wilbefast wrote:
Yeah, we do need to be a little more careful with our resources now, so it would be good if we could find a design solution that would avoid pulling an AI programmer off ES2, even if ideally we'd want to improve how the evaluations are done.

That is what overtime is for.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
I'd prefer if the value of each tech is determined either depending on the faction, or the priorities of said faction (a faction at war, for instance, would value military tech more).

Yeah, we do need to be a little more careful with our resources now, so it would be good if we could find a design solution that would avoid pulling an AI programmer off ES2, even if ideally we'd want to improve how the evaluations are done.

I wouldn't mind a hard cap in theory. After all, we can't sell or buy resources more than 10 at a time. A hard cap of say, 3 techs, per trade is not a horrible thing.



But I'd prefer if the value of each tech is determined either depending on the faction, or the priorities of said faction (a faction at war, for instance, would value military tech more).

Yeah, hard cap wouldn't be nice at all... Higher influence cost? It seems more of a roundabout way to deal with this...



I agree with icarus86 that creating algorytm which calculates the value in the trade would be best solution, especially if some technologies would be more valubable that others... But because of ES2 I doub you would have manpower to do it, right?

wilbefast wrote:
Hmm... OK so the AI will sell technology at a higher rate the more technology the buyer has. Let's say you buy 3 technologies one at a time:

[LIST=1]

You have 3 technologies more than me, so 1 technology is worth 100 dust.

You have 4 technologies more than me, so 1 technology is worth 130 dust.

You have 5 technologies more than me, so 1 technology is worth 170 dust.

[/LIST]

The total cost would be 400 dust in this case.



However since the buyer doesn't have any more technologies until the contract is actually signed it will cost you less to buy multiple technologies at once:

[LIST=1]

You have 3 technologies more than me, so 3 technologies is worth 300 dust (each is worth 100 dust).

[/LIST]

The total cost would be 300 dust in this case.



Currently the AI evaluates each term independently and then does a sum. What we need is to be able to base the evaluations of individual terms on the contract as a whole. This though would require a restructuration of how the contract analysis works. I'll see what we can do, but it may be simpler to raise the influence cost of each additional term so that buying technologies 10 at a time is just impossible. We could also hard-cap the number of terms allowed in a contract, but nobody likes hard-caps.



Thoughts?

Your explanation makes total sense. A hard-cap on the number of items in a trade wouldn't be nice.



What I'd be looking at :

- try to build the sum gradually, where the previous 'step' changes the context for the following 'steps'; I'm not sure whether the order in which the 'steps' are calculated would make a difference to the final 'price', but it could; in this case, the player may remove the items from the trade and add them again in a different order to see the results

- try to focus your calculation on the end-situation which would result from the trade, and not on the current situation (e.g. after gaining those 5 techs, the player could do this and that with them, which could imply these risks for me; if the techs in question are not "risky", then a human player would trade them away just to gain some dust or resources "for free"; if the techs could allow the opponent to pose a threat to the player, then the player would be more cautious about selling them and sell those techs for a much higher price / or not at all)

Hmm... OK so the AI will sell technology at a higher rate the more technology the buyer has. Let's say you buy 3 technologies one at a time:

[LIST=1]

You have 3 technologies more than me, so 1 technology is worth 100 dust.

You have 4 technologies more than me, so 1 technology is worth 130 dust.

You have 5 technologies more than me, so 1 technology is worth 170 dust.

[/LIST]

The total cost would be 400 dust in this case.



However since the buyer doesn't have any more technologies until the contract is actually signed it will cost you less to buy multiple technologies at once:

[LIST=1]

You have 3 technologies more than me, so 3 technologies is worth 300 dust (each is worth 100 dust).

[/LIST]

The total cost would be 300 dust in this case.



Currently the AI evaluates each term independently and then does a sum. What we need is to be able to base the evaluations of individual terms on the contract as a whole. This though would require a restructuration of how the contract analysis works. I'll see what we can do, but it may be simpler to raise the influence cost of each additional term so that buying technologies 10 at a time is just impossible. We could also hard-cap the number of terms allowed in a contract, but nobody likes hard-caps.



Thoughts?

Althought I agree that juming one era just from that is rather odd, but... Aren't boosters important too? Did you check if they ever had it in their own territory?

Dusty wrote:
Hi there. My first post.

Hi Dusty, welcome to the forums

Dusty wrote:
For 60 emeralds and something like 500 influence I was suddenly in era IV.

Interesting... We'll try to reproduce this on our end. As always save games help a lot in tracking down this kind of issue!

Jojo_Fr wrote:
Ok willbefast, but options can always be usefull. In Civ you can desactivate tech trading, because it can be better to play without it, on multiplayer especially.



Moreoever, I don't think you ll can solve this in every situation. For exemple if a human attack another human, and conquer most of his city, then the conquered player quit the game, that is very logical that the A.I is ready to give some tech to obtain truce. Every nation would do that to save itself from destruction.



If you want to play a pure FFA, without secret alliance with tech exchange or AI extortion, it would be good to have this option.

Well that's the trouble: to what degree should the AI be role-playing an empire in a fantasy world and to what degree should it be role-player a human player controlling this empire? I suppose it really depends on whether you're playing by yourself or against other humans.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:




This is definitely not normal and not what I used to experience in the past, with Serious AI.



(I can't upload the save file, as it is in the VIP build)



EDIT: I was able to get 4 extra tech on top of his quite irresponsible generosity.

Hmm... I'll look into the evaluation of map exchanges - probably needs to be capped to something in cases where the AI has explores very very very very much less of the map than you have.



edit: you can send the save via PM if it's the VIP version

Don't know on length of time.



Concerning the "expected trade" part...I don't know. For me, turn 160 means I'm in Era VI or maybe Era V if I've been busy conquering most of the world. So I would definitely be happy to trade five massively outdated techs for my level 8 hero back. But I don't know what Era you and the AI were in. Keep in mind that getting techs increases the cost of other techs -- so by trading you those 5 techs you *should* have already gotten I'm making your current research 25% more expensive or something as well.

Hello Everyone!



My first post here. I have been reading the posts here for a few days, and I must compliment the excellent community and an excellent game!



Had an experience which was similar to the topic of this discussion, so thought I would share.



Basically, I was playing as Vaulters and it was mid game around turn 160. Was spying with my Hero on a Cultist city which had a very strong (level 8, life ~350) Governor and I let my infiltration level rise to 5. Then I captured the Cultist Governor and took him as a prisoner. I kept him for ~25 turns and just a few turns before it got automatically released I tried to trade him. I got 5 technologies in return (mix of Level 2 and Level 3).



Was that an expected trade given the strength of the governor?



Also, would I have got better returns if I had traded him immediately after capture instead of waiting for around 25 turns? Basically does the AI take into consideration that the prisoner would be getting released soon anyways and thus it maybe does not need to spend too much?



Thanks.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
It would be a difficult assumption to make, considering there is a sea between us and so giving me roads won't be that helpful. Not to mention that he doesn't have a port city either.

Not really, all it assumes is that the AI is "told" to value trading those techs but not actually programmed to check whether those trade routes are actually available. You're looking at it from a human perspective, I'm looking at it from a programming perspective. Sort of like this: http://xkcd.com/1425/

icarus86 wrote:
What I would try to do if I were Amplitude is to implement something like a "global market statistics" system.

Meaning that every time a market trade takes place, the corresponding info would be also be sent to this central place, along with some contextual information (# of regions owned, estimated military strength, how "confident" or "threatened" the AI feels at that point, etc.). By gathering more info, the devs at Amplitude could improve the trading algorithm, no ?

Not necessarily, for reasons similar to the above. I know I constantly do weird trades with the AI because I'm trying to achieve specific goals -- hell, a week or so ago I traded something like four Era IV/V techs for five Era I techs with the sole purpose of trying to get into Era VI. I would definitely not want the AI to start thinking "Oh, that seems like a fair deal in that situation" when it clearly wasn't -- I just knew the game would be over before it mattered and most people could/would not do what I did in that situation. The AI also values different techs at really weird amounts -- Pillage, for example, is typically seen as very high value even if the AI is in no position to really benefit from it.



That doesn't even get into issues of how the AI (and the game itself) badly misrepresents how valuable regions are, how military strength is extremely inaccurate, etc.



The general idea is nice, but it seems like a lot of other stuff would have to be fixed first and even then the first paragraph will still apply a lot -- a player would be willing to trade three techs for a single AI tech if it can repeat that trade four more times for a net gain of two techs...but that logic only applies under the assumption that the "bad" trade can be repeated a sufficient number of times to wind up being a positive.

lilyophelia wrote:
I just don't find trading with the AI (or even the marketplace) generally a fun gameplay mechanic. I think they take away from what I enjoy most about Endless Legend.

I'm going to side with Icarus and KnightofPhoenix here -- I think it's one of the things I enjoy most about Endless Legend. I mean, we have a faction with a major penalty of "No Diplomacy" and another faction with a major benefit of "Force Diplomacy." If you're never engaging in diplomacy with the other factions then it seems like you basically might as well play Necrophages -- trading/diplomacy is SUPPOSED to provide concrete benefits. Take away the non-military interaction and you're removing a major part of the "4X" part and turning it more into a TBS. Which is a perfectly fine genre, but there are better RTS and TBS games than what EL would be without diplomacy.

lilyophelia wrote:
What could be more fun is a sort of conquering mechanic that allows you to claim the scientific and economic riches of another opponent. You have a chance of automatically unlocking a tech whenever you conquer an enemy's cities.

Um...don't you already get that, more or less? If you play Cultists, you get Science stockpiles. If you play anyone else, you get the luxury/strategic resources per turn and whatever Science/Dust the city can spit out. Military aggression already seems insanely rewarding in this game, not sure it needs to be buffed even more.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:
Of course considering the nature of the tech tree and tech in EL, such gameplay is not really possible.

It would be nice, though. One of the main draws of 4X games is the NON-military gameplay -- might be interested if the Economic Victory tied into this kind of idea somehow. That you were so entrenched in the market and cut so many deals that no one dared tried to act against you.

That does sound like a pretty fun playthrough, though.

I also find trading to be a great mechanic, and in theory it works well in EL (if it wasn't for these new weird offers that have been going on. It worked really well immediately after the patch).



But it is my experience with Galactic Civilization 2 that was the best, as far as tech trading is concerned. Once, I played an entire playthrough just being a tech broker, buying tech from one faction and selling it to another (and stealing ofc). In that, I became the guardian of galactic balance. An aggressive empire would invest in missile tech? I would sell anti-missile defences to its enemies. A poor empire on the brink of economic collapse? No worries, here's some economic tech in exchange for your military ones. Oh, you're suffering from enemy cultural influence? I have what you need, just give me some diplomatic tech and you can have your own influence tech.



It was a very fun playthrough. Another time, as Dominion of Korx, I played as an industrial producer. I was friendly with everyone, with massive industrial capabilities, and I would just produce and sell weapons.



Of course considering the nature of the tech tree and tech in EL, such gameplay is not really possible. There is great potential in the marketplace, which is unique in 4X, but that potential hasn't been uncovered yet.

lilyophelia wrote:
I just don't find trading with the AI (or even the marketplace) generally a fun gameplay mechanic. I think they take away from what I enjoy most about Endless Legend.

Happy to disagree ^^ I find trading a very nice aspect in 4X games (e.g. also Civ) ...

I just don't find trading with the AI (or even the marketplace) generally a fun gameplay mechanic. I think they take away from what I enjoy most about Endless Legend.



What could be more fun is a sort of conquering mechanic that allows you to claim the scientific and economic riches of another opponent. You have a chance of automatically unlocking a tech whenever you conquer an enemy's cities.

natev wrote:
There are some strong personality based differences, and there's always the issue of truce. I have had no problem taking even an Endless AI for all of its techs, once I've taken it to the brink of extinction (or past, for that matter).

I've only completed 2 games (1 normal and 1 hard, with 2nd hard game almost finished), so my test results are not very extensive. So I could've just had a lot of situational factors skewing what I observed. Still, it was jarring to see the AI willing to give up so many techs for strategic or luxury resources (there were no truce issues involved).

Ashbery76 wrote:
I always think that tech trading should only happen between very close allies like in real life.



Maybe non allied players could only give tech so you cannot game the system.Like supporting the enemy of you enemy.

I don't mind they occur in non-allied contexts as well. For instance, historically the conquering parties tend to steal technicians/technology from the losers - sometimes on a very large scale (e.g. when the Japanese captured and repatriated countless artisans after the Imjin War - well, Japan didn't win that war, but they did occupy and extract resources from Korea for much of the war). In fact, tech trading (or more like thievery) makes a lot more sense in a war situation. The problem is when the AI essentially gives away tech in a non-coercive situation.

I always think that tech trading should only happen between very close allies like in real life.



Maybe non allied players could only give tech so you cannot game the system.Like supporting the enemy of you enemy.