Research / Econ Treaty - trade weights too high?

yea, that sounds like something that could be exploitable by grabbing everything a race owns except for thier homeworld and flagship (if it hasn't been destroyed by then), and then attacking them or whatever. Almost like asking that race to sell themselves to slavery while allowing the decency of keeping thier homeworld.

In other words, sounds like putting way too much value in that kind of treaty.

Treaty values are based on relative economic and research strength of the empires involved, if you watch.

I think the equation for treaty values should be reviewed a bit then... especially early on the treaties seem very exploitable. I was able to convince several starting civs to give me everything they own with the lure of these treaties, then just go destroy them with their own ships and tech... heh

Interesting. In general AI's in my games are very remiss to enter into treaties until the game's moved along a bit and they can get a read on who would be good to treaty up with. Maybe that effect needs to be even more pronounced, I don't know. What difficulty are you playing on quickclay?

I'd have to agree that the treaties are insanely valued by the AI even on higher levels (gifted). You can sell a treaty, which has no cost to you, for a huge amount of techs, ships etc. It also has the effect of massively boosting relations, so you can get an aggressive AI to back down.

Also, the whole diplomatic penalty for declaring war on a treaty AI can easily be circumvented by encouraging the AI to declare war on you instead by parking a bunch of transports next to their planets...then you can turn around and sell the treaty to a different AI.

Cheers

h

There's a problem there, though. If it under values them it'll be too easy to boost your own research and economy to insane heights by acquiring them from the AI. I don't know what the best solution for the way they're being exploited is, but the things really are valuable and the AI isn't wrong to treat them as such.

Well, when i first heard about the feature i assumed it was going to be bilateral - i.e. if you had good relations or a high diplo score you could set up a research treaty that would grant 10% bonus in both directions (like trade routes).

I was kinda shocked when i realized that it was just another item you could sell for techs and such. My exact thoughts were "really?! isn't this just begging to be exploited?". In my very first game (on gifted). I sold treaties to different civs getting a) treaties in exchange basically every tech i didn't have and c) their entire navy (it was just after the colony rush). Seemed kinda silly.

Cheers

h

Horatio's got it, actually. The solution to this particular exploit is simply to force them to be bilateral. It hadn't occurred to me to offer treaties without requesting one in return, but I now see exactly what the concern is on the part of the other posters in this thread. The trade value of an unreciprocated treaty is absurd in the early game. I just offered a research treaty to the Krynn (I'm 10th in the game in tech) and the text was skill green after I'd selected all 20 techs they had that I didn't. That's... insane. The new house rule for me, for the time being, is that treaties must be reciprocal.