The tournament isnt a good thing to compare to a normal game shake its so messed up you cant compare. Hard AI doesnt cheat, Nightmare however does. New players arent gonna be playing nightmare and probably not even hard. So relax, if you hate cheating AI so much just play online.

The AI's job isn't to be fair, but to present a challenge. In a real-time game of this nature it can be difficult to make an AI that can compete effectively by gameplay alone, so the bonuses are used to make up that gap.

@ Resist:

I play online mainly.
At the moment, tournament AI is cheating on hard.
I see their attack speed + move speed + hp + all stats go to ridiculous levels in a longer game (we are talking 10k hp+, as well as faster move speed than possible) ON HARD DIFFICULTY SETTINGS - not even nightmare

I never knew your side was always normal AI, that would explain a lot ^^

I don't think the actual "I" part of "AI" improves between Hard and Nightmare, so if you want cheating set to "Off" just play on Hard instead of Nightmare. Hard AI might cheat a little bit, but easily overcome. In fact, I barely notice a skill difference even between Normal and Hard AI, but there probably is a little.

As this really isn't meant to be a single-player game, I don't expect GPG to spend too much time developing the AI.

Supreme Commander also gives players (AI or otherwise) a much larger amount of tactical options and space in which to employ them.  The AI is more challenging in larger games like this because it's better managing several tasks at once than most players (and as you know, multi-tasking ability is incredibly helpful in SupCom since there is 'always' something you can be doing).  The AI's overall strategy tends to come up short but it does do a good job of keeping things from going idle.

In Demigod, there really isn't a whole heck of a lot that a player can be doing at any one time and there aren't as many angles to be attacked from so that advantage isn't nearly as pronounced.  In this setting, I imagine it's much harder to make an AI play effectively. 

That said, the AI in SupCom is still incredibly easy to beat with pretty much any strategy you can come up with.  That is, of course, unless you're playing on the AIx setting which is, as you probably know, an outright cheat.

I have to agree that without cheats, the AI completely sucks. It routinely overextends and gets crappy skills (yetis ftl!). I just don't think the solution to this is spending more time on the AI.

I think that games should be designed so that when a teammate drops, it's not subbed by an AI, but rather boost the team's passive income / XP gains to compensate.

they make a damn good job of it for DotA AI maps.............

Ignore the manual, Hard DOES cheat, Nightmare cheats more.

Well, I would really like an AI that cheats even more than the nightmare AI, a hell of a lot more! Maybe all cooldowns -25%, +20% on mana and 10% more autoattack damage.

Then the AI would probably be as hard to beat as the average players I get in custom games.

This conversation isn't likely to go anywhere useful if it's just going to be about AI in general.

Demigod isn't the other games that are getting name-dropped here.  It's a completely different environment than you'd find in SupCom, GalCiv, or your typical great single-player game.  It's a relatively small-scale engagement with a very limited selection of actions available to the player at any one time.  I'm certainly not going to say that it's impossible to improve upon what we have but under the circumstances in Demigod, I suspect it's much more difficult because the advantages normally afforded to the AI in other games (better management of large amounts of information and large numbers of units, greater freedom of movement and more points of attack, more combat options to cycle through, or, most commonly, a handicap of some sort) aren't anywhere near as pronounced. 

We effectively have 'one' unit requiring any significant amount of micromanagement and that unit has only a handful of activities at its disposal at any given time.  It's a playing field that a decent player has a much easier time competing on (easier than, say, Galciv which can have literally hundreds of things that a player 'could' be doing and an AI probably 'will' be doing on a given turn). 

I want basic issues - pathing for example - sorted out before this topic leads to some new, undiscovered method of implementing a superior cybernetic+dolphin hybrid that rules the world.

Specifically, very specifically, the AI currently can't path itself on the Crucible map.  All 3 times I've played the map single player, (normal AI) the computer lost without me having to do anything.

The OpFor just never really get very far out of their little "starting circle" at their end of the map.  Why the Opposing AI could do it, but the AI teamed with me could, I have no idea. [Edit: I meant to write, "Why the opposing AI could NOT do it, ...".  Sorry for my typo that made my critical point senseless.]  I believe it's a pathing issue however, simply because when I click ground to move my own DG, It goes the wrong way on that map in a specific case that would indicate the walk mesh can be improved.

Go to the Choose an Arena screen, because I'll reference compass points (north is up) using the image of Crucible on the map selection dialog.

From the South Citadel, move your DG to a point due north (crow flies, jump over the chasm to next roadway)

there is a wall and tower placeable by an intersection.

Move a little west at that Y intersection, following the short wall and go a little past the tower.

Leave your DG outside the circular node you're coming up on, and just a bit before that (2nd) intersection.

Click to move your DG back home, i.e, at a point near the center of your starter circle area.

On my system, DG moves Westbound, away from the correct path, then stops as it realizes it doesn't have the necessary jump-jets to cross the chasm.

I've not noticed this specific type of issue on any other map.

Pix says 1k words. If there is interest, or need, I'll do a mock up and host it someplace.  I'm just lazy right now and wanted to post on this before I forget.

tl:dr A.I. pathing on Crucible needs improvement.

That, I can agree with.  Outright stupidity like poor pathing and standing around are things that I took for a given as needing to be fixed.

Making the AI actually 'play' better once those issues are out of the way... (naively suggesting that the other issues are an 'easy' fix) that's the hard part.