exploiting the AI for money

[vicious.quan]

Do you guys actually consider this as an exploit? Something you don't use when you want a challenge? I mean, real people can be gullible as well.

Deity became very easy when I learned how to fund my empire with AI gold. So easy in fact that I'm starting to feel bad by exploiting the poor AI.

 

[pi-r8]

yeah it's kinda gimicky. I don't feel bad about selling them luxuries for 300 gold, since I think that's intended. I do feel bad about making a massive trade for gold and then immediately declaring war, so I stopped doing that (I think that harms your reputation anyway). The funniest one is to build completely junk city, and then sell it to them for thousands of gold.

 

[EscapedGoat]

I'm a bit divided. On the one hand, it's pretty handy to sell Luxuries to a far away AI for 300 gold, then turn around and declare war and sell the same luxury to someone else. There is no risk really to doing it and the rewards are big.

Same with loans - you can have them trade you a lump sum for gold per turn, then turn around and break the agreement by war declaration. AI's usually want peace after some turns anyway - are there even any consequences for this sort of behaviour? one would imagine that after doing this 2-3 times ALL AIs would stop trading with you (bad reputation)

The AI's just have a lot of cash and are eager to get rid of it it seems.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I'm a bit divided. On the one hand, it's pretty handy to sell Luxuries to a far away AI for 300 gold, then turn around and declare war and sell the same luxury to someone else. There is no risk really to doing it and the rewards are big.

See, there's no reason Civ #2 should want to do that if they just saw what happened to Civ #1. Wasn't there a similar exploit in CivIII? I'm thinking it was the old "buy their awesome tech for X gold a turn then DOW" gag. An oldie but a goodie.

 

[swordspider]

Although it is 'fair game' as far as the 'rules' of the game go, I think it is definitely an exploit because in 'real life' you could never pull off these city swaps and attacks and the like more than once because the rest of the city-states and empires would attack you at once for being an a-hole.

 

[alpaca]

I think selling them luxuries or strategic resources they need is not an exploit if you plan to supply them for the full 30 turns. Selling them strategic resources when they already have 20 of them or declaring war right after selling them something without circumstances changing is for me.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Since the AI directly benefits from selling it a luxury it doesn't have, I don't consider this exploitative. The AI gets more and faster Golden Ages, which give it more cash. Any AI that has not become a juggernaut will burn through its cash, and the juggernauts tend to have almost all of the resources anyway.

Shortchanging the AI on a deal is exploitative, but I don't see any way to code around that problem. AIs with contiguous borders with you or that can see your forces marshalled on your borders should be paying a lot less than they currently do.

The AI clearly needs to reevaluate the priority it places upon cities. The value needs to be a function of the underlying tile quality and the distance from the capital. Cities that are defensible and can immediately be hooked into your trade network are a lot more valuable than ones that do not have these properties.

 

[stii]

I think the solution would be to have the AI offer gold per turn rather than a lump sum. If they give 10gpt for your lux you remove this declaring war problem.

 

[King Jason]

The only portion I consider an exploit is the process of making deals before wars in order to rob the A.I. of gold... Otherwise I think gold and luxury trades are a pretty viable strategy since there are advantages to the A.I.

- The Sale of luxuries = More happiness in exchange for the abundance of gold A.I. usually have. As I understand it on higher difficulties they get a greater amount of happy per resource and while in most cases they may not need the happy for expansion purposes, so you're effectively exchanging gold for a quicker Golden Age rate, which will probably recoup their losses.

- GPT for lump sum = I've done this quite often, especially when I've found myself in cases where I expanded too quickly without an appropriate military and my neighbors decide to take me out. I find this fair game because often times the deal has about a 50% interest rate. If I get 100g, they ask for 5gpt or more. Which, even if the deal doesn't last the full 30 turns, it'll probably cover their loss at least.

- Open Borders ~ This is the most arguable of the ones to sell and consider an exploit, however, I have had one way open borders agreements with A.I. who have seemingly used it to position themselves for an initial assault in an inevitable war. One might argue we as players would notice this but honestly I was caught completely off guard because it wasn't a centralized force, there was a unit here, a unit there, etc. on different ends of my empire and it cost me 2 workers and a settler en route to a new city site that I was backfilling within "my" borders. It honestly looked as if there were just a couple of random units exploring the map.

but I don't shortchange the deals I make with the A.I. players and have found it to be a very viable way to fund the early game and I quite enjoy the fact that I can take out loans. In one game I almost got wiped out by my two neighbors cause I completely lost track of how much time was passing in the game in relation to how much military I had. I had already sold my luxuries away for cash that was used on other things, but my GPT was pretty sizable for the early game (had a lot of gold resources across my empire), So a few quick deals that gave away literally all my GPT in order to buy my military brought me back into the game.

That same nation that took my GPT eventually found itself leading the scoreboard and being my biggest threat, so I don't feel as if I cheated the system.

Personally, if there's any change to the system, I'd enjoy seeing trade deals last regardless of war status. Exception being Research Agreements.

 

[alpaca]

I think the solution would be to have the AI offer gold per turn rather than a lump sum. If they give 10gpt for your lux you remove this declaring war problem.

Quoted for truth. I don't think any human would pay a lump sum for resources unless he really, really trusted his trading partner.

 

[Windsor]

I don't consider it an exploit, I consider it a bad design decision to include this feature. They had to know how this game mechanic would work.

 

[alpaca]

I don't consider it an exploit, I consider it a bad design decision to include this feature. They had to know how this game mechanic would work.

Exploit, n.: Abusing game mechanics in ways they were not meant to be used and offer a great advantage. Mostly possible with badly designed game elements.

The definition from Merriam-Websters is:
Exploit, n: an act of notable skill, strength, or cleverness

The gamer term is probably a noun that was created from the verb exploit but I actually like the pun

 

[Buccaneer]

yeah it's kinda gimicky. I don't feel bad about selling them luxuries for 300 gold, since I think that's intended. I do feel bad about making a massive trade for gold and then immediately declaring war, so I stopped doing that (I think that harms your reputation anyway).

I was surprised they brought that back in (from Civ2, was it in Civ3?). Wonder why?

 

[Ozle]

I feel its fairly lame, just because you 'can' do something to win, doesnt mean you should.

At the end of the day, if people want to do this to make it easier, why not just put the difficulty down a bit.

 

[Soronery]

I don't think deity is possible without trading for AI gold. I don't do junk city selling though because that's just ********.

 

[H4run]

how about give a huge penalty on foreign relation for starting a war (if we who the one being a starter, the penalty being apply otherwise if the starter are the opposite) before the trade agreement are complete?

and giving the AI who cautious or lower relationship toward our nation, can make a term (or tend to make a term) peace treaties for 45 turn with our nation, mean cant declare war on 45 turn. So it will be a savety belt for the AI.

Giving this add, it will be surely chop the problem, further it will make the AI better recognizing a warmongering nation.

what do u think?

 

[Abegweit]

Selling anything to the AI is an exploit. For example, why would it want your luxuries? It has happiness out the wazoo.

Yet another broken game mechanic. It's worse than civ3 as the AI there had some notion of the value of luxes.

 

[MeowTau]

I've had nebuchadnezzar declare war on me ending 3 resources which I had just paid 900 gold for. I've had AI's build their cities literally right on the border of my capital at the start of the game, and then declare war on me.

Anything a player can do to get an advantage should be fair game. The AI simply needs to be programmed better. If you have troops massed on their border, perhaps they should refuse to provide lump sums of gold. If you've screwed over other AI's in the past or are a warmonger in general, they should have some caution. There is no way they should be willing to give you 5k for a few hundred gpt, as the only reason anyone would ever make that trade is if they don't intend to actually pay the money back.

In addition the AI's need to stop being willing to pay gold for open borders. That is a ridiculous boost getting 50 gold every 30 turns from each civ.

One game I had Askia ask for an open borders agreement after years of isolation. I nievely accepted and he declared war as soon as he had my cities surrounded. The AI can be cunning on occasion. The solution is more intelligent diplomacy AI.