The one I’ve noticed most recently is in Warcraft III. There’s three difficulty settings for computer opponents. The lowest is deliberately handicapped, and the middle one is the best real AI they were able to make. The high difficulty setting was just like the middle one, but the computer got double resources: If one of your peons comes back with a load of 10 gold, the computer’s peon would come back with 20 (while still only depleting the gold mine by 10).
The computer also cheated in the old classic Command and Conquer: Red Alert, but I think that might have been sloppy programming, not deliberate. Most buildings and units had prerequisites, but if you lost the prerequisite building, you could keep building those units as long as the building which actually produced them was still intact. But if the production building (barracks, or factory, or construction yard for other buildings) was lost along with your “tech buildings”, you had to rebuild your technology, too. But if you almost obliterated the computer and it came back from almost nothing, it could build anything that it had ever had the prereqs for, regardless of whether it had them at the time.
For example: V-2 rockets are built at the Factory, and have Radar Dome as a prerequisite. If your opponent destroys your Radar Dome, you can still make V-2s, but if he also destroys your Factory and you rebuild it, you also have to rebuild your Radar Dome before you can make any more V-2s. But if you destroy the computer’s Factory and Radar Dome, and he rebuilds the Factory, he can immediately start making V-2s without a Radar Dome.
Grr, Civ games are sooo dirty! How’s come if I bring a unit within a million miles of that Gandhi bastard he’s all “Move them or die!”, and his guys just wander around my cities building their own?! It’s so unfair.
I did the exact same thing at a video game tournament years ago. It was three laps, and I did my best to be in dead last on the second lap. Then, on the last lap, I started overtaking everyone. I’d also figured out where you could tap the car ahead of you with your bumper to t-bone them… but you’d actually GAIN speed by doing so, while they spun out. Weird physics, but I managed to wreck all of my opponents and finished a quarter-lap ahead of everyone else.
I got more than a t-shirt, though- I won a brand new windsurfer and a trophy. Benefits of a misspent youth, I guess.
I found NHL 2003 pretty clean. My roommate and I consistantly won on our march to the cup by realistic scores most of the time. The only thing that made us feel that EA was cheatin’ was that we could NEVER get a shutout. We had many a game where we were up 3-0 4-0 or 5-0 and we would align our stategy to maximize the defense, but damn it they always got one goal in there.
This barely qualifies, but…does anyone remember the Hunt for Red October game for the NES?
Well, one of the later levels turned out to be some kind of freeform side-scrolling shooter, with you controlling the sub’s captain through the bowels of the ship, shooting…saboteurs, or something.
This level wasn’t mentioned in the manual, or on the box. So, of course, there were no instructions on what you’re supposed to be doing, where to go, etc. (No onscreen instructions, either)
You have limited ammunition. And a one-minute time limit.
If you don’t accomplish whatever it was that you were supposed to do, the ship blows up. Game over.
I have found pretty much all strategy game, both turn based (Civ series) and real-time (Command and Conquer) to be really bad. Basically, it seems to me that the computer had no actual need for resources. And the time it takes to build something? Nope, the computer can make it almost instantly. Oh, and all of its units are way overpowered compared to yours. Case in point:
I played the original Civ a lot. I remember many, many times I would be decades ahead of my opponant in technology (I had tanks, they were lucky if they had calvary.) Let’s say I only had one tank attacking a town, and only had it make one attack per round (some tanks could attack more than once.) If the city had a city wall, I could never take it. Why? Because the computer would buy a new unit every turn, so there was always a calvary there to stop me. Yeah, 9 times out of 10 the tank would win, but every now and then the calvary would. There really should be a rule that if a military unit is x number of tech advances ahead, it automatically wins. And where did all this money come from? Those damn score cards say I am the richest, and if you keep spending money to buy units, shouldn’t you run out? Nope. Not at all.
In Command and Conquer, the computer’s super weapons were always waaaaay overpowered. For example, in Red Alert 2, soviets can buld a nuke, If you are the soviets, your lucky if you can take out the construction yard with it, and some surronding units, and slightly damge surronding buildings. If the computer fires a nuke at you? Construction yard: gone. All surronding buildings: Damaged down to the red, weaker ones like barracks are gone. All units in a LARGE radius are dead. Blatent cheating.
[QUOTE=IncubusStreet Fighter II- The computer wasn’t obligated to go through the motions required to perform a special move. Therefore, a computer-controlled Blanka could smack you with a ball attack while moving forward the entire time ditto with Guile using sonic booms, or Ryu/Ken throwing dragon punches from a crouched position. Not to mention that the computer was obscenely good at breaking holds, it would get out of the hold before you could even land a hit.[/QUOTE]
Not to mention the computer could actually do Zangief’s pile-driver move without ending up just jumping.
The Mario Kart games may indeed cheat a fair bit (especially with cars matching your speed when you get speed boosts… that just ain’t right), but I just wanted to point out something in Double-Dash that actually isn’t really a cheat, but is often called one: Anyone playing in the fastest speed knows they’ll get a million spiny shells up the tailpipe when in first place. Fed up with this, I decided to play an entire cup in second place and count how many spiny shells whizzed past me to hit the lead car. I expected there would be very few, because why would the computer jeopardize its first-place standings? To my surprise, the number of spiny shells used was just the same as if a human player was in first place. So, item-wise, the computer doesn’t cheat on the higher speeds; it just gets a little more competitive.
And Rysto, I agree. Pokemon Stadium cheated more than I’ve seen any other game cheat before in my life. I heard the version on the GameCube was even worse, too.
The worst was the insta-wonder of civ one. You do everything you can to get to the Library first, then suddenly two turns before you are done, “Moscow has constructed a new wonder”. What the Fuck, Moscow had been building catapults every 3 turns to attack Badassville, how did they suddenly finish a wonder. Of course if you “correct the situation” with a reload and wipeout of Moscow, suddenly St. Petersburg would finish the damn thing.
Street Fighter II was horribly unbalanced. Zangief was slow as hell and his moves were impossible. Same for half the other characters. Everyone either played Ryu or Ken, and just ladled out hadouken fireballs until a crazed opponent tried a jump-in, then nailed them with the uppercut. Guile was similar enough that you’d see him used once in a while, and there were oddballs who liked Blanka, but you could never escape the Ryu/Ken junkies. Once the special edition came out and M. Bison was available, you’d occassionally see somebody cheap their way to victory with endless psycho crushers. But otherwise, Ken and Ryu.
I tried real hard to play the others: Chun-Li, E. Honda, fucking slowpoke Dhalsim who couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag. Never got anywhere.
I dunno, I’ve had the computer whomp my ass with every character. Ironically, Zangeif is INSANELY HARD when the computer’s difficulty is up. If you tried to jump at him, he would do this little kneeling karate-chop looking jab so quickly you just saw a BLUR of the guy’s arm moving up and down. Even if you threw a fireball at him, I swear the computer would just take the hit, and if he was <10 feet away from you, grab you into a spinning piledriver. I think the way the hit detection worked revolved around if Zangeif was tring to do a spinning piledriver on you. Because I swear I’d be halfway into the animation for a dragon punch or something and the crazy russkie would throttle me.
Street Fighter 2 Turbo (hacked boards that allowed the characters to do crazy stuff; teleport, shoot fireballs in midair, etc) were REALLY bad. The computer was pretty much impossible, because it somehow knew how to do all these cheapass new moves. Though one funny one was the insanely slow fireball. It would take like 30 seconds to go across the screen. I had a battle where I fired a sonic boom, kept fighting for a good while, wore the guy down, then he got careless and was creamed by the sonic boom that was STILL there, slooowly spinning its way across the screen
All the westwood rts games have the computer cheat by making your units absolutely retarded. You had to babysit every single soldier or he would run off and get himself killed.
Street Fighter 2 Turbo (more properly Street Fighter 2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting) was a legit Capcom board. There were a number of hacked boards, the most famous of which is generally referred to as “Rainbow Edition” due to the multicolored logo on the title screen.
The weirdest thing about Rainbow Edition (beside E. Honda shooting fireballs) was how CPU opponents would change into a different character at about a half life bar.
I could never do anything with Dhalsim, eiher, but I played against a few people who were fucking wizards with the guy. I guess it takes lots of practice, but they had their timing and aim down pat with him, to the extent that it was almost impossible to get close.
Re: Civ I, it’s not a cheat because it worked both ways, but the most annoying thing was the unrealistic performance of (very) obsolete units. The most egregious example was your brand-new Battleship attacking a veteran Phalanx (!) unit fortified in a city with a wall – about half the time, your insanely expensive Battleship would be destroyed. WTF? Even if the ancient phalanx could reach your Battleship (it couldn’t), how’s it going to destroy it? Lob Greek Fire into the ammunition cache?
Zangief - do the arm swingy thingy through (HO!)RyuKen’s fireball and corner him. the reach for the pile-driver is very long, and any attempt to jump over can be countered by taking the hit and returning with a pile-driver. (difficulty - insane)
Chun Li - keep them within range at all times and middle sweep/jab them till they die. ‘air throw’ any attempt to jump.
Dhalsim - keep them away from you at all times and poke them till they cry.
Always include the poke and throw for any characters you use to drive your opponents wild with rage, especially those that have mastered the Zangief throw and insist that all throws are cheap.
Oh yeah. Civ III. Cheating piece of crap. And it’s so fricken; annoying because the game is so damn addictive. Any other game that cheats that bad I just toss out. But Civ III I want to play, and get frustrated with the cheating as a result.
There’s the problems others have already mentioned. If you send a Scout or worker into enemy territory they tell you to clear off in 3 turns. But the exact same civilisation can fricken’ warriors or other combat units into your territory in the same turn and you can do nothing about it. That’s annoying.
And the fact that the levels are just scales of cheating for the AI.
But my greatest peeve is the way that the AI cheats by observing the whole board, even areas it couldn’t; possibly ‘see’. Even on the lowest levels this is routine. If war is declared and you have one city defended by a spearman and all the rest are defended by infantry the computer will unerringly sail a invasion force up to that one undefended city even though it can’t know what; defends it.
Sure the AI could be spending money to spy on every fricken’ city every turn, but it isn’t losing income doing so.
I have used this cheat to my advantage occasionally. A ship for example might be sailing in to a weakly or undefended city. Wait until it gets halfway there and shuffle units form the other side of the continent to that city. The ship starts to sail to the other side of the continent (HTF did it know what city that unit left undefened? It doesn’t have the resources to pay to spy on every city.) By doing that constantly you can keep the units on the ship tied up for the entire course of a war, sailing endlessly backwards and forwards.
It’s an annoying cheat but it can be advantageous occasionally.
The other Civ cheat that’s annoying is the AI being able to rush units the turn they are attacked. For example if you order someone off your territory in your turn ad they declare war you can rush unit production in defense, but they aren’t built until next turn obviously, giving the enemy one free turn.
If you declare war in the enemy’s turn they will have their rushed units ready and active on your next turn. They lose no time at all. And it’s not just a timing issue because if you declare war in our turn they still have the rushed units ready on your next turn. Any way you look at it when the AI rushes a unit it appears the same turn as it’s rushed.
Heck, on good ol’ Championship Baseball, you could rack up a sizable lead until the computer got tired of toying with you and would crush six home runs in a row while your fielders ran around in circles.
I still play it now and then on an emulator, just to remind myself of how blatant the cheating is.
Microsoft Hearts for Windows. If the lowest spade you have is the King or Ace, the freakin’ computer will lead the Queen of spades, even though there are still plenty of spades left unplayed. Microsoft programmers must code the program to read your hands. Cheaters!
