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ruchman

Join Date 08/2006

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I want to be an arms dealer!

Ok, so the humans in my gc2 game have discovered that their great economic and diplomatic skills have enabled them to stay on friendly turns with the rest of the galactic powers, which apparently cannot keep from trying to destroy one another. While trying to pursue a cultural victory, I find my space neighbors to be fighting constant wars with the Drengi and Yor on one side, and the Altarians, Torians and Arceans on the other.

Meanwhile, I have been making bank on various trade deals, and personally have found the the galaxy to be in a balance that I wished to maintain as I spread my influence throughout it. So, I decided to do what any great earth power would do: I met with the leaders of the lesser powers and attempted to sell them arms to kill each other with. Don't get me wrong, I don't desire to see any of the other species destroy each other. However, as I've noticed the balance of power shift about during these wars, so I thought it would be good to support the loosing side so that none of my opponents every get an upper hand really.

Well, as I tried this strategy, I very quickly realized that none of my opponents were buying into this, because they wouldn't buy any of my weapons! Now, it isn't as if they were unwilling to take them, if they were free. In fact, a few of my neighbors actually asked for my assistance. Which is why I figured it appropriate that they pay me for my wares. But it seems that military weaponry is worth less than a few influence points, even when it helps turn the tide of their war.

So I'm left wondering, are these constant diplomatic failures by design in the game, or is there some bug that makes the computer AI not place value on weapons? I really thought it would be cool to play arms dealer for a while and use the cash to buy me some space stations, or help my economy in some way. Especially when my neighbors are facing domination by another power; you'd think they would be willing to make a few purchases (at least until they find that you are also supplying their enemies

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Huh. I've gotten decent deals on obsolete weapons. Usually not spectacular, though.

Try trading weapons for other stuff. The AI seems to be more willing to part with non-weapons tech than cash (fools!).

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The AI often hugely undervalues deals - I've had offers (with massive, absurd diplomatic superiority) of 350 bucks for a class 16 planet right in the middle of their influence. I've sometimes been able to make money by deliberately making similar ships to theirs (ie, weaker than mine) and selling them... but you'd think you'd be able to really make money (ie, actual profit over manufacturing costs and time etc) but you can't. Even if they'e got 200,000 in the bank and are losing, they won't buy my superdeath megaships of invincible power to rule for more than a pittance... even though ONE of those ships would give them victory.

But hey, they go from 'no we won't accept peace under any reasonable terms' to 'surrender to someone else' in one turn, so we can't expect too much.

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I've stopped invasions by purchasing all of a civ's transports before. If you have a lot of cash or trade goods, you can really tip the scales of a "Let's You and Him Fight" situation by purchasing the fleets of one side, so that they can't rebuild their fleets in time to stop civ #2 from whacking them. Lots of fun, that was.

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I've definitely had some success with playing an arms dealer. Usually, I've found that the best route is to get a tech advantage, then make a bunch of slightly obsolete ships along with a handfull of top of the line ships. Keep the good ones for yourself, and sell off the rest. I'm pretty sure you'll get a boost to your relations, and even better, you can custom build the enemeis' ships so that they are particularly vulnerable to your own.

That said, I haven't tried this strategy on the harder levels, so I'm not sure how well it will work. Especially since it is good to have at least a little bit of a tech lead.

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Strange, the AI seems to roll over when I offer weapons, even weak weapons.

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It might be your Diplomacy skills need to be beefed up.

My last game i did the very same thing build a good tech base traded for those i needed and i even built small ships 50% defense against the leading weapons Missile and 50% Of the Beam which was my weapon of choice but most race where defending against missiles i handed them out like candy this did two things it shifted the defenses being placed over time so that it was 10-20% roughly Shield and the rest Missile by the AI and Forcing me in researching Guns to take everyone blindsided once i was forced into war yet again i cleaned up the galaxy with my 4th ship build which was the end of all Defense and Weapon techs I had good Missile defense a little shield defense as the AI had started using a little bit of beam weapons as well by now and i had a lot of Gun built a few Huge ships built one Fleet and sent it out to destroy enemy the planets.

I had at the point Medium ships 3 per planet defending with an Orbital fleet manager for almost all planets. Each was more Defense Missile and then weapons Gun about 65/35 ratio. Lost acouple but my Fleet had a movment of 31 a turn and easily got to the enemy fleets before invasion was a threat.

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I have found that the AI will buy ships etc off you but won't give you anything like what they actually cost. I don't think its particularly viable to make profit out of building to sell but you can play both sides against the other by giving them cheap reinforcements.

I would like to see a little tweaking done to make ship trading a little more worthwhile.

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I am not sure what exactly has happened. Not sure if it is the level or what but when I first started playing a few months ago I started on cakewalk, just to get a feel for the game. I remember selling my low techs to all 9 races for what I thought at the time was a killing. I think it was like 13,945 bc per tech. In like only 3 or 4 turns after I started doing this, my treasury had busted 500,000 bc.
At that point I figured I was playing at a level not even worthy of my time and promptly quit. May be level related, not sure.

EDIT: Oh, and since then, I havent been able to sell a tech for that much.

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I always get a feeling that the final sell value that they're willing to part with also hits a limit of a certain % of their max bank account. I've had some turns where I offered something for sale and rejected it, then gone back a couple turns later when they had more money and been able to get a bit more for it.

Anyway, as with some of the other folks, I've found that they're MUCH more willing to trade tech for tech rather than cash. Usually I'll make multiple small trades with a single race first offering beam weapon theory, then laser I, then Laser II etc. I've found that even towards the end game, they put a pretty high value on really early weapon/armor techs.

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If you make ships to sell, then you're not going to make a profit on them, but you're going to making less of a loss than if you made more ships than you actually need.

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