Planets Severely Undervalued

Trading Other Civs for Their Planets Way Too Easy

from GalCiv2 Forums
I don't know if this counts as a bug per se, but I wasn't sure where else to post this. (mods, please move somewhere else if appropriate)

Playing on Tough difficulty, I was able to trade the Thalans 4 techs in exchange for 6 (!) planets. And the techs were not all that impressive: Impulse Drive M II, Laser, Alliances, and Soil Enhancement. Playing on a Huge map with 9 opponents, I traded for 23 planets in one turn and didn't even give away all that much tech.

I know that there are plenty of settings harder than Tough, but come on. The AI gives away 23 planets for a few low-to-mid level techs? This just seems horribly unbalanced to me.

If there is no fix for this, in the future I'll have to resist the temptation to trade planets and just regard this as an exploit to be avoided....
2,855 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Is this TotA or DA? With DA unpatched, you can EASILY trade for planets. The patches fixed this "bug."
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

That is pretty bizarre. I'll have to run it through the debugger and see why the AI would do that. Having coded it, it is really supposed to be stingy with planets.

My guess isn't that it's undervaluing planets but rather overvaluing techs.

Could you tell me a bit more about the game you were playing?

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I just had a TotA game where I bought two planets from the Thalans for some medium-level techs. Observations:

- Only the Thalans were willing to trade their planets, the 8 other opponents weren't.

- The Thalans were not willing to trade 2 planets in one round, no matter what I offered them. They were willing to trade away the second planet in the next trading session though

- I was playing as the humans with *additional* diplomatic bonuses, so I attributed the surprising willingness of the Thalans to give away their planets to my incredible diplomatic advantage.

- When I tried to trade for planets, the Thalans were the largest empire (5 planets), and the two planets I traded for had just been colonized. I suggest checking for two things:
a) Will the AI undervalue planets when it has many? That would be consistent with rabellon's game, which took place on a huge map.
b) Will the AI undervalue planets that have just been colonized? Such planets have high costs and produce little income, so if that's a factor in the equation, then it might devalue fresh colonies in trade.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the last mission of the campaign, the Iconians colonized two of the planets surrounding my star. This became a problem when I needed to blow that star up. So, I figured I would just buy the planets off them, which they readily agreed to. At the time I figured it was due to the rapidly declining value of the real estate ("You you have a *gasp* terror star parked outside? Sold!") but maybe it was the same issue described above.