Tech Trading under the new patch

The AI is not supposed to know if the player is a Human or anotehr AI.

So we have been told from the beginning but atleast pre 1.5x AI did tech trade with each other like horny bunnies.

Which means if it isn't with the human- then it's effectively cheating...

I did notice when I turned tech trading off, the game was much more competitive- though I got ganged up by the AI (which made sense- that should have happened, three evil AIs surrounding a good Civ should wear them down)

Convinced something is up at this point, or that the current system is imbalanced heavily against the player. If the AI won't trade with the human techs, but will with the other AI's, then it's a serious problem. Yes, it makes the game more difficult, but also makes it more frustrating.

Possible solution, assuming that the AI is indeed using the same rules for all players: more feedback from the AI during trading. For example, if you have a deal they don't want to accept, they shouldn't just give you the old "Yeeeeaaaaah no." routine. They should suggest a counter offer... a trade they'd accept instead, a money value they'd accept (or, if they won't accept any reasonable level of cash), and perhaps more rationale for not liking the trade ("The tech you want to give us doesn't have any practical value for us" or "I could research that tech in a day.")

Seems they still do this 'post patch' as well, or so it seems in my game. I've pretty much turned tech trading off at this point due to this because it does seem that the AI trades decent techs amongst 'itself' quite a bit more than it does with me. The computer is lightyears ahead of me on research when I allow them to trade. As soon as I disable tech trading, as someone above said, the game becomes more competitive and seems to be a little more balanced.

They don't, it's all recorded in debug.err and it's quite clear that the AI's trading much more lightly under 1.5X. That's a good thing IMO, as is the fact that it's harder to get all your technology from trading. Research is worthwhile again.

I love that every time the SD team improves the AI everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's cheating against the player. You people have been playing too many bad strategy games.

I'm on the fence whether to turn off tech trading or not. It is nice to see what techs the AI has on the trade screen, so I know who to target for planetary invasion or espionage. With tech trading off, you can't even see what they've got. And I'm still having good luck extorting techs from minor races, even in 1.50X.

How about alliances? Has anyone seen for sure whether tech trading is equally difficult with your allies?

I guess it's all in the eyes of the beholder my friend. When two AI's trade what I would consider 'good techs' like weapons or something to benefit your economy, then I have issues with that. They won't trade in a similar fashion with me, regardless of what I offer, and that's okay, so long as they don't do it amongst themselves. Even AI's I'm allied with won't trade weapons tech/econ tech, etc., again, regardless of what I offer.
So yes, the AI may not be trading like horny rabbits anymore, but they still trade, and if you ask me, the trades they make to one another are way better than what they trade me. How do I know this? I don't really, I am making an assumption based on what I am seeing and right now, when I KNOW I am researching techs as quickly as one can while the AI is busy spending for ships and maintenance, I find it quite hard to believe that the AI has no problem researching all the top time consuming techs in a very short time and then parading those techs immediately. My games don't flow that way, so why would theirs?

Have you actually looked at the specific trades the AI is making per the debugg file and see if they are better? Or does the computer simply not get whiny about being able to make easy trades and thus is less likely to pass up a decent trade which is probable.

In other words, I'm not buying this cheating b.s. until I see a more rigorous analysis of the AI behavior.

Not really. Either the AI can't tell who the human is or it can. That'd be hardcoded into the AI itself, so it's simply a matter of whether the devs are lying about it or not. I honestly can't fathom why they would be, nor do I see any hard evidence that they are, so that's pretty much that from where I stand.

Assuming the AI's can't tell who the human is, why don't I see more trade offers from them? I don't remember ever getting a nice trade offer from an AI.

Because there are fewer trades going on in general and you simply didn't have anything they wanted?

Actually that's an interesting point. I've seen quite a few tech offers from the AI, and they tend to be far more reasonable than what you can get by requesting tech in a trade deal. I'm wondering if the real issue here isn't that trades offered are more reasonable than the reaction to trades requested, both for us and the AI.

Okay, short of 'reviewing' the debug file, which I WILL do to appease some people, let me use this recent example. I am the only one who has researched mass drivers completely, as well as armor. Now my 'allies' begin to pound on my door in an attempt to trade for some driver tech. They only offer one tech, and a useless one at that (the exact one escapes me at the moment, but it shouldn't matter, it's useless to me). I counter and they laugh... fine, no trade. This goes on for a little while, every few turns or so, an ally approaches me for a trade to get driver tech from me. As this goes on, I notice their techs... suddenly it seems that they have the first few in the line of mass driver technology, strangely, they've gotten them a lot faster than I did, and my research rate is pretty damn good at this point. I would have to say that they traded for the tech.
I could care less if I get a trade or not, it's no reason for me to get upset. I do care if the AI's can and do freely trade amongst each other techs which they won't trade to me, regardless of the cost/offering for trade. This is what I think is happening. Furthermore, how did my allies know I had the mass driver techs? When this started happening I hadn't built a single ship armed with ANY type of mass driver weapons/defenses. There were no spies that I was aware of, and I think I would see them on my planet, wouldn't I?
Like I said, I don't study this game to the point where everything I look at becomes a number, that's not my playing style. I didn't think to read the debug, but now I will. I just get a little annoyed when people think that from what I am saying I am somehow 'accusing' the computer of 'cheating'. I never looked at the computer as cheating, just using any and every advantage it has to better it's odds, which is fair enough considering it does have to compete with an actual live person. But if I'm playing at normal diff or easier and see something 'odd' happening with regards to the AI, then I want to know what gives, even if it's something as mundane as trading for technology.
So cool the jets people, I am merely stating my observations regarding this, and since I've noticed it quite a bit since I started playing DA, my opinion hasn't changed. I could be totally wrong... it could just be me or my game. At least I'm willing to look at all the possibilities, even if it is something due to me. Until then, I will stick with what I've observed and it seems to me that so far I am right.

How did they know you had mass drivers? Go to the dip screen for any AI. Look at his tech list. Now you know what he has. Jeez, if you have this little understanding of the game, its hard to take the complaints seriously.

Actually, its more reasonable to offer a fair deal than to accept one. If a player comes to you with a deal, even if it seems 'reasonable', they must have a good reason, and given that this is mostly a zero sum game, the player subject to the offer should take it skeptically.

Just because you considered their offer useless doesn't mean the AI they traded with did. AIs have different priorities, but I would expect their comparative valuations on any particular tech to be far closer than between an AI and the player.

Also, all other things being equal you should expect far less trades involving the player than not simply because there's more AIs than players!

I just tested it out

these are the trades in the game I played

Xeno Comm for Ion Drive
Xeno Factory for Toxic Atmosphere Reductor
Xeno Facotry for Radioactive World Tech
Xeno Economics for Xeno Medicine
General Life Support for Basic Mini
Planetary Improvements for Advanced Computing
Aquatic Col for Heavy Gravity Col
Interstellar Govt for Xeno Medicine
Research Centers for Radioactive World
ECM for General Life Support *2
ECM for Xeno Economics
Research Centers for Xeno Industrial
Adv Diplomacy for Trade
Manu Centers for Toxic Atmo
Research Acad for Manu Centers
Aqua for Manu Centers
Resear Centers for Adv Mini


Most of the trades seem rational- but the Ai wouldn't trade tech for tech with the human at all, and wouldn't take 5-6 techs for one good one.

Conclusion: The AI is being too finnicky about trading with humans, or the AI to AI trade system needs revamping. Or I should do what everyone else seems to do and turn tech trading off, since the AI for that is lacking (AI everywhere else is solid)

Sure it would, it does constantly. I get regular 1 for 1 tech offers from the AI that look just like those. This just supports my "the AI offers to humans are identical to the AI offers to each other" hypothesis.

I never got any of those. That was in about 3 yrs gameplay time

I rarely get those AI tech trade offers, but it could be because I generally only lead in techs that the AI doesn't value very highly, like the sensor, diplo or cultural techs. Also, if you're ahead in tech you won't get them because the AI won't have anything to offer.

So yeah, I agree with Vinraith. IMHO, the AI does not 'cheat' in this matter.

Cheers

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I don't know about you all but even in the latest patch to DA I can trade anything with anybody . If I don't have a tech the AI wants to trade straight up for a tech they have then all I have to do is throw in some money and they always accept the trade . Usually it's just a few billion not much . Try throwing in cash I promise you will always get the trade you want .

If you want to give up 4000-5000 bc maybe...

I think a lot of these comparisons are simply apples to oranges. Isn't it considerably more difficult to trade tech on higher difficulty settings? If so, this discussion is silly without stating what dif setting each person is playing on.

It is a problem when it's being done in a way that gives the AI an advantage it shouldn't have. While the previous way was very easy- the current setup, the AI is, at best, overvaluing tech. At worst, it' a borderline cheat.

It's getting to the point where a lot of GCII options are very imbalanced- and not in the good way like Mega events. Tech trading and Supers need to be turned off to make the game fun...