I noticed this when replaying an offline game against the Hardest AI. In the dark age, I was surprised to see that it only had 3 villagers on food (sheep) and yet was still regularly producing new villagers.
Here were the food counts at critical moments:
1:52 VillA=2, VillB=6, VillC=0, SheepA=97, SheepB=9, Res=30, Town=loom
2:03 VillA=6, VillB=9, VillC=4, SheepA=91, SheepB=0, Res=30, Town=loom
2:06 VillA=0, VillB=0, VillC=0, SheepA=89, SheepB=0, SheepC=98, Res=50, Town=villager
That is, somehow the AI was able to queue a villager for free, as the Res still had 50 food.
Reproduction Steps:
I suspect that not having enough resources, depositing enough, and then immediately buying the villager results in no charge for the villager.
Devs â Iâm happy to send you the recorded game file if you are interested. This form wonât allow me to upload it.
Finally, just 3 seconds later, the AI has both 50 food in the resource bank AND a villager queued. This makes me suspect that depositing the right resources and immediately buying the villager results in no charge for the villager.
In your final screenshot, the TC is still showing the research effect (loom is apparently not finished), so I think itâs more a replay sync issue than a cheating issue. I havenât found evidence the default DE AI is cheating with resources, even on Extreme difficulty. The DE AI doesnât develop faster than experienced players.
Another possibility is that the replay doesnât show the whole queue and the villager was already queued in the TC (and resources were subtracted) while loom was being researched.
That effect simply means the building is working, right? Doesnt make a difference if loom or vill.
It highly doubt the replay doesnt show the whole quueu. It very much looks like a bug.
Ahh! Youâre right. Itâs a display bug. Between 1:36 and 1:41 the AI goes from 70 food to 20 food but the villager doesnât show in the queue. In fact, the queue (with loom and a villager) disappears from the upper-left, and disappears under the right-side names, and the villager doesnât show in their town center queue.
So, during loom, the AI actually spent food to queue a villager, but wasnât credited on the screen. Then, the âfreeâ villager suddenly appeared in the queue after loom was done.
Iâd like to apologize to the AI for my accusation. Iâll send it a nice gift basket as an apology.
In the past, I think hardest and above AI are allowed to cheat â âhardâ is the highest level AI that is not allowed to get free resources; higher difficulties should have cheating programmed in (to various extents), and the AI designers balanced the cheating to the right difficulty levels.
This is also why bot and AI tournaments are played with the AI difficulty set to âhardâ
Iâm not sure if DE still has this policy, or if the AI just doesnât cheat anymore.
