Problem with accepting tribute demands

You are allowed to pay as much tribute as demanded, even if you end-up bankrupting yourself. However, you really should consider strengthining your empire and fighting back instead of driving yourself into bankruptcy. For now, Anti-Matter missles are nice.

You can demand more than what the other civ has. You can do so by manually typing in the amount of whatever for howlong.

Your last statement is not true. You cannot demand more than what they currently have, even if you type it. I have tried. You may type it but the result is always the total amount in their treasury nothing more. You can ask for this amount for X amount of months however so in effect you will get more than that. But the point of my note is, the tribute rules for the player is different.

I know I shouldn't bankrupt myself, I know how to play. My point is, the game probably shouldn't let you be able to accept tribute demands time and time again if they come up and you don't even come close to having funds to pay them.

This behavior was introduced in one of the patches for the 1.02 cycle and has never been addressed as to whether it's a bug or intentional. The AI is now *not* playing by the same rules and, worse, you suffer dearly for it.

It's one of the main reasons that military power is so important, because otherwise the AI makes continuous ridiculous demands of you and still winds up attacking you after your economy has been pretty much stopped to a stand still.

There is a bug in how the AI sees your bank account.

If you look at your stats screen it will show that you are first in treasury, and the graph screen will be off the chart. The AI thinks you have a ton of cash, and will continue to demand tribute when you are actually broke. The more your debt grows, the worse the situation becomes.

This need to be fixed, because I am big into early deficit spending!

DblDamage

Actually I kind of like it the way it is, but it should be fair for both sides. That is, we should be able to demand more money than they have as well.

I think if you've gotten yourself into a position where they're demanding tribute that will bankrupt you, you're already in big trouble. You're too weak, and they know it.

"I think if you've gotten yourself into a position where they're demanding tribute that will bankrupt you, you're already in big trouble. You're too weak, and they know it."

Or playing defensively, as HP and defensive values don't go into the military rating. I run into this all the time; I'll have 100 bc, a couple of fully developed starbases and loads of battlehammers playing for a tech or cultural win. The AI will start asking me for 700 or so bc, I'll refuse, they'll wreck their fleets and economies trying to attack invunerable sectors.

Okay, the military rating scheme should be changed to take care of part of this, but it strikes me as silly for the AI to ask for more credits than you have. Shouldn't they instead be asking for say 20 bc per turn for 25 turns? And this payment should stop if they then decide to attack (currently tribute continues even if the conditions under which it was given change...I find it hard to believe that any country would continue paying tribute for peace to a country which has broken the peace and declared war???).

Why is it silly that they can ask for more credits than you have? You can spend more than you have rushing production. If you can spend more than you have in 1 case, I don't see why it should be different in another. Either you can go into debt, or you can't.

...and the entire time you're in debt, doesn't production stop? So in effect forcing you into further debt is a ploy to freeze your empire.

Of course, you should be able to do this to the AI and, and certainly the AI should be reading your negative balance properly...

Paguma, then the same needs to go in return. *You* cannot ask more of an AI then they currently have and therefore neither should they. Further, it did not use to be this way, and some of the AI routines still see it properly so I am pretty sure it is a bug and needs to be fixed.

As it stands you are often faced with the scenario of having to see your production halted for several months or have your relations trashed because of this bug combined with the as yet unperfected military appraisal methodology.

The new beta is attempting to fix the military algorithm so that should be better, but the AI still makes illegal demands of you (my personal experience with the new beta says that although the military graph seems more accurate, the AIs are still using the same evaluation as before).

Code Monkey: That's exactly what I said in an earlier response. You should be able to demand more than the AI has as well.

I don't see why you can go into debt in one case, but not another.

Paguma, the main reason why no one should be able to do this is the ability to halt all production. The other main reason is the ability to produce money into the economy from nothing.

Picture this scenario:
You have 20X the military might of the Torians. On a turn you come and demand 300 bc for 6 months. Two turns later you do the same. Another two turns later you do the same. And so on and so on.

If you are allowed to demand more than they have (and it is met), two things occur. First, the Torians are shut down, no new ships, no new structures, (plus, whatever it is that happens when you can't pay maintenance afflicts their empire). Second, you can introduce thousands of BCs into the econ that come from nowhere at all.

Neither of those should be possible for any reason. If they're so weak, go conquer them, don't use them as a magic everlasting galactic ATM.

I disagree. The fact they can stop your production if you accept the tribute isn't valid. Don't accept it then.

As for demanding tribute from the AIs and driving them into the hole, same thing. They should be smart enough to know when to say no.

As for introducing money for nothing, isn't that what borrowing money is all about? Somebody else is taking on debt so you can get money. That's no different than you spending money you don't have to rush build something. I'm not talking about leasing, but buying outright with money you don't have. You can do that.

It seems to me that what it comes down to is the whole tribute system is out of whack. The AI does not accurately assess the military strength of the various empires nor does it assess their bank accounts properly. As a result you have AI empires that think they are much more powerful than they actually are constantly demanding more money than you can possibly afford to pay. So of course you refuse, and before too long you are at war. The only way I've found to prevent this from happening every single game is to build up a huge military of your own to prevent people from extorting you, but of course if you're that powerful you probably *want* to go to war. Thus constant warfare is assured, and the game degenerates down to a race to see who can get Dreadnaughts first. Or at least, that's what it has been like for me lately, and it is getting annoying.

That has not been my experience at all. It is true early in the game, but not later. There is more than one way to get the other races to like you. Tribute, trade, gifts, etc... Obviously trading with them is the most cost efficient.

I played a Gigantic map last night, and never built a ship more advanced than a BattleAxe, and avoided war for essentially the entire game. Heck, I didn't even build a ship (other than constructor) after about quarter of the way into the game. War did break out 5 turns out from me discovering Final Frontier, but by then, my victory was unequestionable. I was losing the war, but won the game.

Note: Battle Axes don't stand up well to Overlords.

Well, Paguma, I'm just going to stop debating this with you. The fact that I know this behavior was introduced undocumented in one of the patches leads me to believe it is 100% a bug, so unless one of the devs actually wants to clarify that the AI, and only the AI is *supposed* to have this magic ability to make you produce magic money from nowhere (note, although you can borrow to rush a project, you must be in the black to do so, you can never "borrow" money if already in debt, this does not apply here at all), I'm tired of reading your repetitive justifications for why a bug should be left in the game and even made worse.

I'm not debating whether it's a bug or not, I believe you. I just think that either you can or can't go into debt. Okay, I went back into the game and confirmed you can't rush buy when already in debt.

Although this is another inconsistency. How come I can rush buy something that puts me 8000 credit in debt if I have 1 credit in the bank. But if I'm -1 in debt, I can't buy something that is 100 credits. Isn't this inconsistent?

Paquma, I've read a few threads in which you have posted recently, and I have to say that your experiences don't mirror mine, or seemingly those of many other players. Even with significant amounts of trade and friendly relations with an AI empire, I have had it try to extort money from me if their military rating is more than mine. For that matter, I've had AI empires that were friendly with, shared alignment with, and was trading with, just declare war out of the blue if they (correctly, sad to say) thought they could take me. So I have no idea how you avoided war in this game of yours.