I feel dirty (or mass cash cheese)

Giving AI cash to loot them further is known cheese. Selling tech for cash is too overpowered IMO. It's good that they nerfed it for Maso. I feel that they should also nerf it on a reducing scale from Crippling to Challenging.

~SDC~

Another possible fix would be to update the AI to understand this tactic rather than not having them buy tech. The AI could recognize that the human has given them free cash and then for the next say 20 turns to throw out a number the AI would buy techs only at a much reduced cost (the actual number of turns could be based on the spend rate of the AI race and the amount of cash given) . This would pretty well kill it for all of the difficulty levels without having to adjust the normal tech selling rates at each difficulty level.

Even without the free cash, the fact that AIs buy techs into bankruptcy is something no human player would usually do. They should reject trades that bring them deeply into the red unless they really need the tech or they have been given a great deal.

~SDC~

One thing that might help would be if techs that lots of other races already have were valued at a lower rate (on the grounds that they could buy it from someone else instead). I'm often willing to pay quite a lot of money to buy a tech if I can then trade it to every other race in the game.
It also seems wrong that minor races are willing to pay more cash for techs than majors, even though they have a much lower income.
Another thing: at the moment you can keep receiving income from extinct races. I don't think this should happen. I think extinct species should be able to keep on receiving money from trades (to prevent abuses), but not to keep paying out.


~SDC~

I thought this was due to the higher diplomacy for majors as compared to minors.

~SDC~

I think the extinction of a race should either

a) pass the debt onto the race taking over

or

wipe out all debt in or out (this wouldn't be "abuse", the same tactic could easily be used by a government on earth today, and no doubt has been used at least at some time in the past.

I remember reading that in one of the versions, minors had been made more generous. This might have been through a diplomacy penalty. I do think there should be an upper limit to the diplomatic advantage you can have over anyone.



It used to work that way, but it was too easy to buy loads of stuff off someone, spreading the payments over 50 turns, and then destroy the race next turn so you only end up paying a tiny fraction of what you agreed. It might work in real life, but as a tactic it was too unbalanced.

~SDC~
[Message Edited]

The ai should only buy techs it can use. Evaluating the worth of a given tech is very hard work however.

Military techs value should be limited by the ability to produce and maintain the corresponding ships: If after buying a ship tech, your economy is in the red for more than one month, then it's better to see the tech as being worthless since you can't use it.
Other techs should have their value based on their effect in game, and some sort of return on investment used, instead of an arbitrary number in the ai file. It may be that way, but I doubt it a bit. A +morale tech is not very useful to a regime with little or no morale problems. It has long term benefits (in terms of more tax revenue) but should not be purchased at more than what buying it now gives back in tax boost vs. what researching it would (even though you'd be researching something else instead) for instance.
These evaluations only cover the direct use of the tech, not what the tech allows you to research, so I let you think of the nightmare that a proper evaluation of tech worth may be... Still, these are the maximum prices worth.
The only thing simple enough is probably: Never pay to go in the red for a tech that doesn't provide immediate advantage. Never pay if you go in the red more than 1 month.

I was thinking as a simplistic general rule, the smaller the empire, the less valuable the tech or trade good is. Something that gives +10 morale when you've got 30 planets improves morale for thirty times as many people as it will if you've only got one planet.

Another AI trade problem: a race with one +68% influence base will happily sell it to you, even when it means certain assimilation for their entire empire.


~SDC~

That also happens with resources. Resources are much more valuable on gigantic than on tiny. The AI doesn't seem to adjust cash trade values based on map size.

and star density!