Does someone know how exactly the AI fgures out how where are habitable planets?
A little exposition, a little while back I stated:
"About the AI colonizing fast: The AI most likely just knows where all colonizable worlds are at start. Else I can't explain some of the incredible snatches they pulled on me early in the game."
And got this reply:
"There is no "probable" to your insinuation and speculation statement. Stardock is quite proud and insistent over not giving their AI cheats beyond the published difficulty bonuses. You are going to have to find some other scapegoat for your troubles. 
"
source: https://forums.galciv3.com/478023/page/1/#3639264
So I figured: Ok, lets take a look, start a tiny map and build a huge scanner ship and watch the AI. I watched and saw nothing that indicated foul play by the AI. It usually ahs one colonizer in reserve which it sends to the first world it finds with scouts. So why am i bringing this up again? Because I want someone to explain this screenshot to me:
The situation you are viewing:
- turn 11 (thus the AI has taken 10 turns so far)
- the range displayed is my initial colonizer (I like to not use it on planets in my home system in order to get earlier ideology)
- the only habitable planets within this range are my two home worlds, the Snathi Revenge homeworld and the uncolonized planet
- the snathi colonizer has 4 moves each turn and is therefore 7 turns away from the snathi homeworld (I counted)
This means the AI must have known that this world is colonizable at turn 3 or that all the other scouted stars in the picture had no colonizable planets (and made a wild guess based on that?).
Either way, I don't see how either is possible without the AI moving outside the rules in some way.
Does someone know how it works? I am genuinly curious, especially given comments like quoted above.