AI research agreement price gouging?

Anyone else notice that when an AI tries to get you to sign a research agreement they'll also ask for ridiculous concessions from your side unless their score is close to yours?

Are you an era or two ahead of them?

Are they pissed off at you (unlikely, since you need a DoF to sign RAs)?

They ask you for more when you are ahead in research. It's to offset, for them, that you're getting an even larger lead.

nefloyd said:

They ask you for more when you are ahead in research. It's to offset, for them, that you're getting an even larger lead.

Click to expand...

Ah okay, that's why. I usually try to spam university specialist towns as soon as I get education, so it's pretty common that I'm ahead in science.

Is there a way to edit files so that they won't try to do that?

It get's really annoying whenever a "friendly" face pops up and goes: I fork over a little gold and you give up all your strategic resources and we'll get a deal to strengthen our relationship.

On standard for every era your ahead of them, its generally going to cost you an extra 100g to the AI due to the increasing costs of RA's when you change eras. Same era RA's should go with nothing extra with friendlies.

You could pass on renewing a luxury trade and then put that luxury in with the RA proposal. Then the AI will pay you 140 gold plus the RA investment. Either way, you're still out an extra 100 gold. This also works with strategic resources. The AI just defaults to gold. Also, the AI has a tendency to throw things they don't really value (like horses in the Industrial Era) on the list just to steal them from you. You can remove those if you want and they'll still except.

It's very simple.

For every era you've hit that the AI hasn't, you pay 100g extra. If you're in the Information Era and they're in the Atomic Era, you pay 100g extra. If you're in the Information Era and they're in the Modern Era, you pay 200g extra.

It's there for balance. It's a good thing.