PRICE of SHIPS trade suggestion:

from Stardock Forums
This isn't fully thought out, but here:

The price the AI considers worthy for a ship in trade, or the value it assigns it should be lowered the further away the ship is from any its own empire or place where a battles are occuring. The price of a DEFENDER 5 sectors away from the front is 0 compared to one only 2 Parsecs away from where the alien is fighting a battle.

This formula would not apply to the human player when buying, neccesarily, as it's more a choice of how the buy uses his intelligence to decide whether to take the ship or not, while the AI isn't ever going to be that smart.

Somehow this should be fixed, as its too easy to manipulate selling things to people you know are really worthless. By the time they get the ship anywhere, you've all moved on to the next generation of ships.

~SDC~
245 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
It would also help curb the tactic of buying the defenders from someone you are about to attack as they would place more value on their own ships that are guarding their planets.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Hadn't thought of that. Devious. The buying and selling of ships is a tricky thing to keep from being exploited, and the price ought to be really steep the more they don't trust you.

~SDC~
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yup. I had reached a point in my last game where I was slowly bankrupting myself. I needed more revenue producing planets, but I couldn't conquer the Aceans because their ships were about 3x better than mine (because they had two tricked out military resource starbases).

So I traded them a good planet in a sector dominated by my influence and in return they gave me all 8 of their dreadnaughts 3 fully loaded Combat Transports and 3 resource generating starbases (they were on Normal intelligence)

Shortly thereafter the planet I had traded to them rebelled and rejoined me. I then landed 15 million of their own troops from the purchased transports and conquered their homeworld.

That part was particularly cheesy...Transports should come empty...every transport I've purchased always comes maxed at full.

In another cheesy trick, I dominated the Torians by trading them tech for Transports (which I then sent against the above Aceans). I turned a 40 billion pop planet with a graphic on the minimap the size of a quarter to a barely visible dot...they just kept giving me transports with 5 billion guys a pop.

Hopefully that little exploit will get closed.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Yep. that brings up another point. The AI not only needs to eval ships based on their distance from their empire or whether they are currently in use. It also needs to eval planets similarly. It should value planets that are far from their empire alot less. It should lower the value of planets that are culturally dominated by a foreign empire alot less. If you have a crapload of ships next to the planet you are offering and you are not on good terms, it should not put much value in the planet...

ALSO, it should try to dupe the player with these same cheese tactics. I imagine quite a few people would fall for the ol' give a planet away and get it back through culture gambit.

Trading is very difficult to teach the computer. There are *so* many things that go into the value of the trade that is easy for humans to qualify, but difficult for computers to quantify.

~SDC~
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
OMG- I thought I was good at buggering the AI with my trades... those are good stories and illustrative of what sort of strategies are open through trade that just come off as cheesy. I'm really hoping SD can work out a way to balance theseissues so that we odn't have to impose self-limited ways of thinking creatively *within* the game constraints.