My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

Some games, however, supposedly apply the same rules to the human and AI players. The red bike has a max speed of 230 kph, batteries for 500 laser shots, can't take corners well... wait a minute! The blue bike has a max speed of 190 kph, so how did it overtake your red bike when it was going at max speed?

Compare [[Rules Are for Humans]], which applies to adaptations of existing games.

 

* In the original ''[[Civilization]]'', Triremes built by the player couldn't leave the coast without being lost. Computer built triremes had no such restrictions, allowing them to circumnavigate the world.

** Most of the ''Civilization'' games have AI that largely ignore some of the basic game rules when playing on the higher difficulty levels with the recent edition of ''Civilization V'' being the worst, where the AI can just ignore some of the game rules. For example, when a player founds a city it decreases the overall happiness of his empire thus resulting in things like lower production and a lower growth rate. This is done to prevent the player from expanding too quickly via settler spamming. Plenty of players have reported however, that on the higher difficulty levels the AI can more or less just do as it pleases and produce vast number of cities without any penalties, and produce units at a much faster rate then the player for no reason. The actual AI itself however, does not actually appear to get smarter, making this a perfect example of [[Fake Difficulty]] and [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]].

** Even more, well, insulting, characters have an ability called Insult which allows them to sacrifice one piece of their special gauge to destroy a little more of their opponents. The computer, especially the final boss (bosses in the Sega CD version), is quite fond of repeatedly Insulting you from a distance to render you impotent, usually shortly before, with a blatantly flashing EMPTY gauge, they execute their ultimate full-gauge-requiring attacks, some of which do things like rendering the character completely invincible (the final boss(es) have these, naturally). If you lose in the final battle, you can't continue?

* In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics (Video Game)|Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', not all enemies have the required job levels to use their current job. (This is really a minor issue, however, having those levels doesn't affect their performance and won't make a difference unless the player invites them to the party.)

* Justified in ''[[Digimon]]: Digital Card Battle''. Most enemies avoid this, but one of the bosses fights with a deck containing all the top cards and which doesn't have to be shuffled, while simultaneously moving the player's partner cards to the bottom of their deck. The game explicitly states he's a cheater. However, this trope is used to your advantage in ''[[Digimon World 3]]'': the player has access to a set of Digimon other humans don't; others have a separate pool to choose from where their forces can only have three moves.

* In [[Tom Clancy]]'s H.A.W.X. 2, players often have a limited number of missiles (to shoot down enemies with) and flares (to decoy enemy heat-seekers), and each plane has its own physical limitations on what it can do (such as turning radius and speed). But when the AI uses those same planes, not only do they have an unlimited number of missiles and flares, their planes can pull hairpin turns instantly the second they're in your sights, ''at speeds that would normally make that plane stall out''. And, even when you have ''radar-guided'' missiles, those same flares still work against you. This often forces players to close the distance and use their cannon for up-close-and-personal work.

** AI ''explicitly'' cheats throughout the entire story mode, sometimes to [[Nintendo Hard|nigh-insurmountable extents]]. This is all the more egregious considering that Eye of Judgment is essentially a trading card game, where even a slight mana or attack advantages compound over time to give the abusing side an [[Game Breaker|enormous advantage]].

** The final boss is particularly nasty about this in that the game actually ''lies'' about the extent to which he cheats. While the boss description states that he gets one mana off the summoning cost of any of his ultra rare creatures, he actually gets the summoning cost reduced ''to'' one. Prepare to see him pull out insanely powerful cards like Ouroboros Dragon out of nowhere while you're stuck summoning [[Cannon Fodder|bottom tier monsters]]. Oh, and he uses a [[Fixing the Game|stacked deck]]. Prepare to see his trademark card Scion Triumphant summoned around turn 5 every time you battle him even though he only has one copy of the card in his entire deck.

* In ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'', building bonuses and special weapon abilities tend to vary depending on whether you're the player or not. For instance, units deployed from an Academy gain +50% EXP for players... but enemy units instead gain a sweet level-up each turn. If an enemy hits one of your troops with a mallet, you go down a level, but the same thing doesn't happen when your troop holds the mallet.

* The execrable ''[[Megaman Battle Network]]'' spinoff game ''Battlechip Grand Prix'' loves this trope. The game rules restrict the Program Deck size and slot-in capacity for the player, but these restrictions ''never'' apply to the computer--which leads to ugly surprises like Ring having Jealousy as her slot-in chip in the ''E-rank tournaments'', when you don't actually have the memory capacity for Jealousy until after you've beaten the game.