OK the computer cheats!

[DeathDaemon]

I'm playing Man on Faerun Large, turn 22.

Marignon declares war (for no good reason as they are 50+ turns away) and casts fires from afar. Targets a province that contains only my god which was moving to another province (a fairly high level rainbow enchantress), and kills him. WEAK! I'm starting over, lucky only turn 22. There is no way they had a scout or other scrying spell, and I doubt they were allies with Ermor (I didnt set up allies - I'm just complaining that noone wants to help Ermor heh). OK maybe I should have had a few bodyguards...

EDIT:
I think declare war for the AI needs to be modified to check for contact or something similar. It seems way too often that an AI nation casts call of the winds/wild (and obviously fires from afar) for a province that they'll never even come close to knowing what was there.

[The Panther]

On turn 22 on any size map, a decent player can have scouts all around you, waching your every move. The first indy with scouts to recruit means continuous scout building for many turns. All you have to see is one red candle during exploration and they know you are there.

I think the computer might have total vision, though, but I promise you that this can happen in MP. Expect it, especially in a 1 on 1.

As for declaring war, when you are the only opponent of a single AI, you should expect a war declaration, and maybe even earlier than turn 22. With a third AI opponent, like you had, this is not as certain.

[DeathDaemon]

I understand your comments, but there was every nation in the game (2 Human, rest AI), and it would have taken more than 30 turns or so just to get 1 scout to my nation area. I think the computer didnt like its' start and wanted a remake so it pissed me off Ok there are such things as flying scouts, but still...

[Nagot Gick Fel]

The AI doesn't cheat, except for that one thing: it knows which provinces you control, and when it declares war on your nation and has access to spells like Call of the Wild or Fires from Afar, it will liberally (yet randomly) cast it on one of your provinces. Everyone I know thinks that feature is OK, as the AI isn't smart enough to do proper scouting.

Your Enchantress was just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Give her a ring of fire resistance in your next game .

[Thufir]

DeathDaemon said:
I'm playing Man on Faerun Large, turn 22.

Marignon declares war (for no good reason as they are 50+ turns away) and casts fires from afar. Targets a province that contains only my god which was moving to another province (a fairly high level rainbow enchantress), and kills him. WEAK! I'm starting over, lucky only turn 22. There is no way they had a scout or other scrying spell, and I doubt they were allies with Ermor (I didnt set up allies - I'm just complaining that noone wants to help Ermor heh). OK maybe I should have had a few bodyguards...

EDIT:
I think declare war for the AI needs to be modified to check for contact or something similar. It seems way too often that an AI nation casts call of the winds/wild (and obviously fires from afar) for a province that they'll never even come close to knowing what was there.

This has been discussed many times, and I think the devs have been pretty specific about just what handicaps the AI has. Pulling a quote from Nakomus in this thread

nakomus said:
The only advantages the AI receives as far as I know are:
More pretender points at high levels.
Knowledge of ownership status of provinces.
Knowledge of current PD levels in provinces (arguably a disadvantage).

Here's a previous thread started by deccan.

[DeathDaemon]

I've been playing long enough to know that the computer doesn't really cheat enough to warrant few if any changes, I was just frustrated to have a non-threat (nation way too far away) make me want to start over. I find difficult AI to be tough enough early-mid game in an independent 7 game on a really big map, but I still go with Ermor on easy AI as they seem to take so much territory that they don't need the extra points.

[Alneyan]

The AI has other advantages at higher levels, as seen by the Posts of Johan in this thread.

Sadly, I could not access the other thread linked to by Johan; I guess the forum change broke this link as well, or something along these lines.