Is giving the computer corporations cheating?

[kendric]

The AI obviously can't handle corporations correctly. They spam them everywhere, giving you loads of money and creating massive maintanance nightmares for their cities.

Do you think giving the computer one of your corporations is legit or do you think its ruins the challenge and should be avoided almost as if it was an exploit.

 

[Cabay Jet]

Some of the dumber humans around here will do the same, I don't view it as cheating. I view it as a mistake that's begging to be exploited.

 

[obsolete]

I have not had much time to experiment with them, so can't quite say much right now. It's a new gimmick, so may have some problems.

What I'm still trying to solve, is the age old problem of seeing if I can destroy the UN after I build it. The only thing I can do is build it in a crappy city, then gift the city, then raze the city. It works in theory, but won't work in practice for obvious reasons.

Argggggg!

What to do with a wonder that can only shoot you in the foot if you build it, but if you don't build it, someone else will? That is the problem I've never been able to solve.

 

[Cabay Jet]

Build the UN, elect yourself the the chairman of the board, and when you're presented with a list of resolutions to pass click "none".

If you're really friendly with everyone, you can elect yourself the diplomatic winner...

 

[obsolete]

elect yourself the the chairman of the board

Works on Prince no doubt... the problem is if you're not? There are very strong diplo modifiers against you on the high levels.

 

[Cabay Jet]

It works on prince? I was using it for Noble.

You could bribe somebody to poison the water supply while the city was still small on marathon...

 

[Underdawg]

Works on Prince no doubt... the problem is if you're not? There are very strong diplo modifiers against you on the high levels.

I thought there was just a hidden -4 modifier if the relation is to the Human player. With Aggressive AI on, that modifier is gone (allows for more AI to AI wars)

 

[Tyrael]

There's no diplo modifiers for Agressive AI anymore. It just makes the DoWar more likely to return a value of 1, making them prepare war against someone. AI in general now isn't as biased against the human when declaring war (more AI vs AI wars).

 

[kendric]

How did this become a post about the UN?

 

[Gnarfflinger]

Giving a corporation to the Computer is a trade off. You give them a huge benefit (wherever they want it) in return they give you a nice sum of gold. I just need a little experience with them to know which ones to spread and which ones I need to leave room for...

 

[obsolete]

There's no diplo modifiers for Agressive AI anymore. It just makes the DoWar more likely to return a value of 1, making them prepare war against someone. AI in general now isn't as biased against the human when declaring war (more AI vs AI wars).

I did have monty still go out of his way just to attack only the human player. He went half-way around the word to get me, when I had a decent large sized axe stack anyhow. Then, after kicking his ass, he decides to continue the stupidity by going all out of his way to attack the human player AGAIN, despite being very backwards in tech. O_o

I don't see the changes.

 

[Underdawg]

I did have monty still go out of his way just to attack only the human player. He went half-way around the word to get me, when I had a decent large sized axe stack anyhow. Then, after kicking his ass, he decides to continue the stupidity by going all out of his way to attack the human player AGAIN, despite being very backwards in tech. O_o

I don't see the changes.

Well, you don't exactly tell the whole story here my friend...

Relations? Power Levels? How many AI in the game? What size map? How many troops were in the cities he first aimed to take? And so forth...

 

[Jay]

Well, you don't exactly tell the whole story here my friend...

Relations? Power Levels? How many AI in the game? What size map? How many troops were in the cities he first aimed to take? And so forth...

Also its Monty.....he decalres war on you from across the world? well with him there is no other way

 

[Black_Waltz]

Giving a corporation to the Computer is a trade off. You give them a huge benefit (wherever they want it) in return they give you a nice sum of gold. I just need a little experience with them to know which ones to spread and which ones I need to leave room for...

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Corporations at this point will simply make the AI's maintainence untennable, forcing him to lower science etc and crippling economy. It's fairly cheap to spam your corp to them as it will pretty much enable you to win unapposed - especially if the human builds his Corperate HQ in his Wall Street city.

 

[MrCynical]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Corporations at this point will simply make the AI's maintainence untennable, forcing him to lower science etc and crippling economy. It's fairly cheap to spam your corp to them as it will pretty much enable you to win unapposed - especially if the human builds his Corperate HQ in his Wall Street city.

There is a certain element of trade off. One, corporations can provide a worthwhile amount of resources for their maintenance costs, though this is substantially more difficult when the corporation is foreign. I would still be wary of dropping Sushi or Mining inc into high food or production cities of the AI.

The second point is that once an AI has a corporation present, even if they didn't found it, they begin to quite justifiably horde the resources for it. This in turn makes it impossible for you to trade for them, thus weakening your domestic corporation branches.

The simplest way round this is to found separate corporations for domestic and foreign use. Keep the good ones like Sid's Sushi for yourself, and spam the weaker ones to them. If they already have aluminium and oil, Standard ethanol and Aluminium inc don't do very much for them. Civ jewellers is another weak one unless they're going for cultural victory.

As to whether it's cheating - I'm dubious on this one. It certainly weakens them, but if they stick to free market (yes, you can make it hard for them to keep that) and courthouses it's far from impractical. Also, the AI does use the same tactics. I'm seen the Ai spam cretive constructions to all my cities, which was irritating, but not crippling. Granted it was too late in the space race for it to be much of an issue. I'm reluctant to class a tactic which the AI uses as "cheating", particularly when it's virtually the only part of corporations they use effectively.

Hopefully the (proper) patch will beef up the AI's use of corporations, which is downright nonsensical much of the time, and maybe tone down their use as a weapon, making the trade off of spamming them more serious.

 

[madscientist]

In my monarch and/or Prince games the AI seams smart enough to switch to state property. In fact I usually find it a little hard to find someone NOT in state property to spread corps. One way to rbeak this is to NOT trade food/health resources to them and force them into environmentalism (helps to give them medicine).

In BTS as far as the UN, you can defy any UN resolution (staying in representation rather than universal sufferage) just be prepared to back you decision up with guns.

 

[r_rolo1]

With the actual inflation rate and with the corp-spamming AI ( corps = religions ) spreading a corp to a AI is the closest thing I can imagine of economical terrorism. Ok, they have a certain trade off caracter, but they wreck the AI economy... If we are going to be serious, corps can damage more a AI than a direct military assault or a full nuke attack if used properly by the human player.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

Corporations at this point will simply make the AI's maintainence untennable,

If they are a smaller Civ and have courthouses, that's less of a factor. The example of Mining Inc. means that they have a big production boost in every city that has that corporation. In some cities, I could see adding a huge amount of production even if it meant giving 10 gpt to a rival civ for a huge boost to the production in a certain city...

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Personally I think it may not be cheating, but it is a huge boost to your economy while an even or worse trade off for them (later in the game anyway.) And I've seen weird AI behavior, like spreading my corporations more than their own.
imo, the HQ income is too high, especially in maps with lots of cities, and with the AI helping spread the little viruses, er, corporations, you can rake huge gold surpluses.