Loan increases??

Clear Skies · June 16, 2001, 08:58

Here's the deal. I borrowed about 40 energy credits from Roze at a payback of 1 a year for 60 years. After 20 years (40 credits left to pay) she declared Vendetta on me after I probed her Pactmate (Zak) to get Pre-Sentient Algorithms. We had a short but sweet war - I took three of her bases (ovr 7 years) and she sued for peace. I accepted, but once I'd accepted she told me that my loan had grown to 329 credits! I was astounded - that's over eight times the original amount I borrowed from her!
Is this a normal occurrence?
(In the end, I got her to the point of Submissive, repaid her loan and then demanded the money back off her 'to refrain from crushing her like a bug'. She capitulated - and I got my cash back.)

RedFred · June 16, 2001, 19:31

Ouch. That seems like kind of a harsh penalty for suspending your loan repayments. I seldom take money from the AI so I hadn't noticed this feature. If you loan money to an AI faction that you later go to war with, do you get a similar bonus when the war is over?

Clear Skies · June 17, 2001, 05:49

Not on your life. All they say is 'Since our Vendetta has been satisfactorily resolved, I shall now resume my loan payments' and keep on paying you about 1 credit a year for about 4 years (or until you go to war with them AGAIN). I guess it's a mild incentive not to go to war, but like so many things in SMAC I feel it's needlessly balanced in favour of the AI. I'd rather Firaxis had spent more time programming a decent AI rather than giving it all these ridiculous advantages.

As a case in point, the fact that AI factions can declare war on you at any time just because you happen to have picked a Social Engineering choice that conflicts with their stupid ideology. Why can't you do that? Personally I'd stomp everyone who chose Thought Control into the ground...
Also the complete anti-democracy of the Planetary Council. A faction with one base left has exactly the same influence on any non-electoral vote as a faction with 123 bases, every tech in the book and a military fit to crush anyone into a small pool of blue goop. This problem is quite a big one - I'd managed to eliminate all but three factions and those three had about 3 bases each but weren't submissive. I had hundreds of bases and was way ahead both technologically and militarily, so what does Dee do? Calls a Council and asks to melt the polar ice caps. 3 to 1 in favour, no executive veto (the Council's one saving grace). Pressure Domes galore, and death for the bases that can't build them fast enough.

Anyway, I'm raving.