Trade Goods - what happened!?!?!?

Yes, Brad saw the spinning of trade goods as a massive exploit of the AI so its trade value was nerfed in 1.04 Incredible.

You are basically one of the first to experience this.
Time to throw this strat out of the window if you are going to challenge Incredible.

For non-Incredible levels, I believe it would still be effective.

Dang. My first 1.04 game I have class 26 world in Sol, colonized it second and got +46% PQ, had high hopes for this one! Think I'll have to drop from incredible for a bit.

Scott

~SDC~

The AI is only more skeptical of trade goods at the higher levels. They're about the same at lower levels.

Seems like a dream start to me Bralex, give it a shot, you might surprise yourself.

And hey, I'm a Veteran now.

Trade goods are worthless as, well, "trade" goods on genius/crippling. The Alexians
wouldn't even give me Advanced Trade for Diplomatic Translators. Considering how long
it took to build (yes, I built it), and the fact that I had a party diplomatic bonus, I
have to say the valuation is way off. I would certainly jump at that trade if offered to me,
and wouldn't consider giving it up for so little (I was looking for 2-3 techs).

Well, genius and incredible are supposed to be the "challenge" levels, though there is always the risk that they were overtweaked.

Can we have reports from Intelligent level players on the new TG dynamics?

WOW, I just got hammered on tiny with the new download on masochistic. Drengins, Yor, and Altarians declared war on me by early 2181. A flood of battle cruisers overwhelmed me. I had rush bought diplo translators and grav accelarators as I usually do but couldn't even get shields for diplo translators. I had just researched shields when the transports came and wiped me out. Of course, with battleaxes not being as good that probably wouldn't have helped. Paying tribute to the AI was not an option as they were each demanding 1500+. Let's see, no trade good value, can't get to any kind of defensive ship, big time aggressive AI equals throw the old strategy out the window. Back to the drawing board.

~SDC~

DonFESQ,

Sounds like the new Incredible is really brutal.
But I can see its going to be terrific fun.

Say, can I interest a fellow Maso challenger to join Imperia Galactica? Bralex, you interested to join as well?
[Message Edited]

Ouch, new maso is nasty

I think I can handle it though, but its tight, very
tight.

Trade goods are worthless even on Intelligent now. The AI won't part with any of theirs except for a massive stack of techs, lots of cash, and preferably multiple trade goods of mine. Conversely, I can't get jack for mine except maybe one or two tier 1/2 techs.

Were ship sales also nerfed? I've been only been about 160bc for a Dreadnought in this game.

Teach those maso bugs a lesson, Staffa!

Based on Code Monkey's report, it would seem like that strat is also wrecked at Intelligent.

Hey, you highly skilled fellas said there were holes big enough to drive trucks through with trade goods. Seems like someone listened. So that's a good thing, right?

When seeign what was happening with my strategy, I went back to Intelligent/Painful. My experience there is similar to Code Monkey's. I was doing ok from a not very good start, and eventually got in a hopeless position when I forgot that Batlle cruiser's had become somewhat useful, and that researching battleship's now takes forever (note: I think this is a really bad idea, since it makes the batleship / dreadnought rush the only way to stay alive). Anyway, to quantify the nerfing of trade good trading, I couldn't get get Cultural trading and Nanobots for Aphrodisiac, Tri-Stronitium, and Gravity Accelerators (with a couple thousand influence and a couple hundred BC thrown in).

Ok, I'm probably over reacting at the moment, and despairing of winning a crippling game again (I could usually win on 1.03A). When the AI values trade goods it has so highly, and those it doesn't so little, it feels like the archtypal computer vs. player AI, and not at all like 6 civilizations competing and cooperating with each other, which is one of the reasons I like this game so much.

I think it was Staffa who said in another thread that he thought the trade goods were valued fairly in 1.03, but the exploit was that one could buy them without spending time building them. I feel the need to add my voice to that view. By all means, eliminate the ability to buy them (or at least make them prohibitively expensive), but don't make them un-tradeable

What I dislike *intensely* about this nerfing is, like Babcom points out, it's no longer a 6-way game, but a 5 versus me as far as trading techs and goods is concerned. I have to pay one price to the AI for tech and trade goods, but they operate on a completely different price scale and it's not even close to fair or balanced.

If a trade good is only worth a 100 bc for me to sell it to the AI, then I should by all rights be able to buy an equivalent good off the AI for 100 bc. Since I can't, the AI *IS* cheating against the human player and that's the wrong direction for this game to take in terms of "improvement".

I've only played twice since 1.04 came out but the trading is starting to feel like Civ 3 in all the wrong ways =(

I wonder if the AIs all act this irrationally while trading with each other. I hope so.

I just played my first game with 1.04, and choose AI's on intelligent level to start with.

I think it's a lot better now - I mean, does the computer really NEED those trade goods? Most of the time they don't, so why should they pay for them? However, some trade goods I think are very valuable, such as Grav Accel and Tri-Steel, but they don't seem to want those either. . .

Another thing on trading - is it just me or is the AI now willing to do more tech trades with humans? It seems that they will do more one on one trades and generally trade more equally now.

So in my last game, I couldn't get much out of the trade goods, but I could actually do real tech trades. In the end, it worked out to pretty much the same result, so I was happy.

Um, not to flatly disagree with codemonkey, well ok
to flatly disagree with codemonkey, but I can get
tradegoods from the AI just as cheaply as he offers
them to me. Ive gotten several morale tradegoods
from the Ai for a single tech, same with gravity
accelerators and tech boosting tradegoods.

I purchased diplomatic translators so I dont know if
the Ai offers that up cheaply, but they were always
rather hardnoised about diplos(as they should be)

But morale/gravity/tech boosting tradegoods are
very easy to get from the computer.

In fact I probably wont be building them anymore
and just trade for them. Ill concentrate on
influence tradegoods and wonders and diplo, to prevent
the Ai from having them at all.

Also, I had no problem doing massive trading
in a masochistic game. I just had to use techs
instead of tradegoods. So tech trading is still not
only viable, but very usefull at higher levels.




[Message Edited]

I play on normal and I noticed right away that the AI would not pay for them after I spent all that time and money...bummer, I didn't consider it cheezy to go for the trade goods and get lots of cash.

It was a good way to offset the advantage that the AI tends to have in both planet quality, Yellow stars and tech.

Went back to an early save on the game I mentioned w/ 26 +46%, playing on w/o buying tradegoods. Actually, all the empires seem to be broke, so I am keeping up better than I used to. Drengin and Altairians have most goods (this is on Gigantic galaxy) and I am only a few techs behind tech wise. More as events warrant.

PS RE Empire invite - can't find a PM function if there is one; sure, I'll join. How?
Scott

~SDC~

Just out of curiosity, since a certain someone who always insists that "we're going to support the 99% of the user base who doesn't play for metaverse scores", how in the world does this same person think that the trade good nerf is any good for those 99%?

I mean good god, I know Everquest and Blizzard nerfs, but I don't think they ever went this overboard.

SeanB PS-- made the edit to correct some grammar in the first paragraph
[Message Edited]

I will honestly say that at this particular point, I would not recommend this game to any but the hardcore, because almost every "trick" the wily human could pull on the AI is not only gone, the tables have been turned on the human. Making the game harder while not giving anything in return is not the way you improve things.

Work is not fun (which is why I'm taking this moment out of my job to type this )

Codemonkey--

Which job are you talking about...

This game?

-OR-

Your actual real job

SeanB

Having played a bit on incredible in 1.04, I have to say the trade good nerf was over the top. Just had two empires surrender to the #1 and #2 survivors, both of whom are hostile to me, so that game is pretty much over. I think what I would say is that I don't mind the AI getting bonuses for difficulty, but this seems like they are playing under different rules when I up the difficulty. I have literally no leverage with any of the AIs, major or minor, because nothing I can trade is worth anything - I have nothing to negotiate with unless I trade planets. Jacking the cost of the trade goods while improving them is good. Making them worthless in trade is bad, bad, bad. I don't know who was complaining about them being too powerful; for me they were the lifeline against the AI production bonuses in the early game. Someone else has noted that they were nerfed in lower difficulties too, is this the case? If so, I think I will need to sit out for a while and see what kind of fallout there is from this before picking up play again.

My POV - the main value of the metaverse for me is seeing the improvements made to the AI, the scoring is very secondary. Tweaking game play to address serious balance issues is OK early on - the PQ bonus comes to mind. The game has been out for a while now, and people are starting to get comfortable with it. I like to play with 2 empires on incredible and 3 on (whatever is below that - genius?), working my way up slowly. I am far from complaining about an unchallenging AI - you guys did an outstanding job. I guess what I am saying is that it is time to maybe ease up on the major balancing issues - I'm one of the ones that thinks it is well balanced as is. Look at your poll results - most folks there are satisfied with the challenge. Take your time on the expansion pack, 1.1, etc. and balance those carefully; swapping trade goods isn't a cheese tactic to be nerfed, just maybe some tweaking to adjust values.

Scott

~SDC~

How is it unfair? The AI's won't trade trade goods heavily with each other either.

~SDC~

It seems to me like Brad, etc al. is hearing what we are saying, but not understanding (or understanding, but unable to do it). Many people have been asking for a smarter AI. The computer does some really dumb things in some places. The thing is, most people didn't envision nerfing trade goods as the fix for a smarter AI.

What I (possibly we) have been requesting since the beginning is better map management by the AI. Better use/defense of star bases. Better tactical manuevering during battles. More intelligent choices when deciding to go to war. Somehow this got translated intoto ('the game is too easy, let's nerf something').

On the higher levels trade goods are (were) a really good way of leveling the playing field with the AI. The AI is generally better at managing it's economy, morale, tech, etc. than a human. My feeling is this is because this is a closed equation (there is a 'best' way to do it). The AI is not very good at the open equations (no 'best' solution.. or if there is one, it's really complex) like how to strategically place ships for a tactical win.

Not that this is any suprise, people have been working on making AI think like people for 60 years and still haven't figured it out. However, IMHO, I'd much prefer incremental upgrades to the 'hard' AI problems, than arbitrarily making the game more difficult for me to win by nerfing something that levels the early game.

We're not looking for an impossible to win game. We're looking for a single player experience that plays like you are challenging another human player. Hehe.. I can see the headlines a year from now, 'Galactic Civilizations passes the Turing Test'.