire industrial base in the very early game the ai can march off in any direction they like.

Once you have a couple of zones running light industries and using l2 or 3 truck stops, the advantage is pretty minimal tho. Consider it a 20 turn head start at best.

[Thomas8]

AI is not using LIS to resupply units- its even written in manual. They always get ammo/food/fuel as long as they are connected with their territory. But in your case - a screenshot of your logistic map might have been better to see your situation - but it all depends if you put 'traffic barrierrs' on all those small 1 hexes roads.

[Jdane]

ORIGINAL: Laiders

Also sometimes soldiers need to experience a bit of privation. It's good for morale and excellent survival training [...]

That was just cruel. [:D]
(What? Even I can't be constructive all the time.)

[Laiders]

ORIGINAL: Thomas8

AI is not using LIS to resupply units- its even written in manual. They always get ammo/food/fuel as long as they are connected with their territory. But in your case - a screenshot of your logistic map might have been better to see your situation - but it all depends if you put 'traffic barrierrs' on all those small 1 hexes roads.

Majors do use supply. They get free, instead of cheap, dirt roads so that they don't accidentally thrift themselves into a supply black hole for want of roads and their cities push some amount of logistics for free too (don't know exactly how much).

They get a headstart but efficient players can keep up or surpass normal AIs pretty easily on this front, at least with easy starts on Siwas. Several of us have explained how to do so already in this thread in depth.

Of course, if you're on a resource-starved hellhole and you have three majors at war with you at once, you will be in for a very tough time. I certainly couldn't take that at the moment. WeaverofTheBrokenThreads might be able too though. He pretty much only plays on extreme already as far as I can tell.

Jdane... well a degree of hardness, tempered with empathy, is a necessary quality in a commander.

It may be a good job I have no interest in joining the armed forces, though I did enjoy cadets at school. Not sure I could be trusted with command of actual people rather than computer tokens... [:'(]

[Saros]

Hey Flash you do know to use supply depo, traffic lights and seal roads right? Because truck stations every 6 hexes is about the least efficient way possible to generate a logistical network.

[FlashXAron_slith]

SO FOR ALL ,

no I don't have a problem, I am able to support my troops ... I am even able to understand more complex support systems like "Supreme Ruler", where you even need real "truck" units behind your lines, which have to be loaded with Ammo and Food . but there the AI also has to do it ... and fails !!! LOL

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SO HERE IT IS ABOUT
CHEATING AI at normal settings !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
not how to use the support system ...
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MAJOR CHEATING of the AI confirmed,
SO nothing more to discuss

Maybe the only question remaining is ,
WILL WE EVER GET AN AI, which is able to play with the same rules as the human player ????


THX

PS I like the more complex SUPREME RULER version even better, because there you need also a "Support Army" like in real, which could be attacked, with air forces, missles or orbit strikes and has to be protected ...
they are now programming even a galaxy wide version, where the AI will also fail terrible [:D], BUT IT WILL NOT CHEAT at normal settings and that is what matters !

[Palora]

I have to agree with FlashXAron: AI that blatantly ignore the rules the player is forced to follow are just not fun to fight. Especially when there's no lore reason for that behavior, AI Wars gets away with it because you, the human race, are fighting an AI entity. In Shadow Empire we the X human major regime are fighting the Y human major regime, and yet while we're struggling to supply our troops 10 hexes away from our cities and logistic points the AI is blobing half the planet only using a level 1 private truck station from the very start and doing it in the most obvious and annoying way possible. They obviously don't get for LIS or truck capacity and sending spies will easily show that.

It detracts from the fun and the strategic element of the game, the AI Majors rushing everyone everywhere at the same time forces you to do the same or risk losing access to resources, especially people. You don't get to think about when, where and how you will expand, you are forced to also expand everywhere as fast as possible and you still can't beat the AI at it. Even worse you could lose the expansion war without even realizing it and then far too late to change anything get stomped by a major with endless resources who can reach out and touch you from far outside your range and far faster. They don't need to build truck stations, supply bases, quality roads, nor protect those things if they don't have them, you do. Meaning whatever attack you launch will be slower, less powerful and far more limited in it's objectives than what the AI can do against you with the same forces.

Now I'm not gonna demand a competent AI that follows the same rule, that would require an insane amount of work and would likely still fail to produce something that could equal the less gifted players, humans brain is just perfectly wired for this sort of thing, but I would like it very much to have an AI that PRETENDS to follow the same rules. Cut the supply of any unit that is 6-7 hexes away from a logistic point on dirt roads. Force him to spend resources to build logistic points every 7 hexes of road. Will this mean more work, yes obviously but it will also make the game far more enjoyable.

Or at least give us more starting option so we can limit how many blatantly cheating AI majors we have to deal with, regardless of planets.

[FlashXAron_slith]

ORIGINAL: Palora

I have to agree with FlashXAron: AI that blatantly ignore the rules the player is forced to follow are just not fun to fight. Especially when there's no lore reason for that behavior, AI Wars gets away with it because you, the human race, are fighting an AI entity. In Shadow Empire we the X human major regime are fighting the Y human major regime, and yet while we're struggling to supply our troops 10 hexes away from our cities and logistic points the AI is blobing half the planet only using a level 1 private truck station from the very start and doing it in the most obvious and annoying way possible. They obviously don't get for LIS or truck capacity and sending spies will easily show that.

It detracts from the fun and the strategic element of the game, the AI Majors rushing everyone everywhere at the same time forces you to do the same or risk losing access to resources, especially people. You don't get to think about when, where and how you will expand, you are forced to also expand everywhere as fast as possible and you still can't beat the AI at it. Even worse you could lose the expansion war without even realizing it and then far too late to change anything get stomped by a major with endless resources who can reach out and touch you from far outside your range and far faster. They don't need to build truck stations, supply bases, quality roads, nor protect those things if they don't have them, you do. Meaning whatever attack you launch will be slower, less powerful and far more limited in it's objectives than what the AI can do against you with the same forces.

Now I'm not gonna demand a competent AI that follows the same rule, that would require an insane amount of work and would likely still fail to produce something that could equal the less gifted players, humans brain is just perfectly wired for this sort of thing, but I would like it very much to have an AI that PRETENDS to follow the same rules. Cut the supply of any unit that is 6-7 hexes away from a logistic point on dirt roads. Force him to spend resources to build logistic points every 7 hexes of road. Will this mean more work, yes obviously but it will also make the game far more enjoyable.

Or at least give us more starting option so we can limit how many blatantly cheating AI majors we have to deal with, regardless of planets.

Thanks, someone who understand it !

For me it feels at the moment like playing a game of Tower Defense , or survive the waves game mode ,
NOT WHAT I EXPECT from a 4x game ...

I stopped playing Panzer Corps 2 , because there they just drop units out of thin air against you and it is unbalanced ...
So yes I hate to play such games, when there is no meaning behind it ...
at least STELLARIS , let you play against the empires in the universe , which have to use the same rules AND THAT special events , where unfair Forces shows up, seems fair, when they are balanced, like the Khan, the AIs, etc. the devs have an explaination, why they use different rules but they also have limited resources, after they show up ...

that isn't the case here, the AI produces with a near empty city a lot more as you could even produce with a high developed city ...

So I hate it , in any game, when I conquer something and before , when the AI used the same resources, after I conquered it, it suddenly produces only , say 10% , but when the AI conquers something from you, it suddenly produces 900% more, that is a joke , special , when that 4 other AI Major Empires represent the same origin as you !

Very sad, that this very promising game, with interesting gameplay , fails that terrible in this field !
If the game wants to be taken seriouse , the devs should sit down and think about it ...

at least let us deactivate MAJOR AI empires , when we create planets until that is solved !

For me that game has fallen from WOOOW , COOL to damn one more stupid game, which pretends to be a good 4x game ...
and no I don't want a Tower defens or survive the waves game.

Thanks ...

PS: Seems the new SUPREME RULER will fail in complexity also, as they have given up to code an AI opponent, which is able to handle their own complexity LOL ... anyway hope for Distant Worlds 2 [&o]

[Jdane]

I'm afraid this debate will continue to exist for quite some time. Maybe until personal quantum computers become a thing and very advanced AI development gets taught in high school.

I hear your grievances and think I see your point, though. You're not asking for Deep Blue levels of AI but just for a better illusion of the AI following the same rules as the human. There's certainly room for improvement, but it's a difficult balancing act still.

I'm curious to know at which difficulty level you're playing. The higher it is, the more obvious the advantages the AIs get.

[Naselus]

I think they do need to build truck stops tbh, they just aren't doing atm. The majors get a bonus to logi AP and some free LIS production in their cities, but they're still using the supply rules for the most part. I'm currently in a war with an over-extended AI player who has about half his forces sat at the end of a very long road and in very poor supply indeed.

It seems like they're getting the equivalent of a free L2 or L3 truck stop in every city (on top of any truck stop they choose to build, which they rarely seem to do), which is not a huge advantage after the very early game.

[Vic]

that isn't the case here, the AI produces with a near empty city a lot more as you could even produce with a high developed city ...

So I hate it , in any game, when I conquer something and before , when the AI used the same resources, after I conquered it, it suddenly produces only , say 10% , but when the AI conquers something from you, it suddenly produces 900% more, that is a joke , special , when that 4 other AI Major Empires represent the same origin as you !

That should not be the case. The AI does not get any production bonus on Regular difficulty. (it does get a small extra IP income on Service Tax). So that might have to do with another reason? Feel free to post a screenshot of any such "production cheating" behaviour in the tech support forum. It might also be due to Regime Feat bonuses, some include bonuses to production.

As for the free dirt roads and logistical sources. It does give the AI an advantage, granted, but it is less adapt at conquest than human players and furthermore does not use Strategic Movement. Except for the mountain ranges it does not do anything a Human player could not have chosen to do. especially in the mid-game onwards.

I am planning to tune down this free dirt roads rule in the weeks to come. I might even go so far as to put it on an equal footing with human players. There has been much rucos about this advantage and I am willing to listen to the player base here.

Best wishes,
Vic

[Meteor2]

I need some help and feedback here …
As an owner of most games of Vic, I would like to support him by buying this.
But the two discussed topics (logistics and the cheating AI) make me a little bit cautious.

So, are the things really preventing a good game experience after some hours of playing?
If I know, that the AI is winning by massive cheats, I will get a Little bit angry about it.

Yes, I have seen YT-videos, but that does not answer the question for me.