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Mus -> RE: PBEM 109 (6/16/2009 1:29:26 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: aprezto
Mus, at least, seemed to completely lack trust in the trade AI and favoured player to player diplomacy and only opening the resources you were after in a trade, and only in a very small window.
Yep. I advise keeping very strict control over your exports and imports and only allowing exports when you KNOW a trading parter is going to be sending a trade proposal that you have worked out ahead of time.
Theoretically the trading partner could sucker your AI trade thingy into accepting a bad deal but that would be kinda like violating your word in a diplomatic arrangement. They other party would just cancel the deal and then not do business with you in the future. Basically shooting yourself in the foot.
Below are some examples of AI trade lunacy:
1. If you have a large stockpile of any resource (but mainly noticed it with money) the AI greatly devalues it... it doesnt consider the perceptions of other players, who may well be critically short of said resource, when placing value.
An example of this is Great Britain which is one of the few cash rich countries in the game. France is second, but usually spends its treasure on supplying wars of conquest and fighting off coalitions against it. Most other countries are fairly cash poor in comparison.
Because GB has a lot of cash the AI assigns a very low value to units of money and will trade money for resources at a very high ratio of money to resource. A rational human in charge of trade can realize that just because they have a lot of money doesnt mean that everyone else does (in fact most of the resource rich countries, the most desirable trading partners for Great Britain are cash poor) and will value their money accordingly.
This would be like a rich person buying a $30,000 car for $120,000 or even $300,000. People dont do that in the real world. Its not rational. The supply of the $30,000 commodity was limited such that the rich person had to compete to secure the purchase they would offer more, but no more than necessary to secure the purchase. They wouldnt devalue their money several times over as the AI does.
2. The AI trade engine thought in one game that 1 textile for 1 wool or cotton was a "good deal" when it takes 4 wool/cotton to make 1 textile. Most people can see that that kind of deal would be economic suicide, the AI trade engine thinks its fine and dandy. We never really figured out why the AI thought this was a good trade, but it led to the misconception that that was a "market price" (even though nobody would pay it by definition not market price) and killed a trade deal.
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