Diplomatic limitations- Too harsh?

[_BuRjaCi_]

I was just wondering if anyone thinks the limitations in diplomacy are too harsh. I understan that the human can run circles around the AI if he can trade anything for anything, but still; it's just silly that I can't trade techs for resources or regular payments of gold. It's not realistic and its one of the three or so "unfun" elemens in cIV for me.

( the other two are: the non-custamisable spaceship and teh lack of focus from the AI on the naval and ari part of the game)

I am not advocating total freedom but just a little bit of common sense.

Can't we teach the AI to weigh between having surplus oil to sell on one hand or getting Flight on the other?

Or maybe accepting harsh payments per turn for a critical science tech that would allow it to keep the technological pace despite having less gold per turn?

[jbp26]

one problem with this in civ 3 was you could trade tech for gold per turn to every civ. since they just gave you all their gold per turn, they would quickly have to decrease science to cope with increased maintenance, meaning slower advances, and being forced to buy them for you. it was easy to quickly make every civ dependent on you for tech.

[Hellcat]

Plus you could buy a tech for GPT or resources, declare war the next turn (and thus cancel the deal), and basically get a free tech.

[Dis]

and that was the fun part.

[MasterDave]

The rules are in place to prevent the AI from getting abused. I think they are an improvement over the way they were upon release (no such restrictions).

[zeace]

I agree that no trading is better than the abuse-fest that was tech trading in Civ III. But I'd think that isntead of disabling per turn for fixed stuff trades, they should just be heavily weighted against the human's favour. eg. The AI will only make such a trade depending on it's friendliness with you:
Hostile, no fixed for per turn trades (afraid you'll start a war to end payments) Per turn for fixed only when get is worth 5x the give
Friendly, Only when the get is worth 2x the give. Also only trade gold if AI beaker rate is at least as high as the Human's
Vassal, anytime the trade is worth at least 1.5x

This way you're less likely to be able to abuse the AI, but you could abuse your vassals (as you should ).

---

Interestingly, with trading extra resources to our vassals we have found a new way to take all of their gold. Every time you make a trade to get some gold, they reduce their science rate, freeing up more gold so you can trade another resource next turn. It's the same cycle that led to abuse of these trades in Civ III. Maybe what really needs to be fixed is the AI's inability to consider how much of it's total commerce is going to trades?

[_BuRjaCi_]

[SIZE=1]
Interestingly, with trading extra resources to our vassals we have found a new way to take all of their gold. Every time you make a trade to get some gold, they reduce their science rate, freeing up more gold so you can trade another resource next turn. It's the same cycle that led to abuse of these trades in Civ III. Maybe what really needs to be fixed is the AI's inability to consider how much of it's total commerce is going to trades?

Thats exactly what I'm saying. If you want to eliminate the posibility of humans abusing diplomacy you may as well eliminate it all together. The answer isn't in restricitons but in teaching the AI to recognize certain situations and not accept a coal for satelites deal from teir worst enemy.

I mean look at GalCiv 2, I remember a few years ago I sugessted that the AI should recognize an imminante attack and launch a counter attack before its too late, the response back then was : Go play multiplayer!

[Dis]

For civ5 I really do hope they can improve the AI in diplomacy. I'm not sure how hard this would be. You'd think it'd be easier than improving the combat capability of the AI. But it would require the AI to put a value on everything, and how it relates to the current state of their empire.

[LDiCesare]

There's an idea that can avoid some abuse (I had coded something along these lines in Clash):
You do a treaty like gold per turn (10 turns) vs a tech. If you declare war before the 10 turns finish, then you immediately pay a penalty fee worth the total of what you still owe them (or another penalty decided at the time the contract was made). The problem here is Civ doesn't really support negative gold, but when you're at 0 gold and spenfing more than you earn, the game starts killing your units, so it would be adapted.
So we'd just need a clause of 'what if you break the deal before 10 turns' (10 or any other fixed number to keep it simple for the ai), and apply the penalty to the failing civ.

The other limitation I dislike is:
'We ask you to go to war vs XXX' Yes/No.
I'd rather have Yes/No/Haggle, because at that time I certainly think I could offer my help in exchange for something (gold, tech, whatever).

[Virdrago]

to both ideas