I caught the AI cheating red handed!

geoschmo · #1 March 19th, 2002, 09:25 PM

Actually cheating may be a little strong of a word. But it did something in a game that is not possible for a human player to do. That's something I have never seen before.

I had a planet two sectors away from a warp point. The AI had a ship sitting on my side of the warp point for severeal turns doing nothing. A second ship came through the warp point, and on the same turn both ships attacked my planet in formation.

Basically it came through and fleeted with the other ship and attacked all at once. There is no way a human player could pull this off in a simultaneous turn game as I was playing. You could do it in turn-based though.

Not sure what it means, but I felt like sharing.

Geoschmo

Bman · #2 March 19th, 2002, 09:29 PM

A human can get close to this behaviour if the ships move at the same speed:

Ship that is further away makes a bee-line for the planet. The ship that is closer makes a few back-and-forth movements and then moves to the planet so that both ships arrive at the same time.

Of course, that will not put them in the same fleet so I do not know if they will appear in combat in any sort of formation.

geoschmo · #3 March 19th, 2002, 09:34 PM

That's a good try, but that doesn't explain it. First of all, I watched the movement replay, and the ship on the warp point didn't move until the other ship came through.

Secondly, if you give too ships move too orders and they aren't in a fleet, they don't move at exactly the same time, even if they are the same speed. Because the simultaneous turns for SE4 isn't true simultaneous turns. It's more like "granulated sequential turns" if there is such a thing. The first ship would attack the planet, and the second ships would arrive during the next combat. This I have tested myself and I know it to be the case. These two were both there for each combat phase that took place.

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #4 March 19th, 2002, 11:05 PM

Isn't that something we requested? Ability to use 'merge with fleet' as an order? We've know the AI could do this for some time, I think. Being able to set a fleet as a 'destination' might do the trick.

PvK · #5 March 19th, 2002, 11:42 PM

Ya, the AI has a "join fleet" order, although I haven't noticed a "wait for fleet" or a "add ships to fleet" order. These could be useful as a human player. Though, humans do a LOT of maneouvers that the AI doesn't ever do, and the movement is consistent with the game, and could more or less be pulled off by silly moving back and forth to time the simultaneous arrival.

PvK

Mephisto · #6 March 20th, 2002, 12:43 AM

Just let the human use the "Intercept" button with his own ships. Easy to use, easy to understand and IMHO easy to implement.

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Isn't that something we requested? Ability to use 'merge with fleet' as an order? We've know the AI could do this for some time, I think. Being able to set a fleet as a 'destination' might do the trick.

geoschmo · #7 March 20th, 2002, 01:52 AM

quote:
Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
Just let the human use the "Intercept" button with his own ships. Easy to use, easy to understand and IMHO easy to implement.

It may be easy, but it wouldn't result in the ships all arriving at the same time. They would arrive during the same turn, but not at the same time. You would end up with ships not attacking in a coordinated manner.

I tried that once to coordinate attacks with an ally against a third empire. You can give the "attack" order and point to yoru allies ship. Any time your ally moves, your ship will follow. But only afterwards, and the attacks don't happen at the same time. If your ally and the enemy both have ships remaining after the initial combat though, your ships will arrive for round two.

Geoschmo

Cylapse · #8 March 21st, 2002, 05:36 PM

I can't really explain the nuiance of both ships arriving at the same time, although I wager good timing could have made it happen... as for the fleet, perhaps they werent really a fleet, but simply an attack formation, per the In-combat order menu? Err, but wait - I recall that in Simultaneous, Tactical isnt allowed, so a human player couldnt have set the order for 'Group Leader and member', so its still kinda cheating...

Damn...Good eye, I figured I had it nailed down, but it eludes me still... Looks like the AI was cheating...LOL