In our game they seem to have canceled the contract when they are broke. But even if they had unlimited ressources, the bigger problem ist, that you can get it that easily.

Give them some or all ressources for an insane money every turn, they will keep the contract going until they are broke (like three turns), and you might be some 10000 or even 100000 Dust richer. No loss for you.

How the AI works with ressources is completely game breaking once you know it.

In addition the maximum money I could ask from my opponents was blocked some times. Something like 364 dust maximum. Would make sense if this was what the ai wanted to give away, but it was the same amount as the other ones and this maximum went away a little later.

The bar which indicates if the ai agrees to a deal also seems to be influence by some variables, which are not completely purged when changing stuff around. Once I wanted to cease fire and at the same time get money/turn, tried around a few things to find the middle with ressources - ended up with a broken interface where 1 dust/turn completely switched the bar from middle to left...



Together with the bad interface for trading (I'd love an availability list like in civ) I guess the trading should be completely removed (or broken the other way around, that players will never make any profit) until it is fixed.

There are two related bug threads. Please take a look, and if the behavior you see is not covered by these two bugs, let's make sure to understand any remaining bugs and get them submitted also:



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?6894-ai-does-not-deliver-dust-after-trade-agreement

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?6740-in-trade-screen-AI-limit-on-dust-is-*my*-dust-inventory

Maybe they're mistaking their current Dust total with their Dust income per turn?

I've done some research on this issue aswell and just made an account to be able to report my findings.



The good news first: The pockets of the AI are indeed not bottomless. While they might have some bonusses on their WIND. They still will eventually run out of dust.

The bad news: The AI seems to think it's pockets are (almost) bottomless when agreeing to trades!



Thing is you can set up YOUR current savings as the limit for per turn-transactions from the AI.

I got the Horatio to agree to a trade of 21000 dust/turn for a few strategic resources that I had but they didn't.

The deal lasted for 2 turns. It was not cancelled by them but it ended automatically without a warning. The contract was simply gone from the list of running contracts and I did not get the 21k anymore. I suppose this happened when they did not have any dust anymore.

I got them to agree to the same thing again but despite them agreeing to it, the contract was immediately gone the next turn without giving me the dust. Which, again, makes sense since they apperantly just did not have what they just agreed to give to me.



I suspect a bug along the lines of the AI mixing up their actual income with something completly else. My savings for example as I could set up those as maximum for transaction per turn.

This definately needs to be looked at and fixed asap, as it bears massive exploiting-potential. In SP I will not do any dust-trades with the AI since I know this is just broken. But in Multiplayer I am willing to bet this is being exploited a lot!



On a sidenote: I had another contract not working despite both sides agreeing. This time it was the other way around: The amobae suggested an alliance for a bunch of stuff I shall give to them. Did not bother to read through all they wanted and just agreed. But we never actually got allied. I think I did not have everything they wanted. So probably this time they were asking me to give them what they had instead of what I had.

Shivetya wrote:
When jail breaking a game its not that that I see the AI has a dust surplus, it appears they don't care or are not affected by morale. I mean, I have 3 empires I checked who when I select to play as them are nearly always at rebellion level across the systems, have very small positive dust influx, hardly and production or research yet their number of ships and tech available suggest otherwise.

You cannot tell too much about the actual AI economy from a jailbreak game. The AI gets a significant FIDS bonus, and when you jailbreak a game the position you see does not show this. Unfortunately we cannot tell exactly what the effect "would be". So you can study the AI fleet arrangement, tech order, system build improvements and so forth. But you cannot study the AI economy this way. In particular, the happiness level you see is nothing like what the AI sees.

Ouch.. Lucky me I play with friends only so if we find out one of us exploited we just punch him in the face and get back to the game

They are not the only ones who have half an empire in open rebellion

It might be the way modifiers stack. Even if every system is on Strike/Rebellion (-100%), if the AI has +80% FIDS from difficulty then they're still functioning at 80% of full capacity.

When jail breaking a game its not that that I see the AI has a dust surplus, it appears they don't care or are not affected by morale. I mean, I have 3 empires I checked who when I select to play as them are nearly always at rebellion level across the systems, have very small positive dust influx, hardly and production or research yet their number of ships and tech available suggest otherwise.



Like near turn 60 with nearly all 1800 point cost techs known but when I load them they only make 190 research a turn because their people hate them. So not all rules apply to the AI making it hard to know where the money comes from. At later stages of the game (never played beyond 150) they might just make that 10k without blinking if they are not bound by keeping their people happy

I'm playing against a couple friends in an eight-way game



Since I played the beta I know how to manage my way to dominance, an advantage they don't have



But they've found an exploit: AI friendlies will gift huge quantities of dust nearly every turn, keeping them afloat and able to pursue non-military victory conditions without trouble



it's not so much the gifting that's the problem



it's the fact that, between them, they're raking in nearly ten thousand crets in flat fee gifts



and then there are the per-turn 'gifts' they recieve for a Ti-70 a Hexa





and yeah, I can cream the profits too, but I don't want to - it's one of the cheapest exploits I've ever seen

For people who are seeing this problem, could you please confirm whether the AI *has* this much dust? You can confirm by "jailbreaking" your save game and looking at the AI dust inventory. I "assume" that the AI really has this much dust. In this case, the solution should be to make the AI play better, and in particular to make it perform retrofit on older ships. Then it will not need as much FIDS bonus and it will not have such a huge dust inventory. However, if the AI is giving away dust it does not actually have, then it is a separate bug which needs to get fixed.



To jailbreak a game, follow the instructions in this thread:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?2131-!!-able-to-rejoin-game-as-any-ai-player-!!

Renamed the title.

one thing I have noticed is the imbalance of dust values. I have to give a ridiculous amount of dust to an AI to get any sort of response on the value slider when negotiating.

if they're getting 10000 spare dust a turn they cannot be allowed to trade it away to humans - it imbalances the player's even footing immensely



having allies is enough of a benefit in the first place

From what I've read around, it's not that the AI has "bottomless" pockets, but on every difficulty above Newbie, the AI gets a FIDS bonus. So as a result, they're making far more Dust per turn then you can at an identical level.



And from what I hear, the AI is actually pretty good at knowing the perfect level of taxation to use.

I'm about to lose to an economic victory gained through this



turn 161 and my opponent is raking in 10000 dust per turn in exchange for one unit of Ti-70





the best part? they're totally new to ES and they're learning to win through Exploits :s

I've never tried it but yah that is no bueno if the computer is applying false value to the trades.