Getting Best Trade Deal = Micro-Management Pain

Totally agree. I've been thinking that for awhile now.

just get money instead....

But what if they don't have money? Or you don't want money?

I agree with the OP tho, we need to make this more simple.

The solution to this is a icon u can click which will instantly bring up the best deal the AI will give u for the tech/trade offer u r making. I do not think this would unbalance the game in any way and it would save us time, mouse/finger fatigue, plus speed the game up.

Adding automation support would cut down the trade micro-management making the game go faster and make it easier for novice players.

Playing at the highest levels with 9 opponents requires extensive tech trading to keep up and keep in the black.

In the version 1.2 update you can click on the number, and then type an amount.

In the earlier versions, too - click on the number field

works for both $ and Influence pts

In the version 1.2 update you can click on the number, and then type an amount.

So instead of incrementing 10 and then decrementing by 1 to find the optimal price, I can do a manual binary search by doing a series of guesses. I would much rather have the computer set it for me.

Codecritter says:-

In the version 1.2 update you can click on the number, and then type an amount.

Which is better and true.  

BUT (there always a but isn't there  )

When I am getting influence points to get the maxium out of a trade I after click, guess at 200 lets say. Oh still red, click guess at 100, no still red, click guess 50, yea green , so its 50 - 99 influence points, I then click add 1 still green, repeat 37 times till I get to 87, red again. So finally get 86 influence points for my trade, gee my finger hurts  

Do u get my point Codecritter?

Its only a very minor point, in an otherwise great game, but possibly add to the list of future refinements, even if it appears in Dark Avatar or GC3?

Keep up the great work.

Yeah it gets very annoying when i'm buying a tech and i'm giving them like 1000$ more than it costs.

Yeah it gets very annoying when i'm buying a tech and i'm giving them like 1000$ more than it costs.

That's probably because their diplomatic rating is significantly higher than yours...

Um, if you know it's in the range 50-99, then try 75!

But who trades for influence? It's virtually worthless in the quantities you actually get.

That's probably because their diplomatic rating is significantly higher than yours...

No it's my diplomatic is always the highest, but my point was that I don't want to have to spend a minute trying to scroll to the the best deal, since I have much more money than them.

there is no reason for a person to have to do a binary search. that's what computers are for. this should be automated.

Maximising the AI response could be considered a human player advantage, unless you want the AI to do the same to you. I guess it would be nice if there was a Civ4-style "make me an offer" option; not necessarily the best deal you can get, but something reasonable that at least gives you a ball-park figure.

i like the AUTO-button too!

The point is that since there is a way of adjusting it down to the very last BC anyway, why not just have a 'best offer' button and be done with it?

Fully agreed. I cheer for a "cash me out" button since 1.0.

It can't be that hard to do, can it? And it seems like a great UI enhancement to me.

Civ IV has a great feature for that. You can ask your trading partner 'what would make the deal work' and then he comes up with a counterproposal. Sure you can still do some fiddling, but it's much less micro intensive.

When I am getting influence points to get the maximum out of a trade I after click, guess at 200 lets say. Oh still red, click guess at 100, no still red, click guess 50, yea green , so its 50 - 99 influence points, I then click add 1 still green, repeat 37 times till I get to 87, red again. So finally get 86 influence points for my trade, gee my finger hurts

Meglobob, clicking on the left/right arrows decrements/increments the count by 1, clicking on the up/down arrows increments/decrements the count by 10. So after determining it was >= 50 and < 100, you could have done 60, 70, 80, 90, 89, 88, 87, and 86. Before CodeCritter told me I could type in numbers, I did a couple of trades were after determining the optimal cash value, the optimal additional influence points was around 3290! It took well over 300 clicks for each of these trades!!!

there is no reason for a person to have to do a binary search. that's what computers are for. this should be automated.

In this case the computer does not need to do a binary search because it determines the optimal value from a calculation. We have humans doing a binary search based on feedback from a computer that knows the answer! Now how crazy is that?!

Currently, when you click on the cash it starts at 100 and the influence starts at 0. Stardock, please change these values to the optimal values. On my side of the trade window we would want the minimum that allows the trade to go through and when I click on the AI's side we would want the maximum. This seems like it would be an easy change as it would not require any UI changes (i.e., no new buttons), just change the default values to the computed limits. Any chance of this making its way into v1.3? Stardock is always looking for ways to reduce micro-management which detracts from the game experience. This change would greatly reduce the time it takes to make a trade. Please! Please! Please!

Paul D.

What would be better is if the AI actually barttered. Say the AI will take 250 for a tech and I offer him 50. He responds with a message saying what an insult and then counters with 500. I can then either accept 500 or bump it up to 100. Again, he is offended and says he couldn't part with it for less than 400. My counter is 300 which he snaps up thinking what an idiot I am.

This kind of change would not be unreasonable to implement although it would change the whole red/green text mechanism. Also, the counter offers could be based on the difference in diplomancy rating and influence and AI personality.

This would be hard to add to an update but is not unreasonable for the expansion.

Being pedantic, what you describe is simply haggling, not bartering. As such, I think it seems fine - and not too tough to implement.

True bartering, on the other hand, is trading for other than currency - ie tech(s) for tech(s) trading. This is much harder to get right, as it needs to take into account who initiated the trade, and what they wanted, so that the counter-offer is appropriate. Alternatively, you can make the counter-offer is based on what was initially offered - but this is less useful for haggling until both parties can agree to a deal.

Example1:
Me: I want (a) from you. I'm offering (b).
Other: You want (b)? Well, you can have that, but its gonna cost you (c)
... repeat cycle as necessary

Example2:
Me: I want (a) from you. I'm offering (b).
Other: You want (b)? Tough, but for (a), I'd let you have (c)
... repeat cycle as necessary

Coding either to allow a mix of tech, money, and influence is (in theory) doable, but quite a bit more work (to get sensible counter-offers).

What would be better is if the AI actually barttered. Say the AI will take 250 for a tech and I offer him 50. He responds with a message saying what an insult and then counters with 500. I can then either accept 500 or bump it up to 100. Again, he is offended and says he couldn't part with it for less than 400. My counter is 300 which he snaps up thinking what an idiot I am.

This is more like how trades work in real life. In real life though a person can be offended and refuse all futher offers or raise the minimum value they will accept.

In my current game playing against 9 opponents on Masochistic, I'm making multiple trades every turn. I would like it automated as much as possible because it is very time consuming and taking away from the fun parts of the game.

In a way, I can't help but wonder if an "auto-optimize" button in the diplomacy screen is really that good an idea, considering you already have the luxury of being able to know whether a deal will be accepted or not in the first place; it's like already having it served to you, and then asking to have it on a silver platter.



Perhaps if there were multiple levels of acceptability, then it would be viable--the "optimize" button would put you in the "green" for a guaranteed deal, but you could go into the "yellow" and offer somewhat less and get away with it, and if have a real advantage you might be able to rip them off by delving into an "orange" proposal, and anything "red" would just be downright unacceptable. It'd be even better if diplomacy's effects worked "behind the scenes" as well, by making yellow and orange deals more likely to be accepted instead of changing the threshold for a green deal.

That's something that'd have to wait for the expansion, though, if it's at all feasible.



...Oh yeah, something does need to be done about those influence points as well; trading it is entirely pointless because the AI values their own far too highly, while at the same time they place little or no value on your own. It's especially absurd when you consider the fact that the influence points are really just votes for whatever issues are in the next United Planets meeting.

...Oh yeah, something does need to be done about those influence points as well; trading it is entirely pointless because the AI values their own far too highly, while at the same time they place little or no value on your own. It's especially absurd when you consider the fact that the influence points are really just votes for whatever issues are in the next United Planets meeting.

Agreed. When I first started playing GalCiv2 back last Dec., I thought influence points affected the influence borders but it appears they only impact the UP meetings. I think I'll start ignoring the influence points in my future trades.