Aid Request Money seems OP

[ReVonLohengramm]

New poster here. I wanted to post something on this because I haven't seen any other posts yet. After the June release they tweaked the projects so that production goes directly to gold now on the receiving player of the aid request. I was playing a multiplayer online teams game (comp stomp) 2v2v2v2 Diety AI but what I noted here was nuts.

I received a flood aid request, AI passes it. Then (medieval era) I start getting gold in the THOUSANDS each turn, from the aid request. This seems nuts to me, very OP. I was sitting on so much gold that I ran out of buildings to by in my town centers, then started spam buying settlers, and was able to buy around 8 settlers. This is in the small continents map where I was settling tiny islands without much opportunity for growth and peace with everyone due to surrounding oceans.

Sitting on 10k gold / spending that much gold just seems intense / weird. Not sure if this is an outlier or if anyone else has seen it. Has anyone else noticed the aid requests gold you receive is now obscene / OP? I'm thinking the conversion factor for production to gold is 1:1, but the AI seems to go all-in now with the reworked diplomacy points, so all the AI are cranking these projects and it generates an insane amount of gold. Also this likely seems tied to difficulty level you are playing on but with diety AI has more production so likely has way more to throw at this.

 

[Softly]

Yea the AI goes way way to hard on these especially on Deity. I was trying to win a disaster aid request and all the AI were at 7-10k score each and this was in the medieval era. On a standard map that is around 60k gold, which is basically unlimited gold that early in the game.

 

[Isengardtom]

Yes

Had the same situation today. The money is too insane

 

[steveg700]

Right. Disasters aren't that devastating, so there's no point at all to the aid condition. Emergency aid is a cute idea on paper, but it just doesn't work unless disasters can do more than they currently do. Which they probably shouldn't, honestly.

Really, that's about all the discussion there should be at this point.

EDIT: The money you get can buy a builder to effect repairs on improvements, but money doesn't help with repairing districts. Having to repair buildings and districts is a time sink, so it's probably the worse of the two impacts. But money isn't currently needed for it.

I wonder if the project to repair districts should also cost money in addition to production (which isn't much as it is), and perhaps if the district is jam-packed full of buildings, that sum should be considerable enough to warrant aid.

 

[Loderingo]

It’s absolutely crazy in the game I’m playing - an aid request for Jaya and 6 turns left:

Mongol -10916
Poland - 8414
Eleanor - 8386
Kongo - 6938
Spain - 5199
Persia - 3082
America - 2558
Me (Egypt) -189

I can see looking at my allies that America has 3/3 cities running aid request. Poland has 10/10. Spain has 6/6. Mongolia has 11/15

Eleanor and Kongo shouldn’t be spending anything on aid as they are ahead in culture and science respectively. I’m leading on diplo with 13 points followed by Poland on 8, Mongol and Kongo on 7, Eleanor 6, Cyrus Teddy 5, Khmer, Spain 4

Ironically Jaya has spent all his money on military and has just declared war on leading aid giver Genghis!

 

[Loderingo]

More craziness from the same game.

Genghis attacks Philip. Philip gets an military aid request pop up. Genghis then sets most of his cities to aid request to help Philip fight off an attack from himself...

 

[Kibikus]

More craziness from the same game.

Genghis attacks Philip. Philip gets an military aid request pop up. Genghis then sets most of his cities to aid request to help Philip fight off an attack from himself...

Yeah, I read about something similiar on reddit. Apparently the aggressor can participate in military aid requests, which is pure nonsense. Not sure if it's a bug, or something they overlooked.

 

[WillowBrook]

More craziness from the same game.

Genghis attacks Philip. Philip gets an military aid request pop up. Genghis then sets most of his cities to aid request to help Philip fight off an attack from himself...

Yeah, this is a good example of how the system needs tweaking. You shouldn't be able to send aid to a civ you're at war with, especially if you started the war and triggered the request.

And I'd shorten the aid time to ten turns.

Also, if they could make the aid projects help repair damaged districts and buildings first and only give gold once those are repaired, that would help with the disconnect between receiving gold and needing to repair things that currently only the city's own production can repair.

Some limit on how much the recipient gets would be good, but I'm not sure of a good implementation. Perhaps for any aid after a certain amount (depending perhaps on era and/or severity of the damage), only a fraction actually goes to the recipient, the rest disappearing (corruption, overhead costs, etc).

In my current game, I suffered a flood and just started receiving aid, despite most of the world being upset with me for taking Kongo's capital a few turns earlier. Mvemba was the second to step up after Canada.

 

[Bangau]

The way it works right now seems very unbalanced to me. The AI just blindly send huge amounts of money, and what do they get in return? A small chance for rewards that are mostly likely are never going to help them. I had one recently where all the weaker AIs had their economy totally crippled because they had almost no money left and were producing nothing but the project.

I’d love this to be improved.

 

[UWHabs]

Makes me sad in my game where I had the chance to have an aid event for myself, and I assumed because I was allied and friendly with the entire world that they would jump to my aid. The vote lost by 1 point, while I had hundreds of diplo favour in the bank...

 

[leandrombraz]

What if the amount of gold you get worked similar to the old legacy system? Instead of going to the target, the gold go the a separate pool (gpt is immediately converted to its total in gold). On its place, the target will get a preset reward that last into the end of the aid, lets say 5gpt. When the value in this pool get to certain milestones it increase the bonus the target get, up to a preset maximum.

Example:

Target start the aid request getting 5gpt;
Every 1.000 gold sent to the target increase this bonus by 5gpt;
The last milestone is 10.000, which will give a maximum of 50gpt to the target, any gold sent after that give nothing to the target;
Once the request is over, the target stop receiving this reward.


This way the target won't get crazy amounts of gold but the gold you send still matter to them, even though they won't directly get it.

Edit: It will probably be better to use the total score of the members combined instead of a separate pool of gold.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

What if the amount of gold you get worked similar to the old legacy system? Instead of going to the target, the gold go the a separate pool (gpt is immediately converted to its total in gold). On its place, the target will get a preset reward that last into the end of the aid, lets say 5gpt. When the value in this pool get to certain milestones it increase the bonus the target get, up to a preset maximum.

Example:

Target start the aid request getting 5gpt;
Every 1.000 gold sent to the target increase this bonus by 5gpt;
The last milestone is 10.000, which will give a maximum of 50gpt to the target, any gold sent after that give nothing to the target;
Once the request is over, the target stop receiving this reward.


This way the target won't get crazy amounts of gold but the gold you send still matter to them, even though they won't directly get it.

Edit: It will probably be better to use the total score of the members combined instead of a separate pool of gold.

So basically, the aid gets filtered through an international aid agency.

 

[UWHabs]

What if the amount of gold you get worked similar to the old legacy system? Instead of going to the target, the gold go the a separate pool (gpt is immediately converted to its total in gold). On its place, the target will get a preset reward that last into the end of the aid, lets say 5gpt. When the value in this pool get to certain milestones it increase the bonus the target get, up to a preset maximum.

Example:

Target start the aid request getting 5gpt;
Every 1.000 gold sent to the target increase this bonus by 5gpt;
The last milestone is 10.000, which will give a maximum of 50gpt to the target, any gold sent after that give nothing to the target;
Once the request is over, the target stop receiving this reward.


This way the target won't get crazy amounts of gold but the gold you send still matter to them, even though they won't directly get it.

Edit: It will probably be better to use the total score of the members combined instead of a separate pool of gold.

I really like that idea. Although you would probably have to change the diplomacy to have a special "send aid" for gold (or gpt) otherwise it would get confusing why someone gave me money but didn't actually give me money.

 

[Sostratus]

Although you would probably have to change the diplomacy to have a special "send aid" for gold (or gpt) otherwise it would get confusing why someone gave me money but didn't actually give me money.

Since the current mechanic is tied to the aid project, you'd just add a Send Aid item to the gold purchase queue in cities. Make buying it the same as completing the production project.

 

[acluewithout]

Or just get rid of the ability to gift gold.

 

[oSiyeza]

Or just get rid of the ability to gift gold.

I would leave the ability, it only makes sense.

What worries me more, is that the AI may be paying too much attention to aid requests instead of doing what it should be doing, and shooting itself down.

I just hope the behaviour is very easy to solve. I.e. Reduce to 50% AI dedication to aid requests and reduce to 50% the production to gold change rate.

Ps: I think the post aurhor should make a request in the bug section. Cause this is probably a big one.

Lets hope that with the propper visivility, a fix comes soon enough.

 

[kaspergm]

This imo. is a prime example of what's holding Civ6 down: Many great ideas with extremely poor execution.

In my current game, I got a natural disaster aid request voted through, my ally Khmer and another AI civ Norway opting in. Currently they've given me about 12K gold, and I sit on 50K gold after having built Big Ben. Pretty much all of Khmers cities are running Aid Request production, and have been doing this for 25 turns. No wonder the AI consistently stalls in late game.

 

[steveg700]

What if the amount of gold you get worked similar to the old legacy system? Instead of going to the target, the gold go the a separate pool (gpt is immediately converted to its total in gold). On its place, the target will get a preset reward that last into the end of the aid, lets say 5gpt. When the value in this pool get to certain milestones it increase the bonus the target get, up to a preset maximum.

Example:

Target start the aid request getting 5gpt;
Every 1.000 gold sent to the target increase this bonus by 5gpt;
The last milestone is 10.000, which will give a maximum of 50gpt to the target, any gold sent after that give nothing to the target;
Once the request is over, the target stop receiving this reward.


This way the target won't get crazy amounts of gold but the gold you send still matter to them, even though they won't directly get it.

Edit: It will probably be better to use the total score of the members combined instead of a separate pool of gold.

So basically, the aid gets filtered through an international aid agency.

I really like that idea. Although you would probably have to change the diplomacy to have a special "send aid" for gold (or gpt) otherwise it would get confusing why someone gave me money but didn't actually give me money.

Since the current mechanic is tied to the aid project, you'd just add a Send Aid item to the gold purchase queue in cities. Make buying it the same as completing the production project.

I would leave the ability, it only makes sense.

What worries me more, is that the AI may be paying too much attention to aid requests instead of doing what it should be doing, and shooting itself down.

I just hope the behaviour is very easy to solve. I.e. Reduce to 50% AI dedication to aid requests and reduce to 50% the production to gold change rate.

Ps: I think the post aurhor should make a request in the bug section. Cause this is probably a big one.

Lets hope that with the propper visivility, a fix comes soon enough.

See, you guys are on to something in your own ways, but consider this:

The World Congress has a relief fund. Like Canuck alluded, it's a pool of funds independent of any civ. Every time the WC meets, the fund is checked to see how full it is. You have the opportunity to invest in it. This is the competition part where you can earn DV.

At some point, when the conditions for an aid-related emergency are satisfied, the WC convenes to vote on whether to allow the target to withdraw funds, and maybe how much they can withdraw.

Take it a step even further. Perhaps then its not a direct cash payout, but a relief package that is charged against the fund. The target civ gets to go on a shopping spree, which somehow seems more fun to me than boring old lump sums of gold.

For disaster relief packages, you can buy civilian units--builders or military engineers. Military engineers, btw, should get the ability to expend charges to repair districts, which all on its own seems to me to be a slam-dunk no-brainer to work into a post-GS patch (I mean, disaster relief is actually something ME's, moreso than building dams and aqueducts). If a city could actually get wiped out by disasters, then settlers would be on the table.

For military relief packages, you can buy parcels of units. Heck, bring back the foreign legion!

Well-done, everyone. Sorted. Now just to lean back and wait for Firaxis to execute.

 

[steveg700]

Also, let's throw in some way to create relief requests for city-states, both disaster and military. Let's have some way to help them resist conquest, not just liberate them once they're rolled.

 

[Thibaulthc]

Some great ideas on this post!

To avoid sitting on huge amount of golds, make the Aid project worth more than 200 poor points.

To give a real value to all this money we receive, make districts and buildings repairable with money when you're the target of a disaster emergency
And/Or
ME should really be able to spend charges to repair buildings and districts.

To avoid the AI spending all his hammers and money and those emergencies, make them shorter.


The idea of a "world congress money pool" is great but much harder to apply. But why not!