The artificial intelligence (AI) used in the "Age of Empires" series has been developed and improved regularly by designers. AI specialist Dave Pottinger noted the development team gave the AI in the original game a very high priority, and spent over a year working on it. He said that the AI in the game relies on tactics and strategies to win, instead of "cheating" by giving bonus resources to itself, or tweaking its units to be stronger than normal. Pottinger later noted that the "Age of Empires" series team took great pride in their AI playing a "fair game" and didn't know what the player was doing and had to play by the same rules as its human opponents.