That’s what you get for not having a damage engine. Try Race Driver 2 {aka V8 Supercars 2} for the XBox - take an inside line on a corner and use the other cars as brakes, and not only will you spin off the track with a smashed radiator that’ll overheat your engine and slow you down, but the computer cars will later gang up to block you passing. Not quite as graphically impressive as GT4 {although the damage modelling is brilliant} and less cars and tracks, but a really impressive racing sim. And hard. Did I mention hard?
[QUOTE=wolfman]
Did the enemy civ have a Great Leader? With a GL, you can rush wonder buildings. So even by destroying Moscow, the AI could then move the GL over to St. Petersburg and rush the Library there. You can do this too - just farm for Great Leaders by saving your Elite units to attack only when you are sure they can win.
Or get the Conquest expansion pack; in Conquest, it splits the Great Leaders into Military Great Leaders, which you get the same way as old GLs, and Scientific Great Leaders, which you get a random chance of getting if you are the first to discover a tech. Note that SGLs are much rarer. MGLs can build Armies, or can rush non- Great Wonder buildings & units; SGL can rush any building or unit, or can boost a city’s science production.
I remember one incredibly lucky game I had, when I got a SGL when I discovered the Scientific Method - I used the SGL to rush the Theory of Evolution (which gives you two free new techs) and got another SGL when I discoved Electronics as one of the free techs. Then I rushed the Hoover Dam. 
We’re talking Sid Meier’s Civilization (Civ 1) here – 320*240, with support for an AdLib card if you were lucky enough to have one. No Great Leaders, no Elite units, no expansion packs. Just cheating.
There was a cheat code you could use to look inside enemy cities (IIRC: hold down Shift, press 123456, then view your palace. You’d come back to see the entire map revealed, and clicking on an enemy city would open it up for you.) that could be used to verify that, indeed, the computer was cheating blatantly with its production.
The most ridiculous example of AI cheating in Civ 1, though, was what happened to a friend of mine. For some reason he had fortified a phalanx on each of the 8 squares surrounding his capital, and one turn his capital got attacked by an enemy legion. It would have had to go through one of the phalanxes to get there, and it only had one move per turn anyway, yet it managed to teleport in and attack the city.
I have a backgammon that cheats. If I ever leave any open pieces it has a real knack of being able to hit me. The only time I roll good doubles is when I’m out and I roll 6s and can’t get in.
The game keeps track of all sorts of different stats, one of which is how far ahead or behind you are. I think it just adds up the difference in the die rolls. Yesterday I was 150 ahead, a huge lead. I had three of his pieces in my half. I was taking pieces off, then got doubles and was forced to leave one open. It hit me. The computer only had a couple of points blocked, but I couldn’t get in, and when I did I got hit. I only had 3-4 pieces to take off and I lost!
I remember Mortal Kombat II used to cheat too. The computer could throw you no matter what so you had to stay away from them.
I clicked on this thread with this specific cheat in mind. Damn, I loved that friggin’ AI! It took cheating to new levels of video game absurdity, and it really kept me on my toes.
In the process of playing a skirmish game against about six or seven “brutal” AI bases, I’d blow some Russian installation to smithereens with a superweapon and a massive airstrike, leaving nothing but his primary construction yard, and the AI would immediately spawn a nuclear silo in place of all the structures I just destroyed. Of course, that just left a great opportunity for me to send in a helicopter full of engineers and capture everything…
Stronghold- The computer had an uncanny way of finding breaches in your castle and sending their *entire frickin’ army * through some tiny little breach. Building moats was a pain, because if it extended to the edge of the map it was easy to accidentally miss some spots, and when the enemy army showed up guess what route they would take? They would merrily bypass the whole damn moat and attack me.
Of course, this could easily be exploited. On one map, I used palisades to make a little ‘maze’ into my castle. The whole maze was covered in pitch, and as soon as most of the enemy was lured in, I had an archer fire a burning arrow inside. It was like a giant deep fryer- hundreds of enemy soldiers were flying out of the maze on fire, running about in a panic. I killed an enormous amount of their army this way.
I’m not the only person to have played this game?!?
IN CIv 2 the enemy always seems to know where your least defended city is.
<slight hijack> Re: Civ III and units in enemy territory. I’m a little bit confused; yes, the others will always bitch and moan if you have units in their territory, but you can do the same thing. It’s an option on the diplomacy menu whenever there is a foreign unit in your boundaries (something like “Get your troops off my land or else!”) If, after a few moves, they refuse to move, you can declare war on them, just as they would on you if you refused to move yours.
I haven’t played Civ III in a little while, but I seem to remember using the tendency of the others getting pissed off to get them to declare war on me when I wanted to invoke an alliance or start a war without political repercussions. If I refused to move, and chose the option to Declare War instead, it counted as if the enemy had actually declared war. I welcome correction if I am remembering this incorrectly.
I noticed that too, but I’ve always wondered if it was a matter of perception.
Ever play Grand Prix Legends?
RE: Street Fighter 2 my friend in college was a master with any character. His Honda and Zangief demolished plenty of foes back in the day when folks gathered around the machine. the thing with zangief is his throws have a hell of a reach and they supersede your throw so they are hard as hell to reverse if you could play him well you were near unstoppable. my friend could do every single move from the game just like the computer flawlessly, it was quite impressive to watch.
All games cheat in one-player, I think. Or at least the majority since the mid-80s when I started playing computer games have.
I’ll say one thing- they’ve gotten more subtle about it since then. The old Lakers vs. Celtics basketball game ca. 1988 is the worst one I can remember- the computer would catch up with you, regardless of how far ahead you were.
As for modern games, I nominate the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six games. In these games, you’re supposed to be commanding an elite multinational counterterrorist commando force. Your team members are supposedly Delta Force, Green berets, SAS, Alfa, GSG-9, FBI HRT,GIGN, etc…
Yet… on the missions, the scrub terrorists seem to always get the drop on your guys and slaughter them, especially when they startle each other.
In real life, I suspect that the commando types would be quicker on the draw and more accurate, and consequently would tend to waste the terrorists like a hot knife through butter.
Not so on the game.
Tiger Woods Golf has some stuff like this, although it’s really more of a problem with how far you can build up your character. It doesn’t take long at all to build up a character that can drive many of the par 4 greens, consistently hit iron shots to within a few feet of the hole, etc. To compensate for this, the later computer characters you play against are also superhuman. You play Seve in a typhoon, and you have to shoot about 11 under over 9 holes to beat him.
I know. That annoyed the crap out of me, particulary if you went too fast going up stairs or around corners, sometimes your “elite Special Forces” guys would start running around like idiots on speed, trying to figure out where you’d gone. Poor pathfinding really breaks the supension of disbelief.
And the fact that the guys I weren’t controlling could easily get slaughtered in a room where they couldn’t possibly get ambushed.
Or, since they run around in a line, if the guy in front of them dies, they’ll just keep following the path, and often get killed by the same asshole who killed the first guy.
I kept yelling “I could train monkeys to do this better then you!”
Civ1 the computer could build wonders instantly… later incarnations balanced that sort of thing out a bit, so that the conputer players had to build them with the same resources you had.
Another twist in the civ series… the neighbouring civs tend to build towards the player even if they ave tons of open space in other directions…
Yeah there is tons of cheating but in the computers defense… it is stupid, and cheating is the only way it can keep up with a human player 
Another one with lots of cheating was Warcraft. I used cheat codes to see how they were attacking my settlement so early in the game. They would develop fast enough to be able to build their first barracks (to produce troops) and then hightail their units to close to my border and plant a barracks down. How do they know where I was?
I have no idea what universe you live in, but in the real universe, by far the best character on SF2 classic was Guile. Only Dhalsim could ever beat Guile, but Dhalsim was vulnerable to Chun Li. Everyone else was just a spectator.
In any case, the CPUs on all SF2 versions have been heinous cheaters. In addition to the perfect reflexes, the computer does far more damage for the same move. (The problem, I suspect, is that capcom wanted it to be a challenge for good human plyaers, but didn’t have the time/energy/motivation to actually write interesting AI…)
Eternal Champions for Sega Genesis. This was a Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat imitator. Characters had a thing called “Inner Strength”. You needed it to do special moves. It regenerated slowly after use. The computer never needed it. It would deplete its inner strength, than proceed to do a bunch of moves requiring inner strength.
It doesn’t work like that. You can declare war any time you like. You don’t have to wait until a few turns after the Ai refuses to move. You can declare war at any time for any reason or no reason whether they are on your territory or not.
What we are talking about is the “Move your forces or declare war” order. You don’t get the option to issue that command, it just turns up at the AI’s discretion after enemy units enter your territory.
When that order is issued the AI has to ‘teleport’ their troops off your land or declare war. It’s not just bitching and moaning. It’s a method of forcing enemy units to leave your territory without initiating war.
Usually the “Move or die” order only appears after enemy units have been on your territory for over 3 turns, or if there are more than three combat units on your land. However the AI frequently gets to use it the first turn you enter their territory while if an enemy combat unit is paired with a settler you may never be able to issue it. You can only remove the enemy unit form your land by attacking it.
It’s hard to judge what if any political repercussions come from non-nuclear war so I can’t tell if that’s the case.
However in terms of mutual protection pacts the declaration of war doesn’t activate them for come reason. Nor does attacking enemy units on you own territory. It’s only attacking enemy units on neutral or their own territory that the pact is initiated and the enemy’s allies enter the war. That’s why your declaration of war rather than moving doesn’t seem to have much effect. You aren’t attacking.
Guilty Gear X2. The end boss is a woman named I-No who wears a red animated hat and beats the shit out of you with a guitar. She’s available as a regular character, but the boss version has an uber-move called Megalomania. She’s likely to use it at any time, even when you’re in the middle of a combo. If you try to hit her out of it, you’re practically dead. Try to stand on the other side of her, you’re practically dead. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to avoid once you know how. Unless you’re playing Story Mode, in which case she gets to regenerate health while she’s doing it.
Other than that, GGX2 doesn’t cheat much at all.
Capcom Vs. SNK 2. Two words: Shin Akuma. I’ve never seen so many impossible combos.
It’s an alternative universe called Oklahoma. None of the rules you know apply.
Guile had to be charged to do anything except die. I sucked at charging, so I didn’t bother with him much. Quite a lot of players had that problem. Worse, the charge for sonic booms was back-forward, opposite to the spin kick of down-up. Ryu/Ken could shift from a fireball to an uppercut with a flick of the wrist. Made them faster.
This is, of course, all relative to the cheatiness of the machine. Only Balrog didn’t pose a serious threat to anyone. I had little disposable income for most of this period and didn’t get good at a game until X-Men/Street Fighter, which I beat with every single character simply by pairing them up with Storm. I never saw regular Zangief players until Marvel/Capcom 1, and I never saw anyone choose E. Honda besides me. I was only ever good at the tag team games, where you could retire one character to heal while the other dished damage. I really wanted to be good at Samurai Showdown (Shobu ari! S’ranui Gen-An! Onigodo, what a shame we miss you!) but it wasn’t in the cards.