Known Bugs / Cheese Listing (Game Mechanics Only)

Ring fencing of resources and other stuff with ships

Exchanging peace for tons of goodies from a dead Major (doesn't work in maso)

Exhorting zillions from new minors that appear

Additional move/attack for ships using autopilot

Super fast Terror stars through fleeting star with ships (bug still there I think)

Information Warfare invasion tactic results in bazillion pop in captured planet (still there I think)

Using destructive invasion tactics to reduce pop without collateral damage by ensuring that planet is not captured in attack (cheese resulting from an anti-exploit feature)

Buying ships from AI and invading with their own ships (arguable cheese)

Two varieties of cheese presented herewith:

Repeatedly colonising, and immediately destroying colony, of some size 3 planet for sole purpose of getting events to change morality.

Selling planets you know will flip back very quickly.

The only problem with the repeat colonising one is that it seems to crash the game every time I destroy a colony....
so hardly worth the hassle (particularly considering the save game doesn't save everything).

There are quite a few reload issues that would be
easy to fix.

UN council meetings should use a stored random seed
so that you cant reload to get a different event.

Same for colonization events.

Id suggest doing it for combat too, but thats not as
big an issue.

Ive played 2 crippling games to see what its like and
I have to say that cash trading is way to powerful
for crippling and even painful.

For most of the frigate to overlord period tribute
from tech trading can represent up too 75% of my total
economy for very long periods of time at crippling,
rendering the game rather trivial and of course the minor
has a massive negative income and can thus never build any
defensive ships letting me just stroll on in with a transport
when ever I want.

And when a new minor appears, can generally trade
the 496 credits it has for 48 turns the very first
turn with just trade goods(as it normally has all the
techs). Thats kinda silly at any difficulty.

Solution to all these problems. AI's should not
EVER agree to trades that result in a negative income.
Probably shouldnt even agree to trades that take up
50% of their total net income.

Its sick that I can take a major Ai thats way behind
in tech that has -200 credits and just hand it 600 credits
and then trade all the techs for 400 credits per turn
for 50 turns when its net income was already negative
before the trade.

Starbases are far to easy to trade for in larger games.
Its rather trivial when you have 10,000 credits coming
in per turn in tribute to turn around and buy all
the resource starbases on the entire map for 12-15k
credits.

Er, I shouldnt have tied those together, its rather
trivial to buy the starbases even on masochistic with
out the sick tribute.







[Message Edited]

When the AI players have an alliance, and you are beating the alliance. You make peace with one alliance member in exchange for concessions. They immediately declare war on you due to their alliance, and you can now extract peace concessions again.

The problem is that negotiating peace with one alliance member should get peace with the entire alliance. Or, the peace treaty should override the "must declare war on allies' enemy" rule for a reasonable time interval.

Staffa's comment about "too easy to buy starbases on gigantic" basically boils down to "The AI doesn't properly adjust the value of trade goods and techs based on game state." An AI with 52% approval rating really doesn't need aphrodesiac. An AI at war or planning a war will really want Tri-Strontium Steel. A resource starbase is worth lots more on Gigantic than on Tiny, but the AI doesn't seem to adjust the value.

Fsk, actually the problem is that AI's are global
percentage bonuses while the cost of the starbases
are static.

Your point about the size of the galaxing being relevent
is correct, but time is also a huge factor.

At the start of the game when you have 1000 point econ
and an econ bonus resource with 20% bonus will result
in an increase of 200.

Later in the game when you have an econ of 100,000 the
same bonus will increase your econ by 20,000 but the
cost of the starbase is the same as when your econ
was at 1000 points.

The answer is not to tie the value of a starbase with
the size of a galaxy but with the size of the owners
economy. This is both realistic in the sense that
a tiny empire will still be fairly easy to buy from
as the starbase wont be worth much to them as it would
be to the bigger buyer hence the essence of a trade
where both traders win.

On the other hand, a larger empire will value the
starbase far more(though equally with respect to the
size of its econ) and will cost far more to buy.

Um to sum up, value of resource starbase should be
based on the size of AI's economy.


[Message Edited]

I think the cost of a starbase should be tied to the greater of either:
- the value to the selling AI civ: or
- the value to the buying human civ (Using Staffa's example of a starbase adding 20,000bc per turn then the AI should realise the starbase is of immense value to you and charge accordingly)

I have only purchased a resource starbase once. Handed over a planet for it on a medium abundant map. So cheap it seemed like a cheese so I haven't done it since. (It was worth far more than that to both me and to the selling AI civ).

Of course when trading resources you'll have to look at who you are conceding the resources to. The AI shouldn't concede starbases to an opponent that has a huge economy or moral bonuses to a huge empire.

And Staffa's AI trading point is very valid. The AI should not incur long tributes that will consistently bankrupt them.

Another one, you can declare war on a minor and then have the minor sue for peace giving up all their planets and all their money for 50 turns.

It seems that the AI tries to build every improvement on every planet with the consequence that it saddles itself with a lot of improvements that are worse than useless. It builds an economic millstone around its own neck as there are so many improvements available that really ought never be built or at best built only on the very best planets.

This can be easily fixed by modding the opreating costs of the buildings.

BTW This is also a trap for new players. In my first game I thought it would be desirable to develop my colonies by building improvements. Example follows. Early on an entertainment network was available giving 20% morale for 2bc per turn. I though the morale boost should increase the population enough to pay for the upkeep. Not so for most colonies. Umh, later Virtual Reality Centres become available so I built them, drove my economy into the ground.

Agree with Staffa that trading tech for cash is currently the most overpowered strat in the game. Other than Maso where it is disabled, anybody employing it at any other level would be able to massively exploit the AI to the point of bankruptcy.

The AI seem grateful to work their butts off so that they could buy over some tech without much regard for their direct usefulness to its empire.

I like the idea of limiting their tech purchases to a percentage of their income so that they don't overextend themselves.
[Message Edited]

The AI does not seem to consider fully how developed a starbase is when setting a price. Maybe that's a bug?

The biggest thing I exploit these days is trading for unique techs. This works particularly well on maso where you fall behind in tech quite quickly.

Say we have AIs A through E and techs 1 through 20. A is the galactic leader and is therefore the tech leader. The techs owned look like

A: 1-20
B: 1-19
C: 1-17
D: 1-14
E: 1-10

Also say that I own none of these techs. I research two techs on a different branch of the tech tree than the AI usually pursues. So I have techs 21 and 22.

I trade 21 and 22 with A for tech 20. Now I have 20-22.
I trade 20-22 to B for 18 and 19. Now I have 18-22.
I trade 20-22 to C for 15-17. I trade 18-19 for whatever C has got--ships, trade goods, or whatever, or maybe I just gift to improve relations. I now have techs 15-22.
I trade 15-22 to D for 11-14 and whatever else D is willing to give me.
I trade 11-22 to E for all remaining techs and whatever else E is willing to give me.

In practice it's a bit more complicated but this is the basic idea. You can easily turn one or two unique techs into ten or twenty. Unfortunately this can at times be mindbogglingly tedious.

The obvious fix would be for the AI to value its own tech more if fewer other civs owned it too. So if an AI was the only one to own, say, virus elimination, it would prize that secret highly and be very reluctant to trade. If there were two civs that owned it it would value it somewhat less. And so on.

I do that as well on Maso, vincible but I don't see this deft tech trading as exploitive. This is because the Maso AI has diplo bonuses and unless you get Diplo Trans or have diplo picks, the human will be trading at a disadvantage anyway.

Unlike tech selling, the AI is not weakened by this strat. What it does at most is to allow the human to keep relative parity with Incredible research.

Yeah, but it gets really boring after a while.

I would prefer if this exploit were eliminated AND the AI's econ/research/diplo bonuses were toned down. Then I might have an incentive to actually do my own research, and I wouldn't have to stop every several turns and take 5 minutes figuring out a good trading strategy.

As it is it's a pretty good strategy to in general devote no resources whatsoever to tech, and just put the money into social and military, since after falling way behind you know you can always get back into tech parity by devoting the full economy to research for a couple turns to acquire one or two unique techs, while the comp wastes its money researching most or all of them.

Money spent researching a tech just because you want it is wasted since the AI does it so much more efficiently.
[Message Edited]

I don't think Brad has the intention to make Maso any easier for the few of us that still play it.

I've read some of his really old posts and he implied his intention to make Maso an unbeatable level where people will boasting about how many turns they survived rather than how they have won.

The change I suggested wouldn't necessarily make it easier--that would depend on to what extent the AI research bonus was nerfed. It just reduces the need to do something that is not fun. As it is it's hard for the wrong reasons--it's hard because you force the human to do something tedious (figuring out a tech trading strategy ever few turns) rather than because the human is doing something that is inherently difficult.

I wonder if there are any maso players that *don't* do this. I doubt it.

There are probably dead Maso players who don't do this. Those that win most definitely do.

I support making the Maso AI more intelligent in their trading and balancing that (or whatever) with less "straight" bonuses.

Also there is the problem of the AI counter attack.

You can lure out AI ships from orbit, by announcing war. In response the AI removes every major ship with offensive capability from orbit opening planet to easy invasion.

To Peter Harris:

AI doesn't quite consider the relative value of star systems on different size maps. It seems the values are proper for a tiny or small map.

Also removal of those less useful building would help streamline the AI's building. Ie. maso AIs didn't build any of that, allowing them to tone down the inherent bonuses, slightly.

Entertainment networks are for the population, rather than economy. Continued pop growth helps in the long run or in an invading force.

On maso, I almost never build anything on my own planets, I rush, milk my old planets for pop, and try to trade one or two of them for a large military. Not usually sucessful, but definitely the right idea. The planets that you take over are invariably far better than your own.

I found some bugs too:

1: You attack one race, his ally declares on you. He is ten times smaller than you. Two turns later the asks for peace. Immediatelly after agreeing, he automatically declares war again. This repeats on and on until you sucked all his resources or killed him off.

2: Game kicks back to Windows after exiting conversation screen.

3: Autopilot send you by 90 degrees, not diagonally, and sends your poor ship right into your enemies.

4: REALLY STUPID AL: Two races at war. I'm neutral with both of them. There is one battleship on the left of my planet and an opponent battleship on my right of my planet. Al decides to attack enemy battleship and rams right into my planet and we declared war.

5: Trading for goods. I bought his Aprondistic(an unique good) and it does not show up in my inventory and gives no bonus.

6: Purchasing buildings: After clicking purchase and I bought the building, then I get the bonuses from the building, but before I end turn and I decided to change the building, the building "vanishes" from my inventory and is not on the planet's improvement list.

Ytszazu, most of those sound like bugs that were fixed
in 1.05, have you upgraded to the latest version?

bump this up to the top

:notsure: Cheese or not.

IMHO the one way to trade is at the moment. Look for the nearest star system and build countless starbases with trade upgrades... Bonuses for distance are not relevevant because it seems to me that trade boni stack without a cap. Besides it is much easier to defend only one trading partner. Sideeffekt you can build up a minor superpower that way....

The AI doesn't know the real worth of a ship in the current environment. Yeah, I don't get much for defenders in the battleship era but the AI will pay me for a ship that is actually detrimental (upkeep costs).

If you have enough power you can really cripple the AI's without attacking them. Find two empires at war--sell both of them some of your older ships. The ships will get blown up fighting each other, you get a nice per-turn income. Sell enough and you drive them way into the hole.

When an AI comes to you for help when they are dying, sell them anything other than tech that you can on long-term deals. Once I sold them enough battleships that they spooked their enemy into making peace, but they never worked their way out of the hole they got in. I was making about 3000/turn off them for a long time.