[GS] Send Aid Emergency is completely broken

[GrumboMumbo]

I was playing a game with a friend this week, so 2 human players and roughly 8 AI players on a large map.

My friend was playing as Lautaro, and on turn 306 he was hit by a natural disaster and as a result the Send Aid Emergency Competition started. This means that you can gift gold and complete city projects to send aid to the player in trouble (Lautaro in this case)

I didn't think anything of it, I even sent a small amount of aid myself. But on turn 328, my friend arrived on my doorstep with 8 Giant death robots...He swiftly wiped me off the face of the planet.....game over.

I later went back and checked the Send Aid Ongoing Competition tab.....the total combined aid gold that had been sent by all players was 61,467!!! So the AI had gifted my friend 60,000 gold over the course of 22 turns. My friend swiftly bought up all the Giant death robots he needed, and that was that.

I later checked the autosaves, and 90% of the AI cities in the game were set to a 'Send Aid' project. So am I missing something here? Have Firaxis even played their game? This is game changing and completely broken is it not?

 

[bbbt]

Intially the send aid project didn't send the money to affected player, and was just a competition. The change is from complaints on this board that it doesn't make any sense and the player should receive the money. Maybe Firaxis shouldn't always listen to the player base.

 

[Bitterman]

Yeah I think I've read somewhere they intend to change it.

It's absolutely ridiculous as is it now.

 

[tedhebert]

Wow... I don't play MP, but this obviously is a no-no... broken all the way, should not be usable in MP

 

[Kwami]

The natural disaster competition has always been broken. Even when Send Aid didn't give Gold to the player, the AI would still donate ~10 gpt every two turns. It's all just badly implemented.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Ok glad I've not gone insane

@bbbt I think giving gold to the civ in trouble is a good idea, and I think it's great that Firaxis is willing to listen to it's community and make changes. But I don't think anyone would want the AI to be this volatile. Either this has barely been playtested by QA, or it has been tested and the issue has just been ignored by senior designers. Not that great for something we all paid good money for.

Perhaps this seems harsh, and maybe I am just another frustrated consumer. But build up too many of those and you no longer have a business.

I know good AI is tough to create, but if I was a lead/dev at Firaxis, I would make tweaking the AI a major priority.

Without wanting to sound too dramatic, I want my money back. Because playing a strategy game that gets decided by a coin flip at the end, just isn't fun.

 

[Pfeffersack]

There is another AI-problem with this competition in regard to gifting gold - the AI always does it by gifting a per turn deal (GpT), which is a bad idea after the first round of the competition running, because the later you you gift GpT the more of its effect is wasted (the competition is already over, but the GPT-deal is still going on). The AI should better gift lump sums after the first turn has passed.