AI's terrible deals

[Akko Chan]

can we take a moment to discuss how much of a scumbag 90% of all Civilisations are with regards to trade deals?

other than Luxury resources which are arguably worth 7 gold for 30 turns (or 210 gold)
The consistancy Civs have with trading is down right insulting.

For example, i am befriended by many civs in my current game like full on besties. I declare war on russia, never do anything to them, but they give me one of their cities with a population of 7 and rather good land overall.

now this land is on the other side of the planet and i personally would rather buy land from Spain which is closer to my Country i offer a decent deal of 50 gold per turn PLUS the city and they refuse

they ask for

5 luxury resources
5 iron
5 horses
5 coal
5 Timber (modded resource)
250 gold per turn
10 gold straight up.

now, i am best friends with spain like they have zero reason to be angry at me. yet they insult me with this clearly unfavorable deal. i even build 2 more cities with populations of 1 to try and sweeten the deal but NO they increase the deal to 300 gold per turn. plus the 3 cities and everything else up.

i decided to sell the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1 population lands away for a spare change to whoever wanted it and i'm planning on selling the population 7 city too.

so why are AI just scummy with money? i've even had people offer me 1 gold per turn in exchange for the 7 population city.

[Ghadaro]

If that city doesn't meet their borders it has little value to them, thats not the AI being scummy its just practical for how the AI plays.

Your offer of a city a long way off and 50gpt(1,500 gold) is a terrible deal for Spain. Thats why they refused.
If your city isn't desired by Spain it has negligable value to them so you are essentially wanting Spain to sell you a city with a value of around 10,000 gold for an equivalent of less than 2,000 gold

As for the value of the cities themselves the plots in the city territory, improvements, wonders, population and local resources all increase the value.

To get a better return on a city across the map you would need to sell them a small worthless city which borders the larger one for around 1gpt then offer the better city which now borders part of their territory.

[Render]

Civilizations rarely if ever sell a city. I've never heard of it except in the case of trying to end a war.
People are not commodities. You cant buy and sell them like gold or grapes.

[stvlepore]

As with any trade, it doesn't matter what you are asking for is worth to you, what matters is what's it worth to them. That is what the city was worth to Spain.

[Akko Chan]

Originally posted by Render:

Civilizations rarely if ever sell a city. I've never heard of it except in the case of trying to end a war.
People are not commodities. You cant buy and sell them like gold or grapes.

of course they are. in the colonial era Britain, France and Spain sold South America, Africa and the Middle East by the boat loads. dividing lands up and creating borders between people.

[ArcticPuffin02]

Originally posted by Hollow:

Originally posted by Render:

Civilizations rarely if ever sell a city. I've never heard of it except in the case of trying to end a war.
People are not commodities. You cant buy and sell them like gold or grapes.

of course they are. in the colonial era Britain, France and Spain sold South America, Africa and the Middle East by the boat loads. dividing lands up and creating borders between people.

And how did that work out?
Dividing countries is always a bad idea, think north and south vietnam, north and south korea, east and west germany, etc. and thats only one century

[Damsteri]

Those unfavorable deals are only for their last copy of any resource, regardles how asks them. Would you sell your last copy and get -4 happiness? AIs won't, unless you buy the premium for it.

It's their last copy if the trade window shows 1 as the amount. AIs makes lots of deals to other AIs and they will sell/trade all their extra copies unless you get a deal going on early in the game.

One way to "free" copies for trade is to bribe AIs to go war, because their trade deals are then cancelled... and free copies are available, but mostly only at the next turn (then the AI with extra copies will trade them to other AIs).