Sudden Trade Cancellations

[Black Whole]

Well, this happened often to me but something strange happened.

I was playing India and I was fighting a war against Kublai Khan (damn backstabber...) over centuries. I had two friends, Elizabeth and Boudicca, which couldn't stand Kublai either. They didn't want to join the war, so I had to do it myself. But once, as soon as I hit enter, everyone declared war on me!

There weren't any pacts or such, the Apostlic Palace has been built (but I didn't know the owner).

 

[eric_]

I get these often, and I think the reason is because I've begun begging to my friends for gold. I think that now whenever an AI gives you a gift of gold (and tech?), you automatically sign a 10-turn peach treaty -- even if at peace.

This keeps you from getting gold and techs from a friend just before you backstab them, which is exactly what I tried to do once and was foiled due to this. I ended up attacking a different AI instead and nearly caused a full-scale world war.

Ah, that sounds vaguely familiar. Does this cut both ways? Is the AI forced into a Peace Treaty if they ask something of you and receive it?

At any rate, I believe I had made some tech trades with Peter shortly before this happened. I'll check the save.

Thanks!

 

[Spearthrower]

There really are a lot of conventional possibilities as to why this happened - you'd need to look in the WB to absolutely verify..... but let's not jump to calling it a bug eh?

I've had it happen when trade has been blocked by routes (i.e. Privateers blockading or port cities being captured.... I've had the Stop Trading with the Infidels.

As for the reason why you can start trading again next turn, think about this from another perspective. How many times in game have you seen a situation where one of your friendly civs has the only 3 wheats in the world.... they are trading 2 of them to other friends and 1 to an "infidel" - one of your enemies but one of their friends. They wont cancel the deal because they "couldn't betray their close friends".

As the player, if you built the AP you can get your religious friends to cancel all deals giving you a single turn to snatch that wheat deal back before they trade it out again.

Also remember, that resolution makes the target civ have a negative diplo hit for every civ that cancelled on them as well as removing the positive diplo points of "open borders" and "appreciate the years you supplied us with resources". Getting your religious friends to repeatedly cancel their deals on the infidel sets up nice bloques for you to work with later when everyone goes to Free Religion.

 

[mjs0]

Can the AI Blockade with ships, maybe?

I think this is spot on.
I have seen this happen several times and on one occasion a deal was cancelled in a suspicious manner like this (via a sea/coastal route) and it turned out it was blockaded by a privateer.

When this (a blockade) happens there is no warning, no communication from the other Civ just a deal cancelled message in the status area.

If it were the AP vote you would have to wait a number of turns to reestablish the deals with the AP members until the no trading with the infidel vote expires.

 

[eric_]

When this (a blockade) happens there is no warning, no communication from the other Civ just a deal cancelled message in the status area.

Based on the original post, this would mean that all coastal cities of multiple civs were blockaded at once, and then the blockades were immediately lifted, re-allowing the trades to be established on the same turn...

 

[mjs0]

Based on the original post, this would mean that all coastal cities of multiple civs were blockaded at once, and then the blockades were immediately lifted, re-allowing the trades to be established on the same turn...

Yup, I thought about that...

This could easily happen if the trade routes were through a single port city at either end or across a single explored area of ocean.
The blockade could easily be lifted if another AI sunk the privateer later during the same turn.

...however...on to what I hadn't considered...

I just realised that blockades don't affect open border agreements so that can't be the answer anyway.

 

[Colee]

Okay, so it was definitely the AP then. But having a "trade embargo" which lasts only 1 turn? Not even 1 turn, in fact, because it's possible to re-negotiate deals immediately? I don't think it was intended to work this way.

 

[kurtkage]

First of all, this happened to me multiple times in the game in question. It was only a couple of turns apart between deal canceled, to me this means it could not be the AP as you cannot pass resolutions that close together right? And then the whole 1 turn embargo thing tops it off.

I'm doubting that this was a blockade either as it was an archi map with many coastal cities. I'm having trouble believing the AI managed to blockade 6+ coastal cities, though I suppose it IS a possible explanation.

To be more clear on what happened, I had Friendly relations with America. Was trading Cow and Hit singles for american Corn and Gems. Also had open borders. All of a sudden I noticed that I was missing the corn, so I contact america and it seems they have been canceled. I redo the Same trade, and open borders. Next turn they cancel again, no contact from America telling me This deal is off, just cancels in the event spam. Happened probably 4-5 times with varying time between 1-2 turns. Then it stopped happening the rest of the game.

The strange thing is that other civs would not sign OB with me again for several turns after canceling , while america would at first, then on the 2nd or 3rd time America would not sign them either. I moused over the red open borders and it said something like "Not right now, maybe in a few years".

Eventually this all stopped and things were back to normal shrug.

Unfortunatly I don't think I have a save but I will look.

 

[the_elf]

I think this is spot on.
I have seen this happen several times and on one occasion a deal was cancelled in a suspicious manner like this (via a sea/coastal route) and it turned out it was blockaded by a privateer.

When this (a blockade) happens there is no warning, no communication from the other Civ just a deal cancelled message in the status area.

If it were the AP vote you would have to wait a number of turns to reestablish the deals with the AP members until the no trading with the infidel vote expires.

It would be nice if there was some kind of notification of "Trade routes blocked by enemy Privateer," or something like that. At least then you would know what was at play. I kinda wish that you'd see the same thing when fur and ivory obsolete.

 

[Spearthrower]

It's not an embargo - it's a cessation of trade.... which has pretty powerful diplomatic effects (loss of 2 positive diplo points and gain 1 negative diplo points for a potential relative hit of -3 diplomacy between those civs).

 

[FrancisMarion]

Another example of the AP doing it's job... to annoy the player to no end.

 

[SickCycle]

It could of been as someone already stated a blockade?

It could of been privateers so no war would of been declared? It may not of affected all your trade routes because maybe a few of the trades that were coming in weren't connected to all your cities, connected by a certain river or coastal area and a barb or AI used privateers to cut the trade on you or the other AI's.

 

[mjs0]

It could of been as someone already stated a blockade?

It could of been privateers so no war would of been declared? It may not of affected all your trade routes because maybe a few of the trades that were coming in weren't connected to all your cities, connected by a certain river or coastal area and a barb or AI used privateers to cut the trade on you or the other AI's.

Yes, but as I realised after posting the same idea...blockading with privateers cannot cut open border agreements (which the OP also lost), only resource trading.

 

[Leventis]

Yes, but as I realised after posting the same idea...blockading with privateers cannot cut open border agreements (which the OP also lost), only resource trading.

Yes, and to add further, each of the civs had several (7 or 8) coastal cities each and I doubt they had that many privateers at the time anyway. Furthermore, could anyone suggest why some of the trades I had going were unaffected? As I recall I had a sheep for clam, and a gpt for fish deal that stayed in tact, while everything else disappeared

The more posts I'm reading here, the more inclined I am to think it was a bug rather than the AP, and I'm 99.99% certain it wasn't blockades.

 

[DomA]

That's weird if it's the AP. Early on I voted for one embargo without realising the costs, and it took a full ten turns before I could re-open trade with the targeted civ again.

So far, my experience with blockades is that they don't affect traded ressources nor OB, only foreign trade routes. I'm guessing all coastal trade routes of a civ on another continent would need to be blockaded before ressources can't be traded, and I'm not sure it's how it works.

 

[LegionSteve]

If it's not a blockade and it's not the AP, then maybe it is a bug. You could post the save game in the bug reports forum and ask them to have a look at it?

 

[Leventis]

If it's not a blockade and it's not the AP, then maybe it is a bug. You could post the save game in the bug reports forum and ask them to have a look at it?

Yeah, I'm thinking that too, but we'll wait a bit longer to see if anyone else can come up with any more ideas.

 

[Quagga]

I too think it is the AP: After reading this thread, I'm now convinced I was also seeing the other side of this in the game I'm currently playing. The AP vote to stop trading with Asoka kept coming up and coming up Yes. My trades with him would be cancelled. Then he'd be immediately on my doorstep asking me to re-establish them (which I would do every time, since I was also a No voter).

I think that the AP trade boycott is not working correctly.

 

[DomA]

It's possible - there are some weird things with the votes.

When someone defies a resolution, does it automatically make it fail?

I had some of them which should have succeeded (eg: Fails! Total : 1195 votes. Needed 790 votes). I often don't bother to read all the results, but all the times I noticed this I think there was someone defying the resolution. I thought all it did (beside the penalty) was that the civ that defied the resolution wasn't bound by it even if it passed.

If one civ defying it is enough to make a resolution fail and it's not a bug, it's actually a veto and quite a bit overpowered considering the consequences aren't that bad.

 

[Orion071]

I also had all of my trades with Roosevelt cancelled out of the blue in my last game. I re-established them the next turn. It couldn't have been the AP because I was running the proper state religion so I was a full member and never saw a vote. Also I was the only one with the tech for Privateers so it couldn't have been a blockade either. Just one of those quirky BTS things I guess.