Astromarine Astromarine

Just finished my third game. Please nerf this

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Just finished my third game. Please nerf this

from Stardock Forums
I played a game yesterday on a small map, Beginner AIs all round. I'm still just getting a feel for the game before jumping into the higher diffs, and since I'm usually very poor in military play, I'm concentrating on that.

I went for a "rush"-type strategy. Rush to Transports while noone else has ships built, and destroy one or two civs before anyone else has time to breathe. I know this probably doesn't work higher-up, but it's not really my complaint. The problem is the HUGE boost I can get because the AI tries to make peace with me before I annihilate it. I can extract enormous tribute from them, for a long long time, and just jump on them in the next round. They get wiped out, and I get money coming out of my ears because tribute doesn't stop even when the payer is dead.

There are two problems that I can see:

1) They die, tribute doesn't stop. Instant cheese waiting to happen.

2) The diplo window says, for example, "500 available" when I try to choose money payments. That's cool. But since that is their *total* treasury at this point, it makes NO sense that I can select 500 for 2, 3, 4, sometime 10 or more turns. Where do they get this kind of cash? They should even that maximum value out over the number of months I selected, not pay that value each month.

Thanks for hearing me out

Astro

~SDC~
1,297 views 32 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
Okay, very strange:

I had 1652 in my treasury, so I offered 1652/turn for 50 turns to the Drengin (who are the only major empire I'm in touch with. Two turns later, they came to me asking for 534 BC tribute - they never ask for large amounts of cash when the treasury's low, since I can't afford it. THey demand technology or planets or what-have-you.

There may be a bug here. :)

Ah, well. Hit the "hangs on turn end" bug, so I saved and tried to load, which crashed to desktop.

Strange behavior, though.

~SDC~
Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think a hardcoded upper limit is necessary, although it could not hurt to have the AI consider how much debt it's agreeing to.

~SDC~
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
Admittedly (answering myself) it seems like it already does. I can't really ask for truly ruinous tribute from AI races for tech or trade goods. If a race has about 300 BC, I can ask for 100 BC tribute for maybe 5 or 6 turns for gravitic accelerators. If that race has about 1000 BC, I can ask for tribute over 12 or 13 turns for the same trade good, despite having the same relative diplomatic ability. The question is whether it does this enough to make a difference.

~SDC~
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
In response to:

"Okay, so I'm behind a bit in technology. So, I go to the Drengin and trade for some of theirs, as well as some nice ships, maybe a starbase or two. I offer up monthly installments, relatively low payments for a few hundred turns (or whatever). A few turns later, I declare war. The tribute I offered in exchange for the techs, etc. stops."

I disagree: if you pay tribute and go to war, you should imho still pay tribute. IF on the other hand you RECEIVE tribute for a peace agreement, it should STOP if you go to war with that race again. This would give the player (and AI players) an incentive to respect 'peace treaties'.

In this way, you can still get lots of money from a race, but if you want to attack them the next turn, you should ask for direct cash instead of tribute per turn. This way, i would be much more willing to pay tribute to AI empires, becaus i get a little insurance that they will be less likely to attack me.

Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
You missed the last line of that message, which pretty much said "if you want to see more threads titled 'please nerf this,' push for that change." I was perhaps unclear, but I think having tribute stop when war is declared is an extremely bad idea.

As for tribute for peace - only if the peace treaties have a duration. I would not mind seeing the options to go to peace for "3/6/12/24 months" in the diplomacy screen, but as it is now, the treaty is only to "stop the war right now." Since the AI who asks for peace wants it, but will probably build up to go to war again as soon as possible, I don't have any qualms about doing the same. And I don't want to see tribute nerfed like that.

~SDC~
Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top
Yep, it seems funny at first but Brad took the approach of "the contract says what the contract says" with peace/war tribute. In this case I think Civ3 with the mandatory 20 turn duration on treaties did things a bit more elegantly, but Brad's system is certainly more flexible.

When you're on the losing end of an asswhoopin you'll agree to a lot of silly stuff even if you're pretty sure they're just going to start kicking you again.
Reply #32 from Stardock Forums Top
Pretty much. I also don't want AIs going to war with me just to stop tribute, nor do I want to see a hojillion new threads saying "Nerf the tribute-kill!" Cause they'll say that. :)

~SDC~