Loans

[Peets]

Do somebody use them actually?!

I never saw the AI using them, witch I hope they will do in a future patch. I'm playing my fifth game now in Civ 3 and never used a Loan...

[Matthevv]

I used one once when I wanted some cash to rush build when I was attacked. I've never had the AI ask for one though.

[Marko Polo]

I have never managed to get a loan from even gracious allies of mine. No matter how much money he has. So what's needed to be able to get a loan?

[zanthus]

You can manually give an AI civ a loan. In order to find the largest loan the AI can (or is willing to) afford, I put all of my money on the table and see what the highest ammount per turn the AI will even give me a chance at. Then take 18*x where x is amount of gold/turn. Offer this to AI and you have just become a loan shark!

[Kc7mxo]

I don't think that they fully implemented laons in this game, probably somethign that they forgot about. The AI never uses it, and has never given me one, even when he does have enough money.

Doesn't bother me a whole lot though, at least compared to the hitpoint system.

[zorbop]

there best before you attack.
i like to demand all the money they have and there world map and any other upfront stuff they have, and offer themm about 50gold per turn. then attack them before i have to pay any of it to cancel the deal.
it works perfectly.

[zanthus]

You are right, Kc7mxo (BTW does that stand for something?), the loan aspect of Civ 3 isn't fully impemented like it was in SMAC. There loans were actually worth your time to give to a partner because you could almost double your money over 100 years. Here, the best I can do is a 20% return over 20 years. And in Civ 3, if you go to war, the loan is completely forgotten, whereas in SMAC loan payments were resumed along with peaceful relations, which could be a good or a bad thing. That would help close the loophole you found, zorbop. I think that the people at Firaxis wasted a great opportunity to enhance the economic portion of Civ 3 here.

My rant about the complaning about the hitpoint system:
Ever since ther have been Civ games, there have been illogical battle results. For example, in Civ 2 I had a lone engineer beat off wave after wave of attacks by ironclads. I don't remember who said it, but someone here at apolyton put it a great way.
We have to think of these units, not as an old wooden frigate destroying a submarine, but as a 2/2/4 unit destroying a 8/6/3 unit. Even though it is mathematically unlikely, it is still possible. Just like people win the lottery, so to will unlikely results happen if the opportunity occurs enough times.