Subsidies and Aggressive Trading Practices

The resource trading really sucks in Civ4 anyway. The AI doesn't trade fair now either. Try to trade gold for something when you're on 0% science while buffering. Outrageous. 50 gold per turn is usual. It seems it was better even in Civ3.

Ofcourse the Izzy example here has swung the balance totally the other way round, but I don't even trade resources if they don't offer me more than 5 gold, which is, like never.
 
RemoWilliams said:
Well, what can I say but wow! What a great little article. Short sweet, and to the point. 5 stars, and a nomination to the war academy for you!

I'm going to try this as soon as I get a chance.

Cool idea, going to rip off these "Immortal" AIs right away.

It is impressive how after all these games played there are still new dodges being discovered. A reason to love Civ IV.
 
Well, it's apparently an old trick, but useful nonetheless.

It is exploitable because the AI basicly can't say no, and can't cancel deals it's getting screwed on. If you tribute 4 GPT from a Civ, they will keep giving that to you until the end of time, whereas if you were giving such tribute, you'd cancel it after 10 turns.

I would propose a solution here: Make it so that the AI can't commit more than 20% of it's GNP to pay for foreign trades. Simple and effective, the AI will be able to say "no" to you if it could get screwed, but you would still be able to trade resources for their full amount, just not 11 of them.

To truly exploit this system as it stands, requires a tremendous amount of resources, and you can only really afford to do that to 1 AI at a time. Most of the time, you're just going to be pulling in 15-20 GPT per Civ from a few semi-lucrative trades each, since your tradeable resources are limited, and you too must import some goods.
 
I wonder if Firaxis really wanted to fix it... I remember using this trick in Civ3!
 
There's a thin line here but I think this falls on the exploit side.

The AI was programmed to only keep a certain amount of gpt in reserve for trading deals. The only reason this trick works at all is it doesn't properly recalculate that amount when you cancel a GPT trade. If you waited one turn after cancelling the deals, the gpt available from AI would go back to normal. The reason I consider this an exploit is it takes advantage of a bug/quirk in the way the trading AI is coded, rather than an actual strategic weakness.
 
Hans, are you playing with the 1.61 patch? I tried this today and I couldn't cancel the gift.

Left click does nothing, right click brings up another GPT "How much do you want to offer" window, but this window does nothing as well.
 
RemoWilliams said:
Hans, are you playing with the 1.61 patch? I tried this today and I couldn't cancel the gift.

Left click does nothing, right click brings up another GPT "How much do you want to offer" window, but this window does nothing as well.

I hit that as well. When you get the "How much do you want to offer?" dialog, if it doesn't already have an amount in there, enter the amount of your original gift. If you accept that, you should then get the prompt, "Are you sure you want to cancel this deal?"
 
You have to use the "Foreign Adviser" menu and look at "Active" agreements. That one actually works. Hovering your mouse tells you whether the deal can be cancelled or how long until it can.
 
The AI really should be able to calculate resource-usefulness more, as i believe that it would be possible to really milk of all commerce from small empires using this method. (assuming that these have less resources=more resources for you to trade them, and that the trademaximum is independent of empiresize, it would mean that you could get ALL their money by selling them enough resources--which in the end means that these nations are just working for you, without any risk for you.)

Perhaps there should be a limit of 20%(or so) of BASE(without international trades) NNP(GNP would not include costs for cities,units,..) for import fees..
<-that would be enough for lowering the exploitive nature of subsiding.

And the resourceprizes should vary with usefulness (depending on empiresize and citysize[happiness/health mostly useful for large cities] or something like mean happiness/health-surplus [what's the point of buying happiness resources, if all people are happy and you aren't going to war?])
AIs that reevaluate trades
 
I find this strategy to be very amusing when you think about it. You are being just like visa or mastercard to the ai civs, letting them finance what they "think" they can afford, but then after 10 turns, they have to start really paying for all of those nice resources, and become financially crippled, just like a lot of people in life ;) It just goes to show that the borrower truly is servant to the lender. As far as an exploit goes; It's nice to see so many people acknowledging that anyone who preys on the weak minded, who can't control their lusts for more luxuries are exploiting them! lol.
 
Just when I feel like the board is stagnating and being swallowed up in "gimmie advice i dont know how to play" posts, something like this gets written up. I'm sad I didn't think of it on my own.
 
Actially I tryed to use it and I come to conclusion that this was included by design.

I found it is very rare occasion when you can really cripple civ this way. Actially all there cities have 10 turns subsidised resources for free to addapt to a new state.

On higher level Emperor+ AI has big bonuses to city grow speed, cause it to increase it's population up to avalible max population fast and start to use resources it got.

In addition early on civ estimate value of resources very low, useal trade GC limit for resources early on is 2 gp/turn.

So, if one want to use this as a weapon one need to have a lots of resource other civ does not have and suddenly use this system to sell them all simualtaniously. Even then, civ pay 150 gc to you does not actially cripple it mach, as at that time it useally can make about 600.

Try to play with it and you will find out that there is a strategy in using and not using it. The best time is about Renesance age, later on this 13gc/turn civ payed to you is nothing for a civ, even if it is pay for 10 resources, and that is very rare occasion.

I come to conclusion that it is not luck of foresee on programmer part, but intentional part of the game that simulate and deepened trade starategies.
 
Hans Lemurson said:
The following is a strategy for getting the most out of your GPT trades with the AI.

Have you often been in annoying situations with the AI, wanting to sell off a resource, but getting only a pittance in return? Is silk really worth only 3 GPT?
It turns out that the AI also values these resources more than they are paying, but are limited to only giving away as much GPT as they are currently making in profit. One of the most striking features of this is the fact that the AI always seems be willing to trade all of its availiable GPT for your goods, whether it is 1 or 5. How would you like to make 7, 9, or 12 GPT regularly per resource.:eek:
Well now you can! All it takes is a little patience, and plenty of extra goods, and you'll be in buisiness.

The primary limit on an AI's GPT trading is simply the size of their positive cash-flow that turn. There is a secondary limit based on how much they like you, but you don't often hit it. In order to trade as much GPT as possible with the AI, you have to make sure that they have enough GPT to cover the transaction. How do you do this? Subsidize them!

Subsidies: If you gift GPT to an AI in negotiations, it will (as you might expect) raise their GPT in turn. Gift an AI GPT in small increments until their Available GPT stops increasing. You have just determined their trading limit, and they will now be willing to buy resources off you at top dollar.

Here is an example scenario:
Suppose I was trading with the Persians, and they are listed as having 4 Available GPT.
  • I gift them 2 GPT, and their Available-GPT rises to 6.
  • I gift them 2 GPT again, and now their Available-GPT rises to 7.

    Where did the money go?
    They are simply not willing to trade at 8 GPT; their limit is 7.
  • I now sell them Furs for 7 GPT, and now their Available-GPT is at 1.
  • I gift them 7 GPT, and their Available goes to 7.
  • I sell them Rice for 7GPT, and their Available is down to 1 again.
  • I see that I can only sell 1 more resource to them, Silk, and so I gift them 6 GPT. Their Available is at 7.
  • I sell them the Silk for 7 GPT, and call it a day.

This was one of the ultimate weapons for Sid in Civ3. Basically, the richer the AIs will be, the richers we will be. Nice to know that it still works well in Civ4. You got 5 stars and a nomination to the war academy from me too.:goodjob: Thank you for sharing!:)
 
I'm willing to be it's working as intended.

Based off limited exposure to reported RB SGs, what I've seen is that Sirian and Sullla manage to have impressive relations with consciously selected AI civs. I believe that, though I could be wrong on this, they also tend to receive above average GPT values from the AI.

Both the improved relations, due to gifting GPT, and the above average returns on resource sales are explained by this trading strategy.

I've never seen either one explain how they so effectively work the trade system, but an "exploit" such as this provides at least some sort of explanation.

I use the term exploit loosely in that those guys developed the game. If they had qualms with it, I'm sure they'd make more effort to explain it (and in the same breath state that it's something that a fix is being worked on for a future patch).

Not to put words in their mouth, but, as I said, they seem to get more out of the trade system than most, yet, from what I've seen, provide little, if any, explanation as to how. What little they might explain (ie that you can sell resources at all) does not match what typically takes place in the game (ie you typically can only sell the resource for a small amount of GPT).

Perhaps they do explain it in greater depth somewhere; I don't know.
 
I was playing epic game on some mod, then i found this article. Now i loaded the game, canceled all my deals, reduced my research to 0, and sudsidided (or whathever) all my extra resources, and some health ones i didnt needed. 10 turns later, im getting 250 gold from foreign income. One nation is paying 39 gold on bananas and 39 on sugar (i only have one of each, but for 39 gold ill gladly stop eating bananas!). I was getting so much money i started to rush missionaries everywhere, and spread my religion to most cities from the non teocratic civs, and with science 0 for a few turns i managed to bribe half of the world to convert to the religion i founded! LoL!

If you think about it, theres not a single good soul in this game. Im a capitalistic bastart stealing (from the stronger nations, lol), and they are even worst, getting paid to force feed a new religion to their citizens. I have ships with troops everywhere; everytime someone declares war, i dogpile one of them (or both) and try to take as much cities as i can, while paying other nations to join the war. Its wonderfull what you can do with so much money.

This is by far the most fun exploit in civ 4 so far, i hope it dosent get fixed! :)
 
DaviddesJ said:
I doubt Sirian would call this a valid tactic. Someone could ask him.

Perhaps not, but it would explain the positive resultes he and Sullla exhibit in terms of resource trading, results that are typically unachievable.

As I said, I'm not trying to put words in either of their mouths.
 
The strategem seems to be using the ai's inability to prevent the sting in the tail. You could argue wether or not its an exploit or smart play but if it becomes commonplace (like chopping or the kremlin) it'll get nerfed at some point and people will have to readjust their strategy to live without it. If you don't rely on it then you won't miss it when its gone.
That doesn't stop it being a good trick.
 
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