Anyone Buy Stuff on Credit?

Actually I use it quite a bit, but it is situational and is only used when I absolutely need to have a wonder or something for a deadline based on the strat I'm using. With DAs and TAs ability to pay off early though it's usually a short term lease .

I tried it a couple of times - hated it for "mainstream" use, but its handy for the odd spot build. The AI uses it a lot, particularly in the colony rush/early game

Regards
Zy

I have a psychological prohibition against paying interest in real life and even though I know it's just a game I cannot bring myself to do it even there.

I do believe that the position that DethAdder expressed actually makes the most sense, that it can be beneficial if used with care for getting that critical wonder a dozen turns earlier than you otherwise could.

But if you want a rule to live by without having to carefully weigh each individual situation then I believe that it's far better to never use it rather than run the risk of over using it.

I generally avoid it, as I share Mumble's view on interest. I can indeed be useful in certain situations. Namely, getting one of the 'one per galaxy' type items. It's very satisfying finding out that the AI is about to finish one, and then swooping in and taking it out from under it's nose.

The only situation I know of that calls for significant use of this is the Zero Year Win, in which you beat the AI in under a year. It's actually cheaper to pay the interest, because the game is over before you pay much on the loan.

Too bad real-life politicians haven't learned to do this

So, some folks out there are using credit - nice to know that.

As regards the AI's use of credit, I have never seen it happen in my games. Zydor, you say you've seen it a lot. Is it a level dependent thing? Myself, I've never yet gone beyond Painful. Also, how would you know when the AI used it? The End Game Summary only indicates how much credit has been used throughout the entire game, and does not tell when it was used and for what purpose.

Start a game in cheat mode - and watch the spread of AI ships relative to time (use control-u to reveal map to watch them). No way do you get that many ships out the dock in that time frame with only a 3000bc starting bank, without leasing.

The other indicator is their economy, watch the Economy, research and production graphs, they will flat line very quickly within a few game months, happens at the same point on each game. They stay flatlined until their population grows to build the cashflow. You'll get an intial fast peak, then booom economy went as they expanded very quickly. Sitting there are a dozen planets colonised.

Its one of the reasons you need to "hang in there" in early colony rushes, keep an eye on the graphs, once they flatline, you have a clear run for while whilst they recover from initial expenditure.

As a seperate (not lease related) issue, their population then does not grow as fast as yours due to the early "mutilation"/heavy use. Watch for the second indicator of pressure release, happens around a game year in or so. When the second wave of AI colonisers start to slow because they have run out of population - the ships will suddenly look very small, click on them and you'll see "68 colonists" - or whatever as being on board. Once you see a couple of those you know the second "pause" is about to begin and you get a breather.

Regards
Zy

I'll throw my 2 cents in on this one.

I think the AI's use of credit is something that is assumed based on such things as the rate of early colony ship creation. This is also somewhat dependent on the level of the AI. For example if you're playing against Suicidal AI where the assumption is that they get a 200% econ bonus then watching the AI spit out a colony ship per turn for 10 turns straight could possibly be done just out of their normal (heavily bonused) income.

However when you watch an AI at tough do the same thing without a huge econ bonus then you have to wonder how you would be able to match that same performance. Generally the answer is that you could probably only match that same performance by buying ships on credit. Another indication is that when you see an AI go through a "burst" of activity that at some point stops then the supposition is that the AI was able to do the burst only through buying ships on time and then once the AI becomes mired in debt then the activity stops.

All of this is more supposition on the part of the player rather than any kind of certainity however I have certainly seen this kind of behavior and do believe that this is the explanation for it.

[edit] Although our responses are 5 minutes apart I didn't see Zy's reply prior to posting my own. However I do believe we're both pretty much saying the same thing. [/edit}

I'd agree with the notion of avoiding debt in general but using it occasionally and very carefully. Seems good in real life and the game. One good game reason I haven't seen mentioned yet is wanting to do a mass upgrade of ships without taking the over-20k penalty for several turns.

I'm very interested by this notion of looking for "payback time" for the rival civs' use of heavy leasing. I've got one fresh game at about turn 30, but it's on an immense map and I've only just met the Drengin, so not much to see on the Timeline tab.

Its usually flatlined around the 10th to 15th week, have a look particularly at Manufacturing and Research.

Regards
Zy

Cheat mode - never thought about using it to get insight into the underlying game mechanics. Good way to do it!

I have seen the AI throw out lots of colony ships early on in most games and I've scratched my head and asked myself "How they do dat?". BUT, if they are buying their ships on credit, why didn't that show up on the End of Game Summary???

As an aside on "How they do dat?", I recently had a TA game with everything set to random which produced a galaxy with everything very rare. I was working on my 2nd colony ship when a Thalan constructor (no less) came zooming through my region and went into the fog behind me. As soon as I was able, I sent a ship down the same path the Thalan took and, sure enough, way out there and DEAD CENTER on that path, was a Military Resource which (of course) was now owned by the Thalans. That bugs me.

Just a thought, that if the AI is so heavily in debt at this point due to it's supposed lease buying of colony ships for the initial rush period, would this not be a good time to try and purchase some of their newly colonized/undeveloped planets for a song during their "flat line" period.

After all, if your population is steadily increasing, say with 100% approval and you are staying in the green from all the tax revenue generated, does the AI show some sort of financial desperation and are willing to let things go for cheap at this stage of the game in order to recover faster.
Also, if you have relatively strong diplomacy/influence this could be used as leverage at this point.

Has anyone tried this with any success?

Not tried it, might work.

Unrelated (as such) observation. The flat-lining occurs with the Manufacturing and Research graphs, and to a lesser extent but still there with the production graph. The economy graph is usually - as such - unchanged, although that's not always been the case. Its possible the AI is "turning off" the lot to focus on pure cash generation, which would tie in with a bust economy that needs to recover.

Regards
Zy

Well, I've taken my newest game to turn 79 and still don't see anything like a "flat line" pattern for Man or Res.

Could this be a map-dependent thing or something that the last couple of patches have changed?

I confess that I've had so little TA time that nothing really looks quite "normal" yet (not a gripe; that's actually what I paid my tokens for).

Interesting, could be option based. I play immense, all abundant, crippling, random minors, eight opponents, standard CPU, Federalists. I've found this even with the other GalCiv versions on Gigantic.

I'll start a new game and get a screen shot.

Regards
Zy

Very interesting. I play tough, the last notch before computer cheat bonuses kick in. I'd like to think the >tough bonuses are the "real villain" here.

I hadn't played enough TA to see if they have altered their strat enough to avoid the crash, but all the other versions definately have it. On the highest levels they do hold out a little longer before killing their prod/res.

I do use leases very often.
For one I use it whenever the total short-term-lease price is smaller or equal than the insta-buy-price.
It's totally illogical...but who am I not to use any advantage I can find

Sometimes I use leases when I'm in a production "war" for some tradegood I absolutely want to have and I see the AI is producing it too.

And last but not least I use them passionately near endgame when I know (or think/hope) the game will be over in 10/20/30 turns so I will never have to pay the full price.

As for a crash in production for the AIs due to leases early on - I have yet to see that in TA (playing Maso+ though).

Sorry to necromance this thread, but here are a few thoughts of mine.

I've only recently purchased this game (EU version) and wondered about the way you all seem to avoid rushing production. In Civ, there's a large premium on turn advantage. In particular, there seems to be a very strong tendency to sacrifice population for construction (the power of the whip).

I wonder why there's such a negative view on leasing here. A priori (that is, without much experience on the game itself), I'd say that leasing is a splendid way to gain turn advantage over the competition. Of course, you should not be blindly rushing your production with leasing, but money now is usually worth more than money later, even if the total cost of a lease is higher than a direct-buy option. Postponing payment should be a good strategy if your income will have grown more due to this purchase than the inflated price due to leasing, or if the money otherwise spent on direct purchase is better spent in the meantime on paying for research.

My point is not very clear in this post, but perhaps you can shoot down this line of reasoning by using arguments from the economy model. Again, this is an a priori thought on how one could or should use leasing to get a net gain instead of the current state of opinion on leasing ("Leasing is bad, mkay?").

It's not so much that we avoid rushing production, just that we avoid leasing.  Rushing is actually a good idea, as long as it's done in moderation...particuarly at the beginning of the game, when you need production capacity (industrial or research).

Leasing seems to be a different subject than rushing in general.

There is however the issue that the rush buy cost itself is initial cost ^ 1.1 * 6, which tends to average about 9x the total cost of the building/ship in question (if you just built it).

(Leasing is in fact even more expensive than this, if you count the total cost.)

In general the only time I personally lease is when I'm trying to fill my homeworld with factories and can't afford to 1) rush buy them or 2) straight build them.  However, this is rare-I'll usually only rush buy the first three or perhaps four.

In any case, it is extremely easy to crash your economy beyond all hope of recovery with leasing, and it is therefore something to avoid until you are comfortable with the rest of the game's economic model.

I understand that's it's easy to crash the economy. It's easy enough to do this without leasing in any case

But once you knwo what you're doing (which can still take some time), will leasing not become much more viable? For two reasons: if you can lease your way into winning, then who cares about your economy (this assumes a small enough map or endgame situation where you're able to finish the game before the pain that comes from lease costs start to matter). And if you can postpone payment to a moment when you can afford it, then leasing can be the correct decision if you can gain what you need that much faster by a greater quantity.

In the first case, you're sacrificing your long term viability completely because there is no long term (i.e. all or nothing play). It may be cheesy, but it should work in certain circumstances.

In the second case, you're sacrificing part of your mid term income for a short term gain. The assumption is that without the lease, a rush is not affordable (or you're not able to afford other expenses). The expectation is that the short term gain is great enough to offset the mid term loss of income. An extreme example would be longterm leases on several colony ships on a map with several high quality planets in a border region and direct purchase of the colony ships would be prohibitively expensive.

Total cost is certainly not the only or perhaps not even the main consideration in leasing. The moment of payment is perhaps a much more important consideration for leasing.

I think once I've gotten the economic model mastered a little bit, I'll start playing about with leases on a more serious level. I'll use it as an investment loan. Let's see if that will make me flourish or crash and burn like banks

The game should have a function where you are not allowed to lease when your lease payments are beyond a certain number.  After all, a decent bank will not lend money to a person who is probably going to be a bankrupt soon (unless it's Lehman Brothers).

Unless that limit scales properly, that would be unreasonably restrictive. For example, if I leased some galactic wonders, ships, upgrades, whatever in my current game, I could easily exceed 10k bc lease payments per turn. OH NOES!!! Too bad I'm already making 50k profit per turn, so 10k in payments is not a huge deal.

This is already largely dealt with thanks to the -500BC limit on research/production/buying.  If you manage to lease yourself into that much of a hole, you're unlikely to get out of it before the AI kills you.

Particularly as leasing is only smart when 1) it's early enough in the game that your economy will grow sufficiently to outpace it or 2) it's late enough in the game that you won't be paying more than ~20-25% of the lease payments, at most.  Anywhere between these two scenarios, straight rush buying is actually preferable.