Hello!

Edit: thanks for the replies! ♥

Can you think of some games where the AI/comp straight up cheats?

Street Fighter 2 - Some characters have charge moves, which require you to crouch for two seconds. The AI does not require inputs, and can do these moves on cue without charging - making them able to do these moves faster than a human player can. I remember I used to see comp Guile throw a flash kick super quickly, and wonder how it was able to do it so fast. I thought there was some trick to it I was missing. But back then I didn't know about the cheating AI. There are also things like reduced stun recovery and hits not registering where they normally should.

Mortal Kombat 2 - The AI will read your inputs and counter the exact thing you are trying to do. Trying to clear the game without use cheese strategies is prohibitively difficult.

Diablo 2 - Duriel is not affected by freeze effects. Not an issue for me, but feels a little too strong for an act 2 boss.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - there is a fey type enemy who has several immunities (including control effects and magic missile), is impossible to hit with weapons (except with nat 20s), and has super high saving throws. I can't remember her name, but she summoned water elementals.

Mass Effect 2 - Harbinger will regularly posses normal Collector goons, making them much stronger. If a Collector trooper is about to die, Harbinger will possess the soldier - restoring him to full health, giving him armour protection, and a biotic barrier to boot. Not only do you need to start from scratch, you also now have to grind through three layers of HP.

Arkham Asylum - There is a section of the game with a bomb/timer. If you take a shortcut, Joker will break the fourth wall and reduce the total amount of time you have.

Pokemon (Gen 1) - Your rival will pick whichever pokemon has a type advantage over yours. The first two gym leaders are rock and water type respectively. God help you if you picked charmander. This isn't an issue with squirtle or bulbasaur. By the time you reach a gym that has their weakness, you can pick up a 'mon that can fight for them.

Blizzard RTS games - The comp can control multiple units at a time, as opposed to the player doing them one by one. Trying to micro on later levels at max speed is pretty rough. The comp always knows exactly where you are. They also have full vision of the map with no fog of war. Meaning artillery weapons like siege tanks and catapults will always have max range. A human player would need a spotter unit to get the same amount of range - putting them at a disadvantage.

Mario Kart and various other racing games

In Civilization, the AI gets bonuses the higher the difficulty, but doesn't get smarter, apparently. I heard somewhere that it also knows where all resources are and will build settlements accordingly, but I cannot verify that.

Empire earth 1 the ai cheats by having resources even though when their base is poorly build they still churn out units. Don't know if it does the same in campaign but skirmish it does that and you can turn it off in your self made map as an option. Also have not played the campaign to the end yet

Eador genesis think the ai gets more gold as even when they don't have enough land they are still capable of positioning guards and have lots of units even though their money was supposed to be in the negative. But you have the ability to step 1 turn back in time

It's not really a cheat, but while you can't see zip when crouching in the grass, the enemies in Far Cry can see you very clearly and they can shoot through tents while your bullets will be stopped by these.

Minor: Bots in Quake are usually built in a way that they get a network of possible paths they can follow. They don't have to try out which jumps they can make.

That enemies know more about the map than you do, is a common 'problem' of old RTS games, starting with Dune 2.

Mario kart games, especially the first mario kart game. The first game has special power-ups for the NPCs that the player can never get. I am unsure of other mario kart games but perhaps they speed some a few of the CPUs/give them good items if the player is to far ahead.

I remembered another one, though it's a case that actually benefits the player.

In Dragon Quest games, starting with Dragon Quest 4, there's the option to let the AI control your party members, with different tactics available. (In original DQ4, this was mandatory; in the final (and by far longest chapter), the only character you can give direct commands to is the Hero.) Thing is, this AI chooses its action when the character's turn comes around, rather than at the start of the round as you have to. This can result in a character healing someone who was just revived, or trying to revive someone who either was just killed, or whom a revive attempt failed. (In DQ3 and onward, the first revive spell you get doesn't always work, so if you're unlucky, it can take many tries, and the reliable revive spell typically comes rather late, especially in DQ3 and DQ4.)

Hm,...but is that really the game cheating, then?
Or is this just the game responding - in an appropriate way (!) - to you using a cheat/glitch(?) in the game?

The Diablo 2 case is not cheating. Duriel is intended to be that way as an extra challenge. The player can achieve the same effect by wearing an item with "Cannot be frozen" bonus. What is more of a cheat in that game is monster immunities. While characters are limited to 75% resistance by default, monsters can easily go to 150%+. One of the downsides introduced by Lord of Destruction.

As for Blizzard RTS games, the vision stuff you wrote is false, otherwise the AI could freely shoot up elevations without vision, which it can't. It does know where you are (your buildings) but it does not have permanent vision. But the AI cheats with resources, especially in the campaign, where they only mine to give off the impression they're mining. In reality, they have infinite. They can always rebuild whatever you destroy/kill unless you annihilate them completely. In WC3, they even mine only 1 gold per tick from mines instead of 10, but the only purpose of that is so that the player has access to expansion mines and the AI doesn't mine them out.

But in most RTS games, the AI cheats. Be it resources, vision or something else. A good AI will take vision into account though.

In Unreal Tournament games, the highest difficulties give the bots a massive FOV. On Inhuman, it's 270 degrees and on Godlike, it's 360 with full map awareness at all times without line of sight checks. E.g., the bots always know where you are and you can never ambush them.

Many racing games will artificially speed up the opponents if you get too far ahead. Very common thing. Some will even reverse cheat and slow down if you get too far behind. Both pretty much completely defeat the point of the game.

In FPS games, AI is often unhindered by foliage, obstructions and other vision blocking stuff that can be shot through.

In fighting games, the AI often likes input reading on the highest difficulties, meaning it can always perfectly counter whatever you're doing.

I hear the Baldur's Gate games have some cheating AI, like how apparently some enemies will use ForceSpell() to cast Vocalize when silenced. (ForceSpell() causes the AI to cast a spell, except that the spell doesn't have to be memorized, and the spell can't be interrupted.)

The GalCiv games are very kind about their cheating ways, in that they're rather upfront about the advantages or disadvantages the AI gets, plus there's a good bit of tuning you can do to rig the game against your favor.

Wow, I was playing the Civ games for a while but never knew about that. This reminds me of something a buddy and myself did in middle school. We made a custom map in Warcraft 2, and wanted to use death knights without being badgered by those pesky paladins. So we made the church and upgrade cost for paladin high enough that it would take forever for the comp to get them. The comp still managed to get paladins very quickly. This sounds similar to an issue FPS games have. The AI will never run out of ammo. I remember playing Halo and just waiting for the enemy to run out of ammo (which of course, never happened). However, it looks like there is a limit on enemy grenades. Grunts/jackals throw two max, and elites/brutes throw one. I don't know if they AI actually has more 'nades than this amount, but I've never been in a firefight where they threw more than this many grenades. I remember figuring this out in middle school. Nowadays when I play RTS games I beeline to the nearest expansion ASAP. I didn't know this was a thing. I'll have to look up what items they get. I guess I'm really the cheater here XD.

That's a good point. I play mostly vs AI, and I know I can park my siege tanks safely on hills.

I remember playing an FPS game on the Xbox (I think it was CoD, don't really remember). I was prone on the ground and noticed enemies on the other side of the fence. I thought I could just poke my head out the tiniest amount, and they wouldn't be able to shoot me - and if they did - they likely wouldn't hit. Of course they saw me, and of course every shot hits me.

I've never seen the AI use vocalize while silenced (I don't use that spell anyway). However, there is one example of cheating that I know of. Use invisibility and a cloak of non-detection, then walk around some enemy spellcasters. You will see them casting true sight - suggesting that they know you are really there.

Casting that spell while silenced isn't cheating, as the game will allow you to cast that particular spell while silenced, and according to table top rules, the spell doesn't have a verbal component.

What *is* cheating, however, is the use of ForceSpell(), and I believe there's other uses of ForceSpell() in enemy scripts (not to mention ReallyForceSpell(), which is like ForceSpell() except that the spell is instantly cast; some enemies use it to simulate sequencers, for example).

Some challenge mods that modify enemy AI will cheat this way, while others make a point of avoiding this sort of cheating in enemy AI scripts.
There are two possible ways to implement this, which are indistinguishable from a player perspective:
* The game could actually give enemies finitely many grenades, and track that amount.
* The enemies could have infinite grenades (or more than they throw), but the AI could be programmed to never throw more than a certain number.

I note that, for example, Crystal Project has some enemies that have some nasty attacks that they're programmed to not use more than once during the fight. (Note that difficulty can affect this; patch notes say that some monsters were modified this way, but only on lower difficulties.) (With that said, it's worth noting that Crystal Project *doesn't* cheat with enemy resources as far as I can tell; they have the same issues with HP, MP, and cooldowns that you do, and the one enemy spell with a "once per battle" limit won't be used by that boss more than once during that fight. Attacks that cost HP might be an exception, though possibly the only one, well and a few cases where enemies get a different version of the skill, like with Quick.)

I see, I think I understand now.