Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword Options

[Janichsan]

Actually, that's a well-known fact that in Civilization and related games the AI "cheats" on higher difficulty levels. Sid Meier or any of his minions never denied this – since it even says so in the manual. On the other hand, the player gets relatively unfair advantages over the AI on lower difficulty settings, so that levels out. When you want a Civ game with equal odds, play on "Noble".

[Carl Atkinson]

Actually, that's a well-known fact that in Civilization and related games the AI "cheats" on higher difficulty levels. Sid Meier or any of his minions never denied this – since it even says so in the manual. On the other hand, the player gets relatively unfair advantages over the AI on lower difficulty settings, so that levels out. When you want a Civ game with equal odds, play on "Noble".

Also, see this site:
http://www.kynosarges.de/Civilization.html

for truly balancing the playing field on Noble. The AI supposedly still has advantages on Noble, and this guy's xml file makes it completely even.

[AlanH]

Actually, that's a well-known fact that in Civilization and related games the AI "cheats" on higher difficulty levels. Sid Meier or any of his minions never denied this – since it even says so in the manual. On the other hand, the player gets relatively unfair advantages over the AI on lower difficulty settings, so that levels out. When you want a Civ game with equal odds, play on "Noble".

Giving the AI some differential cost/speed advantages is the mechanism by which the human's game is made more or less difficult. That's handicapping, in the same way as golfers or horses with different capabilities are given equal chances. The only other way to achieve higher difficulty would be to make the AI more intelligent, which could probably only be achieved by slowing the game play down significantly.

I don't see handicapping as cheating.

The OP indicated that the AI can spontaneously create extra units, presumably in response to a human threat, which I would agree could be considered as cheating. But I don't think I've seen any indication from Sid that this is published behaviour.

[dojoboy]

The OP indicated that the AI can spontaneously create extra units, presumably in response to a human threat, which I would agree could be considered as cheating. But I don't think I've seen any indication from Sid that this is published behaviour.

He may be thinking of CivRev, which users have loaded videos on you tube showing spontaneous unit generation by the AI.

[Eric5h5]

The AI in the first Civilization cheated like mad, but the later installments have little or no cheating (don't know about CivRev, haven't played it).

--Eric

[Thain Esh Kelch]

The AI in the first Civilization cheated like mad, but the later installments have little or no cheating (don't know about CivRev, haven't played it).

--Eric

That is not entirely correct. The AI does know some things it shouldn't - Your tech level and troop placement for one thing.

[badger2d]

That is not entirely correct. The AI does know some things it shouldn't - Your tech level and troop placement for one thing.

I don't feel like the AI has cheater's knowledge of your tech and military. Everyone's tech level is more or less readily available knowledge once you've got Alphabet anyway. On the military side, I've seen it happen in several of my games that a militarily much more powerful neighbor did not attack me until immediately and obviously after I made the mistake of giving them open borders and they had a chance to scout my territory.