Am I cheating? Am I taking advantage of an AI loophole?

It's not cheating, but be careful. If you get too much money too early in the game, you'll get an Anomalous score (0 points when you try to submit). Keep your treasury low by spending and gifts!

Good point, Theoden. Jeffrey, as you start to move up the difficulties, you may want to limit your selling of techs, especially to majors, since the majors (and most of the minors) will not pay cash for tech on masochistic difficulty.

The tactic is legit, but it's something you will have to learn to live without when you get to maso.

Trust me, it's a hard lesson to learn! LOL

I like it, this feature makes Maso a very different game! woot!

well, and they have overwhelming influence at the start, heh

Umm, no it's not cheating.  Can you do it to all the aliens?  Which ones are you doing it to now?  The minor races you're supposed to be able to milk for money.

I can do it to all the majors and the minors. Would you like a savegame?

It was like a great discovery at first, but now it kinda feels like cheating. And I dont like to play on difficulty levels too far above normal.

i've always wondered why the races don't have the negative 500BC safeguard that the humans have to avoid getting into ridiculous debt....

but who iz i?

Hmmm well I'm playing 1 level above "normal" and playing with non-tech stats I cannot do this...

For it to be effective you must have the tech points when you create your civ, and bury them early in the game. That's the only way they don't recover.

Actually, they do. If you get an AI below -500bc they will stop spending, just like the player. The problem is that they often have enough military upkeep that they can't recover anywhere near as quickly as the player, and AI tend to be adverse to dismissing ships on low to normal difficulty.

I've bankrupted AIs simply by discarding old ships via diplomacy before.

~SDC~

They could have also a huge debt toward you with a monthly paiement that is bigger than their monthly income

Easiest way to tell from turn to turn is to leave the Production map filter on. It's fun watching whole empires 'disappear' into tiny colored dots while they're bankrupt and their production stops cold.

In one of my games, with AP beta, one of the AI went broke (several thousands). When it was about -2 or -3000, I gave them what was missing, so that they would be at 0. (they were being crushed by their enemies, and I needed them. Then they made peace and stopped all military spending. Within a few years, they were first in pop, research, manufacturing. It does say something about the usefulness (or rather the productivity - lack of it) of military expenses (except for that at the end, I invaded them).

But this was the only time I saw a race with no military expenses and not one single ship (except maybe trade ones, not sure: they could have all their trade routes stablished before that): all ships were destroied during the war and never rebuilt. And it was one of the new races (Korx I think)
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Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they'll only give you money if they currently have a positive cash flow. The problem is, they'll give you more money over time than they can afford and end up going into debt.

Although I wish the aliens were smarter in higher level games rather than just turning it off. The inability to sell stuff is annoying. It doesn't matter so much to me, as I never depended on it anyway. I dislike it, because I use to use cash to even off a tech trade. Now if I have a good tech and they only have cheap tech to trade, I have to do it straight up or not at all, I can't balance it off with cash.

You're right (at least according to my experience)

its really wierd, i just got back from selling hyperdrive and something else to the torians (i think it was the torians) for about 90bc/max amount of months...

which means they will have topay me 90bc/month for the rest of the game, me likey but thinkey itey isey a bugey

It depends on the level you're playing. The higher the level, the less money you get, until you get none. It also is a fonction of your diplomatic abilities.

well i have a very high diplomacy and i play cakewalk difficulty, hmm then maybe it aint a game"abuse" then i can feel good about it

Well Cakewalk is named for a good reason . If the same tricks would work at the highest level of difficulty it would be a loophole .

i never would have guessed LOL

Why would you play cakewalk more than once? I can understand once or even twice just to learn how to manage your own empire without interuptions. There is virtually no opposition from the AI though, that has got to get boring pretty quick.

who says it isnt the first time? ive played 3 games before, lost all, so i still concider myself a n00b thank you

Have you checked the Strategy forum? There is a lot of good advices there.


~SDC~

Posion - nothing wrong with playing cakewalk level. It takes time to learn all the techs and ships etc. Just as well to do it that way thorugh winning experience and be in control.

Oh by the way, I was finally able to bury my opponents in debt - HOWEVER!!! I had such a large military, and depended so strongly on the AI funds that when they all went broke, I did too!

I won the game with a total bankroll of -$20,000

Everyone surrendered after I wasted a bunch of planets with my terror star. hehe!
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Whether we say it is cheating or not it feels like cheating to you I would say don't do it and you wont get that cheatin' feelin' anymore!!! LOL I found a way to consistantly make loads of money and in my mind it is wrong so I don't do it...

later,
oldgamster - sleepin' with a clean conscience

thanx didn't realise the races had the negative 500bc cap. maybe they should be a bit smarter to get out of it? like dismissing the military? it's a bit aggravating sometimes having one remaining Altarian planet support 40 dreadnoughts at -4000BC.

hey, how about reach -500bc and all trades are defaulted resulting in a drop of say, 2 levels, in diplomatic relations with the defaultee? or confiscation of all assets. like the real world?

i iz talkin' through me bum a bit 'ere......