Glitch: negative treasury balance

[divec]

I recently managed to spend more money than I had: see screenshot.

I had 92¤ but then used a diplomat to bribe an English militia for 80¤ (which meant having only 12¤ remaining). This immediately triggered a meeting with the Zulu leader, who demanded 50¤ tribute. I accepted the demand which left me with a -38¤ negative balance! I've never seen this before. The game continued without crashing and eventually my debts were paid off.

I presume this can happen because of the order of processing: the bribe price must get subtracted after the diplomacy happens. I love that I can see such a quirk for the first time after three decades playing this game!

 

[Skybuck]

I think what the game does is it set some flags like:
Unit bribed.
Demand payed.

Only after a screen movement or maybe next turn computation, does it compute it.

There might be even more possibilities. If my screen movement is true, then maybe this could be done multiple times as long as the screen is not moved !

Maybe it can become even more negative if multiple diplomacies are done.

Then again maybe it computes first and rechecks but most likely not, otherwise this bug could not have happened !

Cool thanks for reporting it !

Sometimes I can notice the "gold treasury" is not updated, especially after bribing units, but also maybe incite city revolt.

So for a maximum negative value one could try:

1. Diplomat near every enemy civilization.
2. Diplomats near multiple cities to be revolt incited.
3. Diplomats near multiple enemy units to be bribed.

Maybe there is some situation where maximum negativity can be reached and thus being a "true" american/modern person lol. LIVE ON LOANS LOL. EXPLOITED ! =D

 

[Osvaldo Manso]

Interesting! I have never noticed this but I guess you are correct: the game will only update your treasury when the turn is done.

 

[MiGaNuTs]

Pro tip for get -32500 gold :

finish your turn with +30000 gold
make +- 3k benefits/turn (ok, you need to have lot of citys with big pop size, democraty, many trade road, etc)

At next turn your treasure is in negative !
The game only checks your treasure once per turn. if you have more than 30k it rounds up to 30k to avoid overflow, but if you win too much, it doesn't work.