Major Exploit

from GalCiv2 Forums
I posted about this before but got no response. I feel this is an issue that needs to be fixed soon.

Diplomacy is FAR TOO POWERFUL.

You can win extremely easily, even on suicidal difficulty, by going through this arduous process each turn: Speak to all of the other civilizations, purchase any new technologies they developed on that turn, and sell their technologies to all the other civilizations. Finish your turn, and repeat.

On top of this, you can research your own diplomacy technologies and withhold them from the other civilizations, which will increase the cash you receive from their technologies. Eventually you will have so much cash that you can purchase their mining starbases, and control all the galactic resources. At this point, winning is simply a matter of time.

The best fix would be for the AI to consider how many other races have a technology in their value estimate. If you are selling them a technology which only you own, they should be willing to give up a lot of credits for it. If you are selling them a technology which all the other races own, the technology should be nearly worthless.

This should go for technologies that you purchase from the civilizations too; if a civilization is the sole owner of a technology they should charge a lot for it, and if all the civilizations have it, it should be fairly cheap.

- Fragsworth
8,057 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's called Tech-Whoring. All 4x games suffer from it in one form or another. Lots of threads on this particular issue and lots suggestions on what and how to fix it.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Diplomacy is FAR TOO POWERFUL

Hrm, I don't know what game you're playing, but in my current one (painful AI) their prices for exclusive tech are insanely high. For their latest missile tech (the first one with damage 3) I would have to give them about 20 of those I have the only one in the game: beam weapons 3, shields 3, armor 4, large hull... But those missiles I culd get in just 4 turns with 80% research. The same is with Manufacturing Center, or Advanced Logistic. I could pay with the cash, but they'd charge me about 8000bc. And that same tech I could sell to others for about 500 bc, on equal terms diplomatically. No way, dudes! I'll wait to get it from espionage, or when we get to war.
BR, Iztok


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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I disagree about the tech trading being too powerful. Even on Normal difficulty, the opposition won't give you good techs unless you give up something of high value yourself. The devs recently made the AI value techs more, so try updating to the new version (1.0X1), and it may be fine for you.

(The early techs are traded freely between them, but they aren't worth much anyway, because they only take a couple of weeks to research.)
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my experience, trading techs for money didn't work too well. Trading tech for tech did, though. I've also had a little luck trading influence for tech, if I'm just barely in the red and I need a little push to get it green.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It does seem to be too easy in the early to middle game to do something like this. Deficeit spending financed though high diplomacy tech selling. Sure at some point you may not be able to acquire the wep techs, but that's tangential to the larger point of just reselling everything Xtimes (where X is number of empires out there).

I played my first game (tough) with +60% to diplomacy, then raced on all the +diplo techs and basically sold off old techs when I needed to up my balance. I didn't even abuse the system to the fullest, but was waaaaay out in front in tech anyway. I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is though.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I disagree about the tech trading being too powerful. Even on Normal difficulty, the opposition won't give you good techs unless you give up something of high value yourself. The devs recently made the AI value techs more, so try updating to the new version (1.0X1), and it may be fine for you.


Try giving yourself the +60% diplomacy bonus for your civilization. It only works well if it says you have an impressive diplomatic skill wtih most of the races. I have the latest version, the problem is not fixed.

- Fragsworth
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I played my first game (tough) with +60% to diplomacy, then raced on all the +diplo techs and basically sold off old techs when I needed to up my balance. I didn't even abuse the system to the fullest, but was waaaaay out in front in tech anyway. I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is though.


I suggested the solution, and it is pretty simple. The AI needs to consider the number of other civilizations that have techs in deciding their value.

- Fragsworth