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Some thoughts on trade after returning to the game


Makris1821

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I've only just started playing the game again after playing it quite intensely up to December last year. I have some thoughts and some requests about how trade works:

1. A "what do you want for ..." function would be useful and save time when trying to acquire something in a trade, e.g. a treaty.

2. When I'm trying to sell another player 37 oil at $1.8, I'd like the game to do the maths for me, rather than me having to do it when deciding how much cash I want from the AI player in return.

3. Do two hints for the same technology speed things up even more? If not, could the technologies I already have hints for not be displayed when I look to acquire hints.

4. I think the AI way overvalues treaties and map peaks. I offered one AI player on the verge of destruction an alliance (I was not at war and much bigger than them) and they turned it down, and I added a sweetner of about 500 oil in the deal. The deal meter was still at zero. Also, I tried for a map peak and offered 1000 oil to another small player, and the meter stayed on zero. I'm not sure how the AI calculates its situation, but in at least the first example its seems to not understand what is in its best interest.

By the way, its good to see Brit still actively updating after all these months.

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5. I also want to add that the AI doesn't seem to like per turn trades. I've tried to set up some per turn trades selling oil, and the AI doesn't like them, even though the same AI players seem to be coming to the market almost every turn for oil. It adds a lot of micromanagement to the game to deal with these every turn.

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I'm a couple of hundred turns into a game, and I'm really starting to wonder under what circumstances the AI player accepts, map views, non-aggression pacts and alliances. I can't seem to get any offer above -100, including with an AI player I have at relationship level 81 (friend).

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On another point with trade, I did a trade with the AI player I was 81 (friend) with, and the trade meter said my relationship would improve by +13 with a particular trade, but it only improved by 1 or 2 at most. I just wonder if diplomacy is WAD as the evidence is starting to suggest otherwise.

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On another point with trade, I did a trade with the AI player I was 81 (friend) with, and the trade meter said my relationship would improve by +13 with a particular trade, but it only improved by 1 or 2 at most. I just wonder if diplomacy is WAD as the evidence is starting to suggest otherwise.

Strange, I don't know why the numbers are off. As far as the diplomacy stuff goes, it's true that the AI isn't willing to do certain things - like form alliances and teams, but one effect of positive relations is that he is less likely to go to war against you if you have good relations and more likely to go to war against you with bad relations.

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it's true that the AI isn't willing to do certain things - like form alliances and teams

Can I just check that by this you mean that the AI will NEVER engage in certain diplomatic activities, no matter how high the relationship score?

If so, which does it include? Non-aggression pacts, alliances, teams and map reveals? I've certainly had no luck getting any of those, and it would be good to know so I can stop wasting my time.

Also, why did you make this design decision, as it is a dimension that is common in other similar games?

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Can I just check that by this you mean that the AI will NEVER engage in certain diplomatic activities, no matter how high the relationship score?

If so, which does it include? Non-aggression pacts, alliances, teams and map reveals? I've certainly had no luck getting any of those, and it would be good to know so I can stop wasting my time.

Hang on, I'll have to look it up.

Also, why did you make this design decision, as it is a dimension that is common in other similar games?

I'm actually considering it to be a bug, rather than a design decision. The AI needs to be smarter about this. I just haven't put together a decision-making process that would allow the AI to make intelligent decisions about these issues yet.

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All we are trying to say is, that there is no reason an AI shouldn't ally with you when you have 90+ relations, and offering free oil on the side AS WELL as the Alliance.

Thanks for pitching in on this Osprey. Although the AI might have some reasons in the case you mention above not to ally (e.g. it perceives you as weak and wants to attack), the case I had was that I was the biggest kid on the block, it was the smallest, we didn't share a border, and it was at war with two bigger nations, it was about to be destroyed, and I wasn't at war with anyone (plus we were BFF and I was giving tons of oil). Surely, this has to be a very good reason to ally.

I must say, I'm a bit surprised after so many months after release that diplomacy is still not WAD.

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Brit, thanks alot for listening to our concerns. Not allot of devs do that.

All we are trying to say is, that there is no reason an AI shouldn't ally with you when you have 90+ relations, and offering free oil on the side AS WELL as the Alliance.

Yes, I agree, assuming there are multiple players still left in the game.

One case where this could be a problem is if you and the AI are the only players left in the game. One of you have to lose, and so there might not be much value to forming an alliance with the one player who has to be defeated in order to win the game. I suppose the AI could form a team if the two of you are the only ones left in the game (since you'd then both win), although, we wouldn't want that to be a way for a player to "win" a game that he's clearly losing.

The other issue with alliances is that they are temporary, which means the AI (with whom you have an alliance) can trust you and can't trust you at the same time. There's some things that a person could do to double-cross the AI if he trusts you too much. For example, if an alliance with the AI means he lets you pass through his territory, then players could exploit the AI by parking ground units outside a bunch of his cities and suddenly invading. So, there's some complications that need to be worked out - they all revolve around the AI being smart enough to make good decisions and avoid traps.

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The other issue with alliances is that they are temporary, which means the AI (with whom you have an alliance) can trust you and can't trust you at the same time. There's some things that a person could do to double-cross the AI if he trusts you too much. For example, if an alliance with the AI means he lets you pass through his territory, then players could exploit the AI by parking ground units outside a bunch of his cities and suddenly invading. So, there's some complications that need to be worked out - they all revolve around the AI being smart enough to make good decisions and avoid traps.

One way to handle it without lots of extra AI code might be to make the penalty for doing such a thing really high. I'm not sure if the game tracks reputation, but someone who pulls that kind of stunt (e.g. using the alliance to move troops in then do a sneak attack) should be a pariah for the rest of the game, e.g. ejected from the community of nations and not able to trade with other players or make diplomatic agreements unless they were strongly in the interest of the other party.

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One way to handle it without lots of extra AI code might be to make the penalty for doing such a thing really high. I'm not sure if the game tracks reputation, but someone who pulls that kind of stunt (e.g. using the alliance to move troops in then do a sneak attack) should be a pariah for the rest of the game, e.g. ejected from the community of nations and not able to trade with other players or make diplomatic agreements unless they were strongly in the interest of the other party.

Well, true, but that only works if there's still quite a few other players in the game. For example, if there are three players in the game (you and two AI), and one AI is weak, then you could ally with the stronger AI, double-cross him, and invade his cities. A diplomatic penalty means that the stronger AI would dislike you (obviously) and the weak AI would also dislike you. But at that point in the game, it wouldn't really matter because the weak AI is basically out of the game already, and the sneak-attack helped knock down the stronger AI player.

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