A very serious exploit in this game - must be fixed

[YoHo]

I don't think lump sum deals should be removed. There are many legitimate uses for lump sum deals and without them, trading would be even more boring and one-dimensional than it already is. We need more trading options, not less.


I never hated that feature. It presented you with an interesting strategic choice - should you cheat a civ for short term gain and screw up your long term reputation and limit your future diplomatic options? Perhaps its implementation in Civ III was somewhat flawed, but the concept behind it is realistic and makes sense. Some simple ways to improve it would be:

1) Only civs that have made contact with the AI you cheated would hear of your duplicity (and while we are at it, please bring back the "bring X civ in contact with Y civ" trading option, which would provide useful strategic value).

2) Civs would only flat out refuse treaties of a similar nature with you. So, if you broke a defensive pact, civs would become very reluctant to sign defensive pacts with you. If you broke a per-turn deal, civs would be reluctant to accept your per-turn offers. They should still be willing to accept other deals like lump sum gold, open borders or research agreements.

3) Civ distrust of you should slowly fade with time. Emphasis on "slowly" to make sure that you stay in the diplomatic doghouse for a hundred turns or so.

I agree with all of this.

The exploit isn't that you can be a duplicitous jerk in the game. That is in fact how many leaders/civs were. It's that there are no consequences.
CivIII's consequences may have been too strict, but that doesn't make the entire concept wrong.

You should certainly be able to screw over another Civ in this way at the expense of your reputation.

 

[}{ELL/\/()]

In a golden age I offered 400 gpt for 6200 of Japan's gold, declared war and upgraded all my infantry to mechs. I only did it because I was mad that he turned down my demand for 1000 gold and open borders to go take out the french.

 

[Aoeu]

The obvious solution is to never trade something that is paid ahead (e.g. lump sum, tech) with something per turn (gold per turn, resource).

Civ4 did exactly that.

Clearly, whoever designed trade for Civ5 didn't even bother to look at how all the previous Civilization games did it, and wasn't capable enough to come up with a good solution himself.

This also holds for all the other parts of the game, with astounding things like smallpox ICS being advantageous (also known as the #1 thing to look for when designing this kind of game).

Anyway, it seems that the AI gives you progressively worse deals if you consistently break treaties this way, but it's still overwhelmingly advantageous to do so.

 

[Buccaneer]

I still can't fathom the lack of beaker overflow. It may not be the biggest black mark on Civ5, but it remains the most inexcusable and inexplicable.

Why? Isn't the tech rate already fast enough and you want to make it even faster to get techs? The simpliest way we can realistically have beaker overflow is to double the cost of every tech.


As far as the serious exploit, it is yet another stupid thing that was brought in from Civ3. That's one of the problems of having a lead designer that actually thinks Civ3 was good game.

I suggest make it like Civ4 where you can't declare war for 30 turns - until your trade ends (of whatever number is feasible).

 

[lordsurya08]

There should be some kind of mechanism by which ripping off someone like this is possible, but will have VERY severe diplomatic consequences and trading sanctions.

 

[code9]

They could also have introduced a condition within the trade, such as "Need 5 turns notice to cancel trade which will cost X amount". After you cancel the agreement, you can attack.

 

[swordspider]

I make this trade with Suleiman on turn 305:
SULEIMAN: 6219 gold.
ME: 2100 something gold, 40 gpt for 90 turns (total 3600 gold), 5 luxury resources.

Turn 306:
* Entering Suleiman lands will declare WAR! Are you sure you want to continue? "Yes"
* Gold per turn to Suleiman ended *
* Dyes to Suleiman ended *
* Sugar to Suleiman ended *
* Ivory to Suleiman ended *
* Marble to Suleiman ended *
* Cotton to Suleiman ended *

So if I can do this to the AI, what's to say he can't do the reverse to me?

Everyone already knows of this exploit. There is a simple solution in single player, don't exploit it!!! If you can't control yourself enough not to cheat in single player, then I have no remorse for you!

Where this exploit is MUCH more dangerous/meaningful is in multiplayer. That on the other hand can give you a serious advantage over other players and is truly an 'exploit'. I see it done all the time.

 

[SuperJay]

Everyone already knows of this exploit.

You're responding to a post from three months ago.

 

[Deep_Blue]

I have discovered an exploit related to this before:
Gold from fake trade exploit

 

[Truthy]

I always exploit the AI like this. I trade resources for lump sums, until my enemy has no gold. I also like to make research agreements just before the war. When I invade my enemy is broke and has no money to purchase or train new units and I have a huge advantage. Personally, I hope this is not fixed. It makes wars much easier and I'm not worried about the AI doing this in return because I never buy resources. Who's to say that tricking the AI is even a bad thing? It's only a little bit of trickery. It is not something that should be or needs to be fixed and you can't even call it a bug. Removing lump sum trading would be a bad thing. It would completely block off wealthy civilizations who don't have very much gold per turn. The best solution to this problem would be to make the AI become distrustful of you if you make deals and declare war.