AI and Debt

from Stardock Forums
First off - incredible game. The last 4X I played was Koei's venerable "Nobunaga's Ambition," so it's been awhile. But this is fantastic. :)

I'm on my fourth game; large galaxy, normal AI. I'm doing quite well and in the process of smashing the Drengins. Slowly but surely I'm making progress - some event earlier in the game caused all planets in the Drengin vicinity to increase exponentially in quality, so invasion takes time. I've done what I can to separate the Drengin from resources, and the computer now more or less rates me as winning the war.

One problem: I would have thought I'd throw the Drengin into backruptcy, and yet it keeps on pumping out starships. I looked at my espionage report, and the empire was running a debt of -5800!

I haven't read any indication that AI are exempt from the -500 threshold. What gives?
202 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
On a hunch, I reloaded the game and, after rejecting a Drengin bid for truce, looked at their stats.

Very interesting: still a -5800 treasury, but this time something in the code kicked in and spending finally stopped cold at 0.

That doesn't explain how the computer was able to spend itself nearly 6K in the red. Bug?
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Either the Drengin rush-built an extremely expensive item, or there is a bug in the code (as shown in the FAQ, section "Does the AI cheat"): http://www.galciv.com/faq/faq.html


So in pColony->CalcTaxesCollected() at the end it gets:
ulTaxes = ulTaxes * (40 + ulIntelligence);
End of quote


Note that this line multiplies the amount by at least 40. There is nothing in the FAQ that states that it gets divided by 100 to prevent the excessive growth. (e.g. ulTaxes = ulTaxes * (40 + ulIntelligence) / 100; )

It's your call. :)

Star Control: Origins