1.0.0.62 Patch: AI /worse/ at trade

Trades and diplomacy in Civ5 is a complete joke. It's highly abusive, and beyond that is totaly irrelevant to the game. It's a joke as is.

I think you people are whining over something which makes perfect sense. Anyway, if you need a goods to get one or more of your cities to celebrate "We Love the King Day", try offering the AI three goods you have a surplus of. Also, remember that none of the goods you have may actully make his cities go into celebration. If you give him a luxury that won't make his cities celebrate in return for one that will make yours do so, then the AI is the one that's getting shafted. The bigger difficulty in trading is a decided improvement, in my opinion.

Öjevind Lång;9817321 said:

I think you people are whining over something which makes perfect sense. Anyway, if you need a goods to get one or more of your cities to celebrate "We Love the King Day", try offering the AI three goods you have a surplus of. Also, remember that none of the goods you have may actully make his cities go into celebration. If you give him a luxury that won't make his cities celebrate in return for one that will make yours do so, then the AI is the one that's getting shafted. The bigger difficulty in trading is a decided improvement, in my opinion.

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Unless the AI is cheating it doesn't know if the luxury you want will give you a WLtKD or not.

The AI should be human-blind when it values resource deals.

When the AI demands a non surplus resource from me, I often change it for another surplus I have and they still accept the deal. Problem solved.

I haven't played yet, but I really hope this isn't the case. I was really enjoying 1:1 trades, it keep me a float and, more often than not, I noticed it kept AIs happy cap afloat as well.

I hope someone mods a fix for this quick.
My favorite part of Civ ever since 3 has always been to seize a monopoly of luxury resources and rake in the profits from gpt sales.

If The AI knows which luxuries you need then, I find it stupid that it often asks for luxuries/resources which you have 1 of in trade. Yeah, I'm going to give you my furs and gems along with the whale for the silver and make my civ even more unhappy ... ass

Rat

Yzman said:

When the AI demands a non surplus resource from me, I often change it for another surplus I have and they still accept the deal. Problem solved.

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Yeah, they usually like to throw in an arm and a leg if you let them choose what could make a deal work but will accept a surplus luxury instead of one where you have only one source of.

The developers really over-reacted. the problem with trade was never the 1 for 1 resoruce trades, it was that they would offer way too much $$ (and cash is king in this game) for resources (especially when they were already happy and got marginal gain from the resource).

so lowering the amount of $$ offered was a good change, but getting rid of strait-up resource trade deals and replacing them with ridiculous jokes of deals was a bad step.

You know what's really bad?

I don't see the AI reevaluating luxury resources in the patch notes. Anywhere.

What the heck happened to documentation?

The thing is it is not just the human player being shunned by the AI. The AI now expects these same ridiculous prices from other AI's. This is why they now all have a large stack of resources the entire game, when they didn't on the previous patch. They used to trade with each other. Now they do not trade resources at all.

I really don't think they even play tested this. I now make more gold selling worthless open borders agreements than I get from selling luxury resources.

I was under the persistent impresion the patch only made things better. At least I can't fool them in stupid trade agreements only benefitting to my growing empire... plus they still do accept to sign research agreement, open borders when it seems obvious they do have to do so.

Count me as disliking the systematic 2:1 resource change.

Wow, 2:1 resource exchange is ridiculous. Is it possible that if they have more than just 2 of that resource that they will lower the cost? I think that this is probably just a step in the way of improving the AI. Maybe they are just setting them up for later patches and slapping a bandage on the issue for now?

I've noticed this too. Caesar won't trade one of his 5 whales for pearls unless I throw in my only dyes resource. Even though we've never been at war, and we're nowhere near each other on the continent.

The AI is so ridiculous right now its easier just to take the resources from them. Indeed, you will most likely have no choice if you need the resource. Its like they intentionally tried to make the AI more infuriating and stupid. I began a new game this morning and along with the trade problems I don't see much improvement in the AI at all.

1. Darius builds his second city pretty close to my border, which if allowed to stay there will be a choke point stopping my further expansion. Good move....if he were a human player. Unlike a human player he doesn't build ANY units other than workers! (He rush built an archer and one of his UUs in the two turns before I took his capitol, removing him from the game) I basically destroyed him with two spearmen, an archer and a scout....and at that time I only had 2 cities also)
2. Caesar and Hiawatha turn hostile, instantly after Persia is gone. Despite the fact that they both asked me for pacts of Secrecy against him before I went to war....and that they're both on the other end of the continent.
3. Oh yeah, both of them popped up from time to time to tell me to watch my back 'cuz of my weak army, and how I'm a bloodthirsty jerk and pathetic. Despite being more powerful than either of them.
4. Hmmm....maybe I am weaker than they are. After all, I've noticed several times how barbarians beeline right for my units even when they are within killing distance of of one of their already weakened-on-the-verge-of-death-units. I can't prove it, but I'm almost sure that barbs are programmed to attack YOU if you're in their line of sight even though they could kill an AI unit with more ease and little chance of failure. While taking Persia's capitol a barb archer ran up...instead of targetting Darius' 1-sliver-of-red-almost-a-goner archer, it went right for my spearman who was at 90 percent strength. Even though the archer was right next to him. The Archer, BTW didn't move to a safer location....as if it knew the barb archer would keep me from attacking him again.
5. I have NEVER seen a barb attack a city directly until today. Usually they wander around and pillage and never move out of range so even a city with no defenders can pummel them to death in a few turns. The same turn I took Darius' capitol they attacked it. (A barb archer and brute came pouring out of the darkness) Funny, since there were 2 barb camps near it before and Darius HAD NO ARMY!!!! until I decided to take him out. They could have easily captured his capitol from turn 10 or so. Again, I can't prove it, but it looks like the AI barbs will go after you even if they have little chance of killing your unit, but every chance at keeping you from winning a battle.

This combined with the broken trade makes the game frustrating. Did they even TRY to make the AI engaging at all? Doesn't look like it.

d4everman said:

I've noticed this too. Caesar won't trade one of his 5 whales for pearls unless I throw in my only dyes resource. Even though we've never been at war, and we're nowhere near each other on the continent.

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I have got better results. He has ONE (2) trade resource, I have many... Should I make deal or not, how do you think?

Morningcalm said:

What the heck happened to documentation?

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Judging by the manual, civilopedia and UI, I'd guess documentation wasn't real high on their list of priorities.

Haven't tried enough with patch since. I've irritated every AI on my continent by warring with them, usually repeatedly and 2-4 of them at a time, and I have a lot of cities and wonders. They won't trade me anything 1:1.

Before this patch the AIs wouldn't trade 1:1 once you got to be powerful or if you had ever dissed them, like saying "just passing thru" when they whine about your troops half way around the world.

They seem a little more rigorous with the trade restrictions now. It kinda makes sense - why would you trade with the most powerful Civ (player) when it helps them get even more powerful? But, I think they've gone overboard.

The AI is also ridiculous with peace treaties now in the opposite direction. They sometimes won't even just take a flat peace treaty when you've utterly crushed them...wait a few turns...then they offer you the same deal or more. And trying to get gold or anything else in peace deals seems impossible even when you've taken half their empire and their capital.

So, I gotta test more to see about the 1:1 - seems like they'll do it before you start getting ahead but after that they're ridiculous with wanting such stupidly unbalanced trades that you'd never do it.

I'm enjoying Civ 5 but this kind of sledgehammer balancing/fixing that seems to not get tested at all, or get tested by people who are clueless and miss the basic/obvious, is pretty annoying.

Zhahz said:

t kinda makes sense - why would you trade with the most powerful Civ (player) when it helps them get even more powerful? But, I think they've gone overboard.

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That is kind of like shooting your foot to spite your face. The AI should really ask 'is NOT trading actually helping me any'? The problem is the game here is zero sum. Half these problems are not about the AI trying to win but about another player not winning. I have bene in many online and FtoF games where this kind of player is generally derided as an a-hole and blackballed.

Example (RL) - Axis and Allies game - Germany sees that it is not going to win and the UK will win by game objectives (most points) so rather than trying to play well it decides to throw everything at the UK just to spite the UK player and letting the USSR get the cheap win by basically taking over all of europe. He did it all just to be an ass because he felt there was no point as he couldnt win; but still affect the game's outcome.

Rat

low said:

Judging by the manual, civilopedia and UI, I'd guess documentation wasn't real high on their list of priorities.

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Well, we have to be fair.
Documentation was clearly more important than such minor things as combat AI, AI in general, diplomacy and so on.