AI trading Glitch/Exploit?

[Dominae]

As the human player, if I check "Always Renegotiate Deals", I expect the deals to always be renegotiated every 20 turns. It makes no difference to me if the AI wants to keep the trade or not; I want to see the the leader's face and reagree on the deal every 20 turns. Is this not what the option is meant to do?


Dominae

[badams52]

got it dexters. unfortunately, to answer that question, you would probably need to ask Soren, and I haven't seen him post on this board in a looooong time.

Originally posted by Dominae
I have noticed the glitch badams mentions. Personally I'm trying to figure out what the "Always Renegotiate Deals" option is supposed to do. Does it mean "always renegotiate deals when the AI remembers to, according to some fuzzy logic", or what?

I believe the "ARD" option makes it so that after 20 turns if you forget to renegotiate the deal, the diplomacy screen comes up as if you were the one renegotiating and not the AI, but I'm not certain. I remember sometimes that if you click on the deal to renegotiate the price the AI would say "no way," even though he was willing to accept the deal before you tried to renegotiate. But I also think that sometimes when it comes up, the AI says "we must renegotiate." I'm guessing in those cases the AI would have contacted us to renegotiate if the ARD wasn't checked.

What I also find amusing is when you have 2 separate deals that are ending on the same turn (I do this sometimes cause you can take more gold from the AI this way for luxuries). If you have ARD checked, you get one one turn, and the second the next turn.

[badams52]

Originally posted by Dominae
As the human player, if I check "Always Renegotiate Deals", I expect the deals to always be renegotiated every 20 turns. It makes no difference to me if the AI wants to keep the trade or not; I want to see the the leader's face and reagree on the deal every 20 turns. Is this not what the option is meant to do?

Have you never used it Dominae? The basic is that after the 20 turn deal you have going expires and you forget during your turn to renegotiate the deal, during the AI's turn the diplomacy screen comes up and you are face to face with the AI asking to renegotiate.

I was afraid that having ARD on would force me to cancel those exploitive salpeter gpt deals, but it doesn't. The deal is still there and all you need to do is to click accept this deal and it's renewed for another 20 turns even though the AI already hooked up his saltpeter and doesn't need this deal anymore.

[Catt]

Ah, I misunderstood the glitch in question. I thought the glitch referred to was the discrepancy between the AI choosing to continue a deal (i.e., not renegotiate) when its income was insufficient to cover the payments vs. the AI refusing to continue the deal when you renegotiate it. That glitch was highlighted when the "always renegotiate" option came into play, and you could save and reload to see that: (1) the AI wouldn't end a deal on its own; but (2) would refuse the deal if you chose to renegotiate (apparently because of a lack of adequate current income). In other words, the AI would happily continue a deal that it would reject if you reoffered it.

Dominae - think of "always renegotiate" as a computer-aided reminder to you that a deal has expired. Without the option enabled, your 20 turn deals will continue until the Ai seeks to renegotiate or you manually reopen the negotiations. With the option enabled, each of your 20 turn deals pops up on the trade table as it expires (forcing / reminding you to renegotiate a deal).

badams52 - no, alexman's explanation didn't address that. One could spin a tale that iron, when no longer needed, was still worth something as a "backup" supply, but that explantion falls apart with horses or rubber (since they won't deplete). That, IMHO, is a glitch.

BTW - others have pointed out some potentially helpful tactics wrt the "always renegotiate." The one I remeber (and could find easily with the search function) was by TheNicoOne at CFC:

Originally posted by TheNiceOne at CFC
I'd also like to add that there may be a good reason for turning the "Always renegotiate deals after 20 turns" preference. If you have several deals going on with the same civ and want them all to end at the same time (just before you declare war), you should turn the option off, so that one deal doesn't get renegotiated 3 turns before your planned attack.

Another interesting trade lesson I learned last game was this: If you buy a resource from a civ for gold or techs, and you really want to continue to buy this resource, then add 1 gpt to the deal as well, even if the deal is already accepted.

The reason for this is that if you only gave instant goods (tech, gold), then when the deal is over after 20 turns, the AI will simply let it fade unnoticed, and may contact another AI civ and sell the resource there before you even get a chance to suggest a deal.
If you added 1 gpt to the deal however, then the AI will call you up, and tell that it want to end the resource for 1gpt deal, and then you get the chance to suggest a new deal.

Catt

Edit: bunch of x-posts make my response largely duplicative.

[Dominae]

I always use ARD. The AI very often forgets to pop up a window when a particular 20-turn deal is up. I know this because in the OCC AU, I would have had popups every few turns. In fact I had very few.

It seems to me that the AI will offer to renegotiate deals only under special circumstances, which makes the 'A' in ARD very misleading.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Additionally, the AI will "forget" to inform you when a deal expires and it has no desire to renew it (which is close to what the leader-head actually says). I would assume this is a case of renegotiation, yet it does not always offer you this service (even if the option is selected).


Dominae

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae
I always use ARD. The AI very often forgets to pop up a window when a particular 20-turn deal is up. I know this because in the OCC AU, I would have had popups every few turns. In fact I had very few.

It seems to me that the AI will offer to renegotiate deals only under special circumstances, which makes the 'A' in ARD very misleading.

Take a look at TheNiceOne's post I quoted above - it may explain the curiousity. ARD will only operate on deals that have continuing obligations from both sides, so gpt in exchange for techs just fade away after 20 turns. If you weren't getting renegotiation options on resources-for-gpt or resources-for-resources . . . then that's weird -- I haven't ever failed to generate a renegotiation pop-up in such circumstances (sometimes to my detriment )

Catt

[Dominae]

I'll pay closer attention next time I play.

End thread-jack.


Dominae

[Catt]

And now I remember better the subject that alexman weighed in on but still not his precise theory (though I now think it was very much like Aeson's) -- with the advent of "always renegotiate" you could happily click "agreed" to renew a deal for 20 turns but if you choose to renegotiate you wouldn't be able to strike the same deal.

Sorry for the confusion I've injected into this thread

Catt

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Catt
And now I remember better the subject that alexman weighed in on but still not his precise theory (though I now think it was very much like Aeson's) -- with the advent of "always renegotiate" you could happily click "agreed" to renew a deal for 20 turns but if you choose to renegotiate you wouldn't be able to strike the same deal.

I thought that's the very glitch which prompted dexter to start this thread.




Dominae

[Catt]

and the confusion reigns! I thought the glitch was that the AI continued a deal even though it was beyond its current income and its treasury was gone -- meaning it was disbanding units or selling improvements to do so That was my second take on the glitch at issue, and was based on this quote:

Originally posted by dexters
I'm more concerned about how the AI is paying for it during the turns where it couldn't or wouldn't pay the price.

Catt

[alexman]

You guys seem Bamboozled with this whole story...

[dexters]

That other thread offered some interesting theories on why this is happening.

I wish Soren would weigh in on this :/