AI "cheating": Permanent omniscienct Scrying??

[tinkthank]

I dont think this is "bad", I like it if the AI has an advantage over humans, just wondering if this can be corroborated:
In SP games, I get the feeling that enemy AI nations know exactly where I am before they could possibly know this.
I often get the message from an AI nation "We hereby declare war upon your unholy nation" etc. and just then I get hit by either fires from afar or seeking arrow. Since seeking arrow often comes from Caelum, I had figured that Caelum just got lucky with its fast scouts, but in some recent SP games on Faerun (wanted to monkey about with the map) against impossible AIs, both my Vanheimian nation and my Machakan nation got hit by fires from afar on turns 5-7 by Marignon, who couldnt possibly have gotten a scout/spy to me that fast. (They both hit non-capital provinces containing my troops).
Does the AI have some form of "omniscient" knowledge of troop placement (contrary to what we may have thought so far)?

[Arralen]

Not contrary to what we have thought so far.

It's known, and the devs have mentioned it several times, that the AI doesn't suffer from "fog of war" as much as players: It does 'see' ownership of every province on the map.

Secondly, the AI seems to happily fire arrows at indies as well .. sometimes you'll find indy provinces without commmanders, which 100% haven't been attacked before.

[tinkthank]

Hm, thanks. I was under the impression that, after reading threads on so-called "AI-cheats", the AI was ascribed no more than a few bonuses to gold and resources plus the design points at higher levels.
What you say makes sense. Odd, that I didnt see this mentioned by anyone so far.

It makes me wonder too about the following:
- Why then does the AI go about producing and sending in scouts to my provinces?
- What good does the Eyes of God spell do for the AI (which astral AI nations love to cast)?

[Arryn]

tinkthank said:
Odd, that I didnt see this mentioned by anyone so far.

It has, but it's been a while (months).

tinkthank said:
It makes me wonder too about the following:
- Why then does the AI go about producing and sending in scouts to my provinces?
- What good does the Eyes of God spell do for the AI (which astral AI nations love to cast)?

Because without such actions, the AI only knows what provinces you own, not what you have in them. Scouts/Eyes lets the AI actually see into the province.

The equivalent is if you were in an MP game and some player told you that another player owned a certain province far away from you for which you had no normal means to know was under his control. So, you would know the ownership of said province, but know no other information about it. However, were you to send a scout over there, or cast the Eyes spell, then you would get more info.

[magnate]

That Last one is a very good question (oops, got beaten to the punch - I mean why the AIs cast EoG) - I love watching two or three AIs compete to waste astral pearls casting it over and over again.

CC

[Boron]

tinkthank said:
Hm, thanks. I was under the impression that, after reading threads on so-called "AI-cheats", the AI was ascribed no more than a few bonuses to gold and resources plus the design points at higher levels.
What you say makes sense. Odd, that I didnt see this mentioned by anyone so far.

i thought always the ai only gets extra pretenderdesign points but nothing more .

so is this true that the ai also gets gold + resources ?
does the ai perhaps then get some extramagic gems too ?

[nakomus]

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).

[Demosthenes]

I believe that J.O. recently posted that the AI is also receiving a gold and resource discount on troops above Normal.

[deccan]

Demosthenes said:
I believe that J.O. recently posted that the AI is also receiving a gold and resource discount on troops above Normal.

Yep, in a thread I started.

AI difficulty levels