Abusing the AI - Gold before DoW

[fufie]

I have not seen a computer with 6k gold after the fall patch, or anything near it.

Currently in a game (w/fall patch) where Songhai recently had 5900 gold. Something must've gone wrong for the AI, since he came at me with full force of mandekalu cavalry and riflemen - charging like a maniac - too bad I had bombers and rocket artillery waiting along with mech infantry to clean up. Pushed one of his cities to zero hp and he gave me ~5700 gold for peace. Curious why he didn't use the money to upgrade or spam units since he was hellbent on attacking.

 

[fufie]

a player can borrow from the world bank, but has to pay interest. If you borrow a lot of money, and then crater your economy, you must disband units and/or sell buildings or even cities.

Could be interesting. . .

But Greece already has a UA - getting two would be bad

 

[fibonacci112358]

+1 to that last comment.

 

[RedFuneral]

I don't think they should flat out stop you from doing it, they should instead give the AIs a relationship multiplier like the warmonger one. 'Bad trade practices' or something. It would make AIs less likely to accept trades where you provide luxuries or GPT, and make them more hostile toward you.

 

[Lose]

They also need to fix the abuse where players can offer everything in one turn and then declare war the next turn to cancel all trades but retain the money.

 

[beestar]

The AI does the same thing to me (or tries to), except usually w/ Research Agreements.

Yeah, I saw this in one or two games. Seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face - the AI loses out just as much as you do.

 

[Matthew.]

If you don't like it, don't do it. Lots of people add arbitrary limitations to their game play.

This. I get that it sucks not being able to use all tools available, since it kind of goes against the gaming philosophy. Devs post a challenge (the game) and we attempt to break the game. But at the end of the day, I play games to kill boredom. If placing an arbitrary rule maintains interest, it is worth it.

 

[joncnunn]

The AI does the same thing to me (or tries to), except usually w/ Research Agreements.

This and the related experienced human can just look at the map and know the AI is about to DOW them in one or two turns (and consequently buy out the AIs entire treasury) both expose that the military adviser part of the AI does not talk at all to the foreign minister adviser.

RA issue : This is a lot less of a problem in G&K: First because you now need a DOF for this, and second its worth a whole lot less so there's less incentive to sign these with players anyway, especially with AIs an era behind [which is the case where the human lost more cash]

We also have issues with trying to bring back sanctions for broken trade deals (Civ III)
It wouldn't be quite as bad in Civ V since roads aren't needed, but you still have the issues of assigning blame. If we blame the person who did the DOW, then the human signs a deal for cash now on his turn knowing that not only will we not have to pay for it, the other AIs will also blame that AI for a broken trade deal. And if we blame both sides, then the human is going to become nervous about signing even straight luxury for a luxury deals given the length is 30 turns.
Much easier to avoid these problems by just bringing back Civ IV's rule and have humans adapt to getting 7 GPT* from selling a luxury instead of in 240 gold cash dumps.
*The 7GPT is assuming they don't get around to fixing the bug that the AI is willing to pay more cash now than in GPT for a luxury.

But it turned out the main reasons the AI has cash now to begin with are:

1. Until a recent patch, AI would only cash rush units if it thought it was behind. (Now it will also cash buy if it thinks its even)

2. AI does not know how to cash rush buildings at all. This is also the main reason the AI needs the massive happiness bonus [humans cash rush them in slow production cities when needed] and its also majorly slows down expansion AIs at building national wonders.

 

[Moriarte]

There are a bunch of easy solutions to implement this. But developers seem fine with the exploit, after so many patches and expansions nothing was done about it. So, i guess you'll just have to restrain yourself, Peter. Then again, you can always make a game harder elsewhere. Like, play Ice age Pangaea map on Deity standard map with high sea level and no city states. Yeah, and DoW every civ once you meet them, haha.

Also, CiV is not all numbers. It's also a role-playing game. Plenty of occasions in real world history where this 'exploit' was implemented.

 

[ixias]

I don't understand what the problem is. You know it's an exploit, you don't like that you can do it, yet you do it anyway? Fraxis shouldn't need to fix anything; just don't do it. Simple fix.

 

[Greizer85]

Thing is though, there are challenges posted on this site where some people use this exploit with impunity, while others hate meta-gaming like that and must accept inferior finish times as a result, defeating the whole point of the challenge. Were the exploit removed, everyone could compete AND have fun at the same time. It's win-win imo... Or rather win-neutral (rp camp-minmaxers).

 

[sufficiency]

Here's something that is even more broken.

Say India is getting destroyed by the Huns. All of the Indian units got killed, all there is left is for Attila to walk into every Indian city. You want to dow on Gandhi too and take all of his land/wonders, but Attila would be competing with you, what do you do?

Simple. Trade with Gandhi and ask him to sue for peace with Attila. It doesn't matter what kind of price he asks, make sure it's not cash and accept, then immediately declare war on him. Congratulations, all of the Indian cities are now yours to take and there is nothing Attila can do about it for at least the next 10 turns (well, he might dow you instead, but that's not the point here).

 

[Nick Hynds]

Another option is to have the AI refuse to do "loans" but instead have a mechanism whereby a player can borrow from the world bank, but has to pay interest. If you borrow a lot of money, and then crater your economy, you must disband units and/or sell buildings or even cities.

Could be interesting. . .

Love this idea. I think this could be a great new mechanic. In the meantime I guess the OP will has a self discipline challenge in front of him.

 

[Biologist]

I think the best solution to this problem (and other "problems" created by user behavior in a single-player game) is this: Don't use the exploit. There are no other humans in your game, so if you don't use an exploit, it's like it doesn't exist. If you really detest a loophole, than you shouldn't need the devs to exercise self-control for you.

I used to grab lump gold from the AI before declaring, then I decided that it removed too much challenge from the game. I will still trade for lump sums with AIs I plan to fight eventually, just not if I know a declaration is coming in the next 5 turns or so.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Just make it a huge diplomatic penalty. Do it, and next turn, all the other AI's denounce you.

 

[Wargizmo]

I loved the great fall patch. But there is one major major problem still in the game: Offer the AI a trade gold vs gold/turn. Then declare war.

This ruins late game. If you are pressured it is hard resist doing it, it is just too easy.

Why not just patch this? The solution I offer is: If you make a trade to receive gold you cannot declare war in 10 turns. This would solve the whole thing.

How can we come in contact with the people patching the game?

Please help.

Personally I'd like to see lump sum gold trades taken away from the game entirely - it just doesn't make sense; who pays for hundreds of years worth of imports in a single lump sum? All trades should be gold per turn.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

How about haveing the AI allways upgrade units, and rush buy buildings/settlers if it is slightly ahead.
Ps and let them not pay for lux if they have positive happiness of 10 or more.

 

[ense7en]

Don't do it?

No seriously, just don't.

It's not that hard to just NOT do it.

I do agree there should be ways to prevent this, but it can actually be nice to do the opposite sometimes (get lump sums from the AI for your GPT).

This is the thing with Deity though...the way to win is pretty much exploiting the AI as much as is possible.
If you didn't steal CS workers, didn't make bad trades, didn't pay off the AI to attack each other, etc, people wouldn't be winning Deity much.
Deity is pretty much about exploiting sadly.

 

[Shadow717]

Do it twice and nobody in the world will ever give you their gold/stuff for gpt ever again. Easy solution, isn't it?

I remeber civ 3 had something like this didn't it? If you broke a trade people trusted you less, after so many broken trades you basically had no trade partners left. However the problem with that was of course that the AI didn't bother to care who broke the trade, so an AI declaring war on you still gave the negative hit to you I believe.



of course as others have said, it's pretty easy to just not do it

 

[n00bxqb]

This and the related experienced human can just look at the map and know the AI is about to DOW them in one or two turns (and consequently buy out the AIs entire treasury) both expose that the military adviser part of the AI does not talk at all to the foreign minister adviser.

RA issue : This is a lot less of a problem in G&K: First because you now need a DOF for this, and second its worth a whole lot less so there's less incentive to sign these with players anyway, especially with AIs an era behind [which is the case where the human lost more cash]

We also have issues with trying to bring back sanctions for broken trade deals (Civ III)
It wouldn't be quite as bad in Civ V since roads aren't needed, but you still have the issues of assigning blame. If we blame the person who did the DOW, then the human signs a deal for cash now on his turn knowing that not only will we not have to pay for it, the other AIs will also blame that AI for a broken trade deal. And if we blame both sides, then the human is going to become nervous about signing even straight luxury for a luxury deals given the length is 30 turns.
Much easier to avoid these problems by just bringing back Civ IV's rule and have humans adapt to getting 7 GPT* from selling a luxury instead of in 240 gold cash dumps.
*The 7GPT is assuming they don't get around to fixing the bug that the AI is willing to pay more cash now than in GPT for a luxury.

But it turned out the main reasons the AI has cash now to begin with are:

1. Until a recent patch, AI would only cash rush units if it thought it was behind. (Now it will also cash buy if it thinks its even)

2. AI does not know how to cash rush buildings at all. This is also the main reason the AI needs the massive happiness bonus [humans cash rush them in slow production cities when needed] and its also majorly slows down expansion AIs at building national wonders.

On several occasions, they've DOWed a few turns after signing an RA and there were literally no units anywhere close to my borders and not a single shot was fired. It especially pissed me off when Ghandi did it to me as we'd been friends the entire game and had several RAs in the past, but I made friends with Sweden to gain the great person bonus. I guess that peeved him enough to sign an RA only to break it a few turns later, wasting all of our money. Jerk ...

Now I just use my RA money to buy universities, research labs, etc.