AI can maintain trade after resource is disconnected?

[kommie]

Hey All,

I posted this in the general thread, and thought i'd post it in here as well, to see if anyone else has run into this.

I'm currently at war with an AI civ (Americans) during the modern age, and there's also a 4-way spaceship race going on as well. I'm a bit behind but trying to catch up.

Anyway, to slow down my main competitor (Roosevelt) I wanted to cut off his source of aluminium and sent spies to destroy his 2 aluminuim mines. After I did that I had a look at his city screen but he still had aluminium. It ended up that he secured a trade of it from another AI. That AI was my friend, and also a spaceship competitor, but they traded their only aluminium away for deer! Kind of strange.

That aside, i sent a spy there and blew up that aluminium as well, and that was the only source, but the trade pact for it still persisted, and Roosevelt had aluminium available!

This sounds like a bug to me. Isabella definitely had only 1 aluminium mine (I even used the world builder to double-check), and I sabotaged it, but she still manages to trade it away, turn after turn. THis may be because you cannot cancel trades earlier than 10 turns after they were initiated, but if you dont have a resource you cant possible send it somewhere else!

Annoying bug and might cost me the space-race too.


Any1 encountered anything like this?

 

[MrCynical]

Have you checked than there aren't any aluminium deposits under cities? It sounds like Isabella has an aluminium supply under one of her cities, so she had two deposits when she traded aluminium for deer. You've cut off one, but her remaining aluminium deposit can still be fulfilling the trade agreement.

I've never encountered any problem with this in my games.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I've had many instances where trade deals between me and an AI were canceled because the AI's resources were pillaged. If you want to report this as a bug, it would be could to attach the savegame where you have pillaged both the AI you were at war with and the AI that traded the resource.

There are several things that you could have missed:
1) maybe it takes one turn for the treaty to be cancelled. I've only seen it happen to me where an AI that traded with me got it's resources pillaged. But this happened in the interturn, so maybe it could have to do something with that.
2) You looked well, but still missed one resource. It can happen.
3) The second AI bought a resource from a third AI and resold it to the first AI empire. I don't know for sure if this is even possible...

I can't think of anything else, but that doesn't mean there isn't a rationale explanation other then ' it's a bug' . But maybe it really is a bug. Upload a savegame so that others may check it.

 

[_alphaBeta_]

This is definitely a bug. I just experienced it from the other perspective - I was the one that lost the resource.

I have a city with access to two clams. No other city of mine has clam. Qin Shi calls up and wants one of the clams for hit musicals. I say fine. Two turns later a revolt happens in a newly acquired city, cutting me off from the two clams since the cultural border collapsed. I only noticed because my health in the rest of my cities went into the red. So now I have no clam, yet this deal stayed together. Even the screenshot below shows that I'm trading 1 of 0 clam.

This was within the first 10 turns of the deal, meaning it couldn't ordinarily be cancelled. Looks like the devs missed this scenario since the deal doesn't automatically cancel as it should. Perhaps they left it like this on purpose to avoid some kind of exploit we're not thinking of. Although I don't see pillaging your own resources to break deals very exploitable however.

So, it would appear trade deals stay together after one party loses the resource being traded - at least during the initial unbreakable deal period.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Very interesting. Especially the screenshot is useful for a bug report (although a savegame is even better). What exactly happens after the ten turn period during which a deal can't be cancelled? I would expect to see an immediate end of the deal after the ten turn period.

If the deal were cancelled immediately, then I see two small exploits:
1) You can cancel a traded good initiated by a demand from another nation.
2) You can cancel a deal within the 10 turn period and start trading it with another nation.

Effectively, the 10 turn period stops being any kind of limit if the deal is immediately cancelled.

Solution: The deal is immediately cancelled, but is immediately resumed when the goods become available again. During the period where some of the goods are unavailable, the deal is coloured differently (grayed out) and the party that couldn't keep its part of the bargain will suffer a -1 diplomacy penalty (You didn't honor your deals). The length of the -1 diplomacy penalty is equal to three times the period in which you couldn't supply the goods (so 30 turns maximum). If some of the goods aren't available after the 10 turn period then the deal is cancelled immediately.

Example: I'm supplying another nation with uranium (1 out of 2 sources) in return for aluminium. The deal has been going on for 2 turns, when both of my sources of uranium are bombed. I can't supply my uranium anymore, so I don't get any aluminium anymore. During the next three turns, I quickly rebuild my uranium mine and start supplying my trading partner with uranium again and start receiving aluminium again. After rebuilding the second uranium mine, my own supply of uranium will be available again. During the 3 turns in which I couldn't keep my part of the bargain and 6 additional turns, I will suffer a -1 diplomacy penalty with my trading partner.

The -1 diplomacy penalty is important so that you can't cancel demands of goods by pillaging your own resources without repercussions.

 

[_alphaBeta_]

I don't know what happens after 10 turns. Unfortunately, the resistance ends before the 10 turn anniversary of the deal.

I suppose this bug is reproducible by anyone. Have a city with a resource traded away. Go into world builder and delete the city, reduce the cultural borders, remove the resource, or pillage the resource in-game. Then see what happens. If the deal does end, then it's a specific problem with city resistance.

I think another way of handling this is to have it such that you owe the resource to the other civ for 10 turns. They don't necessarily have to be consecutive. So if you lose the resource, the deal is suspended immediately, since you cannot trade what you don't have. If you regain that resource, it is traded for the remainder of the 10 turns, regardless of current relations. This would remove the exploits since you cannot use the resource (or trade it somewhere else) until the 10 turns are fulfilled.

 

[Soren Johnson]

Deals are cancelled between turns, not during them, and that applies to the AI as well as the human.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Deals are cancelled between turns, not during them, and that applies to the AI as well as the human.

Thank you, Soren. It's always nice to see a Firaxian post in this forum.

I have never been in this situation before, so I believed the original poster. I just tested it in game and you are right.

This does leave one exploit though. It allows you to circumvent the ten turn period during which a treaty cannot be cancelled. I never tried that before, because I'm not in the habit of searching for exploits, but it does work. Just pillage every instance of one of your resources and the treaty will be cancelled (within one turn)
This is especially exploitive when a resource was demanded. This way you give into the demand and thus avoid the diplomatic penalty, but in the same way can have your resource back within one turn by pillaging it and rebuilding it the next turn. It requires a few worker turns, but it is often worth it.

The exploit could be fixed by using the suggestions given by _alphaBeta_ in post 6 or my own suggestions presented in post 5. The exploits are not huge, but one of the many improvements of civ4 over civ3 is that it allows less exploits. It would be nice if this one could be corrected.

Thanks again for posting here and reading the bug report forum.