Economic Victory Conditions

**easytarget** · 09-25-2013, 01:19

Originally Posted by Sp4

I'm at 80 settlements and there aren't even 20 factions anymore >_>

Yeah, shocker, another element of the game not well thought out. Just like no short campaign option.

Who on earth requires you to pick up 90 settlements on an economic victory? That's supposed to be the turtler option, not the war monger.

**Bramborough** · 09-25-2013, 06:14

Originally Posted by easytarget

Yeah, shocker, another element of the game not well thought out. Just like no short campaign option.

Who on earth requires you to pick up 90 settlements on an economic victory? That's supposed to be the turtler option, not the war monger.

I would suppose that's a major reason why Military Allies and Client States count toward the victory condition....the regions are "yours", but you can still trade with them.

That said, in the campaign to which I referred above, I used MAs and CSs pretty extensively, over 25% of "my" settlements were in blue territory. And still I reached a point where there just weren't enough factions left to realistically make 20 agreements.

It doesn't help that Client States often stubbornly refuse to trade with their Big Brother faction, even decades after the initial subjugation and all the old-school hate is gone from the diplomatic modifiers.

**andrewt** · 09-27-2013, 22:28

Originally Posted by Bramborough

I would suppose that's a major reason why Military Allies and Client States count toward the victory condition....the regions are "yours", but you can still trade with them.

That said, in the campaign to which I referred above, I used MAs and CSs pretty extensively, over 25% of "my" settlements were in blue territory. And still I reached a point where there just weren't enough factions left to realistically make 20 agreements.

It doesn't help that Client States often stubbornly refuse to trade with their Big Brother faction, even decades after the initial subjugation and all the old-school hate is gone from the diplomatic modifiers.

Client States are just not thought out well. A few turns ago, my client state I subjugated close to 100 turns ago just decided to cancel our trade agreement for no good reason. They got 8000 because I was trying to figure out how much is needed to get a trade agreement back. I had so much money at that point in the game that I didn't care. If that happened early enough in the game that income mattered, that would be a reload and a punitive expedition mounted.

**Bramborough** · 09-28-2013, 00:32

Originally Posted by andrewt

Client States are just not thought out well. A few turns ago, my client state I subjugated close to 100 turns ago just decided to cancel our trade agreement for no good reason. They got 8000 because I was trying to figure out how much is needed to get a trade agreement back. I had so much money at that point in the game that I didn't care. If that happened early enough in the game that income mattered, that would be a reload and a punitive expedition mounted.

True, but earlier in the game they wouldn't have held out for so much. Took me a while to realize this, but AI factions' $$$ demands aren't based on a discrete amount, but rather a percentage of your treasury. In this case, say, maybe they agreed to settle for 8000 because that was 20% of your treasury, if you were sitting at 40,000 in the bank. Whereas 100 turns ago, perhaps ending a turn with only 4000 in the treasury was more realistic; all else being equal, in that case they would've settled for only 800. So, diplo-wise, there's an inherent benefit to spending all the cash you're going to in a turn before initiating any negotiations with other factions, so that your treasury is as low as you can reasonably make it.

That said, I fully agree that CSs are jacked up. They should trade with you on demand, and not break the trade agreement afterward. They shouldn't declare war on you (didn't think that was possible for a long time...til it happened to me...). They shouldn't make war on another one of your CSs or MAs...and if they're at war with such at the time they become your CS, they should damn well make peace immediately. They shouldn't DW on one of your other enemies unless specifically asked (or more accurately, instructed) to do so. Bottom line, CSs should cede some substantial advantages to the player in return for being allowed to live...right now sufficient incentives to "clientize" factions really don't exist.

**andrewt** · 09-28-2013, 05:06

Oh, no. I did the trick where I could move it based on 10% of their wealth instead of mine. They wouldn't accept 6000 and only accepted 8000.

War is another annoying thing with client states. Feels like I have a client state world war going on.

edit: I think I figured out what happened. It looks like the standard CA diplomacy philosophy where after you hit a certain size, diplomacy is essentially shut down. All the AI factions look like they are hard coded not to accept any deals with me any longer. Even a 2 million+ bribe would not get any trade agreements, military alliances or even non-aggression pacts with anybody.

The sad part is that I only have 1 more port settlement than the minimum required amount for an economic victory. If you need to conquer provinces to have trade access to landlocked AI factions, you might completely screw yourself out of an economic victory by hitting the NO DIPLOMACY threshold.

**easytarget** · 09-29-2013, 16:36

I hope CA decides at some point to fix this 10% of your current worth mechanism in negotiations.

It's just silly by mid to late game for factions to be asking me for 50k for a non-aggression pact or for trade (that will never recoup by the time the campaign ends).

I've no idea what they were thinking here locking this down, I'm sure they thought they were making it easier and streamlining things, but it's just one of a hundred things that then looks like no one play tested it even once to take notice of unintended really stupid consequences in game play as you go deeper into a campaign.

Honestly, did anyone at CA actually play an entire campaign through once?

**easytarget** · 09-30-2013, 01:33

I'm at the point now where I'm being turned down when I offer 3-400k, the faction response is still low. I'm offering them 100 times what I will make off their trade ever, and they aren't even considering it.

Eco victory is broken, or working through some mechanic I've yet to decipher...

Oh, and best of all, there aren't 20 factions left in the game that I can even trade with even if they were willing, because a good 1/3 of them say the following: "Sea trade route unavailable".

Question for anyone: have you ever opened up the diplo screen and not been given any option to initiate diplomacy? Example: I currently want to make peace and start trade (of course) with Persia, when I open the screen to ask for peace, there's no box to open up to offer it, you literally can't do anything. WTF?