Unlimited Gold for NPCs?

from Elemental Forums

Well I've been playing defense for a while now against 2 kingdoms. Its not too bad because I have better units than both, but one empire is churning out companies (12 units in one) non-stop. Well I thought I would try to buy some time with a peace treaty. I check and the rating for peace is 37000 in his favor...Huh? so I look and he has -37 MILLION gold. THAT IS NEGATIVE! Just to be sure I check the empire info screen. YUP. He has an income on 42 gold total and an expense of 437 gold.

Seem that once the NPC gold supply goes negative it bugs out and just ignores the gold needed for unit and building creation. Now I have been playing this game for 2 days now and don't want to restart, so I found a good way to get peace. Turns out that the negative gold has negative favor value in the trade and treaty windows.  SO I offer him peace and click on his negative gold. Now the NPC reaction to the treaty is Very positive. Of course I'm still pissed that they are able to kick out those troops, so I open the trade window and take everything he has using the same negative gold trick. I guess this is ok for the short term, but seriously...Please fix this.

elemental
4,665 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Yep, I had the same thing happen to me. I found it odd how the one empire expanded at the rate that it did, and when I went to go speak to it, I noticed the negative Gildar bit. Unfortunately, you cant take advantage of the glitch yourself. I offered all my Gildar for the entire negative Gildar debt that he had. I got the negative debt, and he retained his debt... However, I couldn't actually do anything with the debt. Apparently us humans aren't worthy of such exploits. ;)

It's not really a huge problem for me as I've isolated myself from the empire using the flood spell. I left a small choke point that he's more than happy to funnel his troops through. My company of elite dragons then wipe them off the map. Meanwhile I research spells and got a grasp on the game mechanics.

I'm not sure if the problem can still manifest itself in the day 0 version, or if the day 0 patch will render said empire crippled when the save is loaded yet. If it can still happen in the day 0 patch, then yeah, it needs to get fixed ASAP. If not... no biggie, as I wasn't expecting the game to be critical bug free until the day 0 patch anyhow.

Edit: Day 0 patch doesn't fix the issue in existing saves that have the problem. He's still able to create armies and new cities/buildings despite the debt. Still no idea whether the bug can actually occur in the current version though.

At any rate, it seems the AI doesn't have all, if indeed any, of the sanity checks that the human players get. This is no doubt under the assumption that the AI can't and won't make decisions that would lead to normally impossible situations. By not having the game logic cross checking every action the AI takes, they can conserve CPU cycles.  Introduce some bug that creates said impossible situation, however, and the AI runs rampant with nothing to stop it.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

If you have a save that shows this happening, please post it.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I dont have a save handy but I can confirm I have seen the same thing, with respect to the AI having huge negative value sums in the trade diplo UI. It also doesnt seemt o give you your part of the trade (gildar/items)

RAT

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The save is more important than a personal confirmation.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I too have noticed this problem.  Here are 2 saves that I have with it.  The first is before I messed with trading Umber's negative gold for peace, and the second is after I traded with him for resources getting a negative gold amount myself.  I hope this helps you quash this bug.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Bugged negative money game saves.

I've compiled a series of 3 saves into a 7z archive.

  • Save 3 is from before I met the afflicted empire (By forcing a meet with them in the current game version from this save, they have very little Gildar, but at least it's still positive.)
  • Save 4 is from after I met the empire and they have a negative, albeit comparatively small Gildar debt.
  • Save 9 is many turns later and they're now over 1 million Gildar in debt (Are Enron accountants heroes in Elemental? ;) )

None of these saves have me doing any trading with them, so they shouldn't be affected by that. Hopefully it'll help.