Thank you Brad for your time and effort. Will d/l it and check it out. I really appreciate it.

~SDC~

Got it. I'm wondering. Is the change obvious when we try to trade or something subtle. What did you change?

~SDC~

Changed a number of things in the trade screen based on your posts.

~SDC~

hehe... lol. Ok, Brad. Thanks!

funny reply.

Oh, HEY! I'm a Veteren! Thanks again.

~SDC~

Man, I have to tell you Brad your support and care for this game has made me (and many other people) huge Stardock fans! I can't wait for your next game to come out.

Thanks. Hopefully this update will take care of the remaining cheese in the diplomacy.


~SDC~

If you're going to let the AI take planet class into account in trades then that same information *MUST* be available to the player on the trade screen when asking for a planet from the AI.

~SDC~

Well I just reloaded my last autosave from a game I had just won to test the 5 turn thing, and its fixed. Yay!

olaf

Mythor,

No it doesn't. Do the research yourself with investigatory spy satellites or scout ships, find the star and click on it. Check the planet.

Olaf,

yes indeedee doo, ROCK ON STARDOCK! Talk about building customer loyalty! I'll beat someone up if they badmouth ya'll now!

~SDC~

I agree to an extent that you can only stop so much, but everyone is in the same metaverse rankings list, and it would be pretty crap for the people who actually care about the ladder to have to resort to cheese tactics to get to the top, because everyone else is exploiting the AI.

Not that I care about the ladder myself, but I know some people get pretty fired up about these things - take a look at battle.net for an example.

SIMPLE solutions:

1) Get rid of the X$ for Yturns payments to keep their economies strong. Also that way they can never spend more than they can truly afford.

2) The AI will only buy decent ships.

3) The AI will not buy ships that cannot return to their space in X number of turns.

5) No negotiating during war unless it is to negotiate the terms of peace.

5) Peace treaties (and probably when you extort something out of an enemy under "threat" of war) should be ENFORCED for a set period of time (6 months or a year maybe). This would prevent you from extorting or buying their ships in exchange for peace and then attacking them the next turn anyway. If not "enforced", then breaking that general guideline should at lease be a significantly EVIL act (-30 alignment or something?).

PS I've noticed when I buy ships from the AIs, I seem to take a big relationship penalty for having warships in their space. Maybe have those ships the player buys automatically set orders to return to the nearest friendly sector and you won't take any doplomatic penalty unless you change it's orders or something?

Hope this helps...

--Soulfire

Also, it doesn't seem like how much an empire likes or dislikes you has any affect on how willing they are to deal with you. Seems like an empire that hates you would be willing to pay you a lot less for trades and and demand more BCs from you for items you want than an empire that liked you?

--Soulfire

That last bit seems like a bad idea tome- even if I HATE the Drengin I'll tkae any sweet deal they offer. So should they of me.

Your other ideas seem worthy of consideration to me.

~SDC~

It looks like an out of control diplomatic modifier to me. Not sure why an empire would want all those scouts anyway.....

Brad,

First, I am very impressed with your level of support and dedication to this game and customer service in general.

However, I have to offer up that I think you are making a mistake by not paying more attention to the trading issues that are being discussed in detail here. I can see you made a patch very quickly for some issues - but you also seem to be saying "as far as trading exploits, only a few are doing it and I have to spend my time on the needs of the many."

I'm not sure it's accurate to say only a few are doing it - or more importantly will be doing it. I read that no beta tester was able to beat the game on it's hardest setting. Yesterday I saw a post of a player who claimed to beat the game on it's highest level without every colonizing a planet other than earth? How did he do it? Trading cheese. What this means is:

1. Data shows you can't be this game at it's highest level without being a very good and active trader/diplommat (makes sense - (I like that)
2. Data shows the way it is right now it seems that experienced players doing this will discover the trading cheese and use it to win at the games highest levels.
3. As more people play the game and discuss it there will be more experienced players doing this.
4. These experienced players make up your hard core community that likes to talk up the game and keep things active in your forums.
5. These experienced players will eventually get bored with the cheese and move on to the next game.

I don't think saying "just don't do it" works when you are trying to play at the highest levels and you really need to do it to stay in the game. Once you know about the cheese most players will do it. By paying attention this important flaw in what seems to be a necessary activity at higher difficulty levels (i.e. active horse trading) you will keep the game fresh and interesting for the best players - who also make up your core fan base of people. I'm not saying people newer to the game don't make up the fan base too, but without the core of "old timers" there is a lot less activity and discussion.

Enforceable peace treaties sound good. I've made peace with one race and they declare war on me the next turn because i'm still at war with their ally. Also, I took it upon my self to protect a minor race so I gave the Arceans some techs in exchange that they make peace with them and then the very next turn the Arceans declare war on the minor again. This issue needs to be looked at.

~SDC~

Europa Universalis II has the best War declaration system ever in a PC game. If you don't have a just cause your stability takes a beating for declaring war. When you go to war with a power, each of their allies have the opportunity to honor the alliance or betray it and not get involved (with betrayal being another hit). When you're at war with an alliance you can end the war entirely by making peace with the leader of the alliance, or you can make individual peace with each member. Peace is enforceable for 5 years, with no further hostility being permitted.

I would love to see sometime in the coming year of support a war declaration system similar to this in GalCiv.

Thanks for the patch Frogboy.

Hopefully you can find simple solutions to some of the trading cheese so it can get fixed.

Ships: don't buy crappy ships. don't buy good ships for more than you can make/lease them yourself. don't buy ships more than X turns away from your planets.

Planets: don't buy planets in a sector culturally dominated by other empires. Or don't buy planets far from your planets.

Maybe those are simple solutions??

Cheers!

~SDC~

I don't understand the big deal about ships that are too far away from the race's planets.

They still operate.
They still provide information on the region.

Am I missing something that makes them a seriously bad deal?

Certainly for defensive purposes they are lousy, but informationally they are handy to get a handle on the regional situation aren't they?

Of course mass numbers wouldn't be.

And I really wouldn't want to lose the leasing option of X/so many turns. I think the leasing element for purchasing your own ships, etc is benefited if you can then work a deal with another race to cover that loss over time. Way way way way better than lump sums.

Well, glad they fixed this, it didnt really bother me, as i tend not to use exploits once i see someone post them. Its good to see Stardock patching minor things like this even if only a few are requesting it!

Just hope now they concentrate on added a few features, such as Rally points, and new events

~SDC~

A little aside . . One thing I really hope gets looked at is the “grey” area of trade . . There must be some way where you might get a better then normal trade with skill or ripped off with none not a strict binary good/bad formula.
Right know the AI will either trade or not trade (depicted by the color of the text) it is very binary with chance seeming not to play a role (real trade is full of it). . with the trade bonuses there should be a growing lee way of trade possibilities to allow a chance of a profitable trade or getting ripped off.
Some thing like
*Green is a trade THEY like and you have to see if you like it (they will also most likely go for it every time because it is in there best interest/profit) it should also affect their standing with you for the better.
*Yellow would be “it could go either way” this is where the real bonuses come in. the difference in trade and/or influence bonuses may set how wide the “yellow” window is. Then A random number is made for both sides and their bonuses are added . . the winner gets what he wants (ie since it is normally the player offering, He should get the hard fought trade and possibly the better side of the deal . .good bonuses and constant tweaking of the numbers paid off! If you loose no trade and possibly a very minor standing shift (if you try to get things passed them and fail too often then they start getting pissed but only if it is a trend). .
*Red would be insulting to the other side and should affect their standing with you.

The reverse should happen to the player when an AI offers. He might not see it as yellow if the AI beats his bonus check.

PS. The AI should be more deals they seem to be there but infrequent. (an they should try to rip you off too )

So, is the X amount of money for x months in diplomacy really going to be taken out? I kind of liked that one. Oh well.

~SDC~

Oh, and I agree with many other people on this one: The amount of dedication the devs are putting into improving this game is incredible. I shall be eagerly awaiting future games. Keep up the good work

~SDC~

Nirvana,

I just don't get the assumption that this is something "only a few used." I think gamers have been conditioned to "not play certain ways" because they've accepted that the programmers and game designer wrote themselves into a corner they couldn't fix and because the company wasn't going to seriously patch the game. I think "not playing a certain way" is a silly response; a game is an artificial creation that has defined limits- simply define a limit if a certain way of playing is unbalancing the game. You can play chess *any way* you want within the defined limits. Period. A well designed game should be the same way.

I greatly enjoy the freedom of playing anyway I can figure out to play that wins the game for me without overt cheating- its called (drum roll) strategy! If becoming an exporting empire through diplomacy would work then good. Unfortunately instead of merely winning the game for me, it became a grossly unbalanced experience where I could no longer even "not play a certain way" because the AI couldn't come even close to fairly evaluating the worth of offered items when I would deal with it only occasionaly using other strategies to win- the only restraint available would be "don't sell anything." Ridiculous. The AI better be selling to each other behind the scenes too!

All this has been touted as part of the game. And I will NOT surrender the idea that this part of the game CAN be balanced, as long as SD is truly dedicated to working with us on it. I'm not demanding instant fixes by any means, but diplomacy is a huge part of the game to a lot of us.

Nothing in here against SD at all- If I didn't seriously love this game and have more respect for Brad and SD than I do for any company out there, I wouldn't bother. And I certainly wouldn't have bought copies of GC to give to my friends in order to reward this company (and indirectly my friends). I'm just rebutting the thinking and conditioning with which gamers have been putting up.

~SDC~

Yep. This is a great game and the strategic AI is great. But I am surprised that the AI does not look at any situational modifiers on the items up for trade (it only looks at the value of that type of item, not whether or not that particular individual is desirable). The "humanlike" AI has been one of the most touted features of this game during development. Trading is a big part of this game as you can tell by the wealth of trade options available (options I've not seen in other games before). I'd love to see the AI improved in this department.

~SDC~