Bug Report - Trade reputation

[arretium]

NOTE: This bug has been reported before. But 1.15 Conquests is out and it's still not fixed. I believe it is time for a reminder for the folks at Atari.

Description of problem - If you are trading with a civilization that is teriminated, has a capital nuked, or has the capital's road's/habor destroyed you take a reputation hit for trading even though the cause of the destruction of capital/nuke was unrelated to your own activities (you didn't declare war).


Steps to reproduce - 1) Engage in any game in the modern era and wait for the computer to start nuking each other. 2) Trade with all civs. Results guaranteed.

Observed result - The source civilization that you previously traded with whom was nuked will refuse to trade with you in the future OR other civilizations will be disinclined to trade with you because the trade agreement got teriminated due to nuking.


Effects on Gameplay – A very real and unfortunate consequence of this bug/feature is that it has a terminating effect on gameplay by forcing you to utilize conquest/domination over the other civs since they won't trade with you anyway and have a poor opinion of you due to the perceived but inaccurate trade reputation.

And a feature request (since that forum is closed):
Add a preference function to the gameplay menu to allow your foreign advisor to NOT report every time another civilization declares war on another civilization. During the industrial and modern eras, with numerous competitors, it is not infrequent to go through 4-5 pop ups of war declaration notifications. This unfortunately slows gameplay. Instead, allow a player to be notified of the declaration of war ONLY if your MPP partner has declared war or had war declared on them OR someone declares war on you.

 

[Guildenstern]

I'm not sure what to think of this phenomenon. On the one hand, your reputation shouldn't take a hit for things you had no part in. On the other hand, in the modern world you have a responsibility to protect your trade routes.

Sounds like a realism vs. gameplay thing. I'm not sure whether something should be done about it or not.

 

[stachnie]

The problem is that sometimes I want to support a dying civilization, I give them e.g. Horses, Iron and Saltpeter for nothing or almost nothing (like 9 gold + World Map) and they lose connection (e.g. capital jumps to some unconnected city). IMO at least there should be an additional option like "Repair reputation" where you could negotiate some extra deal, e.g. give some tech or gold.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

 

[al_thor]

Yes. This happened to me recently. I was trading with Russia, who was moderately sized. Had about 10 turns left on the deal. Suddenly, 3 or 4 other civs ganged up on her and wiped her out in no time (late Industrial/early Modern age). My deals were interrupted by like 3 or 4 turns, and my rep took a pretty big hit. I found this to be very frustrating to say the least.

 

[arretium]

Originally posted by Guildenstern
I'm not sure what to think of this phenomenon. On the one hand, your reputation shouldn't take a hit for things you had no part in. On the other hand, in the modern world you have a responsibility to protect your trade routes.

Sounds like a realism vs. gameplay thing. I'm not sure whether something should be done about it or not.

I know I've discussed this before in another thread, and I feel like I'm repeating myself here, so forgive me if you've read my words before. However, my answer to this question is simply that your solution is untenable. You can't protect your trade routes from nuclear missles. There is nothing that you can do about it. Yet you still take the same reputation hit as if you actually broke the treaty by declaring war. Stated again but in logical form: since you can't protect your trade routes from nuclear missles, your proposed solution has no effect. In fact, no solution is effective.

Also, an inherent problem with the "realism v. gameplay thing" argument is that the cost to your reputation is no where near realistic in the real world. Potential real world trading partners simply aren't going to consider the fact that a prior trade agreement was terminated due to an outside influence beyond your control. Thus, the fact that the game algorithm considers these irrelevant factors means that it takes away from realism, and does not enhance it.