How do AI civs manage obscenely negative gpt numbers?

In most games, at some point or another, and usually by the endgame stretch, one or more AI civs will be running anywhere from -100 to -400 or more gold per turn... and sometimes for quite long periods of time. What gives? Whatever it is, it's definitely a mechanic that the player can't possibly match, as far as I'm aware of. If I was able to get that screwed up, my civ would be so dead that even CPR wouldn't be any use. How do these electronic yahoos manage to pull it off and not instantly implode? Many of the worst offenders in this case are the leading civs with the most resources and highest scores. <scratches head in bewilderment>

It has nothing to do with losing wars or giving out big peace settlements, as most of these huge negative-Nellies are very successful and not even in any wars when this is going on.

Edit: oh, I'm using InfoAddict to observe this information- it is the latest version, compatible with BNW. Hope it isn't a bug with that mod...

Its a bug in the display of the game I have heard. They don't actually have that.

Yzman said:

Its a bug in the display of the game I have heard. They don't actually have that.

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I'm not sure if it's even true at all because Its a common sight even back in Civ 4 for me XD Although I dunno about civ 3 too far back for me to remember.

The AI cheats extremely heavily.

Horizons said:

The AI cheats extremely heavily.

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Nothing has been shown that the AI gets cheats for the game in that regard AFAIK. Care to share your proof or are you just saying stuff with no backup like people love to do?

I've read in other threads that the AI is never forced to disband it units / lose science from losing gold. However I can offer now proof of my own, only repeat what I've heard

Shadow717 said:

I've read in other threads that the AI is never forced to disband it units / lose science from losing gold. However I can offer now proof of my own, only repeat what I've heard

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Then you shouldn't believe everything you hear.

Yzman said:

Nothing has been shown that the AI gets cheats for the game in that regard AFAIK. Care to share your proof or are you just saying stuff with no backup like people love to do?

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No I can't, because the code is either not exposed to me or I don't have the time to spend analysing what code is available (or I don't have the skills lol). I can just compare the things the AI does and calculate that if I tried to replicate them it would be impossible.

I've seen negative total pools of gold on many occasions and that will magically reset after a diplomacy session, so there are inconsistancies.

Besides they often get a substantial amount of gold out of nowhere around election time it seems. Just a single civ get that pleasure and more than the total amount of gold available I've seen and many other indications they do indeed cheat a lot, but that's prolly the balacing of the difficulty. Civ has always been like that.

Btw I play on immortal/marathon, so I guess I get to see it more often. Also I check the diplomacy screen every single turn.