A.I and gameplay balance issues with 1.2

[ASHBERY76]

The A.I sells you his colonies for a budget price as little as 1000, which with the new economy is a huge exploit and stupid on its part.
The A.I can not wait to get rid of its unique tech.It spams this request all the time but wants a zillion credits for it.I do not think the A.I should sell it at all.

The economy had gone from one extreme to another.The econony is now too big.It is too easy to get money which breaks the gameplay.It makes huge fleets easy to maintaine which increases the micromanagement if you control it(not good),and makes buying protection and infomation from pirates and bribing Empires to cheap and a no brainer

Love the game but the balance needs sorting out a bit.

[lordxorn]

+1

[Tormodino]

Agreed on both points.

The AI seems to weigh things strangely. I reported some of my impressions on the in tech support.
Tweaking how the AI weighs its actions could probably go a long way to creating a better balanced game.

[Jim D Burns]

The best way to balance it is to simply increase prices. Don't mess with taxes and incomes now that it works, just up the amount everything costs and it will bring it all back into balance.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

I like having huge fleets, shush.
 
I'm also exploiting the hell out of resorts. Running 4 right now in my present game, they are bringing in something like 50k between them.

[lordxorn]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I like having huge fleets, shush.

I'm also exploiting the hell out of resorts. Running 4 right now in my present game, they are bringing in something like 50k between them.

Nice I will now pay more attention to them. Yeah I would say don't mess with the income, just balance things our more like bribing empires to war dec others, or purchasing colonies from others, and selling their exclusive tech.

[Erik Rutins]

There will very likely be a bit of rebalancing soon, now that the economy is making more money for everyone.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend playing on the more challenging settings. Set the Galaxy to Restless for example and see how things go. [8D]

[Joram]

I don't think the economy is just the point actually.  I've reported other bugs with diplomacy too.  I don't think it's just a balance thing.

[Erik Rutins]

We'll be going through all bug reports as well and taking a look at how the AI is making some of the trade decisions for colonies, I was just speaking to the "lots of money" point.

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

We'll be going through all bug reports as well and taking a look at how the AI is making some of the trade decisions for colonies, I was just speaking to the "lots of money" point.

Just saw that, a friendly race proposed 3 colonies at 5000 cr each, while being ok to buy some not so useful industrial tech for 20000 ... [:D]

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

We'll be going through all bug reports as well and taking a look at how the AI is making some of the trade decisions for colonies, I was just speaking to the "lots of money" point.

A slower economy or faster economy option would make everyone happy [8D]

[JosEPhII]

The only "cheap" colonies the AI has ever offered me had little or no resources.

I did have 1 Large empire AI ask for one of my better planets in exchange for 3 of their mid range planets in 3 separate systems. Trouble was I had a very hard time trying to find those systems to even consider the Exchange. So I turned it down. I might have thrown away a good deal because I had No way to "view"/look over those offered planets. Missing important info like this makes game decisions much harder and basically for me become crap shoots. Roll the dice, snake eyes this time, maybe 7's next time. I need better means to acquire info to make calculated choices.

The Patch saved my game and my economy. The economy is still being learned and I for one don't want it "rebalanced" right away till I have more game time under my and everyone else's belts. So saying it went "to far" is rather premature in my book.

Maybe late game my Bank Should have 1,000,000 credits in it. If I want the Zenox Megatron Z4 for 1,600,000 I should have the means to get that much cash in the latter game to purchase it. And Not have a budget of 20,000 after building an Empire with 60+ colonies. That to me would be Unbalanced and Unrealistic.

JosEPh [:)]

[frugaldude]

ORIGINAL: JosEPh_II


The economy is still being learned and I for one don't want it "rebalanced" right away till I have more game time under my and everyone else's belts. So saying it went "to far" is rather premature in my book.

Agreed.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: JosEPh_II
Maybe late game my Bank Should have 1,000,000 credits in it. If I want the Zenox Megatron Z4 for 1,600,000 I should have the means to get that much cash in the latter game to purchase it. And Not have a budget of 20,000 after building an Empire with 60+ colonies. That to me would be Unbalanced and Unrealistic.

I think all anyone is saying is things like planets, research, buying off lots of pirates and purchased info on systems should not be easily affordable from game start. You should need a larger economy to easily afford stuff like that. Early in the game it should be a near bank breaking decision to do anything like that.

Jim

[Gertjan]

Why would technology trade not be feasible/easy/affordable from the start? I think it is quite normal to have that.

Sometimes the AI offers weird proposals, like offering a technology trade for huge amounts of cash. I always have to be careful to click the right response. Otherwise I could restart the game.

[playedabit]

The colonies the AI would sell me cheap are those usually that are either very small or surrounded by my other systems therefore strategically not well placed for the AI. Those would cost around 10-40k. The AI would refuse to sell me more established planets even though the prices would be still quite low, in the 50-100k range. I still think the AI's willingness to part with its colonies is a huge strategical disadvantage for it.

Also, the AI should protect strategically important assets and abilities more, such as the ability to colonise certain types of worlds if I don't have that ability (e.g. it has acquired a minority race and can colonise ocean worlds), race specific techs and colonies. In this game I'm playing now I saw a quick expansion of alien ocean world colonies threatening my own territory because I didn't have access to a certain minor race. That was a huge advantage for that AI empire but it was gone in a minute when I simply bought some of their planets for 15k each. This should be much more difficult to acquire, only through war or from a very friendly race for loads of cash.

My problem with the AI empire offering race-specific technology isn't that it costs a lot of money. Race-specific techs should remain very highly valued. My problem is that it's offering it at all, thus diminishing whatever strategical advantage it had over me.

[ASHBERY76]

More issues with the diplomacy systems.When the somebody gets the A.I to declare war on another empire they should not be able to get a peace treaty straight away,considering they have been bribed..Same with getting A.I and human players to get a peace treaty for loot and then declare war again straight away.

GC2 had this problem but they stopped it by only having diplomacy allowed after a set time,EU3 had the same system of course.

[taltamir]

the only cheap colonies are worthless colonies... good ones costs millions and the AI will often refuse to sell those even if you DO offer him their value.

Also, you only make ridiculous amounts of money when you have a ridiculously big empire. Which makes sense... yes the united states as a whole has a massively larger economy and funds then the city of dallas... duh. should now the cost of a single cruise ship skyrocket for the usa as a whole for "balance" reasons?

now, that does make micromanagement a problem... but that is why you micromanage that when you have a tiny 5 colony empire... later you have hundreds of ships that the AI control... the ai forms fleets from those, you can micro manage the fleets... give a 30 ship fleet an order and it will follow it just fine.

[Fishman]

The AI is not as dumb as he looks when he's willing to sell you some crap colony for 50K or more. The only thing that colony cost him was a $3000 colony ship and he's making out like a bandit every time you buy that colony off him. If you try to buy a real colony, it will be like a million kajillion bucks.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

The AI is not as dumb as he looks when he's willing to sell you some crap colony for 50K or more. The only thing that colony cost him was a $3000 colony ship and he's making out like a bandit every time you buy that colony off him. If you try to buy a real colony, it will be like a million kajillion bucks.

I noticed that! The AI tried to scam me several times actually..
and one time he tried to ask me to swap two colonies of us (trash) plus a tech for one colony of mine... my colony had a huge empire wide bonus from ancient ruins in it.