Screenshot of the Day #9: Gift from Greece

Thunderfall

Thunderfall

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In the forum, players often complain that the AI leaders in Civ3 are very greedy and ask an outrageous amount in exchange for a tech or a resource. Today's SOTD will prove it's not always the case -- the AI can be very generous sometimes!

Gen was pleasantly surprised when his Greek friend Alexander "sold" him oil for a symbolic amount of 1 gold piece:

I played India (purple) and I was at war with Egypt (yellow). I DESPERATELY needed oil for my ships, tanks and aircraft (last two of these a bit later, as you can see I was still researching steel) so I supposed that Greek oil will be veeeery expensive. First, I asked Alex if he can sell me some and got expected reply which you can still see at the screenshot. Hell, there MUST be anything I could buy that liquid for, I thought! I tried 500 gold. "This deal will probably be acceptable". What? Not bad, really! 400? 300? 100? Of course. Wow! Last shot just for laugh: 1 gold. Answer the same. Unbelievable, they are giving extremely valuable strategic resource FOR FREE! I have never seen that behaviour before! Of course I bought it and used with great pleasure heheheh :)

http://www.civfanatics.com/sotd/sotd09.jpg

Really unbelievable indeed. I hope the AI leaders in my game are this generous. :) Thanks to Gen for this screenshot.
 
Heh. Well that was mighty generous of him. Was he really mad at the Egyptians or something? What were your relations with him at the time?
 
Sometime they give me a really sweet deal because we are fighting a common emeny.
 
But if it was before you needed it, and you didn't offer a per-turn deal in return, it would end in 20 turns. Were you able to use in time?
 
I think that before a resource is needed for any units/improvements/wonders/etc the AI considers it absolutely worthless. I had a thread on a simmilar issue (but the other way around) and the screenshot is below. Basically they didn't want to hear about paying 1 gold for oil, prolly for the same reason -- couldn't build any units at the time. They did pay a reasonable price once they got Combustion.
 

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That's insane! Truly a flaw in the AI's design but perhaps a certain variable got offset by something which is causing them to refuse an awesome deals.
 
Originally posted by unscratchedfoot
Is it just me or is Alexander actually rejecting that oil deal in the screenshot of the day? I don't get it.
Click to expand...
"Regrettably, we don't see how a deal could be worked out..."
He must have rejected a previous offer. That line will stay there until you click on "Will you accept this deal?" If you look at the advisor at the top right, he says the deal will probably be acceptable. And that means Alexander will take it.
 
Originally posted by WHTKD

"Regrettably, we don't see how a deal could be worked out..."
He must have rejected a previous offer. That line will stay there until you click on "Will you accept this deal?" If you look at the advisor at the top right, he says the deal will probably be acceptable. And that means Alexander will take it.
Click to expand...
Actually, it wan't the response to a previous offer, it was the response when Gen asked what Alex will sell oil for, as Gen said in his original post (in red).
 
Originally posted by willj
Actually, it wan't the response to a previous offer, it was the response when Gen asked what Alex will sell oil for, as Gen said in his original post (in red).
Click to expand...
Oh....I see that now! Thanks. :crazyeye:
 
I think this happened to this to me before. I bought the oil for the 1 gold, but when the deal expired, the AI was back to it's outragous price.
Then again, that was a lucky game. Later on, I had a plains square become desert due to global warming, then I discovered oil on than new desert square.
 
Are you playing with v.1.29??? In the earlier patches, this kind of behaviour was in fact pretty common, but I have never seen it in 1.29.

In this old screenshot of mine (v1.21), I was able to buy Theory of Gravity from the furious French for 1 gold: :D
 

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Call me a sceptic, but did he then declare war on you the next turn, Gen?

I think nicuss is right though. Try selling them a resource they can't use yet...
 
Well, I expected many questions :) . I'll try answer them all:
FlakJacket, Hades:
Heh. Well that was mighty generous of him. Was he really mad at the Egyptians or something? What were your relations with him at the time?
Click to expand...
Indeed, we were fighting a war with Egypt, we haven't alliance but our MPP triggered it when Egypt attacked me. As you can see Alexander was polite at the moment.
Exsanguination:
But if it was before you needed it, and you didn't offer a per-turn deal in return, it would end in 20 turns. Were you able to use in time?
Click to expand...
Yes I were able to use it thanks to my high research rate (4 or 5 turns per tech) with some prebuild for advanced units.
nicuss:
I think that before a resource is needed for any units/improvements/wonders/etc the AI considers it absolutely worthless
Click to expand...
nicuss is probably right. It's logical explanation. I didn't notice this before! I believe this is true reason - both Greeks and me still "didn't know" value of oil! Well, one more trick to use in future games :D
Hurricane:
Are you playing with v.1.29??? In the earlier patches, this kind of behaviour was in fact pretty common, but I have never seen it in 1.29.
Click to expand...
Yes, this is with 1.29 patch.
Zur:
Call me a sceptic, but did he then declare war on you the next turn, Gen?
Click to expand...
No! Our relations were calm from the beginning of the game, they were always either polite or gracious. I quickly ended war with Egypt after securing one oil source for me (war weariness kicked in), our oil deal expired and we are still friends. But I expected sneak attack too!
 
Sweet :D

This way around, it should happen more often :)
 
Something similar happened to me this morning.

I am playing large map on deity and of course I'm way behind in tech. I knew 7 opponents and asked them what do they want for each of their techs. The responses ranged from 6gpt +200 gold(all my money) to 12 gpt +200 gold and the World map.

Since I had four techs to choose I asked everybody what they wanted for each tech to validate my theory that if the AI bought a tech they sell it cheper than if they researched it.

I was amazed that the persians wanted WM + 60 gold for Philosophy and the Russians wanted WM + 120 gold for Code of Laws and WM only for Philosophy. I asked the Russians what they wanted for both and the answer was 14gpt + 200 gold + WM.

I bought Philosophy for WM and asked what they wanted for Code of Laws: 7 gpt +200 gold.

Did this happened to anyone else?
Is it a random bug?
 
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