Don't get me wrong, I still really love these games, but the HoMM Engine/AI really cheats big time.

In HoMM1 the AI never fights wandering monsters. Instead, they ALL join him. This can get really deadly on some maps. To make matters worse, this means that wandering monsters guarding artifacts are a double-bonus for the AI - they get troops and stuff to make the troops better.

In pretty much all of the HoMM games, random stuff that can happen will happen at a MUCH greater rate for the AI than it will ever happen for the player. Morale and luck bonuses are much more frequent for the AI, as well as the "special effects" that some troops get (like unicorns blinding enemy troops).

It's really too bad that part of the way they made the game more difficult was to give the AI a bunch of extra fortune when it comes to the element of "chance" in the game.

It is an unfortunate state of affairs, but credible AI is very hard to program, not to mention a resource hog. My fervent wish is that programmers would be upfront with the advantages that they give to their computer players, and if it's the case, then let me know that it's happening so I (being something of a tactician) can account for it!

Truly intelligent non-cheating AI is really, really difficult to make. The quality of your AI is based on how much scripting the programmer is willing to make, and how many different situations the scripts account for. In most cases, it's simpler, and easier, and often better to simply make "fake" difficulty. However, it can easily be overdone, and things like the AI knowing exactly where all of your units are at all times (especially irritating in games with fog-of-war) can get pretty tedious. Or in fighting games, at higher difficulties the AI opponents become able to perfectly counter every single move you make, even while they're ON THE GROUND. Some games are better or worse than others. I haven't played HOMM1, but for me personally the worst offender is Starcraft in terms of obvious cheating.

There's a whole page full of descriptions and examples like these on TvTropes. It's a good read.

If you want a non-cheating AI - look at Galactic Civilizations 2, plays by the same rules you do and has been upgraded over the years to cater for common human strategies and holes/exploits in the AI found by players.

Another intersting one is AI War - that has a huge variety of different AI styles to choose from and is based around "emergent behaviour". Again constantly updated to keep aherd of the game.

To the best of my knowledge niether of these are "scripted" AI's. Scripted AI's are written to respond to specific player actions with certain pre-defined responses. These games analyse the current state of play and work out what moves to make based on achieving strategic goals adjusted to their coded "characters".

Truth. And it doesn't change my love for the HoMM series.

Actually, the only time it really bothers me is when I've already got a map more or less won and I'm just in the mop-up phase. Then all the cheating just slows me down. ;^)

The AI does explore and sweep up artifacts etc very quickly. It also gets (clearly stated) resource bonuses at the higher difficulty levels. I do agree the specials like blinding and luck double damage are a little wonky at times..but random is random.

Yeah you know it was created like that the guy who made the engine was a joker and he did not like to be beat so check the names on the list of high scores he is the guilty one for the engine. LOL.

Actually I don't believe it has anything to do with AIs being too difficult to create. There was an old interview where NWC claimed that Gus Smedstad had made the H3 AI much too hard, and was asked by testers to tone it down to reasonable difficulty:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050405180523/http://mmportals.com/marainter.html

"Our AI programmer was so good that no one could beat the game without cheating, so after some discussions the AI was brought down a notch or two[...]"

Well, what we don't know from that interview is the definition of "so good." One can easily program the AI with so many advantages (like the "cheating" I mentioned above) that the player also has to cheat in turn in order to win.

I believe what organmike was talking about with "real" AI's being difficult to program is that it is actually a very difficult task to program an AI that reasons and strategizes the way a human would.

For example, it's relatively simple (though not objectively simple) to program an AI that analyzes the situation on a given turn in HoMM and makes appropriate decisions based on that situation. What is much, much, harder is to program an AI that thinks two, three, four, or ten turns ahead... or better yet that approaches the map with an overall strategy or goal that it systematically works toward with every turn. For example, many computer AI's are not programmed to understand how to lose a battle in order to win the war.

HoMM more or less does the former. The fact that it doesn't do the latter is evidenced by some of the AI quirks. For instance, AI heroes will frequently attack any vulnerable castle town, even if doing so means they're going to get wiped out next turn by the far more powerful hero nearby. Worse yet for the AI, they'll typically take a castle and hole up in it, so that when they do get wiped out, they can't flee and the more powerful hero gets their artifacts as well!

In any case, HoMM is a great game. The little AI cheats can be annoying, but they're acceptable.

Heroes of Might and Magic 1 is the only one I haven't played yet. Still look forward to trying it sometime, even knowing this.

In every game I play, the computer seems to cheat in one way or another. Or even worse, rather than doing something smarter on higher difficulties, all the computer does is get more hit points, more bad guy friends, and better weapons, and everything else is the same.

I think, harder should mean better tactics to fight against... I'm playing some Empire Earth right now... this is just bad. They have one person getting resources, I have 14, and they still beat me in resources gathered by like 1,000.

For more information on the computer being a cheating bastard in general, read - well, this.
But, simply put, in most games, the AI doesn't so much play the game as it does run the game and follow certain programming. In order to create something resembling a challenge (since, unless you're going to go all Deep Blue and build a computer strictly to play your game, the computer isn't going to be able to devote all of its resources to doing only one thing) the AI has to hold some advantage over the player. So, rather than playing (in most cases) the AI processes, and that's the key difference.

You might find the Eternal Essence project for HOMM V of interest. The guy has access to the source and is rewriting the AI from the ground up. As of writing it doesn't cheat at all and I hear it's already a vast improvement.

The chap who did it is currently working on a strategy AI portion where it evaluates long-term goals.

I like to do this on day 7, that way the creature generation bonus the AI gets benefits me instead. :)