A Better Deal

[stratego]

I noticed that sometimes that the trade advisor would say "They'll never accept such a deal" if you offer the AI 2gpt for 36 golds, because the AI can't afford that much gpt. However, if they are able to afford 1gpt for 18 golds, you would actually be able to go back to them and offer them the same deal again. (In other words, you might not be able to get 2gpt for 36gold in one trade, but you would be able to get up to 5 trades of 1gpt for 18gold)

With that in mind. If you meet an AI who can only afford 1gpt plus some gold for your tech, you can take some time to make your trade better for you. First offer them gold for gpt, seal the deal and go back and as for more gpt for your gold. Do so until the AI has enough gold in their account to pay for your tech for full price, then sell them your tech.

(This is kinda confusing, I hope I explained it well enough)

 

[MadScot]

Sounds like a bug.

If I read it right, you're saying the AI has 1gpt spare, so will not pay 2gpt for anything.

So you keep giving them 18g for 1gpt, over and over, until they have agreed to a huge total of gold for gpt (even though they only have 1gpt income, and would not agree to it all at once).

Then you swap a tech for all the gold you just gave them.

In effect you end up giving them a tech, for, say, 10gpt, when they don't have 10gpt to give.

Sounds like the AI doesn't update its gpt status during deals. And that makes it a bug.

 

[Strider]

Yup, it sounds like a bug to me....

I'll have to test it out in my next game.

 

[Qitai]

Don't think it works that way. Post a save to prove this.

 

[Grille]

It does indeed work this way. Stratego is absolutely right , I can confirm. I came across this when I tried the "banker variant", see here. (I also mentioned this in an earlier post in that thread - see #27)

The ai obviously likes to split their gpt when you offer a loan (at least in the vanilla version).
I have no save file available, but it's easy to notice when you play the banker variant (or sign up loan deals like mad, that is).


I don't know if it's a bug or limitted to loan deals only for what reason ever (tech deals obviously grab their whole income in one go). Often it's even better to split loan deals: somehow they sometimes sign -say- 10 times a 5gpt for 95 gold deal, but would only accept 5 times 10gpt for 191 gold (not 190!).

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by MadScot
Sounds like a bug.

If I read it right, you're saying the AI has 1gpt spare, so will not pay 2gpt for anything.

Note that they actually must have more than 1gpt to spare!
I such cases, the ai would eventually pay more than 1gpt for some stuff (lux, tech...), but they obviously have a gpt limit for loans.

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by stratego
With that in mind. If you meet an AI who can only afford 1gpt plus some gold for your tech, you can take some time to make your trade better for you. First offer them gold for gpt, seal the deal and go back and as for more gpt for your gold. Do so until the AI has enough gold in their account to pay for your tech for full price, then sell them your tech.

Grille, he's saying that the AI won't pay 2gpt for a tech (so only has 1gpt income) yet is able to negotiate multiple 1gpt for x gold deals in the same turn, then sweep all that gold up in a cash for tech deal, meaning he's effectively getting 10gpt (say) for the tech, when the AI only had 1gpt free income.

Unless I read his post wrong, but it seems to me that's what he means. And that, I'm pretty sure, is a bug.

 

[Grille]

Well, I was mainly refering to the first part of stratego's post.

It's not possible to exploit loan deals, there actually is a limit (I'd assume their total gpt income, of course). So you're not able to sign such until the end of days. At some point, they would stop signing loan deals (so I assume they had indeed more than 1gpt income).

Granted, I haven't tested the second part stratego mentioned.
There seems to be a gpt-per-deal limit, at least in the early game (later it's possible to grab all income in one go - by tech deals that is). In some games, I could have selled a tech for 100gpt (suspected income limit, used it to "test" their income) for example, but couldn't grab that 100gpt with one single loan deal. I could get a total of 100gpt by several loan deals, though. I could not overrun this limit by further loan deals.

This possible per deal limit (for loan deals, there is such) is of course strange and I can't imagine what it's good for and why it includes tech deals , in early game, that is. If there's fine a reason for it, the loan thingie obviously circumvents it and that's surely a bug/exploit.

edit:
Another point is ai's Wall Street: Getting it to work by loans would increase their total income (question is if income is recalculated "on the fly" during negotiations), but that's loans on a different scale (not 1gpt of course).

 

[stratego]

It's not a bug if both you can the AI is capable of doing it right?
I mean, if you are producing only 50gpt but you have 2000golds in your account, you are able to make gpt deals sightly higher than 50gpt, because you can afford to run a debit. In the case with the AI, it's able to offer you more gpt deals because now it has more money in its account, so it can afford to run a debit for awhile. But it is true that if you make such a deal, the AI's economy would be so bad for the next 20 turns that it might now be able to make gpt deals with you within that time.

 

[Qitai]

With civ3 1.29, you can't. The gpt deal is limited to your gpt surplus. humans can get around it to a limited extend by going 0% lux and science before going to the trading screen and then switch it back when you are done. The AI cannot do that.

The earlier versions allows you to essentially win on deity in the ancient age if you manage to backrupt them at that time, rendering them unable to do any further research.

 

[MadScot]

Nor PTW 1.21.

The AI isn't smart enough to work out whether it can afford deficit spending for a time. If they allow it, then players can cripple the AI, as Qitai said. So the easy option is to simply ensure the AI never puts itself into a deficit through deal making.

What you described, if I understand it, is a way around that, which would allow a crippling attack on the AI economy if you did it right.

 

[MadScot]

oops

double post - slow forum

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