Subsidies and Aggressive Trading Practices

Same slavery fuature could not only benefit you, but hurt you to.
Why? Because bonuses do not apply of original shields going to whiped entity.

Example.

You have forge in city, 25% to shields.
You whipe library when only 29 shields left, costing you one population.

One migth expect that you will get 30*1.25 =37 shields from slavery.
In reality, you will get only 30, as shields going to library will not get benefit of forge and you will get only 1 shields overflow.
 
Mutineer said:
Example.

You have forge in city, 25% to shields.
You whipe library when only 29 shields left, costing you one population.

One migth expect that you will get 30*1.25 =37 shields from slavery.
In reality, you will get only 30, as shields going to library will not get benefit of forge and you will get only 1 shields overflow.

This is not true. In Warlords (with all of the bugs fixed) you get 37.

In 1.61, you do get 30, but not for the reason you state (it doesn't have anything to do with "shields going to library will not get benefit of forge"). Adjust your timing, and you can get 60 instead, under exactly the same circumstances.
 
I know. I did not noticed your second post. My point is that 3/4 of time (If whipe in rundom moment) you will get only 30 and 1/4 of time you get 60. in average it does make 37, but we all know that humans will not use averages. :)

I do not have warlords, so can not know. God only knows when they will be avalible in Japan.
 
This is a definite exploit imo, taking advantage of something the coders never considered. "War" or "worker stealing" aren't exploits because the coders considered them and gave the actions consequences.
 
luniz said:
"War" or "worker stealing" aren't exploits because the coders considered them and gave the actions consequences.

The fact that they nerfed worker stealing considerably in warlords leads me to believe that they did consider the vanilla behavior to be an exploit.
 
malekithe said:
The fact that they nerfed worker stealing considerably in warlords leads me to believe that they did consider the vanilla behavior to be an exploit.
sounds very true to me!
It's still possible to steal workers, though, and i still do!

About subsidies, did anyone try it in warlords? Is it still working?
If so, following the same rational than for workers, it would say it's ok to do so.
 
It kinda works. They change their sliders right after the trade so if you give them too much money they'll up the science rate and have none or little to trade so you'll have to trade enough to get them at 100% and still money left over to easily do this again.
 
CivDude86 said:
It kinda works. They change their sliders right after the trade so if you give them too much money they'll up the science rate and have none or little to trade so you'll have to trade enough to get them at 100% and still money left over to easily do this again.
I can confirm this behaviour in warlord.
It makes a little bit more difficoult to do it, but doesn't stop the practice.

My attitude to this practice is "self restraint".
(e.g. instead selling to a single AI 6 resources at 2GPT I sell 2 at 6GPT, i do not sell 6 resources at 6GPT)
 
wolfigor said:
I can confirm this behaviour in warlord.
It makes a little bit more difficoult to do it, but doesn't stop the practice.

My attitude to this practice is "self restraint".
(e.g. instead selling to a single AI 6 resources at 2GPT I sell 2 at 6GPT, i do not sell 6 resources at 6GPT)

what is the rationale behind this?
I don't subsidize. The rationale behind it being that the AI don't link the free money and the ressource, although it should. But 6 GPT for a ressource in mid/late game is really not too much.
You can sell to your vassals a single ressource for 20+ gpt (and that's not an exploit, you simply bleed dry your vassals, just as you should).
 
I think something was done about this in the Warlords Expansion. When I begin to subsidize the rival to its max GPT available, the gold starts to decrease as he applies the newfound gold to research. This happened after one single donation. He went from 5 GPT available, I donated 2 GPT, and then he had 1 GPT available. I'm sort of glad they fixed this, as if you had tried to subsidize a human opponent, he would no doubt increase his science output as well. Maybe if I try to do the subsidies on separate turns?

[EDIT: Maybe I should read the whole post before quick-replying! I guess many people already addressed this.]
 
Only being able to trade gold in an amount equal to your current surplus still has a degree of irrationality to it. Raising or lowering your Research% can drasticly change your surplus gold, without actually having any effect whatsoever on your total wealth.

The best way to fix this, in my oppinion, is to just give each AI a "spending limit" on the purchase of foreign goods. Have this based on their total wealth and how much they need resources, and just have them stop buying goods when the limit is reached.
 
The AI is bound by a set of rules. These rules extend to how much information it can consider when making a decision, and how that information influences the decision.

The major difference between the AI and the player is that we can consider *all* available information at any given time, and tie it together in any way.

In this case, the AI *appears* to consider only two pieces of information:
1) Max tradeable GPT (determined solely by available GPT and diplomatic relation status)
2) Whether or not it has (not "needs") the resource to be traded

It does not seem to consider what the GPT source is, what fraction of its economy it represents, or how valuable the resource is. When considering a happiness resource, for example, one would expect a purely rational player to consider how many citizens it will make productive, assign a gold value to the increased production/commerce/food, and set a GPT amount lower than that as a max limit. But it looks like the AI does none of these things.

I'm not saying it's necessarily an "exploit" - that term is entirely subjective in a single-player game like this, since *any* victory at higher levels requires use and application of information that the AI isn't capable of using - but the AI does certainly seem to be pretty broken in this regard.
 
I think much of the furor on this topic is the perception that the AI is somehow being disadvantaged. But when you consider that a happy resource can be used throughout the civilization to increase all cities by one (and a health resource has half that effect) it seems obvious that even at the post-subsidized price the AI is making out quite well. Considering that an extra population can be worth up to 7 or 8 gpt per city (with a cottage fully developed into a town), the price of 20-25 extra gold seems like a bargain. And, of course, the value strategic resources is not easily calculable but they are clearly more valuable still. Add to this the admitted fact that the AI will never buy a resource for more than it would sell it to you, and I don't really see how this is an exploit.

If Cabert's point above is true that they will buy the resource when they don't currently "need" it (and I have no way of testing that) it does seem that the AI was poorly implemented, but it doesn't seem to be any worse off than some human players in that regard.

In a recent game (Emperor, Tiny Island) Isabella had a world-wide monopoly on coal. Since I was playing a variant in which I would not research or trade for the Astronomy tech (in order to preserve the financial benefit of the Colossus until the end of the game), the only ocean-going vessels I could get were Transports and Destroyers. So I needed the coal resource, but she wouldn't trade it to me. So I had to reduce my research rate until it allowed a sufficiently high gpt. Are those of you who think the subsidy is an exploint saying that I would have been worse off if she had given me the extra gold up front and then cancelled it after 10 turns? The way I see it, I would have got an extra 10 turns of research in at the higher level -- a much better deal than the one I actually had to settle for.
 
JackOfClubs said:
I think much of the furor on this topic is the perception that the AI is somehow being disadvantaged. But when you consider that a happy resource can be used throughout the civilization to increase all cities by one (and a health resource has half that effect) it seems obvious that even at the post-subsidized price the AI is making out quite well. Considering that an extra population can be worth up to 7 or 8 gpt per city (with a cottage fully developed into a town), the price of 20-25 extra gold seems like a bargain. And, of course, the value strategic resources is not easily calculable but they are clearly more valuable still. Add to this the admitted fact that the AI will never buy a resource for more than it would sell it to you, and I don't really see how this is an exploit.

This is true, to some extent. See further.

If Cabert's point above is true that they will buy the resource when they don't currently "need" it (and I have no way of testing that) it does seem that the AI was poorly implemented, but it doesn't seem to be any worse off than some human players in that regard.

There is an easy way to test it.
Try selling an happiness resource. See what you get.
Then try selling a health resource. See what you get.
You get the exact same amount of gold.
Meaning that the "need for the resource" isn't a factor.
So the trick is to trade health resource to expansive leaders and happiness resource to charismatic leaders... And to never trade health and happiness to the same leader.


In a recent game (Emperor, Tiny Island) Isabella had a world-wide monopoly on coal. Since I was playing a variant in which I would not research or trade for the Astronomy tech (in order to preserve the financial benefit of the Colossus until the end of the game), the only ocean-going vessels I could get were Transports and Destroyers. So I needed the coal resource, but she wouldn't trade it to me. So I had to reduce my research rate until it allowed a sufficiently high gpt. Are those of you who think the subsidy is an exploint saying that I would have been worse off if she had given me the extra gold up front and then cancelled it after 10 turns? The way I see it, I would have got an extra 10 turns of research in at the higher level -- a much better deal than the one I actually had to settle for.

I can see a good value for coal and I can see why you would be ready to make a disproportionate deal for it.
But you cannot build transports and destroyers with coal, can you? You need oil or uranium...
You can however build ironclads, which don't travel across ocean, with coal:mischief:
 
cabert said:
There is an easy way to test it.
Try selling an happiness resource. See what you get.
Then try selling a health resource. See what you get.
You get the exact same amount of gold.
Meaning that the "need for the resource" isn't a factor.
So the trick is to trade health resource to expansive leaders and happiness resource to charismatic leaders... And to never trade health and happiness to the same leader.
I see. So what you mean is that they do not base the price on the usefulness of the resource. I thought you were saying that they already had x amount of happiness and none of their cities had gotten to the x+1 stage. I can see that the AI is rather rudimentary on this point, but when I hear "exploit" I usually think of some glitch that breaks the spirit of the rules. This seems to me just understanding how the rules work and playing accordingly.

cabert said:
I can see a good value for coal and I can see why you would be ready to make a disproportionate deal for it.
But you cannot build transports and destroyers with coal, can you? You need oil or uranium...
You can however build ironclads, which don't travel across ocean, with coal:mischief:
Yes, I see that I was being somewhat incoherent in my attempt to be brief. The reason I needed the coal was that Alex was killing all of my fishing nets with his frigates and I needed ironclads to defend them while I teched up to combustion for a counter-attack. I had forgotten that when I was writing this post. But the point remains the same. I had to sacrifice my future in order to pay for a resource I needed now. I guess your point above indicates that the AI does not necessarily make this detailed of an analysis, so I can see how this analogy is not as good as I thought it was. But what the AI does could make sense from an economic point of view, so I still don't see this as an exploit in the usual sense.

Also, I think the original post exagerates when it says that you can ruin the AIs economy by using this method. In order to do that, there would need to be at least three factors:
1. The posession of surplusses of multiple resources by the player.
2. The lack of these precise resources by the AI (and no prospect of gaining them).
3. A very low level of commerce for the AI (so that the loss of the subsidy would actually be a significant portion of the total economy).
I don't see any of these elements being a reliably present in the majority of games. Having multiples of some resources is possible of course, but the very fact that there is an abundance of them is likely to make them available to the AI. The case of monopolies is rare (my comments above notwithstanding :mischief:) and usually only occur in one or two resources in any event. I just don't see this as a significant problem, although I agree that it would be nice if the AI was a bit deeper in its analysis than seems to be the case.
 
JackOfClubs said:
Considering that an extra population can be worth up to 7 or 8 gpt per city (with a cottage fully developed into a town), the price of 20-25 extra gold seems like a bargain.

If the whole map started with towns built everywhere, you would be correct. Since it doesn't, you aren't. No competent human player is willing to pay such prices in any normal situation.

I do agree that sometimes you really need a strategic resource, and are willing to pay a lot for it. The problem, in that case, is that the AI will pay high prices for strategic resources, whether it needs them or not.
 
This simply sounds like Western capitalism at its finest. The West grants subsidies to developing nations often in order to stimulate their economy, yet at the same time taking all of their resources. It seems to me that this "exploit" simply mirrors a common form of RL economic exploitation.

And really, it's not quite as profiteering as it seems. It takes a long time to make-up for the cost of a subsidy. You must remember that for ten turns, you are giving an AI a resource for free. And the AI does sometimes cancel these deals, either through a declaration of war, another civ asks them to cancel deals with you, someone pillages your resource, or, simply because it cannot afford them any longer (I actually do see this, though usually not until the latter stages of the game). I can remember doing this to the Dutch a number of times, only to have them cancel the deal after ten turns, thus robbing me of any profit from the venture.

With all of the built-in advantages of the AI (at the higher difficulty levels) this is really just learning to utilize your resources appropriately. The AI tends to have larger empires with more land and therefore more resources. If you're fortunate to be resource rich with the little patch of land that you possess, you'd better leverage that because it'll be the only advantage you get.

Additionally, it should be noted that if you're utilizing this particular trading practice, you're most likely trading resources to every possible civilization, thereby damaging your diplomatic relations. Hence, you are incuring a negative to this practice as well, as it will commonly lead to one of your trading partners to either declare war or cancel their deals with you. It really provides only a short term benefit.
 
Hmmm.

Corporations have blunted the use of this tactic.

Rather than trading away extra resources and cancelling the subsidies, just keep the resources to enhance the effect of the corps.

I used to do this all the time pre-BTS, but in BTS, I'd rather use it for corps and trade those I don't use for corps for resources that I'd use for corps.
 
Hi!

Sorry to bring up an old topic, but I had some problem with this kind of trade. I can't cancel a trade if it's only about giving money for no resources. In the "what are the current deals we have together" option if I click on the sum of gold being transferred, nothing happens. I can only cancel a deal if I'm clicking on the resource. But how to do this if there is no resource in return?
I'm playing vanila btw.

Thanks for the help!

-OK, now I see the answer is at the bottom of the articel...:crazyeye:
 
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