AI can trade without Universal Translator

I'm guessing your not talking about cargo trade?

Not that I don't believe you but how did you test that?

I have seen something strange.  I go to trade with the AI and it appeared he does not have the universal translator because i can include mine in the trade offer.

Well, I have played several games in which I encountered the AI very very early and it did not have the Universal Translator because I could sell it to it. Last game I encountered the AI on turn 7 and on turn 8 it sent me an offer to buy Universal Translator for a 130+ credits.

Look, when the AI wants to buy Universal Translator from me it means it doesn't have it. Then I see it tech trades with another AI - which also has no universal translator.

If you have it, they can talk to you as you understand them. I'm not sure how your able to check that they have traded with others or not. It only takes one party of the two in trade for it to be able to work.

It seems to me perfectly logical that two factions can communicate as long as one of then has universal translator.

In the diplomatic overview you can see (by clicking on their planet) with whom they are trading (the yellow lines).

Let say, you are playing the Terrans, you click in the diplomatic overview on the Drengin planet and you see that they are trading with the Alterians. So now trade with the Drengin and you can see that they want the Universal Translator. Now trade with the Altarians and if they also want the Universal Translator, then you know something screwy is going on.

However to be honest, if myself have not see this recently. Last time i did see it was around the first week of April. And that i remember because i wanted to ask Paul about it in the dev stream (the first one that Kristin moderated).

The yellow line is an indication of a trade route by a cargo ship. Not a physical trade in the trade window where you talk to them. You don't need to understand a race to have a trade route just like in real life ages ago two cultures could trade goods without needing to know each others language.

00zim00

You are right, i just checked, my mistake (felgercarp, now everybody thinks i am a complete novice at this game ). Should have checked instead of answering from memory.

Look its fairly simple: I encountered an alien faction, something like turn 8, and it didnt have the Universal Translator tech. How do I know? because a turn later (turn 9) I get a trade offer from that faction which asks me for Universal Translator in exchange for 130+ credits. This should not be possible - how can a faction that does not have the tech offer a trade? Answer, because the AI is able to trade without the Universal Translator tech. I am using version 1.02, latest build, btw.

As we said before, maybe you should read up more. As long as one of the races has the tech either or both can talk to each other.. The race can offer you a trade because you have a translator that let's you talk and understand them, and in turn they can also understand you. They are asking for the tech from you because they also want to be able to talk to other races not just you.... I don't know how much clearer I can make it

Guess you have a point here. To be more specific, the Universal Translator tech enables only its holder to initiate a dialogue. At least, this rule is set for the player so it should be in place for the AI as well.

Also I suspect the AI isn't bound to the time closing prohibiting him new trades for a specific time after a successful communication has been done.

Well, return to the OP and read my input, clear enough regarding the point that the AI is able to trade without the UT tech. 

They can trade with you when you have UT, they can also trade with another race if the race they are trading with has UT. Even if they themselves Don't have UT, Only ONE party in the trade needs UT. But so far you have shown me no evidence they are able to also trade with another race who dosnt have UT while them themselves also dont have UT. And if you have, you really havnt made that clear.


Can someone else chime in please, maybe im just not explaining myself plainly enough....

you are, can you as a player initiate contact without having UT? no... hence unfair. 

Ahh, well thats different then what was implied in your first post xD. im not sure if that's the case but if it is then i guess there should be a way to talk to other Ais who already  have UT when you yourself dont.. i think it was like that in galciv 2 but im not 100% sure.

Really though it is logical that if an alien who has not got universal translator trys to talk to me and I do have it we can talk since I can translate in both directions.

But that said ai and humans should play by the same rules.

The Universal Translator (UT) does not initiate conversations; it just makes them understandable. If you start a game allied with another player and neither of you have the UT then you get a contact message from the ally where your only responses are "Duh!" or "Smile, and nod knowingly."

If you are the only player with the UT you can communicate understandably with everyone. They can only communicate understandably with you. I think you're better off not trading away the UT for as long as you can.

I have to agree that not being able to initiate diplomacy wiith a faction that has UT seems asymmetric.

If you could initiate diplomacy, how would you know?  Would you have to attempt diplomacy over and over until it worked one time?  With each different faction?  I would rather we train the AI to open diplomacy the first turn it could, either because it had the tech or, by trying over and over, found a partner that had the tech. 

in GC2 you had to have researched UT on your own, otherwise the game gave you an error message ("We need a Universal Translator to speak to this civilization") regardless if the civ you'd like to contact already has the UT or not. Thus, it was totally impossible to actual trade for the UT itself. And the same mechanism seems to be in place here as well, so to my eye it's fairly obvious from the examples ExNihil posted that something is off , ie. AI not playing to the player rules....