Extremely dumb AI-trading behaviour spoils whole game

I agree that abusing the A.I is quite easy right now. I can't imagine playing a game without "Disable Tech Trading" on. 

However, tech isn't the only issue. There are many potential exploits that don't require tech. For example, the war declaration / peace treaty trades. Since I have been playing Malevolent, I realized that races would generally declare war on me early on (around turn 30-40 with Godlike opponent difficulty setting). So I would simply keep playing for a while like normal until they are actually getting close to me or I think its been long enough.

Then I unlock the malevolent tier 5 ability that gives each of my colonies a large ship. This instantly gives me a huge advantage in military power so early in the game. I then decide to trade a peace treaty with the A.I that have declared war on me, and then take everything they have. I ended up being able to exchange a single peace treaty for 880 credits per turn, 215 credits, a powerful beam ship (like 72 beam attack), their survey ship and trade resources + tech.

I can then trade a few of the ships to other factions in order to get their trade goods / techs / credits per turn...etc. Also it's probably a bug, but I can instantly declare war on the same faction that I traded the peace agreement with - insult to injury really. 

So yea...trading exploitation is pretty severe and varied right now. I especially didn't expect godlike (the highest difficulty A.I) to be this bad at trading.

Keep in mind we are still in Beta. The devs just now got the AI to use these items. Using them intelligently is just beginning.

Isn't this due for a full release in May?

AI is a basic AI right now as the game is still in Beta (Expected release is May 2015 or next month) by then expect the AI to be very similar or better than it was in Galactic Civilizations II.  Thus why when you launch the game it states "this is a Beta game not for fun".  Please expect it to be fun with-in the next couple months.

I also recognized the sam issue regarding trading in a peade treaty.

Also, I am very pleased to hear that the AI is just being optimized. Disabling tech trade would indeed be a pity, but it has to be made sure that the AI can also correctly estimate/calculate mid- and longterm consequences from certain trade agreements.

I also would suggest to introduce some mechanism that forbids or at least punishes an imediate declaration of war shortly after a 'substantial trade' between two parties. E.g. if you trade 5 techs and 3 ships with an opponent and then immediatly declare war, part of the deal should be made undone. This can be argued that it takes some time for your species/scientits/engineers to learn the new techs or to learn how to fly the new alien ships and if you don't wait x turns, you cant fully benefit from the trade.

Also, I think, it would be appropriate and realistic, if the AI somehow reacts on the trading and post-trading behaviour of the player and 'learns' from previous actions. E.g if you trade in ships/techs that are shortly afterwards directly used to harm another player, the AI should become more sceptic and 'increase what they want in exchange for a certain trade good'.

And, last remark, especially if the player is already very close to a specific type of victory, the AI must NOT trade goods that will help the player even slightly. E.g. no techs must be traded anymore if the player is already close to the end of the tech tree, or no planets must be traded if the player already dominates almost everything etc.

I just read the comment that the AI will be as good as in GCiv II or better. I definitly hope it to be better because the same trade issues that we mentioned here were also very bad in GCiv II.

It would help slightly if credits per turn and trade resources had some kind of end date.  But as far as I can tell you get them from the AI forever.

A lot of sound observations, but I believe either Brad in the forums or Paul in the dev stream said they just now got the ai hooked up to all the features. IIRC Paul said the version he was using that will probably be opt-in in a week or two was already much better. Until all the features are hooked up, there isn't much point to working on ai priorities. 

Turning off tech brokering helps as you can only trade what you researched. However, that means whoever is leading in tech can trade away and get further ahead. So really not allowing tech trading unless you are allied or at least friendly (open borders, trade, same ideology) might be the way to go. It is one thing to trade say advanced farms for a manufacturing tech. It is quite another to say "Give me all your military techs and I will give you trade and farming techs" That is like trading a lunch for a gun, then using it to rob them.

Ships and military techs especially should be almost impossible to trade for IMO.

Just adding some of my 2 cents to this post,

In one of my earlier games and I must admit I'm not sure if this has been addressed yet or not (but from reading this post it doesn't seem to be). I was (and still am) getting use to the game and fell behind the AI so out of nowhere the Evil Drengin Empire declared war on me and I put up a long dragged out fight but in the end I was loosing so I decided to give diplomacy a chance and we able to come up with a solution for peace which cost me a huge chunk of my cash reserves just for him to take my money and declare war on me next turn and eventually wipe me out. Shouldn't there be a mandatory cease fire where we can't declare war on each other for a set amount of turns? 

Well, that was CIV and this isn't. Sorry but true. However, it could be like total war where there would be a massive diplomacy hit. That seems pretty fair. Do that and others DoW on you easier with little to no diplomacy hit since you were untrustworthy.

Ya, the AI evaluating trustworthiness would be great.  Being trustworthy should be worth something, but more importantly cheeseing the AI should should make diplomacy very difficult in the future.

Sort of related; the AI shouldn't hate you forever because it declared war on you at some point, currently its a -- modifier to relations.

Agreed

Unlike the way civ 4 actually did closed borders. I actually sgree with you on this even though I've taken advantage of this myself. I think that an amount on turns like maybe 20 where you can't declare war is reasonable. Definately civ was better at this with ais being pissed off at you for being dishonerable.

Now about the post I think that trading with anyone that you are at war with should not be allowed.

Some other options that might be viablein the game,  or at least realistic. How about an agreement where you reconquer their territory for them where they actually get back the planets you win. You could always broker a price for this. How about rebuilding options for both allies,  and enemies after the war. Either dedicate some of your cash,  or production for this.

If cash when it runs out you have an option to dump more cash into it,  or convert the rest into using a percentage of your own production,  or aboning the rest of the project. You could use both from the beginning with the ability to stop at any time. With cash you could either use a lump sum,  or per turn. Just remember if you agree to something,  and stop in the middle of it, especially if you rip them off you should take a diplomacy hit.

The game already have unstealable,  untradeable techs. I guess whe should give ideas on what should be that maybe someone should start a post on this. I recommend checking out brads ai posts I think he wants feedback on this. I support the idea of the ai reacting to your actions. I also don't think the ai should trade techs that are inferior to what it has.

If the traded tech doesn't further its own goals,  give a building that is cheaper than the building it uses,  builds some tipe it can't that is useful,  more powerful than what it has,  modules either cheaper,  smaller for the same firepower,  or more powerful in gameplay. If the tech doesn't fulfill the requirement of furthering the ai then it won't trade for the tech.

May huh?  Maybe they should keep it in BETA till then, if they want the bugs squashed.

Considering this is "Beta 5" the diplomacy and the AI should be in much better state then it is.  This Beta 5 seems more like an ALPHA 5 to me, or maybe a Beta 1. 

The game is cool, but there needs to be more focus from the team on bugs and AI.

Paul said they haven't really worked on AI per say and have been working on the major feature of the game in the last stream actually they have stated that in all their stream because you always have people on chat asking then on when AI is going to get better. Anyways, they are all done with the major features are polishing then and have now really began turning their attention to the AI. I expect the AI to be a lot better by release of the game.

On the trading issue Paul is aware of it just hasn't had time to play with how the AI weight the tech or item its trading. He is going to start looking at the numbers and adjusting then. I expect this all to get worked out in the next couple of weeks but as Paul has been saying balancing and AI adjusting are going to be going on forever.  

The difference between Prototype, Alpha, Beta, and Release is different with many companies and in most cases has spoiled some in others lowered the standards, Stardock, however, is in line....

Prototype - ruff draft, minimal graphics, base part of game functions but, most likely serves little or no purpose.  Little bugs because most of game isn't in.

Alpha - just beyond prototype, more graphics in game, base functions of game with limited features, basic game-play will be in play, many bugs appears as things are turned on.

Beta - A game that is mostly complete, in various stages, testing specific functionality of game to get it ready for release.  Main stage to find and squish potentially game breaking bugs so it can be ready for release.

Release - Little or no bugs remain, game could be sold in stores if that was the way games did business.

Some companies will release Beta games now days as full Release with many game-play issues and bugs  (EA) [SimCity]

Some companies will have full release Beta's (makers of Space Engineers) where things are always changing never complete.

Some companies will continue to make a great game using the full potential of Alpha/Beta process (Stardock)

At the end of the day though, all that matters is the game works with little to no bugs upon release.  I have no doubt that Stardock will accomplish this with in the next month plus.

Going back to my post maybe adding a cease fire option to diplomacy so that it could be made a part of the peace proposal or even while remaining at war just an agreement that player wont attack each other for a set amount of turns 

To address the original exploit,the AI should probably never consider trading away its fleet if its fleet strength will be below a amount relative to current empire strengths, modified by personality.

Like, a peacekeeping race wouldnt mind if it traded away some of its fleet that put it at 90% of the known galactic fleet strength average.

However warlike dude is probably gunning for 110% of the known race fleet strength.

Like if three empires had 100 fleet strength, then the average is 100. Say a fourth dude has 115 fleet strength. He would be okay to trade 15 strength but no more. (This is simplified)

And of course once you screw over an AI using this he should never deal arms with you again!

It would be cool if this was fixed, but I would love weapon dealing with other empires, purchasing ships and selling them. 

The AI should not trade its fleets, with one exception.  Helping an ALLY and that should be the ONLY time.

Making Tech trading not an exploitive feature for the human player is impossible. They might do some fixes reducing the potential exploits a little bit, but the feature as is are bad news for the AI. I just don't understand why we can't choose the NO TECH TRADING option yet, so we can play some balanced games both in SP and MP already. I guess they want us to test the game with tech trading on, but God damn how much more fun I'd have if I could turn that tech trade off.

I also have to say that keeping the old Tech trade mechanic is a design error. I also mentioned this pre-alpha. Stardock should have found other solutions like Civilization 5 did, or just abandoned it. Tech trading in this classical 4X form is just doomed to lead to terribly unbalanced and unfair gameplay, not rewarding skill and punishing the AI all too much.

StarDrive 2 has good way of dealing with this. One of the factors in diplomacy in that game is "Diplomatic Tolerance" which is basically a cap on how much diplomatic activity can be exchanged between a pair or players over a given period of time. Once you've depleted your tolerance with another faction you need to wait a number of turns for it to regenerate before you can make further deals with them. The better the relationship between factions the faster it regenerates and the more of it you can save up before hitting the cap. Significant deals like military alliances need you to have good relations to be able save up enough tolerance to make them.

Practically this means that even if your prepared to pay through the nose an AI that dislikes you will only conclude small scale deals, and you need to wait several turns before speaking to them again. (e.g. you can only buy one tech at a time, you need to wait 8-10 turns between trades, and they'll never give you something really powerful).

Even with a close relationship you still need to spread your exchange of tech and treaties over a number of turns. Concluding a major deal like a military alliance requires you to spend several turns building up tolerance with a close friend, and afterwards it will be several turns before you can do much with them again

I've noticed the following issue in my current large game (started in 5.1) and in several small-map new games in 5.2:

The AI is very willing to trade credits per week for exploration & non-agression treaties, even to their severe detriment. On my larger game, I'm playing a custom artificial race and have two races feeding me 9000bc/turn. I'm using those credits to buy the Assembly project on every planet and have maxed my population in just a few turns.

On the smaller maps, I tested this playing as the Iconians. I traded for techs and credits/turn with something like 16 factions on a small map - VERY crowded. The credits/turn I'm getting allows me to buy ships and colony upgrades quite quickly and several of the factions I'm getting credits/turn from have offered me lucrative trades just to get their balance above 0.

It seems like the AI currently does not value credits/turn as highly as it should. Any amount that's going to bankrupt it within 50 turns should probably not be accepted.

I think it was mentioned that they intended to do a lot of work improving the diplomatic trade AI before release anyway think Brad was working on combat AI this weekend just gone but he said he had a future pass at the diplomatic AI in the plan so I think this is going to be addressed and they know it's not great at the moment.

In addition to all that, it has been stated many times by Paul and Brad, that the AI will be worked on and tweaked for as long as the game is supported. Is it prefect? No. WIll it be? No, but it will only get better and better the more time they put into it and the more feedback that they get.

Ahh ok, for some reason I was thinking the entire trading AI was updated. I checked the patch notes and it was just fixing the most egregious issues. I'm sure it's on the list, then.