About reputation, Am I right?

[wervdon]

It seems that in most of my games I end up having a bad reputation regarding keeping per turn/luxury trade deals, and it always happens about halfway through the game. Until just now, I couldn't figure out why since I never declare war and break such deals (I always always check first).

Then this last game I noticed it when it happened. I made a trade deal with the persians. My ivory, map, and some gold for one of their techs, I forget which one and its not important anyways. About halfway through that trade deal the Babylonians eliminated them ending our trade deal. After that anytime I started offering resources or gold per turn in deals it'd automatically become "They'd never accept such a deal" even if before I added the extra resource it was "We almost have a deal here." indicating my reputation had become bad. Its important to note that I was not involved in any wars at the time, so the only feasible explanation was that the ai's blamed me for breaking the persian ivory deal when they got eliminated.

Can anyone else confirm this? If so, this has to be a bug since I had no control over the babylonians

[vondrack]

Yes, your assumption is correct, the deal that got broken even though you did nothing wrong was the cause of your suddenly broken reputation. It is a known problem - the AIs are not really great in determining whom to blame a broken deal on...

[miccofl]

It is possible they just wanted more from you. The AI can be greedy. Try asking it what IT wants, you don't have to agree (to anything other than the fact it is greedy.)

[Catt]

I'm not sure if it's (1) a bug, (2) bad design, or (3) good design for some reason I can't fathom, but I and seemingly many other posters have noted the same game function.

I really don't like it either, as it imposes the sometimes harsh penalty of a blackened reputation even though you faithfully held up your end of the bargain. A more rational reputation effect is one of the top items on my "Civ 3 Improvements Wishlist."

Catt

[Ribannah]

It is definitely a bug, and has been reported as such.
For the time being, it's best not to make per turn deals with civs that can disappear any moment.

[wervdon]

It is definitely a bug, and has been reported as such.
For the time being, it's best not to make per turn deals with civs that can disappear any moment.

Well I know that now, I guess Ill just have to live with having a crappy reputation in the rest of the game Im playing. Incidently, when I made the deal with persia in this case they still had about 5 or 6 cities :P They just got steam rolled by a bab/greko alliance.

Here's another question while we are at it. If you are in a per turn deal with a civ and it declares war on you thereby breaking it, it only damages their reputation I hope I wouldn't normally ask since it seems so logical, but given this its a good idea to ask

It is a known problem - the AIs are not really great in determining whom to blame a broken deal on...

How hard could that be to figure out for the ai? If you declare war on someone you had a trade deal with, it damages your reputation, otherwise it doesnt :P Unless there is some other way to intentionally break a trade agreement I dont know of that is

[jkelly]

Unless there is some other way to intentionally break a trade agreement I dont know of that is

Pillaging your own roads, selling off a harbour... I wonder if the "always your fault unless they declare war on you" rule is a feature instead of a bug; a lazy way to stop such exploits.

[wervdon]

I didnt think about disrupting the trade network. Though really its just as easy to add a check to the function for pillaging and selling improvements to hurt your reputation if you do it and it ends a trade. And abandoning cities I guess

[JohnM2433]

It's a bit more complicated than that. For example, you can move all of your defenders out of a city, let an enemy take it, and then retake it. You will have the city back again, but any luxury from it you were trading will be lost to your trade partner. And even if you don't lose a city on purpose, it still makes sense for your trade partner to be mad at you for defending the luxury source poorly.

The biggest problem is that you get blamed for broken deals when it's clearly your partner's fault that they're broken, them getting wiped out being the most extreme example. I think the best fix would be to be able to negotiate the cancellation of current deals, which would allow one party to offer another compensation for an accidentally broken deal. But I realize that this would require a lot of complicated programming (not just to implement the feature, but to get the AI to understand it.)

[wervdon]

Honestly in that last case, I think the current behavior is worse than the exploit

[Ribannah]

I simple pop-up would do.

"Your trade partner is about to get elimininated. Do you wish to stop all trade with them without repercussions?"

[kolpo]

Couldn't that rule be used agianst the AI?

Pillage the goods he trade with other AI and his reputation drops, let all AI on that way have awfull trade reputation so that you are the only repectable trade partner left

edit : but your peace repurtation would be awfull unless you can provoke the AI to attack(or arent they separated the different types of reputation?)

[fittstim]

Originally posted by jkelly

Pillaging your own roads, selling off a harbour... I wonder if the "always your fault unless they declare war on you" rule is a feature instead of a bug; a lazy way to stop such exploits.

I don't think so. I routinely pillage everyone's (enemies, neutrals, allies) roads that are not in anyones domain but just lie out in the middle of the desert connecting resources to civs. I've never noticed that this has affected my reputation.

[Hurricane]

He meant pillaging your OWN roads. If you lose your resource, you can't naturally trade it.

I think a good solution to this problem would be a pop-up informing that the trade is about to be cancelled, and that the losing side gets compensated proportionally for the remainder of the deal.

Say, for example, that you sold Iron for 500 gold. The iron supply suddenly runs out (like it often does) after 5 turns, so you have to compensate the AI with 375 gold. This would work equally well for luxuries (since the AI gives monetary values to them anyway). The biggest problem is of course what happens if you don't have that kind of money available?

[Traelin]

I've also noticed that the only time I've experienced a hit in rep is due to having a gold-per-turn deal with an AI that suddenly gets wiped. The other Civs refuse to trade Techs/luxuries/whatever-it-was-you-were-trading unless you have the cash on hand to pay them. Apparently the AI is too dumb to determine that it wasn't your fault the deal the broken. If this happens in the early to mid game, you can be seriously screwed to say the least.