Tech trade impossible? » Forum Post by RichardTheIII

I've had similar experiences, and similar thoughts. Before trading was ridculously easy, now it's far to difficult, and by difficult I mean the AI doesnt appear to be thinking rationally about the offer.

For example, if I were to off the AI Impluse Drive Mark I and Warp Drive Mark I, it would say I'm trying to 'include worthless techs' in the trade. But Impulse Mark I isn't worthless, Each generation of propulsion provides an automatic speed+10 bonus. With what I was offering the AI would get warp drive and a resultant speed +20 bonus, the way the AI wants it, it would get warp drive and speed +10.

Same thing for Invasion and Soldiering techs. If I offer to trade Adv. Troop Mods and Shock troops, the AI again accuses me of including worthless previous techs. But each step on the Invasion tech tree gives some sort of soldiering bonus. So While Shock troops might be the most advanced tech, if it got Adv. troop mods too that would be an extra +10 soldiering bonus.

I am able to buy planets for a song from players who have a neutral atitude toward me and a stronger military (in one game 7 planets at once, for 2 early techs like trade centers and basic logistics), and have had AI players who are 'wary' of me go to war at my bidding for chump change usuallly around 1200bc, but once for 250.

Finally, I understand that the AI wants to protects is ship and weapons techs and so cost more to get, but the colonization techs are weighted too heavily. I've offered the AI 3 Adv. COlonization techs for 1 in return and been rebuffed. When I sweetened the deal with a resdearch treaty and Alliances I was still rebuffed. I gave up at that point. I dont care what the AI is basing it's decision on, 3 for 1 is too good a deal to pass up much less with the treaty and another tech in the bargain. Even if the AI has no worlds that need the 3 Adv Colonization techs I'm offering (which wasn't the case) it would still be foolish to turn down such a deal because that AI could then trade those tech to other races that need them for a hefty profit itself.

Oh, and all of this is with diplo super ability, diplo translators and 'an incredible advantage in diplo' playing at whatever difficulty level it is when your opponents are all 'gifted'.

In conclusion, before it was too easy to trade important techs, but now the AI's valuation of worth is skewed further to easy for planets and war, and as far in the opposite direction as it can go for techs, with some pretty non-sensical results. I hope its merely a matter of under and now overshooting the mark and the next patch will adjsut the trading issues for a better balance and more realism.

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Even if the AI has no worlds that need the 3 Adv Colonization techs I'm offering (which wasn't the case) it would still be foolish to turn down such a deal because that AI could then trade those tech to other races that need them for a hefty profit itself.

Not only. If i'm not wrong, when you conquer inhabitable planets from other races you need anyway these techs to make them work at 100%, so advanced col techs are always worth the case.

The problem is that the value of techs should be a proportional constant in the game while the difficulty in trading should depend on the attitude of the AI. Higher is the level, harder the way to gain the respect and trust needed to trade techs with AI.

It's understandable that the AI (at least the majority of the races) doesn't accept any trade in the beginning or doesn't trade military techs, but then, when you become friend with someone, it's crazy that you can't make neither the most disadvantageous trade.

Obviously you can use trading techs as a kind of an exploit, like everything in the game (starting with easily manipulate your enemies to destroy each other or rushing troop transports when the pirates are around). But the beauty of this game since the beginning has been the possibility to win with your own style and role play your race. Exploits will be always possible and if the devs want to eliminate all the opportunities for exploits, the game will clearly become more limited.

richard

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I do hope that the current tech trading system is taking into account alignment differences, relations, and civ power into consideration when it comes to tech trading. It makes sense if early tech trading is hard if this is true, else tech trading might need more balancing.

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This is idiotic. Suicidal was made 'impossible' because the AI is not longer handcuffed by the cheesy diplomatic system that was a huge player cheat and allowed it to made the ai act against its interests. To the degree that the AI now acts in its interests, the AI was improved; a simple, but effective fix.

From any cursory glance of this thread, it would appear that you hold the minority opinion. The AI wasn't coded to act against anything, all they did was effectively turn off tech trading. So f*** you.

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Suicidal was made 'impossible' because the AI is not longer handcuffed by the cheesy diplomatic system that was a huge player cheat and allowed it to made the ai act against its interests. To the degree that the AI now acts in its interests, the AI was improved; a simple, but effective fix.

There's the problem you see, the AI doesn't act in it's own interests (i.e. won't make peace with each other giving human player a free reign to do whatever they want without interference), and IMO suicidal is even easier than it was before - just depends on the way you play.

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in a recent game, nearly throughout the Dominion of Korx wanted to trade "New Propulsion Tech" for my "Universal Translator"tech!! I mean, this after I was already into the Hyper warp stages of research and he obviously was too and the fact that he was talking to me was a sign he didn't need the translator.

????

This is POST patch btw.

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You know, if there was one race who should be able to tech whore, it's the Korx. That AI should be buying and selling everything.

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The tech is worth much more, but I know people who wouldn't tech trade AT ALL if they played GalCiv2, or would ask for an arm and a leg every time. They're very good players, too, at least at Settlers of Catan.

The value of tech is such that you can literally buy half the galaxy from the AI for the price of a few techs. If you have high Diplo ratings, are friendly with everyone, and generally ask only for low pop, new, and hostile environs planets, it's trivial. Heck, you could buy planets for less cash than it costs to produce a colony ship (not rush buy, produce!).

I don't even bother to make fast or long range colony ships as Terrans anymore. If there's a planet I want, I just give the tech to whoever's near it and ask for it once it's settled.

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I think in our dicussions of Tech trading, we ought to avoid discussing the Colony techs.

The reason being is the extreme colony tech has an unfortunate variable to it. There is a chance that certian tech will not ever be needed based on the galaxy creation. As a player there is no way that I am going to trade anything valuable for the colony techs unless I can use them. If I can't find any aquatic worlds, why would I need the tech? I for one do not know how the AI looks at the colonization techs. I have a feeling that it does not look at the number and type of planets in the galaxy when formulating a deal for colonization techs. Thus, in the prepatch days, we could rob the AI blind by trading a 100% useless tech (and expensive!) to them and recieve many great techs in return. Honestly, it was cheese.

If diplo is too irrational, we need to make it more logical. I don't mean make it easier. I don't want *easy*, and I doubt anyone here wants easy. Ideally, the AI should be able to look at a variety of factors (Alignment, relative strength, history, proximity, current diplomatic situation, etc). Ideally, there would be a random element too (Ai "personality" decides to go it alone - big ego maybe). This would prevent players from determining a "pattern" or formula to beat the AI, and keep the game from becoming boring.

Fun is the key, after all. I just hope we can finda blance that keeps diplo hard, for the hardcore who love it, buy makes it logical, so we can atleast relate to it and use it.

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Silly. That is an extreme example that no player in their right mind would do in the first place. Or do I have to spell it out: the AI acts in its own interest now assuming the player is acting in his/hers.

Extreme or not, it occurs, and demonstrates there's a problem. Same with the planet going for 280 BC. The AI "assumes" nothing, nor does it particularly act in its own interests - its a set of algorithms designed to initiate specific responses and actions depending on a large number of variables. I'm sure the code is fairly complex and the developers have all kinds of fun tweaking it ( I would! ). This last tweak was a little too much, and that's IMO.

And its incredibly dumb to expect the AI to give equal trades or a 'fair' price. Given circumstances, techs can have variable values, and any benefit for one player is in the end at a disadvantage for another. Any good player knows this.
Do we want the AI to act more like a player or not?

I didn't claim the AI should be "fair" in trade - but it should be affected by the variables I listed earlier (attitude, diplomacy, close to getting conquered, alliances, established treaties). As for cheating, lets say: it was obvious the AI has some benefits in those areas. Of course it needs them.

Lastly, I don't consider this thread "idiotic", nor have I leveled charges of "silliness", "dumb" at anyone, or insinuated someone's a poor player. Try to provide cohesive and sound arguments in the future without resorting to such.

If the changes made please you, revel in them, and have fun! I can tell you the adjustments made to technology trading are being met with broad dissatisfaction. That's fine, too - the old saw about "pleasing all of the people all of the time . . . ."

Ok. Let me be more precise so as to avoid more strawmen that have taken from an intentional misreading...the AI acts in a way MORE consistent with its interests in terms of tech trading now than it did before the patch. Of course I wasn't claiming it wasn't perfect, and there are some sweetheart deals it should take, though no good player, AI or human, would make those offers in the first place, so I still don't consider this an honest argument. The second part of the post wasn't aimed at you, btw, but by another post that claimed the AI should have made a trade for an equal level tech.

And I generally believe that a lot of the complaints in this thread have less to do with wanting the AI to be better than in wanting to continue to cheese it. Because if the issue is challenge, the AI is surely better now on the whole than it was before the patch.

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I think in our dicussions of Tech trading, we ought to avoid discussing the Colony techs.

The reason being is the extreme colony tech has an unfortunate variable to it. There is a chance that certian tech will not ever be needed based on the galaxy creation. As a player there is no way that I am going to trade anything valuable for the colony techs unless I can use them. If I can't find any aquatic worlds, why would I need the tech? I for one do not know how the AI looks at the colonization techs. I have a feeling that it does not look at the number and type of planets in the galaxy when formulating a deal for colonization techs. Thus, in the prepatch days, we could rob the AI blind by trading a 100% useless tech (and expensive!) to them and recieve many great techs in return. Honestly, it was cheese.

If diplo is too irrational, we need to make it more logical. I don't mean make it easier. I don't want *easy*, and I doubt anyone here wants easy. Ideally, the AI should be able to look at a variety of factors (Alignment, relative strength, history, proximity, current diplomatic situation, etc). Ideally, there would be a random element too (Ai "personality" decides to go it alone - big ego maybe). This would prevent players from determining a "pattern" or formula to beat the AI, and keep the game from becoming boring.

Fun is the key, after all. I just hope we can finda blance that keeps diplo hard, for the hardcore who love it, buy makes it logical, so we can atleast relate to it and use it.

I agree with the sentiment here. Though I will say that I consider the patch an improvement and I really don't know how one could argue otherwise, atleast from a challenge point of view. I'm also not convinced that this thread is representative of all players, no more than I was convinced that those hardcore who believed that the diplomacy system should be scrapped entirely so as to turn this into a pure wargame and complained wildly before the patch were representative of all players.

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Ok. Let me be more precise so as to avoid more strawmen that have taken from an intentional misreading...the AI acts in a way MORE consistent with its interests in terms of tech trading now than it did before the patch. Of course I wasn't claiming it wasn't perfect, and there are some sweetheart deals it should take, though no good player, AI or human, would make those offers in the first place, so I still don't consider this an honest argument. The second part of the post wasn't aimed at you, btw, but by another post that claimed the AI should have made a trade for an equal level tech.

And I generally believe that a lot of the complaints in this thread have less to do with wanting the AI to be better than in wanting to continue to cheese it. Because if the issue is challenge, the AI is surely better now on the whole than it was before the patch. Trade with them was impossible as the title of this thread asks.

Fair enough. I agree tech trading was (for me) too easy, particularly since I play the Terrans. IMO the change made is challenging (too much) and it does act irrationally when offered trades in its interest. I'd like to see the Relation variable affect trade, also, it doesn't seem to. As it stands, at Painful and above, Diplomacy (as it affects trading), and the Galactic Bazaar is worthless. Fortunately the former still affects Relations and bribes.

There also seems to be a marked difference in the new race, the Krynn, compared to any others. I stopped trying to trade with them at all, they warred with the Altarians for hundreds of turns (first time I've seen that), and in general they seem to have a much more advanced and challenging AI then anyone else.

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Hi!

the fact that he was talking to me was a sign he didn't need the translator.

Long ago (DL 1.0x) I objected to this, and obviously it still isn't fixed.

BR, Iztok

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