Recently, there are couple players asking me how to keep up with the tech pace while getting rich at the same time. So I thought it may be fun to have a little practice session on that. While awaiting for the next game, let's have a little friendly learning competition here. The rule for this thread is as follows:

1. I will post a random save game and each of us will play zero turn (that means you can do whatever you want after you load the game but do not go to the next turn).

2. You must write down all the steps that you did and post the result here. A simple result would be fine; there is no need to upload your save game here.

The winner will be the one who have made the best possible deal or the best sequence of transactions. What do you really win? The reward = the experience to help you on your next game.:)

Let's play. In this (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/TradeTraining_825BC.SAV) save game (vanila Civ3 with patch v1.29f), your civ is falling about 6 techs behide, it's your job to bring your civ to even tech parity with the tech leader and to become the tech leader yourself. Feel free to make any deals with the AIs and post your transactions here. Please remember that all transactions must be made within the current turn. Have fun and good luck! I will post my result later. I'm sure we will have a lot to compare. Chances are I'm going to learn something new as well.:)

Note to Cracker: I'm not sure if this forum is appropriate for this thread. If not, please move it to wherever you think is appropriate. Thanks!

Added the save file as an attachment to this post, as it got lost in the last site housekeeping - AlanH

I love it! Sounds like a quick mini-mini game to me! :thumbsup:

I can't wait to try this tonight!

I think this is a really great idea! Especially the week before the deity GOTM, this should really help.

A couple concerns though. I don't think there should be any competition to it. Just post what you did, why you did it, and what the results were. I think people can compare with others and see how they could have improved without saying one person did better than another person.

One dilemma with trying to say who was 'best' is that you really can't decide that. There can be many different objectives to a trading session based on your overall game strategy. Do you want to sell your map or hold onto it? Do you want to trade contacts or keep everyone oblivious of each other? Do you want to save all your lump sum money for unit upgrades or just use it to buy techs? Do you want to trade all techs around to everyone? Or try to keep the other AI's as backwards as possible? Etc, etc..

But I think it's a great idea. Just no need to try to say one peron's trades are 'better' than another person's.

// reserve for summary

// reserve for summary #2

I think this is a great idea and could become a standing monthly feature--The Trading Pit! It doesn't require moderator supervision, just someone to post the save file.

The main thing I would change, though, is to say NO RELOADING! Write down all the factors you looked at to arrive at the decisions you made to trade with this civ first and then that one. If someone else then comes up with a better result by trading in a different order we can dissect it and try to figure out why it came out better.

Since you're coming in cold to the game situation, you'll have a LOT of things to look at before pulling the trigger on that first trade, so you may not have time to go back through it again anyway. And it could require a LOT of documentation if there is a lot of trading possible--QSC timeline length if you're explicit.

Shillen, it COULD be set as a specific goal: Have the most tech improvement at the end, or have the most GP on hand, or have the most GPT, or the most luxuries, etc. This one Moonsinger seems to be saying to try and catch up in techs as much as possible. So two people who end up with the same techs could then be ranked based on those other factors.

This is a learning experience, NOT a competition, please, no wagering! :)

Originally posted by Shillen
One dilemma with trying to say who was 'best' is that you really can't decide that. There can be many different objectives to a trading session based on your overall game strategy. Do you want to sell your map or hold onto it? Do you want to trade contacts or keep everyone oblivious of each other? Do you want to save all your lump sum money for unit upgrades or just use it to buy techs? Do you want to trade all techs around to everyone? Or try to keep the other AI's as backwards as possible? Etc, etc..

Well, if we don't trade with one AI, some other civs will. Therefore, by withholding tech, map, or whatever usually won't hold back that one AI for long. But you are absolutely right, sometimes, we need to hold back a little for our overal strategy to work. However, in this case, we are the backward civ and we have a lot of catching up to do. When we are at the bottom, we don't have much else to lose; so let's trade as much as we can.

Basically, in this game, I have shutdowned my research after I discovered Pottery. Some of the AIs are 2 techs away from entering the Middle Age, can we catch up to them without emptying our treasury? Basically in this game, we start out with around 700 gold at the beginning of the turn, I would like to see us getting at least 700 gold at the end of the turn while gainning all the techs plus the complete worldmap.:)

Originally posted by pterrok
The main thing I would change, though, is to say NO RELOADING! Write down all the factors you looked at to arrive at the decisions you made to trade with this civ first and then that one. If someone else then comes up with a better result by trading in a different order we can dissect it and try to figure out why it came out better.

Good idea! That would make the practice game be more like the real game and that would also make us learn how to think more before saying yes to any deal. I will edit the original rule.:)

1. Noticing only 2 civs have contact with the Greeks, I trade World Map and 27 Gold for Greek contact from the English.

2. Trade with Zulu. We get Literature for Greek contact plus 137 gold.

3. Back to the English. Code of Laws for Literature and 6gpt.

4. Off to Russia. Philosophy and Babylonian contact for Greek contact and Code of Laws.

5. India trades Polytheism for Greek Contact, Literature, and Code of Laws.

6. Back to Zulu. Trade Mathematics for Polytheism, Code of Laws.

7. England seems to be the only one with Map Making. So, map making for Mathematics 10 gpt and 345 gold.

8. Russia: our World Map for their Territory Map and all their gold (21).

9. Persia: We get Territory Map plus 11 gold for Greek contact.

10. Bablyon's Territory for our World Map.

11. Egypt's Territory for Greek Contact.

12. World Map for World Map trade with Rome.

13. Our World Map for Greek World Map and 50 gold.

14. World Map for World Map trade with India.

15. Japan offers World Map and 1 gold for our World Map.

16. England now will pay 6gpt for our World Map.

17. World Map for World Map with Russia.

18. Zulu will pay World Map + 137 gold for our World Map.

19. Persia will pay World Map + 28 gold for our World Map.

20. Egypt: World Map for World Map.

21. Back to England: They will pay ANOTHER 2gpt for our world map.

End Result:

England : Equal techs
Russia: We lead by 4 techs
Zulu: We lead by 1 tech
Persia: We lead by 2 techs
Babylon: We lead by 3 techs
Egypt: We lead by 6 techs
Romans: We lead by 3 techs
Greece: We lead by 8 techs and they dont have Japanese contact.
India: We lead by 2 techs
Japan: We lead by 5 techs and they dont have Greek contact.

We have 514 gold in treasury and +18 gold per turn. The only civ with money in the bank besides us is England.

Judge Dredd,

Well done!:goodjob: Exactly what I had in mind when I started this thread.:) Now let's hope someone else can come up with another approach.

The things of note:
1. England is the only one with Map Making
2. We are the only one without contact with Babylon
3. We aren't in any position to war, but we are ahead in scoring and power.
4. The bulk of the civs are missing techs that others have, this will be our main trade oppurtunity (ie Mathematics and Polytheism). However, only England has any sizable gold on hand.
5. A few civs have contact with Greece, but they are all pretty weak so I am assuming Greece isn't a powerhouse.
What I think will work best is to pay gold for this in-between tech in the hopes of then trading them other techs to get our gold back. At a glance this would work with India and Zulu, and maybe some others.


renegotiate peace with Cleo, get contact with Hammurabi
* could get Mathemathics from Shaka for 440g
renegotiate peace with Shaka, get Mathemathics for 260g
* could get Polytheism from Gandhi for Mathematics and 60g
renegotiate peace with Gandhi, get Polytheism for Mathemathics, he has nothing else to give
renegotiate peace with Toku, get Philosophy and 1g
traded Shaka Polytheism for Literature and 20g
* could get Code of Laws and contact with Alex from Hammurabi for Mathematics, Literature and some gold
renegotiate peace with Hammurabi, get Code of Laws and contact with Alex for Mathematics
traded Shaka Code of Laws for 200g
* could trade Alex Iron Working for 50g
renegotiate peace with Alex, get 40g
* could trade Alex anything for his remaining 10g
* could trade Eliza Literature, Mathematics, world map and 265g for Map Making
renegotiate peace with Eliza, get Map Making for Literature, Mathematics, world map and 25g


Now at parity with tech leader which appears to be England with 771g remaining, and can now trade maps and hopefully get my 25g back and Eliza's stockpile.

Normally I wouldn't care this much about world maps, but for the sake of comparison I'll get everyone's world map.


traded Gandhi Literature and Code of Laws for his world map
traded Caesar Mathematics for his world map
traded Xerxes Mathematics for his world map and 20g
traded Cathy Mathematics for her world map and 5g
traded Toku Mathematics for his world map
traded Cleo Mathematics for her world map
traded Shaka contact with Alex for his world map and 20g
traded Eliza ROP for her territory map and 70g
traded Alex Mathematics and Horseback Riding for his world map and 10g
traded Eliza world map for her world map and 28g (all remaining)
* could swap maps with Hammurabi

Now I have most of the world map, except some pieces around Babylon and where ever Germany happens to be, I have 924g, no change in gpt. The breakdown of what can still be traded is below. Also only England has my map (which was the full map, minus Hammurabi's).

At tech parity with:
England

Civs that only need Map Making:
Zulu (has nothing)
Persia
India (has nothing)

Civs that need contact with Alex:
Russia (could get 16g)
Persia (could get 19g)
Egypt (has nothing)
Japan (has nothing)

Civs that do not have 20 turns of peace with me:
Rome
Persia
Russia
(Germany)


Since we aren't in a good position to start a war, the 20 turns will give us plenty of time to build up and then attack our neighbors. But even still within the next 20 turns we could get some world wars started against Rome, Persia and Russia. Although its possible to still renogiate peace with them for something, maybe ROPs or military alliances. In addition, there is a lot of room left wiht the other civs as well, trading ROPs and such, this would be useful if a world war is intended, but right now they are all broke with nothing to give.



Edit:
I don't think my contact with Alex list is complete, I don't remember trading any contacts so it should match whatever it was at the beginning of the turn.

Ok, here is my result. I don't know if it's good or bad yet, but I did end up with more gold than I start out with and the almost complete worldmap and at tech parity with the tech leader.

1. Notice that England is the only civ that has Map Making and the Zululand is the only civ that has Mathematics. Since we really need Map Making in order to trade map, we immediately spend our life saving on Map Making. Pay 627 gold + Worldmap to England for Map Making

2. Since Egypt is the poorest civ, we may well get them out of the loop now. Trade our Worlmap with Egypt for their Worldmap + their contact with Babylon. Egypt is now totally bankrupted.

3. Trade our Map Making + our Worldmap with Rome for their worldmap + Polytheism + their contact with Greeks

4. Trade our Territory Map + Iron Working + Mysticism with Greece for their Worldmap + 50 gold. Greece is now totally bankrupted.

5. Trade our Worldmap + Map Making with Zululand for their worldmap + Mathematics + Literature. Zululand is now totally bankrupted

6. Trade our Worldmap with Japan for their Philoshopy + 1 gold + their Worldmap. Japan is now totally bankrupted.

7. Trade our Worldmap with India Worldmap. India is totally bankrupted.

8. Sell Literature + Mathematics + Worldmap to England for 494 gold.

9. Trade our Worlmap with Rome for Worldmap + Code of Laws. Rome is now totally bankrupted.

10. Trade our Worldmap with Rusia for their Worldmap + 21 gold. Russia is now totally bankrupted.

11. Trade our Worldmap with Persia for their Worldmap + 39 gold. Persia is now totally bankrupted.

12. Trade our Worldmap with England for their Territory map + 34 gold.

Summary:
Starting gold in treasury = 775 gold + 26 gpt.

* We are leading Japan 5 techs and they don't have contact with Greeks.
* We are leading India 4 techs and they don't have contact with Greeks.
* We are leading Greece 7 techs and they don't have contact with Japan, India, Egypt, Persia, Zululand, and Rusia.
* We are leading Rome 2 techs.
* We are leading Egypt 6 techs and they don't have contact with Greeks.
* We are leading Babylon 3 techs
* We are leading Persia 2 techs and they don't have contact with Greeks.
* We are leading Zululand 2 techs and they don't have contact with Greeks.
* We are leading Rusia 5 techs and they don't have contact with Greeks.
* We are tech parity with England; they end up with 172 gold in the end.

Final gold in treasury = 787 gold + 26 gpt. With the exception of England, we got everyone worldmap. England is willing to sell us their complete worldmap for 90 gold, but we don't want it because it's basically the map of their little jungle which is totally useless to us at the moment.

Smirk,

I will have to do further study with your technique of renegotiating peace. I rarely use it because I don't want to get stuck with the peace treaty for 20 turns. However, since we aren't going to war any time soon, your technique has given us the best deal so far. :goodjob:

Overall, it was pretty amazing that we are all able to gain six techs, at parity with the leader, and extra gold without really doing any research ourselves. Hopefully, this thread may help someone who has trouble keeping up with the tech pace.

Thats what my own gameplay has been based on the last few games. (ie studing the peace negotiation)

Actually in this game, 825BC, I would normally have done this at least 2 times with some of the civs. As a side benefit doing this allows you to control the game flow better, or make the civ pay dearly in the case where they break these treaties. (ie they are the bad guy from now on)

One down side is that there is what I consider a bug when these treaties are renewed, if you miss it and the civ brings it up, you can't get anything else in the deal! And it will still be a 20 turn deal, otherwise it just laspes and will be like the start where it lasts until war is redeclared. One good thing about doing it all during one turn is that you only need to remember one period.


Edit:
Hitting submit too fast today. BTW thats why I put the pre-trade results before the peace trade to help quantify how much peace was worth. I've generally found that in tech trades you can get 100g+ value from them, where if they had that same amount of real gold it wouldn't be the same. But saving 100g is the same to me.

I downloaded this earlier today shortly after you posted it. Now that I am home I am glad to see that it is meeting with much enthusiasm. I traded without reading any of the other posts. I also didn’t reload except for a test of the effect of establishing an embassy with Rome.

1. I note that we don’t have any techs to trade but have lots of cash. All of the other civs have contact with Babylon. However, Rome also has contact with the Greeks. I notice that there are no embassies established. Before I establish an embassy with Rome I negotiate contact with the Greeks for 141 gold. Then before I conclude the trade I establish an embassy with Rome for 69 gold. When I return to try to trade again the embassy does not make any improvement in the negotiations. They still want 141 gold. After the trade their attitude has improved from annoyed to cautious. I do not know whether this is because of the trade or the embassy. Their attitude improves to cautious even without the embassy. Perhaps in the future the embassy will make negotiations easier.

2. I did not notice initially that we had contact with additional civs. I had 2 ? on the Foreign Advisor screen (F4). I contact the Greeks but they don’t have contact with anyone but Babylon. Also on the list of civs I have contact with is Russia, England and the Zulus. The Russians, Zulus and the English do not appear on the Foreign Advisor screen or on the Trade Advisor screen (F2). Apparently we have just met Russia. I check in with her and all she has is Philosophy, which everyone else has. BUT, the Zulus have Mathematics, which no one else has. They will trade Mathematics for 367 gold and contact with the Greeks. I make the trade.

3. Unfortunately, not everyone is falling over me to give me their techs in exchange for Mathematics. I trade Persia Mathematics for Literature and 18 gold, because none of the other civs have Literature, except the Zulus.

4. I then trade England Mathematics, Literature, World Map and 271 gold for Map Making and their Territory Map.

5. I trade India Literature, Mathematics and World Map for Polytheism and their World Map.

6. I trade Egypt Contact with the Greeks for Contact with the Babylonians and their World Map.

7. I trade Japan my Territory Map, Contact with the Greeks and Mathematics for Philosophy and their World Map.

8. I trade Persia Contact with the Greeks and World Map for Code of Laws, World Map and 21 gold.

9. I trade World Maps with Rome, plus they give me 141 gold.

10. I trade Greece Iron Working and Mathematics for their World Map and 50 gold.
11. I trade Babylon my World Map for their Territory Map. They have no gold.

12. I trade Russia Mathematics for their World Map and 21 gold.

13. I trade England World Maps, plus they give me 80 gold.

14. I trade the Zulus my World Map and Code of Laws for their World Map and 367 gold.

At the end of the trading I have all of the known techs and almost all of my money back (694 gold). I know the entire world. The only other civ with any money is England.

Don't add gpt or resources to the peace treaty if you want it to expire "cleanly". And make sure "Always renegotiate deals" is unchecked.

There is a much bigger bug with peace treaties, you are allowed to pay gpt in a peace deal no matter how bad your reputation is.

I tried but it crashed : Is this a huge map :( ??

I started by buying MM from England for 630 gold and WM and went from there to get Math and Lit from the Zulus and filling in the Map and the techs from the others until it crashed.

To start:

We know Egpyt, Rome, India, Japan and Persia with 2 unknowns. Current research is Math due in 16 at 10% science and 30% :eek: lux. The lux is clearly on to keep the Pyramid city happy. I cut Lux to 10%, and hire an entertainer and scientist in Shanghi and still pick up the pyramids next turn this gives a new +39gpt surplus.

Why is it that we know Russia, England and Zulu but they are not on the diplomat screen.

Any way:

England has: Philo, CoL, MM, Poly and contact with Greeks and Babs.
Russia has: Philo and contact with Babs.
Zulu has: Math, Philo, Lit and contact with Babs.
Persia has: Philo, CoL, Lit and Poly and babs contact
Egypt has just contact with babs.
Roma has contact with Greeks and babs, Philo, CoL, Poly
India has philo, poly and contact with babs.
Japan has contact with babs and philo.

1. Buy contact with Babylon for 35 gold from Japan - Babs have Philo, CoL, Poly and contact with Greeks.

2. MM and Math are monopolies look to get both first and trade down for the rest, Buy MM from England at 2nd prices, WM and 630 gold.

3. MM, WM, and 4gpt to Zulu for Math and Lit.

4. MM, WM to Persia for Polytheism, TM and his 39 gold.

5. LIt, WM to Rome for Contact with Greeks and CoL, and TM.

6. IW and WM to Greeks for WM and his 50 gold.

7.

Goddess Moonsinger? :lol:

Survey the scene. Science is at 10% with 17 turns left on Math. Lux is at 30%. It appears only Shanghai needs the lux and the Pyramids are due in 1 anyway. I turn lux down to 10% and the Pyramids are still due in 1. Lots of horses so I assume we want to save cash for upgrades. England has a monopoly on Map Making, but lacks Literature. Zululand has a monopoly on Mathematics. Better change research since Math is already known, shut it off for now. Persia and Zulu have Literature.

1. Ok first order of business is buying contacts to lower tech costs. Since England has a monopoly on Map Making I assume they will come out as the strongest civ when the trading is done. Therefore I don’t want to buy the contacts from them. Rome is the only other civ with Greek contact so I buy Greek contact from Rome for 141 gold.

2. Ok Greece is backwards as expected. We’re up 3 techs on them. They have the other contact we need so they’re the obvious trading partner. I trade them Horseback Riding for contact with Babylon and their 50 gold.

3. Next I want to buy Literature to cheapen Map Making. Since I’ll need to get a monopoly tech from the Zulus I buy Literature from Persia. I trade contact with Greece and 132 gold to Persia for Literature.

4. Ok now it’s time to buy Map Making. I debate whether to give England gpt or cash. I don’t know how much cash I’ll be able to get back. I will be able to sell them Math and possibly my world map after I get other people’s maps. How much will math be worth at 2nd civ price? I check the tech calculator and it says 311 gold. I trade Literature, World Map, 313 gold, and 8 gold per turn to England for Map Making.

5. Now we buy the other Monopoly tech, Mathematics. I trade contact with Greece, Map Making, and 49 gold to Zululand for Mathematics.

6. Ok time to get my money back from England. Well the tech calculator didn’t work. She’ll give me 204 gold for Mathematics. I take it, maybe I can get some more when I trade for some maps.

7. Now the next most valuable tech available is Code of Laws. Persia and Rome have it and both have lots of cash. I trade Mathematics and Map Making to Persia for Code of Laws, 171 gold, and their TM.

8. The next most valuable tech available is Polytheism. I trade Literature, Map Making, Mathematics, and my TM to Rome for Polytheism, 141 gold, and their WM.

9. Now I just lack Philosophy. Russia is the richest civ with Philosophy. I trade contact with Greece, Code of Laws, and Mathematics to Russia for Philosophy, 21 gold, and their WM.

10. Ok Zululand still has some cash on hand so I need to trade for that next. I trade them Code of Laws for 49 gold and their WM.

11. Ok now it’s time to buy maps. Greece is the most backward civ and they aren’t visible on the map yet. I trade Mathematics and Iron Working to Greece for their WM.

12. Ok Babylon still isn’t visible. I trade Map Making and Mathematics to Babylon for their WM.

13. Egypt has the most blackness near them. Trade Mathematics to Egypt for their WM.

14. Now I sell my map to England and try to get my cash back. Sell WM to England for 180 gold. Darn they have 2 gold left.

15. Ok Persia still has a valuable map. Trade my WM for their WM.

16. Japan still has 1 gold and their map. Trade Mathematics to Japan for 1 gold and their WM.

17. Research set to the Republic and a scientist hired in Shanghai.

End result: Tech parity with leader, 957 gold, making 31gpt. Republic in 40 turns at min sci. Most civ’s are still extremely backwards. England, Rome, and Persia are at tech parity. Zululand is down Polytheism. Babylon is down Literature. Every other civ is down 3 or more techs.

Originally posted by hotrod0823
I tried but it crashed : Is this a huge map :( ??

Yes, it's a huge map.:(

I guess I should have traded my world map more. I think that's how you guys kept the other civ's farther behind in tech. I only sold my final WM to England. If I had traded WM more instead of techs I'd have kept them more backwards. But that wasn't stated as an objective anyway. :p Also I still have those maps to trade once a civ learns a new tech or comes into some money.

What a fun idea Moonsinger!

This save is at my favorite trading turn, i.e. the first turn where Map Making is known on a pangaea map with lots of Civs. I played it as follows:

1) I want Map Making before anything else so that I can use my maps in other trades. England is the only supplier for that so,

England: maps+627g for MapMaking

2) I want contacts before techs because techs will become cheaper that way. There are only two places to get contact with Greece: England and Rome. I don't want to finance England any further, it will be hard enough to get our 627g back. So,

Rome: maps+53g for maps+Greece

(A side note about my reasoning here: Probing Rome with simple cash offers determines that she'd accept about 155g for her maps, and about 150g for Greece. Further probing shows that she'll take maps+53g for maps+Greece. This means that she values our maps at about 250g. If I did the simplest trade of just maps for Greece, I'd be wasting about 100g of the value in my maps. Instead I add 53g to sweeten the deal and get her maps. I figure I'll get that 53g back later in the trading. All this may be unnecessary to get everything from all rivals in the long run but you never know, it doesn't hurt to start by squeezing trades.)

3) I still don't have contact with Babylon. Japan is willing to offer that and everything else she has just for my maps, so:

Japan: maps for Babylon+Philosophy+maps+1g

4) Time to get all their tech and maps. My intent now is to squeeze everyone dry if possible. I'll pick off any Civs who will give me everything they have for my maps. If I reach a point where no such trade can me made then I'll lean toward trading for maps first, hoping to get more tech from other Civs afterward. I'll trade away my techs and/or contacts only if there's no other way to get what I want. Since only the Zulu have Mathematics, and only Zulu and Persia have Literature, those techs needs special care (i.e. don't waste the trading turn with those Civs on other techs.) Since only one Civ knows Mathematics there's no need to trade carefully to allow for blocked techs (Currency and Construction) - no one will have them yet anyway. One final note: I'll leave Egypt till the end, because she's the Civ I'd be most likely to go to war with soon. (That means I won't consider taking an alliance with her against someone else, so I want her map info last in order to be able to use it at the very end to perhaps buy alliances from other Civs.) So,

Russia: maps for maps+21g (that's all she has)
Persia: maps for maps+Literature+39g (to get Literature)
Zulu: maps for maps+Mathematics (to get Mathematics)
India: maps for maps+Polytheism (that's all she has)
Rome: maps for CodeOfLaws+53g (get our gold back, all she has)
We now have all tech. So we're done with Zulu and Persia also now.
Greece: maps for maps+50g (all she has)
Babylon: maps for maps (all she has)
Egypt: maps for maps (all she has)
England: maps+Mathematics+Literature for maps+570g

(Note about my reasoning on the final trade with England: Since England has cash and Map Making there is little doubt she'd trade to get Mathematics and Literature from other Civs next turn. So regardless of our long term strategy it makes sense to make this deal now - we might as well be the ones to get the payment from England for those techs.)

Status at this point: Got everyone's maps, all tech known by anyone, all maps, and all of their gold except 130g which is still in England's treasury. Got 829g in our treasury. Have not made any gpt deals. Did not give away any new contacts. Did not give away any tech except two techs to England. Gave away maps.

Now some final trading will depend on long term goals. No matter what I will give maps to everyone before the turn is done. They'll trade the maps around anyway, I might as well give them away to reduce the trades the other Civs can make and to get some goodwill.

If I want a tech based goal and some research partners I would now give away some techs, especially Map Making (because they'll focus on learning it next otherwise) to some tech leaders.

But I'll assume I want to slow things and be a warmonger. So let's leverage the remaining value in the maps to get some alliances. First of all a Greece/Babylon war looks like fun. I take an embassy with Babylon, declare war on Greece, and take an alliance against Greece with Babylon. Surprisingly it isn't even necessary to throw in maps to get it.
Next an embassy with Russia, give her contact with Greece, and then give her maps for an alliance against Greece.
Next, declare war on Rome and India. Establish embassies with Japan and Zulu. England is willing to pay for alliances! Take alliances against Rome and India with England and get her remaining 130g for it. (If she hadn't gone for this I'd have renegotiated peace and thrown in a ROP to try to get the alliances and as much gold as possible.)
Japan allies with us against both Rome and India without needing anything in the deal.
The Zulu need a bonus thrown in - give them maps for alliances against India and Rome.

That's as far as I went. Treasury is down to 675g due to embassies. The western world is in massive war. I would end this trading turn by giving all friendly Civs maps at this point.
After this turn I think I would plan toward attacking Persia. (Changed my mind about Egypt being the best early target.) When ready to attack I'd consider bribing Egypt to join in though of course she'd be next after Persia. And I'd stay prepared for either of those two to start a war before I did - remote Civs might bribe them and in any case they might get feisty with their UU's soon.

Originally posted by Shillen
End result: Tech parity with leader, 957 gold, making 31gpt. Republic in 40 turns at min sci. Most civ’s are still extremely backwards. England, Rome, and Persia are at tech parity. Zululand is down Polytheism. Babylon is down Literature. Every other civ is down 3 or more techs.

You are ending up with a little bit more gold than Smirk, but the tech pace in your game is a little faster because England, Rome, Persia and you are all at the tech parity. In Smirk game, other than England which he also bankrupted her, all other AIs were still backward in tech. In either case, both you and Smirk did much better than the rest of us so far. If I have to rank the results so far, I think I Smirk is #1 and you are just a tiny bit trailing him at #2. To Judge Dredd, Zagnut, Hotrod0823, and myself, we were almost there.:)

PS: I started this thread to help someone but it looks like I'm helping myself after all.:) Let's hope that we can learn more from the other top players.:)

//Edit Note: I posted this before I saw SirPleb's post. I really like SirPleb solution. What do you guys think?

SirPleb,

I'm so glad you come to join us. I'm sure everyone here will benefit greatly from your wisdom.:)

Originally posted by Moonsinger
You are ending up with a little bit more gold than Smirk
Actually I think Smirk is ahead in gold if I read things right. Looks to me like Smirk has 924g and doesn't owe any money vs. Shillen is owing 8gpt fpr the next 20 turns...

I don't know if managing the sliders was part of your intent, but no one else noticed that having lux at 30% is a huge waste at this point. You can turn it down to 10%, hire a scientist in shanghai, and get 13 more gpt. Shanghai will still complete the Pyramids in 1 turn anyway. Sure it will stop growing, but all your other cities are like size 4 or less. It's really not worthwhile to turn lux up that high for a single city unless that city is building a wonder. Now that it's done with the wonder the lux should be turned down and growth stunted, until you can either build some happiness improvements or capture/trade for some luxuries.

Since Smirk didn't notice this, I'm actually making more gpt than he is...but really I don't care who did 'better'. I just think this is one thing that someone should have noticed. I also never renegotiate peace. It's too 'dirty' to me. So a handicap I put on myself I guess.

Originally posted by SirPleb
Actually I think Smirk is ahead in gold if I read things right. Looks to me like Smirk has 924g and doesn't owe any money vs. Shillen is owing 8gpt fpr the next 20 turns...

Yes, you are right about that. I just learned the "renegotiating peace" trick from him and the early war declaration from you. Getting the AIs to involve in an early war among themselves is a very good idea; that way, there won't be any massive build up for us to deal later on. It looks like I'm getting a big pay off for starting this thread.:)

Current research is Math due in 16 at 10% science and 30% lux. The lux is clearly on to keep the Pyramid city happy. I cut Lux to 10%, and hire an entertainer and scientist in Shanghi and still pick up the pyramids next turn this gives a new +39gpt surplus.

;) Great minds think alike ??

I wish I could've played it out before it crashed I would've liked to see how much gold I could've ended up with.

Originally posted by Shillen
I don't know if managing the sliders was part of your intent
I read Moonsinger's post to mean that it was just about trading, so I didn't even look at what our empire was doing. I didn't even notice until reading through this thread that we nearly have the Pyramids finished :lol: All I checked was our geographical situation, that's all that mattered to me for trading. Now that I look our position over, whoosh! We're sure set nicely to clean this world up. Nice setup Moonsinger!

Originally posted by Shillen
I don't know if managing the sliders was part of your intent, but no one else noticed that having lux at 30% is a huge waste at this point. You can turn it down to 10%, hire a scientist in shanghai, and get 13 more gpt. Shanghai will still complete the Pyramids in 1 turn anyway. Sure it will stop growing, but all your other cities are like size 4 or less. It's really not worthwhile to turn lux up that high for a single city unless that city is building a wonder. Now that it's done with the wonder the lux should be turned down and growth stunted, until you can either build some happiness improvements or capture/trade for some luxuries.

Yes, I usually check the slider at the end of my turn, but since my focus was about "trading" for this thread, I forgot to check it. Thanks for pointing that out.:)

Since Smirk didn't notice this, I'm actually making more gpt than he is...but really I don't care who did 'better'. I just think this is one thing that someone should have noticed. I also never renegotiate peace. It's too 'dirty' to me. So a handicap I put on myself I guess.

I concur!:) It's a learning thread. It doesn't matter much who did better here. We are just trying find more about all the "trade" secret.:) I thought I was pretty good with squeezing gold out of the AIs, but now I know that I still have much to learn.

I'm both cheap and greedy. ;) Not as cheap as some of you though, I only trade in units of 5 or 10g. :P

SirPleb's looks to be the best for slowing tech, I think. I figured there were two major routes, either getting everything else to ease the gold needed for Map Making with England (I didn't want to leave a large excess there since it would be harder to get back.) or paying for Map Making and then bartering with maps as SirPleb did.

I tend to be tight with maps, but its likely just an unfounded perception. The AI ESPs my weakest city regardless whether they have my maps or not. So my biggest knowledge hole is, why does the AI like the maps, and how does having the maps affect their plans? Are they more likely to go to war?

The only thing I've ever noticed was they they are more willing to run thru your land to a good spot they now see in an area you may be holding back to develop later.

Also, if they have your map already you never get that pre-war warning when they try to trade for your territory map. Its been my opinion that asking for a world map means they want to be your friend, asking for a territory map means they are considering declaring war. Demanding either one is a different animal altogether. Which reminds me, I wonder why no one has tried that yet? I think I may replay it and attempt some forceful persuasion.

I tried it in PTW (don't know why but PTW runs better for me) and recreated my first turns and played it out until no more trades remained and ended up with 730 gold, and +34gpt.

I didn't create any wars or force any peace deals.

Edit: After reading the spoilers I renegociated with England for 200 gold and signed a ROP for the rest and got back to 959 gold and +34 gpt, owing Zulus 4gpt for the next 20.

Smirk,

From your experience, do you have much luck with the peace renegotiation at the Deity level? It seemed that everytime I did that, I ended up with paying them some extra gold or they won't accept the peace treaty.

Originally posted by SirPleb
Now that I look our position over, whoosh! We're sure set nicely to clean this world up. Nice setup Moonsinger!

This game came from one of my previous milking attempt for the HoF. That would explain why it's a huge random Pangaea map with stationary barbs.:lol:

Originally posted by Smirk
why does the AI like the maps, and how does having the maps affect their plans?
That sure is an interesting question!

And actually, to digress a bit, this whole thread sure is interesting! It is timely for me. I've been thinking for a while of writing an article on trading, with a special focus on this often crucial trading turn. I've got some scratchy notes started but it has a long way to go, I find it a tough subject to organize and generalize.

My thinking about maps, which has led to the style I use in this trading turn:

1) The AI values them highly. (Given enough land that is - on a small or tiny map the total value is more limited.)

2) They are a special commodity in that they don't seem to be devalued based on how many Civs know them. Tech and contacts devalue but maps don't - they can be separately traded for full value to each Civ.

3) The AI seems to not get much real value from learning them. I haven't withheld maps in a long time so I'm not sure. But when I tried it in early days it didn't seem to make any difference. This is perhaps partly because the AI can't squeeze full advantage from the info and partly because it seems to already "know" some things such as resource locations without having the maps.

4) The human can get enormous value from them. I want maps as soon as possible. They allow me to see which Civs have which resources in their area. Much more importantly they allow me to plan for the long term. I can foment wars with predictable results once I know the layout. I can plan my overall expansion, attacks, alliances, etc.

5) Maps have a "stale date". E.g. in this sample Moonsinger has given us, almost everyone has ended up trading nearly full map knowledge to England. When another Civ next learns a tech, England will have the currency to buy it - those maps! And after that happens we won't be able to sell the maps to that Civ for anything, our maps will have become "stale". If I hold onto maps for very long, I'll lose two ways: their value will go down (as others learn parts of my maps anyway), and the Civs who provide that knowledge will gain something. I'd rather sell the maps early or even give them away.

A little info from Cartouche Bee in The RBP3 SG thread

The peace negotiation is just part of my regular arsenal and is perhaps exploitive (my emissaries are very skilled in this tactic now). If you go to the graphical power charts and you have a higher power rating (I've actually measured the width of the power bars with a ruler at times) than the AI you will negotiate with, you will be able to get peace and they will pay you for that peace (world maps, gold GPT, techs, Alliances, ...) the amount depends on what they can afford and just how much stronger they perceive you. When the 20 turns of peace ends it does continue as normal peace that could be broken at anytime and that's is when you need to decide if you want another 20 term pact or leave the peace free and easy. This type of peace treaty favors those that have a builder/domination style and can keep a foe with a stronger military at bay when things get dicey (aka. GOTM14).

This was a response to a question from Charis on why CB was crazy enough to renegociate peace with only warriors serving as MP's in their cities.

The Game was on Emperor BTW.

What to do:
Checked what everyone has and doesn't.
Checked what embassies do I have.
Check historygraph.
Check trade tab for trade routes.
Check science tab for techs that we lack(doh)
Check domestic tab for maximum gold per turn
Check military tab for military might. (were average with Persia)
Check foreign tab to see who's friend with who.

Result. What do we have to trade:
- 775 gold
- 45 gold per turn (with science to 0%, happiness set to 0)
- Our Map
- access to our territory
- our military capabilities.

We have a lot to trade. Let's see what they have
The worst tribe is Egypt. They only have contact with Babs ahead of us. We're preparing them a surprise.
Backward civs: Russia, Japan, India.
So&so: Rome, Zulu
Advanced civs: England, Persia
First thing! Get the other contacts:
1. Declare war on Egypt (anyone thought of that? i have a decent military, I won't lose)
2. Trade England (what we give is listed first): Alliance vs Egypt+ROP+WM for Contact Greeks, Babylon, 23g
Worst civ: Greece
So&so: Babylon
Task one: Get the higest priced tech (that we see): Mapmaking (ability to sell our map to others). But England does not have Literature and we would like to pay her goods not money. WE give the money to someone who will pay us back later in the trading.
3. Trade Zulu: Contact Greeks+137g for Literature
Just noticed Zulu have monopoly on Mathematics. Grr.
4. 77g for Embassy with Zulu (right after I see ROP worth only 35g. Grr.)
5. ROP+397g for MAthematics.
6. TRade Greece: Mysticism for 50g
7. TRade England: Mathematics, Literature, 7gpt, 226g for Mapmaking
8. Trade Rome: Mat, Lit, WM, 4g for Code of Laws, Polytheism
I have 7 gold. NOw let's get our money back.
9. TRade Zulu: Map, Poly, Code for 534g + WM
10. Trade Japan: Poly for Philosophy, 1g
11. TRade Greece: Iron Works, Riding for WM
12. Trade Russia: Code for WM+21g
13. TRade India: Code for WM
14. Trade Japan: Code for WM
15. TRade Persia: Mathematics for WM+39g
16. TRade Babylon: Maths, Lit for WM
17. TRade Rome: Mapmaking for WM+4g cheap
18. Trade England: WM for WM+206g
19. Trade Zulu: WM for WM
20. 48g for Embassy with Persia
21. ROP, Contact Greeks, WM for Alliance vs Egypt

Bottom line: It was much easier than I expected. I ended up with 764gold, all tech, all WM except Egypt's, three techs advance compared to half the world. I also got an embassy with the Zulu and Persia, a war with Egypt, England, Persia being my allies, 7 gpt paid to England which still has 70g.
It all took a little over an hour but I expected it to be much more difficult.

I had my trading session before reading your posts (no spoilers:) ). Except several mistakes that I did, I guess I did OK. When I read Smirk's peace renegociation 'trick' I was thinking 'Is this allowed? Why don't I do it then?' Later I remembered that once I tried and had one of the few civ crashes that I ever encountered so I deemed it to be 'not to be used'. As Hotrod quoted from CB, the key in pece negotiation as well as alliances is POWER. You can do like CB and measure it on the graph, or you can go to the mil advisor and ask him how are you doing. Since you're strong you can leverage the strenght either through peace negotiations, or through alliances. I declared war against Egypt, knowing that they are weak and expecting England to pay me for an Alliance. They did pay about 10g, less than I thought but I got something.
SirPleb, that's why your alliance with Babs against Greece costed nothing.
Military power is just another thing that you can trade.
Right of Passages could also be traded as China is bigger than most others. My ROP with England was worth over 50g, and the one with Zulu was worth 35g (less than the embassy).

Edit: Some notes for your summary Moonsigner. Some of the trades that we demonstrate here will not work on deity (at least at the start) because you probably won't get the opportunity. You won't have larger territory to sell ROPs and you won't have larger power to leverage it for cash. I wonder what happens if you try to renegotiate peace and they are stronger than you. According to the game mechanics you would probably have to pay to get peace (anyone tryed it?).

Some of you went directly for the most expensive tech which is the 'normal' thing to do if you know a little bit of civ trading. But you have to see the overall opportunities. You could get all/most of the money back so paying to only one civ would not be advisable.

By the way I set the lux and sci slider to 0%, I always do that before a trading session to see how much can pay. I can switch it back at the end.

As I said I wanted to try this again with minimizing tech trades, doing more map trades and also a little bullying.

Here it is:


renegotiate peace with Eliza, got Map Making for world map, ROP and 310g
renegotiate peace with Gandhi, got world map and Polytheism for world map and 175g
renegotiate peace with Shaka, got Mathematics, Philosophy, Literature, world map and contact with Babylonians for Polytheism, world map and 45g

demanded Cleo's world map (polite)
demanded Toku's world map and 1g (stayed annoyed)
demanded Cathy's 21g (stayed annoyed)
demanded Cathy's territory map (annoyed)

renegotiate peace with Xerxes, got Code of Laws, world map and 39g for world map

build embassy with Zulus cost 77g
traded Shaka ROP for 30g
build embassy with India cost 56g
traded Gandhi ROP for 60g

demanded Caesar's world map
declared war on Rome
bargined for alliance versus the Romans with Gandhi got 115g and world map for Mathematics
bargined for alliance versus the Romans with Shaka got 15g and world map for world map
bargined for alliance versus the Romans with Eliza got world map and 330g for Mathematics, Literature and world map

demanded Cathy's world map, couldn't get it (now furious)

traded Hamm Mathematics and Literature for world map and contact with Greece
traded Alex Horseback Riding and Mysticism for 50g and world map
traded Eliza 53g for world map

sold two granaries for 14g, not sure if the +2gpt would matter since Pyramids are due next turn
slider at 8.1.1, two entertainers in Shanghai, now at 39gpt and 840g


Greece is at least 7 techs behind and needs 6 contacts (Japan, India, Egypt, Persia, Zulu and Russia)
Egypt is 6 techs behind
Japan is 5 techs behind
Russia is 5 techs behind
India needs Map Making, Code of Laws and Literature
Rome needs Mathematics, Map Making, and Literature
Persia needs Mathematics and Map Making
Zulu needs Code of Laws and Map Making
Persia needs Mathematics and Map Making
Babylon needs Map Making
England is even with us

India and maybe some others are near to finishing Map Making, so the next few turns it would be good to sell it cheap. Still a few without complete world maps so they still have some value. But right now everyone has zero gold.


Still some room to play, all of Rome's neigbors are at war with him and will soon crush him. I doubt he'll be able to get any peace since he has nothing in which to trade.
Japan is next.
Meanwhile I could start attacking Egypt, but don't want to suffer too many loses since I would want to war with Persia in 20 turns. I see the start of that attack is already in place with Macao and a barracks.


Demands are pretty worthless in general except for this turn and earlier where you can get some cheap techs and definately can get maps as I did here. Of course you can get small amounts of gold anytime, its especially useful to clean out a civ of any <100g they have before you declare war, which I do when I can. The more you do it, the more likely it is to reduce their friendliness, but that hardly matters in the cases where you'll use it.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
Smirk,
From your experience, do you have much luck with the peace renegotiation at the Deity level? It seemed that everytime I did that, I ended up with paying them some extra gold or they won't accept the peace treaty.

I haven't noticed much difference in any difficulty, but power is important so it will be more difficult to do this in a diety game. I try to start this as soon as I get a clear advantage and they have something I want. For instance in gotm19 I did this about 2000BC to get cheaper trades for some of the early techs, and then again in the 1000BCs.

I've messed up a few times, but if you think you are more powerful, and the graph bears this out, then you should be fine.

But, I always go into it thinking that I won't pay squat for peace so if they give me nothing then I declare war. What will happen is you then have to make an impact (reduce their power, take cities destroy units, or just grow faster) (Note 1), so when you can get peace again you get some real meat like cities. Point being, even if you can't get anything for free, you declare war, and then some turns later you can get even more from them. Even if you've done nothing but build.




Note 1: This BTW is why I think the AI doesn't see the forest for the trees, it judges an attack event based on power with its winning percentage. It seems a good idea to send that horse to take a worker, or to attack that warrior, nevermind you have a stack of 10 swords next to their capital.
This has gotten better over the years and the patches. I remember in the original game you could leave a city unprotected and it would race across a landmass with a stack of cavalry to attack that city, never mind all the other cities were protected by only one unit (of course once they got close you could defend that city and leave a hole somewhere else and they would then go for that one). Anyway to make a longer story still longer, the power change of taking a city outweighs that of killing a few units so they will prefer that.

The moral of the story is you can play the AI game with them and pick off workers and warriors, and get a quick power advantage even when you can't sustain a real war with them. So I generally don't worry about early or frequent wars.

But don't take my advice, you seem to play differently, and it would certainly bother a builder more than me. That is delaying building to pump out some needed offensive or defensive units. In addition I suck, I've played 3 gotms and all I got was this lousy piece of parchment. Your 10+ medals means your strategy is better than my warmongering toys. ;)


Edit:

If you want to see something like this in action, check my timeline for the barb insanity event for gotm18. I got an early war with Cathage and held them off for a long time with just one archer positioned on a hill, until I was able to get something in peace trades.

A couple of thoughts:

1. Is this the best time in the early game to start the first major trades? Since Moonsinger prepared the game and SirPleb says he thinks trading at the first discovery of Map Making is his favorite time, I assume many of you delay your trades until this point. I have generally traded when trades are available and maybe that is why I rarely get off to a great start.

Can I correctly state the strategy as follows: don't trade, except for some early first level techs, until you have built up a good stash of cash and wait until another civ discovers Map Making so you can get the value from trading maps.

2. There are a lot of different strategies that we all followed. However, we all ended up by getting all of the techs from the AI and most, if not more, money that we started with.

Moonsinger, will you be evaluating the strategies we used to determine which one leaves us in a more powerful position? I think this will be more valuable than declaring a "winner". After all we are all using this as training for the next Deity level GOTM game.

3) The AI seems to not get much real value from learning them. I haven't withheld maps in a long time so I'm not sure. But when I tried it in early days it didn't seem to make any difference. This is perhaps partly because the AI can't squeeze full advantage from the info and partly because it seems to already "know" some things such as resource locations without having the maps.

In some situations you can actually hurt the AI by selling/giving them maps. Any AI units that are out exploring, work the same way as when you have a unit on 'auto-explore' (keyboard shortcut is to press the 'e' key) and they bee-line for any unknown tiles. If you give civ A the entire map of Civ B's territory and surrounding lands, then Civ A won't send any exploring units in that direction and won't meet Civ B, thus won't make contact. Of course, later on they may send a settler in that direction and 'accidently' make contact or if CivB happens to be in path between you and CivA when CivA sends some units at your territory (war or sneak attacks), but sometimes that won't be for a very long time.

In my HoF game there was 2 civs that were next door neighbors on a pangea map but didn't contact each other until like 3-400 AD, and that was just by accident when they sent a unit to attack a city I had just captured (a couple turns later I killed off the one civ, so they almost never met each other). The hard part is making sure *every* tile is exposed, because of sea tiles that are only visible from 1 specific land tile, but that isn't a problem if you have a bajillion scouts like I did and you trade maps every turn (so other AI are picking up the isolated tiles you missed).

This could work well on island maps if Civ A or B had their whole island settled, so the AI would have no reason to go there. On lower levels if you had a huge tech lead, you could get the whole oceans explored before the AI got astronomy/navigation, and then sell maps and they will have a hard time ever meeting someone, because the AI does not know how to use units for the sole purpose of meeting someone (that they know where they are!)

Great idea Moonsinger ! :goodjob: :thumbsup:
I was thinking of something like this when I posted my .sav file in the second spoiler thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=965944#post965944) (Warning : don't go there if you don't meet the req's for the second spoiler thread of Gotm19 !).
I had a go without reading the posts here and came out with all techs, 491g and +41gpt, and the world map. Not the best, so I suppose you don't want the details (I'll post them if anyone asks).

I'll read over the other posts here as soon as possible - very interesting ! Thanks folks.

Here's mine.

First, get contact with Greek/Babylon. They might have map making or Maths!

Rome>141gc for Greek
Greek>Mysticism for Babylon +50gc

Nothing New so time to get map making

England>627gc + WM for Map Making

From here on, trade WM in reverse order of civ tech advancement to maximise gain. (Each trade nets you a bigger WM to trade with the next more advanced civ)

Eygpt> WM for WM
Greek> WM for WM
Japan> WM for WM + Philo + 1gc
Russian> WM for WM + 21gc
India> WM for WM + Poly

(Tried to trade with Babylon at this moment, but the WM is worthless to them. Looks like England already sold it to them for maybe Code of Law?)

Rome> WM for WM + Code +141gc
Persia> WM for WM + Lit +39
Babylon> WM for WM
Zulu> WM for WM + Maths
England> WM + Lit + Maths for WM +570gc

End result 829gc. Only traded Mysticism to Greek; Lit + Maths to ENgland.

Reminding possible trades
England RoP for 75gc (England is too far to have any troop moving over within 20 turns)
Peace gold drain (Only England has 130 gold left but there is no hurry since gold is only usable for upgrades in Despotism and England Iron is not hook up. If you use the RoP free gold, that means England has only 55gold left)
Remaining new WM to all civ
Zulu - Code, Poly - He will almost definitely get them in next turn by trading maths away anyway. Giving him these tech means other civ may not get maths, just to slow down trading.
Give excess tech to AI just to make them polite or use them for war.

Zagnut>Establishing Embassy has neligible impact to trading. So, it is pointless to establish embassy before you are done with the trading except for the purpose of hoping that a RoP can net more gold than the cost of establishing the embassy or MA.

Yndy> My experiences so far. RoP turning point is when they have more land than you. Peace turning point is when they have more power than you. (i.e. You pay when they have more land or power, so that is how to judge if a negotiation will give you gold or you have to pay)

Smirk> Turn the Auto-negotiated off. And don't put in any 20 deals along with the peace re-negotiation. Putting any 20 turn deals along with the peace re-negotiation means AI will automatically re-negotiated anther 20 turn at the end of the first deal.

Originally posted by Qitai
Zagnut>Establishing Embassy has neligible impact to trading.

So I see. But at the time I started trading I could not remember whether it did or not. So I tried it. Now I will remember that for the future.

Originally posted by zagnut
Can I correctly state the strategy as follows: don't trade, except for some early first level techs, until you have built up a good stash of cash and wait until another civ discovers Map Making so you can get the value from trading maps.
To my mind that is a good general guideline. It shouldn't be treated as an absolute, there are a number of exceptions, but as a general rule that is how I like to play it. Exceptions I can think of:

1) As you've noted, first level techs should usually be considered an exception. On most maps the AIs will get them for free by trading with each other so if you make early contacts where trades are possible you might as well make those trades.

2) If you really want a particular tech. E.g. Pottery to build a Granary.

3) If you want a very fast tech pace.

4) If the map isn't one which favors this approach (holding off till Map Making) then some earlier trading can be important. Moonsinger's map in this thread is an ideal one for map trading - big, pangaea, a good number of Civs. At the other extreme on a small non-pangaea with few Civs map trading won't be worth a lot. And then it becomes more important to trade some techs earlier on to avoid falling too far behind. But still I'd say that applies only to tech trading - I wouldn't be buying techs for straight cash just to stay caught up.

5) There's an earlier trading turn which I often find is a similar turning point on a smaller scale - the turn when someone discovers Writing. On that turn, if you have contacts to sell, and the Civs involved are likely to meet each other soon, I think it is good to have a similar trading session to this Map Making turn - go around the table and catch up some tech by trading contacts. I also often include some tech trading in that turn. If I know Civs with separate techs and figure they'll meet soon, then I figure they'll trade those techs. So I try to broker the techs in the contact trading turn to get a commission on the deal :)

Originally posted by Qitai
Smirk> Turn the Auto-negotiated off. And don't put in any 20 deals along with the peace re-negotiation. Putting any 20 turn deals along with the peace re-negotiation means AI will automatically re-negotiated anther 20 turn at the end of the first deal.

My own advice, is to just pay attention. There are times when I want to use a 20 turn item, like a luxury, or gpt. Its just an oddity of the game, I just try to remember to check. Its not too hard in PTW since you can see all actives with just a click.

@ zagnut: To add to what SirPleb said -- if you want to get the most out of tech trading at the advent of mapmaking, you'll want to at least have Writing (mapmaking prerequisite) by that point. Otherwise you won't know when mapmaking is first discovered, and you'll lose your opportunity. In my somewhat limited experience, though, that's the only tech past the first row that you need to have to make the most of the opportunity, since generally the AIs get mapmaking before any other third-row techs.

@Moonsinger: thanks, great idea for a thread. I've learned a few things. :) Since I'm out of town I decided to just go straight to the spoilers instead of waiting several days to 'play'. :p

Renata

Here is my trading sequence:

1 England trade WM + 627g for mapmaking
2 Rome trade WM + mapmaking for contact with greece + WM + philosophy
3 Greece trade WM for contact with babylon + WM + 50g
4 Persia trade mapmaking + contact with greece for literature + WM
5 Persia trade WM for code of laws + WM + 39g
6 Russia trade WM for WM +21
7 India trade WM for WM + polytheism
8 Zulu trade WM for WM + mathematics
9 Japan trade WM for WM + 1g
10 Egypt trade WM for WM
11 Babylon trade WM for WM
12 England trade WM for WM + 206g

Depending on my goal I would now either stop: I'm technology leader with 465 gold
Techs ahead: Japan 5, India 4, Greece 8, Rome 2, Egypt 6, Babylon 3, Persia 1, Zulu 3,

Russia 5, England 2

England is the only other civ with money, or trade for higher tech pace and more money:
13 England trade literature + mathematics for 365g

Result: Tech leader + 830 gold

edit: after reading the spoiler I renegotiated peace with England for 129 gold (all they had)

Result everybody is broke I have 959 gold no debt to anybody

This is a great exercise, Moonsinger. I haven't read any of the replies yet, but here's my shot at it. I only made a small profit and finished up equal tech leader with England and Rome:

First target: Get additional contacts first as this will reduce tech prices.

1. India sells Babs contact cheapest at 32, and this will reduce price of Greece.

2. England sells Greece contact at 91 Price was previously 137, so I saved 46 [error edited] by buying separately in sequence.

Second target: Buy the scarecest techs - Maths, Lit and Map Making, to trade around.

3. Buy MapMaking from England for 549 + W/map + ROP. ROP available because we have an Embassy, and is low risk because they are far away, and it saves over 100 on the deal.

4. Buy Maths + Lit from Zulu for Map Making + W/map + Greek contact.

5. Sell Maths and Lit to England for Territory map + 348. Did this before trading anywhere else to keep the price high. This to get back some of our investment cash and to increase the value of our world map.

6. Buy Phil + Poly + Code of Law from Rome for Maths + Map Making + Lit + W/map. *Improved from Annoyed to Cautious.

We now have equal tech lead with Rome and England, and just need to build our world map to sell to recover our cash position.

7*. Sell contacts with 5 civs to Greece for 50 + W/map.

8*. Sell Territory map to Persia for 34 gold.

9*. Swap W/maps with Zululand

10. Buy Babylon W/map for W/map + Math + Map Making. *Improved from Annoyed to Cautious. This leaves Babylon needing Lit in the tech race, to reduce the Great Library competition a bit.

11. Sell W/Map to Japan for W/Map + 1.

12. Buy W/Map from Egypt for our Territory map.

13. Sell complete W/map to England for 189.

14. Sell W/map to Russia for 21.

15. Sell W/map to India for 31.

16. Sell W/map to Persia for 5.

We have 782 gold, 7 more than we started with. We are equal tech leaders with Rome and England. England has 104 more gold than before. Everyone else is cleaned out.

@Moonsinger: Thanks very much for organising this, it was a great idea. A couple of questions - Is this a typical game position for you? Does difficulty level change the position at this stage of your game much?

All comments welcomed. I really hope to learn from this one.

Now I'll read the rest of the replies and see how badly I did!

[edited]Apologies. When transcribing my scribbled notes I missed out a couple of the map trades and omitted the two civ attitude improvements I achieved. Now corrected (asterisked * above)!

I also noticed in reviewing the sequence that I should have taken 33 more gold from England by moving the last Persia map trade (step 16) to before the last England map trade (step 13) and making it a W/map swap..

Originally posted by Yndy
Some of the trades that we demonstrate here will not work on deity (at least at the start) because you probably won't get the opportunity. You won't have larger territory to sell ROPs and you won't have larger power to leverage it for cash. I wonder what happens if you try to renegotiate peace and they are stronger than you.Luckily, even on deity there are civs perceived weaker. ;) In my current deity training game for gotm20 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53736) I immediately put the peace negotiatiom to use. And it works very well. :D

PS: Regrettably Moonsingers save didn't open on my Macintosh 1.29b2 :( but reading this thread alone was very helpful. :goodjob:

Originally posted by tao
S: Regrettably Moonsingers save didn't open on my Macintosh 1.29b2 :( but reading this thread alone was very helpful. :goodjob:
It loaded fine here - 1.29b2 in OS X 10.2.6. How did it fail? What OS are you running? It's a large map with more than 8 civs civs, so if OS 9 you might need more memory assigned to Civ3.

Your practice game looks great so far. Much more successful than my Indian practice starts have been. And no Conquest mode bonuses to help you!

Originally posted by tao
Luckily, even on deity there are civs perceived weaker. ;) In my current deity training game for gotm20 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53736) I immediately put the peace negotiatiom to use. And it works very well. :D

You got a nice game going there. I have also started a deity training game and I'm not doing that good. Some things I have learned not really related to trading (my peace renegotiation only gave me World map for free):
-When starting the first war get someone on your side no matter the cost-
I have been fighting for 30 turns and have gained one city but killed four AI units for everyone I lose, but the AI keeps pumping them faster than me.

Moonsinger, are you going to do something with the summary reserved posts?

In my most recent practice game I had a huge trade opportunity. I was curious if I did ok. I was NOT able to catch up on tech. I was wondering if I just did it wrong or whether I was just too far behind. This is a deity game. I just made contact with the other continent.

I got one middle age tech, but at a gpt cost when

This is 1.21 PTW.
complex trade example (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Greebley_trading_190_BC.SAV)

Edit: It occurred to me that one mistake I probably made was doing the trading this turn when I have a chance to meet Egypt as well next turn :(

Ok, take a look at situation to see who has what techs, and who has contact with who.

We are #1 in territory size (demographics screen), so others will pay us for ROP.
We are #1 in power rankings (histographic screen-Power), so others will pay us for peace.

England values the ROP at 73 gold (minimum).
Renegotiate peace with England.
England gives Map making for ROP, WM, 306 gold.
We want mapmaking to make map offers in other deals with other civs.

Egypt has very little to offer, so give her World map for her world map + Contact with Babylonians.

Japan has little to offer, also.
Renegotiate peace for philosophy, World map, 1 gold for my world map.

India has little to offer, now.
Renegotiate peace for Polytheism, world map for my world map.

Give Rome World map for Contact with Greeks, Code of Laws, and World Map.

Give Greece World map for his world map and 50 gold.

Renegotiate peace with Babylon and exchange world maps with him.

Give Persia world map for Literature, world map, 39 gold.

Give Zulu world map for Mathematics, world map.

Give Russia world map for 21 gold and world map.

Give England world map and mathematics for 379 gold, world map.

End Result:
959 gold, no debts, no income from other civs.
The only thing I gave AI was maps and 1 tech to England. (and gave some civs 20 turns of peace)
Tech leader.
Everyone's world map.
Every AI is broke.

What the AI needs that I could donate:
England- literature.
Russia-5 techs, contact with Greece.
Zulu-3 techs, contact with Greece.
Persia-2 techs, contact with Greece.
Babylon-3 techs.
Egypt-6 techs, contact with Greece.
Rome-3 techs.
Greece-9 techs (polytheism not shown), contact with 6 civs.
India-4 techs, contact with Greece.
Japan-5 techs, contact with Greece.

If I want to, I could establish embassies in every civ and sign a ROP, and get everyone polite.

Greebley-If you don't mind trading contacts, then I got you 3 techs into the middle ages:

Give Germany world map + 109 gold for Contact with Egyptians.
Contact with Egyptians was the cheapest price and will give us another civ to sell our world map to, and will de-value the price of future contacts/techs we want to buy.

Give Egypt world map for contact with Indians, territory map, 3 gold.

Give India world map for contact with Babylonians, territory map, 45 gold, 3 gpt.

Give Babylon world map for contact with Aztecs, territory map, 68 gold, 1 gpt.

Give Aztecs world map for horseback riding, Philosophy, 5 gold, world map.

Give Russia world map for Code of Laws, Polytheism, world map, 17 gold.

Give Korea world map for Currency, world map, 16 gold, 4 gpt.

Give Japan World map and currency for Construction, WINES, world map and 88 gold.
edit: Oops, didnt' realize you were 1 turn from hooking up your own wines:o

Give Rome world map, contact with Babylonians for Feudalism, 28 gold, 1 gpt.

Give Egypt Fuedalism, contact with Japanese, for Monotheism.

Give Russia Monotheism for Republic, Monarchy, Engineering.

Give Germany contact with russians, korea, romans, japanese for 151 gold + 44 GPT!!

Give contact with russians, korea, romans, japanese to India for 35 gpt.

Give Babylon contact with Russia, korea, japanese for 12 gpt.

Give Korea Monotheism for 12 gpt.

Rome has Invention and Babylon has Theology. Both have a monopoly on those techs, so will charge unbelievable prices. Nobody has anything to offer, and we do have some contacts we could hold for trading or donations.

We have everyone's world map, 455 gold, 112 gpt coming in from other civs (+137 net income with 0% science). 3 techs in the middle ages, and picked up an additional luxury.

Greebley:

Your save sure is a challenging one, it is a very complex trading turn indeed. It is an excellent example for Moonsinger's principle of it taking money to make money. If you'd had a lot of money (maybe more than would have been possible) on hand I think I could have done better, you'll see why in the following notes. Here's my trading sequence (I played it through in one try, on looking back at who has what I think a slightly better sequence is possible.) A main principle I followed was to hold back contact between the continents. That should be worth a lot of money for a good number of turns in the game's future.

Germany: maps+109g for Egypt
Egypt: maps for India+terr.map+3g
India: maps for Babylon+terr.map+44g+4gpt
Babylon: maps+77g+5gpt for maps+Aztecs
Russia: maps for Currency+Philosophy
Japan: Currency for CL+Polytheism+maps+33g
Korea: maps for HR+16g+16gpt+maps
Japan: maps for Construction+55g
Aztecs: maps+108g+25gpt for Monotheism
Russia: Monotheism for Feudalism+Engineering+17g+Monarchy

At this point I saw that I'd blundered. There is no way I can get Rome to part with Invention. If I could finance a deal for that then I'd recover the cost on the other continent and have all tech to date. As things stand I've let loose Monotheism on the home continent, I haven't got Republic (because I figured on getting it free for one of the most advanced techs), and I can't get much further.

So to finish the turn as best as possible:
Rome: Monotheism for Republic+maps+28g+1gpt
Japan: Monarchy for wines

Final result: Got all Ancient Times tech, three Middle Ages tech, all contacts and maps, one more luxury. Did not trade contacts between the continents, expecting to profit greatly from that in future. Have 45g in treasury and paying a net of 12gpt to other Civs. (Paying 33, getting 21.) Advanced Rome and Russia by one tech and sold all maps.

BUT, I decided to push it a few turns further to see what could be done with the isolated contacts. Flipped to Republic, then played two turns (couldn't do anything in 170BC.) In 150BC I was able to make more good trades. To make them I first had to move almost every citizen in the empire onto the highest possible gold producing tiles (gems etc), to get a high gpt to bargain with. (A purely temporary move, to be fixed before ending the turn, it is just to get some leverage during the turn, getting gpt up to 60.)

Rome: maps+60gpt+100g for Invention
Babylon: Invention for 137gpt
Germany: Invention for 49gpt+132g
India: Invention for 59gpt

Now the situation looks better! Net income from other Civs is up to 173gpt (paying 93gpt, receiving 266gpt.) We and most of the other continent now know Invention. Can't make a good deal for Theology yet but contacts remain controlled and the future looks promising from this point...

I also tried going back to the starting save and played one turn forward without doing anything, hoping one of the galleys would be able to meet Egypt. That worked and we also meet Babylon and India in that turn, presumably because Germany traded our contact. A much better trading sequence followed:

Egypt: maps for Aztecs+terr.map+Philosophy+8g
Aztecs: maps for maps
Russia: maps for Currency+41g+1gpt
Japan: Currency for CL+Polytheism+maps+34g
Japan: maps for Construction+18g
India: maps for maps+HR
Germany: maps+241g+21gpt for Monotheism
Korea: Monotheism for Feudalism+Engineering+7g+14gpt (@@@ should've added Monarchy?)
Rome: maps+Monotheism+2gpt+18g for Invention
Babylon: Invention+maps for Theology+maps+80gpt+195g
Korea: Invention for Republic
Japan: Republic for 30g (just to get her economy boosted)
Egypt: Feudalism for Monarchy
Germany: Invention for 45gpt+240g

Final result: Got all techs and maps, 482g in treasury, net income 114gpt from other Civs, and kept contact restricted.

Originally posted by SirPleb

And actually, to digress a bit, this whole thread sure is interesting! It is timely for me. I've been thinking for a while of writing an article on trading, with a special focus on this often crucial trading turn. I've got some scratchy notes started but it has a long way to go, I find it a tough subject to organize and generalize.



I gave it some more thought and have now come to the same point you are at, but from a different direction. The maps hold no value and change nothing about the AI, the only reason they seem overvalued, is because their value has been arbitrarily set by the designers/programmers so that the AI won't just give them away for free (like they used to do with workers). But by the same token you can get thats same value from the AI, sometimes. I think there is an artificial modifer in there since I can never get the same gold that the AI often wants in a pure gold for maps trade. While maps for maps seldom need more than a few gold to offset one side or the other.

Without the sleezy and compromising peace negotiations (Moonsinger's game):

[1] Babylon (Egypt) for $33
[2] Greece (Babylon) for $93
[3] Map Making (England) for $627 + WM
[4] $50 + WM (Greece) for Iron Working + Mysticism + Horseback Riding
[5] $33 + WM (Egypt) for Greece
[6] $83 (England) for WM
[7] WM (Russia) for Greece + $125
[8] WM (Japan) for Greece + $30 + TM
[9] $31 (England) for WM
[10] WM (Rome) for $53 + TM
[11] $3 (England) for WM
[12] Mathematics + WM (Zululand) for Map Making + WM
[13] $204 (England) for Mathematics
[14] WM (India) for Greece + $85
[15] WM (Persia) for Greece + $96
[16] $48 (England) for WM
[17] Literature + $7 + WM (Persia) for Mathematics
[18] $161 (England) for Literature
[19] WM (Babylon) for Mathematics + $79
[20] $42 + WM (England) for WM
[21] Code of Laws + Philosophy + Polytheism + $128 (Persia) for WM
[22] $172 (Babylon) for WM
[23] $146 (Russia) for WM
[24] $85 (India) for WM
[25] $53 (Rome) for WM
[26] $31 (Japan) for WM

End result: we have $831, everybody's WM and all the available techs.

England is the only one with money left ($128); they would pay $75 for a ROP (or the full amount to stay at peace with us).

parity: England
1 tech behind: Persia
2 techs behind: Babylon, Zululand
3 techs behind: Rome
4 techs behind: India
5 techs behind: Russia, Japan
6 techs behind: Egypt, Greece

Egypt got no map, Greece only has our TM and Zululand only a partial WM.

That's very interesting. I was kind of hopeing to see something like that but I did not had one. Thanks Greebley.
Start 143g and 25gpt
Step one: I trade maps to the 'old' world for some cash.
Then contact with Egypt for WM+110, contact with Babylon and Territory from Egypt for WM+20g. Contact with Azteca+Territory+25g from Babylon for WM. Contact with India+WM for WM+25g from Azteca. India pays Currency, WM, 40g and 3gpt for WM.
Japan lacks Currency and are willing to pay Polytheism, Philosophy, Horseback riding and 15g for it. Japan lacks Monarchy, so I buy it from Korea for WM+11gpt. Japan pays COnstruction and Code of Laws for Monarchy and 65g.
We're in the Middle Ages and tech parity with Japan. A very interesting opportunity appears. In the old world, Russia, Korea and Rome have Republic, Eng and Feudalism. In the new world, everybody has REpublic, Eng, Monotheism and Feudalism (with the notable exception of Egypt who lacks the latter).
Buy Feudalism from Russia for literaly all we have WM+17 gpt +40g.
Egypt won't give Monotheism for Feudalism. WE lower lux to 0% for 11gpt, sell the map again to the new world for 42. WE give Feudalism, 11 gpt and 30g for Monotheism.
Korea is happy to pay Republic, Engineering and 27 gpt for Monotheism at monopoly price :).
Rome has world monopoly on Invention and Babylon on theology.
In a complex deal we give up our contacts.
Rome pays Invention, 1gpt, 20g and ROP for Monotheism, WM, and all contacts.
Japan pays Wines, 130g and ROP for the WM to have worldwide knowledge of it.
Babylon outbid evrybody and pays 61gpt and 40g for the privilege of having invention at 3rd (they would not sell monopoly theology for anything).Germany pays 150g and 49gpt for Invention. India pays 40 gpt + 4g (they're clean).
Russia pays 15gpt, 52g and ROP for Monotheism.
Babylon pays 26gpt for three contacts, Germany 6gpt for one, Egypt 3gpt +46 g for two.
I gift all the remaining contacts to get people polite with me.
At this point I could start a worldwide war Sir Pleb style but I do the summary instead.
We're down one tech from Babylon (the only ones who still have money)
We're at tech parity with Rome, Germany and India.
We're 1 tech ahead of Russia, Korea, Egypt and Azteca.
We're 5 techs ahead of Japan.
We have the world treasury of 455 and 228 gpt (231gpt other civs+71gpt cities-42gpt to other civs
The world map as it is known and ROP with our close neighbours.
We got an amazing 12 techs. It took 75 minutes of RL to do all this. On a sidenote, Sirpleb you were of course right to not trade contacts.

Well I did ok on Moonsingers example, but see I could have done much better in the game I was playing. Thanks for the analyses, it will really help me do better in the future.

I do have 2 questions.

I have seen mention of the fact that holding back contact helps in trading. I am not completely sure how this works however.

a) For example, if Rome (just choosing a random civ for the example) has an exclusive tech and he knows 2 civs and I know 5, is the tech cheaper for me (compared to both of us knowing 5?).

b) Or is it because If I bought a tech from someone that Rome does not know, and then sell to Rome, the amount I get is more because he is paying for the "exclusive" price instead of the price he would give me with another civ knowing it?

c) I guess the other case would be if Rome only knew one other civ and both Rome and the other civ had a tech, then that tech would be cheaper than if he knew 4 other civs with only one knowing the tech.

I am guessing that b and c are true, but a is not. Is that correct?

---------------

My second question is that if you are trying the suicide galley "meet the other continent first" gambit, then is it best to try to save as much cash is possible and NOT buy techs from the civs you know? It would mean you are further behind, but have more cash for purchases. I would assume some purchases are worthwhile (if you buy nothing and the gambit fails you would be in deep trouble). Are there techs it is worth getting even if it means you might be poorer when you meet (currency perhaps?)

If he is the only one in the world with that tech, he has a monopoly on it, so it doesn't matter. However, if 2 civs have it, then the person who has contact with both civs would get it cheaper than the person who only knew one of the civs.

If there are 5 other civs on the other side of the world, that your neighbors don't know, you could buy techs from the other side of the world @4th-6th civ prices (very cheap) and then sell it to all your neighbors at monopoly prices. The perfect situation would be where each side of the world goes down different branches of the tech tree, so you can continually trade back and forth.

But I like swapping contacts. They give each other big discounts so they trade back and forth more frequently, and I can more often get techs @9th or @10th civ prices, and it makes tech speed faster. But I only recommend this if you have a decent empire (economically speaking-making hundreds of gold/turn) to easily keep buying techs.

Nice, a trading excercise, one of my favourite aspects of the game, thanks for putting this up Moonsinger.

This is how I traded:

Bought contact with Babylonians from Egypt for 32.

Got Mapmaking from the English for 627g and WM.

Got Mathematics and Literature from Zululand for Mapmaking, WM, and 60g.

Traded Mapmaking and 52 gold with Rome for Contact with Greece, WM and Philosophy.

Traded Mysticism, IW and Horseback Riding with Greece for WM and 50g.

Traded Mapmaking, contact with Greece and 44g with Persia for CoL and WM.

Traded CoL, Contact with Greece, Territory Map and 4g with india for polytheism and WM.

Traded CoL with Zululand for WM and 60g.

Traded Mapmaking with japan for 1g and WM.

Traded CoL with Russia for WM and 21g.

Traded CoL with Egypt for WM and 33g.

Traded mapmaking and 21g with Babylon for WM.

Signed ROP with England and traded Mathematics, Literature and WM for 662g.

Traded WM with Persia for 83g.

Traded WM with Rome for 52g.

Traded WM with india for 4g.

traded WM with Babylon for 23g.

End result: 921g and all techs, with England currently at tech parity, Persia and Zululand 1 tech behind, India, Rome and Babylon 2, Japan and Russia 4, Egypt 5 and Greece 6.

Main focus was to get as much gold back from England as possible, thus refraining from selling mathematics and literature to anyone before selling it to England, so their value was as high as possible, and get as much of the world map as possible for the other trade commodities available.

Normally, I'd probably also have given away the techs the other civs still possess to speed up the tech pace, or wait just a few turns to get some additional gold they might earn during those turns.

I totally forgot about the possibility to renegotiate peace, usually I'm in no position to do so myself in my games, so I didn't even think about using it to gain some extra coin.

Trading?

:confused:

You mean you can trade in this game?

:eek:

Two months ago I was playing a Deity game when I got this position:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/babylon_deity_550bc.sav

With only 4 gold and one new contact you must get all the ancient techs and collect all the gold from the AI.

I hope you enjoy it!
This is Civ3 v1.29, standard map, archipelago, 7 rivals.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
It looks like I'm getting a big pay off for starting this thread.:)
I think we all are, Moonsinger. Thanks for your great idea. SirPleb's deals look superb. as ever.

@SirPleb: I went for contact with Babylon first, as this was cheaper and there was a good chance they knew Greece so the high price of Greece would come down. Was there a specific reason for going for contact w. Greece first in your sequence?

I've tried using peace renegotiation as a bargaining counter in a couple of test situations, and noticed that you can sometimes get value for it when your Foreign advisor says our military strength is about equal, sometimes not. So it seems you do have to use a more precise measurement of the power histograph lines to discover whether it will win you anything. "Weaker" or "Stronger" seem to be good enough indicators on their own.

I just played Bremp's game and had to stop yet again because my computer hates 1.29 but anyway was able to get everything but Monarchy and Republic. I made a poor choice in who to sell Monotheism (the only other Middle age Civ) rather than check for techs to trade partly because it would mean putting gifting couple AI way up in tech just to be able to trade Monotheism to them. It was fun though.

Originally posted by AlanH
A couple of questions - Is this a typical game position for you? Does difficulty level change the position at this stage of your game much?

Yes, this is very typical game position for all my games. That would explain why I'm usually too slow in launching my spaceship. It doesn't matter what level I'm playing, I always let the AI to take over the tech lead. While they are too busy satisfying their thirst for new techs, I'm just saving up all my gold and building up my military to get ready for my chance to take over the world.:lol:

---

Just in case someone may misunderstand me, I'm not saying that doing our own research is silly or bad. It's really all defending on how we want to finish the game. Since I'm in the farming business, I don't really care much for fast tech and fast space launch anyway; there is really no need for me to waste my income on research while I could easily buy all my techs from the AI for a lot cheaper. May be this help explain why I think "milk" will do a lot of good for those who just want to learn to play a better game.;)

As everyone have demonstraded in this thread, we usually have no problem in catching up to all the techs without really paying any gold because we usually get all of our money back (plus extra profit) at the end of the turn. Since it does take money to make money, the secret here is to save enough money while awaiting for the right oportunity to make those big trades.:) And there are plenty of trade deal like this in any game. Basically, anytime we see some AIs having good enough cash, we would immediately use our buying power to transfer all their gold into our own account; works every time!:)

Bremp's deity trading
Trade WM with Iro and Rome for 24g. Also get an update on their territories.
Normally I would have traded contact with Iro and Rome but instead I pay an outrageous 7gpt and 18g to England fro contact with Zulu. Contact with Russia for WM to Zulu. Russia pays Territory map and contact with Zulu fro WM. Egypt pays us Maths, Territory map and 52g. Sell Maths to Rome for Poly and 100g. Sell Poly to Iroquois for Code of Laws, WM, 2gpt and 6g.
The trick is there are a lot of monopoly techs:
Iro: Republic,
Rome: Monarchy,
England, Egypt: Currency
All the new world: Construction
Buy Construction from Zulu for Poly, WM, 152, 8gpt.
Seems like I have to trade contacts a little.
Pay Rome all contacts, Construction and WM for Monarchy, WM and 110g
Trade England Monarchy for Currency and 270g.
Trade Iroqouis all contacts, Monarchy, Maths, 18gpt and 385g. Subsequently trade construction to Iro for 15gpt and 2g. Then sell them Currency for 292. Sell Currency to Zulu for WM+175g.
Sell Currency to Rome for WM + 165g
Sell Republic to Rome for 284g +WM. Sell the WM to Iro for some extra 70g.
I'm tech leader with my free Engineering (just figured out that I fired the save with PTW v1.21)
Rome lacks Republic, Egypt and Zulu lack Monarchy as well. Russia lacks Currency, Monarchy and Republic (hey they're scientific).
Gift Russia Currency and they draw Engineering as well. I can gift before they trade between each other.

I have 1010gold and +19gpt(@100% tax)

I tried this trading turn exercise having first read the thread and didn't keep track of what I did.

This is one of the best threads I've ever read and has completely changed the way I look at trading.

1. Renegotiating peace deals. Brilliant. Whats the downside? I was able to get techs from nearly everyone for free.

2. Starting wars. Fantastic. I was able to start a global war, and I got paid for the privelige.

Although I didn't keep track of what I did, I ended up with 949 gold 8gpt, all the techs with only a couple of civs level with me, everyones WM without exception and a huge global conflict which I'm fairly confident I could avoid getting too involved in.

Thankyou to Moonsinger and everyone who posted. This will definitely improve my game. :)

Originally posted by Moonsinger
Since it does take money to make money, the secret here is to save enough money while awaiting for the right oportunity to make those big trades.:)
I think this exercise has demonstrated that point very well as applied to situations where the AI has just learned a critical tech like Map Making.

Bremp's example demonstrates that you can use your own critical advances to make big steps forward even if you have no cash to start with. In his case the discovery of new contacts gives the leverage needed to start the ball rolling, but it was risky because he could have lost the race to first contact with the other continent in his game.

This demonstrates the alternatives we recognise in RL - high risk/high spender vs. low risk/saver paths. Spend to maximise your own contacts, maps and tech advances, or save a nest egg ready to buy your way into the market.

At higher difficulty levels it's more difficult/impossible to develop your own tech advantage, so the gambler's approach gets more risky, and your savings plan becomes more attractive.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
While they are too busy satisfying their thirst for new techs, I'm just saving up all my gold and building up my military to get ready for my chance to take over the world.:lol:

Sorry to be asking so many questions, but I'm really learning a lot from this thread:goodjob:.

When you are not self-researching something critical, like Pottery, do you run the science slider at zero or 10%?

Originally posted by AlanH
Sorry to be asking so many questions

There is really nothing to be sorry about.

When you are not self-researching something critical, like Pottery, do you run the science slider at zero or 10%?

If possible, I would try to go with the 1 scientist trick and science slider at zero. However, at the early stage of the game, I can't afford to create the 1 scientist; therefore, I usually waste 10% on the science slider as a backup plan.

Originally posted by Moonsinger
If possible, I would try to go with the 1 scientist trick and science slider at zero. However, at the early stage of the game, I can't afford to create the 1 scientist; therefore, I usually waste 10% on the science slider as a backup plan. [/B]
That's becoming my style as well, but I sometimes wonder if it makes sense to spend anything at all on science in the ancient era, apart from a few obvious first level ones like Pottery. It probably depends on being able to predict the right tech to run with so that there's a reasonable chance it will become a monopoly tech after 40 turns. I'll have to study that article on AI tech selection again.

Originally posted by Yndy
Bremp's deity trading
I'm tech leader with my free Engineering (just figured out that I fired the save with PTW v1.21)
Rome lacks Republic, Egypt and Zulu lack Monarchy as well. Russia lacks Currency, Monarchy and Republic (hey they're scientific).
I have 1010gold and +19gpt(@100% tax)

Hi Yndy,

Great trading :goodjob: :goodjob:

I was so excited with this trading opportunity, that I forgot to write the sequence down. I ended up with all the techs, but I had much lower gold and gpt income than you. :cry:

It was a great example of what you can achieve by maximising the opportunities at a certain stage of the game.

Bremp: Thanks for sharing this wonderful example for the power of well managed trading

Ronald

Originally posted by mad-bax
1. Renegotiating peace deals. Brilliant. Whats the downside? I was able to get techs from nearly everyone for free.


There isn't much of a downside IF you have a power lead. If you don't have a power lead, then you will have to fork over money to stay at peace (and if you have nothing, then you are at war!). Once you enter into the negotiating table to find out if they will pay for peace or not, it is too late to back out of it, so you better make sure you have the power lead. It can be risky if you don't know for sure if you have the power lead or not. But usually, if the powerlead is that close, I either don't take the risk, or just pay the small amount they want.

Other than the gamble, the only downside is you can't attack them in the next 20 turns (without ruining your rep), so you have to plan for that.

Techs, improvements and wonders doesn't seems to affect power rankings as much as military, cash, and # of cities does, so certain play styles will find it easier to get a power lead and extort from the AI than others.

Just note again that you are unlikely to be leading in power on deity early in the game. Thus, it may not help much (Or even HURTS!!) in the upcoming GOTM20. Also, not suitable for warmongers who constantly change their war target and don't like to ruin their reputation (e.g. myself).

Originally posted by Qitai
Just note again that you are unlikely to be leading in power on deity early in the game. Thus, it may not help much (Or even HURTS!!) in the upcoming GOTM20. Also, not suitable for warmongers who constantly change their war target and don't like to ruin their reputation (e.g. myself).

It isn't any question of being unlikely, you either will or will not get a power lead and be able to extort these beneficial deals. This is stating the obvious. If you have no military you won't be capturing cities. If you don't build cultural improvements you won't win a cultural victory.

If you make *any* kind of 20 turn deal, and value your reputation you have to plan a little more carefully. I see no value in ever proposing a strategy where planning doesn't exist. Things like the peace deals keep you aware of this planning, and also keep the AI aware.

Additionally there is a lot of value in making a peace deal even if you have to pay, at least you can then scoff any demands and you can be reasonably sure you will be safe for 20 turns. That is, making the eventual wars revolve around your planning as opposed to the whim of a simple AI.

Now if you change your target frequently it seems like you are just making everyone mad at you and gaining very little. I know who my potential early/middle/late targets are in 4000BC. I am hardly ever in a situation where I can support fighting on multiple fronts, when ever I see a situation like that I realize I wasn't as agressive as I should have been, and thus next game I speed up the entire process. My play style never builds up huge forces, I try to stay in a constant blitz until the enemy is dead, thus I need good roads and infrastructure to build and send reinforcements.

The only problem is when the loses exceed your ability to reproduce units, thereby stalling the war for 5-10 turns. But as a comparison to the build-up militarist this would be a loss, sue for peace and then build-up again. Different play style, different results.

The point is that the more I concentrate my forces the less likely any defense can stand up against it, and at the same time I can maintain peaceful relations with all the other civs and in most cases even translate their fear of me into useful production. Unless I can capture or otherwise gain something from a civ, why be at war, or change targets?

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
There isn't much of a downside IF you have a power lead. If you don't have a power lead, then you will have to fork over money to stay at peace (and if you have nothing, then you are at war!). Once you enter into the negotiating table to find out if they will pay for peace or not, it is too late to back out of it, so you better make sure you have the power lead. It can be risky if you don't know for sure if you have the power lead or not. But usually, if the powerlead is that close, I either don't take the risk, or just pay the small amount they want.

In addition to what you just said, I think we also take an attitude hit everytime we renegotiating peace and they ending up paying us money. I have been trying the peace renegotiating trick in the last few day and I'm noticing that the AI's attitude instantly drop one level after every renegotiating peace deal. Therefore, I think the renegotiating peace deal will make it tougher for the Diplomatic win.

I am just highlighting this just in case some players might rush into this re-negotiation trick without checking. I made this mistake initially since I was in the lead most of the time and it did not occur to me that I have to pay instead of getting $$ for re-negotiating peace. It may sound obvious now, but when you first learn this trick, it works so well that you may actually forgot to check the power graph!!! At least, i did forgot.

Also, when I mean changing war target, I do not mean actually fighting one and then deciding to fight another at the same time. It means I don't have an exact target while I building up my military. And often then not, I am able to war earlier than when I had anticipate and had to wait just because I do not like to ruin my reputation (Not that ruining reputation is a big deal, I just don't like it).

There are a lot of variable influencing my warring target and those variable keep changing.

Eaxmples
(1) when pyramid is build by some AI and you want it NOW!;
(2) when AI has troops in your backyard but would not declare war and that leaves you worrying if you go to war with another civ and this civ wars you, it will be a two-sided war, so you war that civ instead;
(3) when target AI gain some military technology unexpectedly making it less of a juicy target;
(4) Your town with luxury/resource flip! and that is your only town with that particular luxury/resource! etc...). 20 turns is afterall not really that short to have alot of things changing.

Not sure about the part that if you have a 20turn deal, they will be less likely to attack. In my experience, that does not seems to matter to AI. My believe is that if they want to hit you, they will. Never had the impression AI cares about reputation.

And I fully agree with your accessment of concentrating during warring. Nothing is worse than a prolong war that drains your resources but does not gain you anything.

Utimately, you have to decide these before using this re-negotiated peace trick.
(1) You are sure you will gain from a re-negotiation or believe paying a 20 turn peace will do you good.
(2) You can live with the 20 turn peace restriction or don't care about reputation.
(3) The gain for re-negotiation peace is worth it. Without obvious power difference, the gain can be as little as 30 gold or less!!

Thanks for the clarification about renegotiation. :)

I also noticed that once I had renegotiated peace with a particular CIV it was then impossible to negotiate a military alliance with anyone else against that CIV. I know it sounds obvious.

You can't negotiate a MA against anyone none of you is at war with. One of the party must be at war with the thrid party.

Maps and contact are clearly very powerful trading counters in the early game.

If either trading party has Map Making then both parties can buy or sell maps.

Writing seems to behave differently. It seems Writing allows me to sell my contacts, but I can't buy contacts from another civ until she has Writing. I guess she can't write down their phone numbers yet. So if I want new contacts from my new friend I first have to sell her Writing.

Fair enough, but it turns out that she can't then tell me about her contacts in the same turn, so I can't trade for them this time around. If I wait until the next turn I run the risk that one of my competitors will get her contacts first and reap enormous potential advantage. All I get from the deal is the sale of Writing.

Has anyone else seen this?

Originally posted by Qitai
You can't negotiate a MA against anyone none of you is at war with. One of the party must be at war with the thrid party.

Thanks. 'tis as I expected. :)

Originally posted by AlanH
It seems Writing allows me to sell my contacts, but I can't buy contacts from another civ until she has Writing.

I don't think this is true but I can't seems to recall if I had trade communication from a civ without writing. But I am SURE I have sold my contacts while not having writing.

Trading contacts works the same way as trading maps and mapmaking. One of you must have writing to trade contacts. It is possible she didn't know anybody that you didn't, until the next turn, and/or had traded for contacts via a third party.

Great idea Moonsinger!

Bottom line: with slider unchanged, I have all techs, everyone's world map except Persia, 898 gold and am up 5 per turn.

Play-by-play:

Trade 1: England (only she has Map Making)
My World Map (WM) + 425 g + 13 gpt for her Map Making and Territory Map (TM)

Trade 2: Zulu (only he has Math butI trade for Lit first, mistakenmly)
Map Making for Contact with Bab + Lit + TM

Trade 3: Zulu:
WM for WM

Trade 4; (oh yeah, math!) Zulu
WM + 8 gpt + 300 g. for Math

Trade 5: Japan (all they have id Phil)
Math for Phil + WM + 1 g.

Trade 6: Rome
Math for Cont. Greeks + TM

Trade 7: Rome
WM for Code of Laws and WM

Trade 8: Greeks (unknown and uneducated)
TM for TM + 1 g

Trade 9: Greeks
WM for WM + 49

Trade 10: India
Con. Greeks + Code of Laws for WM

Trade 11: Egypt
TM for WM

Trade 12: Babylon
TM for TM

Trade 13: babylon
WM for Ploytheism + WM + 30

2 hour break to watch The Matrix with my wife.

Trade 14: Zulu
Con. Greeks + WM for 300 g

Trade 15: Russia
Con Greeks + Code of Laws for WM + 21g

Trade 16: England (I want money)
WM + Lit + Math for WM + 446 gold

What about the Persians--must've forgotten them after I got Polythesim from Babylon and knew they had no techs for me...sheesh that's what happens when you take the blue pill instead of the red one...

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
If I want to, I could establish embassies in every civ and sign a ROP, and get everyone polite.

How do people decide when to invest in embassies? Rarely, the computer will establish an embassy with me, I think, but mostly I'll end up do