Trading with AI totally screwed...

Might help to post this in one of the comments threads in the GalCiv forum.

~SDC~

What were your relations with them at the time? And how was your Diplomacy relative to theirs?

~SDC~

I actually I gree, I tend to get the message "You are soooo much better at diplomacy that you could trade them a pile of goose turds for 3 planets" or whatever that "good diplomacy" message is, and i have good relations, but, hey, I'll give you 4 techs for those 2? No...how about 5? No...ummm 5 and some cash? Soon enough I get fed up, if I'm such a good diplomat why am I getting treated like a disingenuous used car salesman.

~SDC~

FreddyBear, They were Friendly, warm and nurtral. It was in the first 30 turns of the game. I'd screwed up and bought 1 ship on credit and it burned me... I was so screwed. But none of them AI's would trade for even 1bc. Ugg... They were not willing to part with ANY cash. Maddening. 1.03 has made the game no fun for me.

~SDC~

I agree that there's a problem with trading when they make an offer to me, I decline.. and then offer the exact same trade to them.. and they say no.

There's a significant problem with the new trading routines, at least at the higher difficulty levels. I took Diplomacy +50 and had Diplomatic Translators and simply could not sell tech to the AI. They wouldn't buy anything, even good stuff, for more than a couple of BC (lump sum).

Diplomatic skill is useless if it means you can get 2 BC instead of 1 BC for your tech.

I guess this was done to stop the exploit of making AIs go broke through the selling of tech to them. But it seems to have been done to the extent that they will not buy anything even with lots of money in the bank (at the higher AI levels).

Maybe a good compromise is that they would only buy tech up to the amount of money in their treasury, ie no buying on credit/future cash.

So what you are saying is that v1.03 sucks because the AI won't bail you out of your mistake?

Besides, the AI will not do even deals unless they come to you first (or they fear you). That's pretty well established.

The new AI routines are VERY scared of running out of money. It used to be you could get them to spend about 1/5'th of their money over 20 turns for tech. Now it's more like 1/20 - so in order to get 100/20 from them, they need to have 2000 in cash. Oh, and no other long-term deals going on.



~SDC~

"Besides, the AI will not do even deals unless they come to you first (or they fear you). That's pretty well established."

Yep. They often give pretty good deals on stuff if they make the offer.

I have also noticed that the AIs are far more free trading with each other than with the player. In my current game (normal difficulty) the Drengin were able to trade Organic Piercing to the Yor for Dreadnaughts! No way would a player ever get that deal (and what the hell were the Yor thinking?)

Re: #10

The new AI routines are making the game less strategic in my book. If there ends up being only one or two ways to defeat the AI at the highest levels, WHERE IS THE STRATEGY IN THAT? It just ends up being a meteverse rank power building waste of time. IMHO. :notsure:

~SDC~

"I have also noticed that the AIs are far more free trading with each other than with the player. "

Yes, that bugs me. I will not even approach the AI with a tech-for-tech trade because I know it is pointless. It's much easier just to take out a few of his ships and then take a bunch of techs for FREE along with the peace treaty a few turns later.

thongor, don't be a worm. Not everyone likes to play the same way. I prefer to play most of my game in the Trading screen. Making deals when you are in trouble is a huge part of the fun for me. As is trading for other techs and holding back tech I don't want the other guys to have. But if I'm in trouble I have to make a choice and life with the reprocussions.

Right now they've killed the fun in the entire trading system. I REALLY hope they fix it V. soon.

TFM :notsure:

tfm,
My apologies, I meant to put a on my original post.

I have to concur with most of the comments here. I have been holding off on starting a new game because of this. I like to play a fast tech, high diplomacy strategy, and this is all but pointless now.

I'm wondering if the algorithm dealing with willingness to trade has been tweaked as far as military power. There seems to be no point in having a standing defense since attack power seems to be grossly favored in the eyes of the AI.

I'm also wondering if the AI is purposely prejudiced against the human player. I've found it virtually impossible to remain in the tech race anymore given the AI's unwillingness to trade.

"I'm also wondering if the AI is purposely prejudiced against the human player."

I don't know what the developers say, but this seems to be the case.

"I've found it virtually impossible to remain in the tech race anymore given the AI's unwillingness to trade."

You have two good ways to stay ahead in tech. Be warlike and trade peace for techs, or be productive and trade trade goods for techs.

Trade Goods are way overvalued by the AI and you can take them to the cleaners by getting to Trade Goods first. Just don't bother trying to trade for a few techs that are also overvalued by the AI like Defense Theory and Corvette Technology.

I just started my first game with AIs set above bright, but I managed to trade for tech quite a bit in my last 1.03 game. I was selling mostly, and I wasn't getting as good a deal as I was under 1.02,

Don't try to buy any trade goods from the AI. If I wanted to buy one it was 6 techs or 2 planets!

TFM

~SDC~

Wow, I have no problems playing and trading with the AI's in 1.03 at Intelligent level. Why can't you guys figure out how to adjsut? It's sitll VERY easy to grab LOTS of money from the AI- only now it's more realistic and usually only 33% of my budget not 75% anymore, which was stupid.

~SDC~

I'm also not having any trouble trading for techs. I've even gotten the AI to let me out of a war (I had just terror stared one of their planets). But they pay me money. Maybe bc they're only on subnormal? I've only played two games and won handily both times, so I'm going up to normal now. We'll see if I have more trouble.

Dearmad - I, at least, am playing at Masochistic. I suspect it makes a difference.

I'm playing Technologists with picks in Diplo, Trade and Military Production, and I got Diplo Translators and I'm cleaning up on 20 bucks a turn deals. I'm getting about 30-40% profit on ships.

I got a special on BattleHammers for anybody at war with the Drengins.

~SDC~

Justinian- If you're playing with Bright+ ooponents and complaining about the AI's reticence to help you out, please adjust the difficulty level. I, for one, would ike there to be *some* difficulty in the higher levels to manipulate the AI's into paying me their bank accounts.

If there were a problem at Painful, and the AI was just impossible to get moving on anything, then maybe I'd think you had an issue, but at "Masochistic", go look up the word.

~SDC~

I do not mind difficulty at the higher levels, as long as it's fair. I've read threads and other postings about this great AI that doesn't cheat, yada, yada...

But what do I see in the debug file the game produces as it's running? Lots of trades of techs BETWEEN the AI's. Trades like Year: 2183. Yor Collective traded Advanced Engineering to the Torian Confederation in exchange for Diplomacy

What do I get when I try to trade for items like Diplomacy or Advanced Engineering? I always have to offer at least two techs, often offer two techs + cash, to get a trade. But throughout the debug file all I see are AI one-on-one trades. It starts early with equal trades on weapons theory for propulsion theory (again I have to offer two for one at the least even with extra diplo skills and good ratings with the empires). And it goes on turn after turn after turn.

So there it is. One way the AI's do better at higher IQ's is they start playing tough with trading with you, keeping you out of the loop. But they still play buddy-buddy with other AI's in the game trading techs like candy. So much for the vaunted AI.

I've had the AI offer me outrageous trades.
Always an aligned empire, offering me the next best ship technology for basically nothing.... usually when I'm at war, too.... their idea of aid I assume.

But barring that, the AI trades are very one sided. High diplomacy skill usually means you end up taking the short stick.... the AI offers even trades.