tjs282, I thank you for your detailed response, however, with all of the research and work people have done in Civilization 3, why has no one figured out the calculations for trading with a civ? So that those statistics can be viewable by a calculator?
Sorry I didn't see your answer until now.
Most of that work was done by programming enthusiasts, in their own time, for their own amusement/ gameplay improvement shortly after Civ3 was first released. And most (if not all) of the Civ3-utilities available from CFC started life as homebrew single-tool spreadsheets/ projects, which were only later integrated into larger multitool packages. Many of the individuals who did that work have long since moved on from Civ3 (or even from CFC), so have no further incentive to tinker/update -- which is unfortunate, but understandable, and probably inevitable.
Since all the AI-contact, civ-size, infrastructure-builds and knowledge info is in the save-file, it certainly should be
possible to write a utility (or update an existing one) to calculate the in-game market prices for any given asset -- but maybe there simply wasn't ever sufficient demand/ incentive for someone to do the necessary research/ programming.
There are just so many questions I would have about civilizations like, what calculation is used for each civilization to determine how much they will pay per item? Per turn? How much they will sell? What they will sell (when they will sell cities) and when they will sell?
I can only give rough answers for most of this, based on my own observation and what I've read on here:
Alexman made a thread about tech-values: these are based on the base cost (which you can find in the Editor), multiplied by the various difficulty, map-size and other factors, and presumably also the desirability of that tech to that AI (if the tech enables an AICiv's UU, it gets a higher value).
Lux-values are based on how many additional 'Happy faces' that new Lux will provide across the buyer's total population (i.e. how big it is, how many Luxes he already has access to, and how many of his cities have Markets). I'm not sure how StratRes values are calculated, but I would assume it's at least partly weighted based on a Civ's aggression-level, and their Governor's build-priorities, and possibly also whether or not they're at war:
e.g.1. At least in the Ancient Age, I could imagine that a Civ which has 'build often' set for attackers, and/or one that needs Iron to build its UU -- might value Iron higher than one that builds more defenders (i.e. Spears), or has a non-Iron UU (e.g. Bowmen).
e.g.2. After it's unlocked Gunpowder, a more 'defensive' AICiv might value Saltpeter (Muskets) higher than a more 'offensive' AICiv would -- at least until MilTrad (Cavs etc.) has
also been unlocked. Just guessing there, though.
Maps are (I believe) valued at east partly based on how many (more?) tiles of the world-map they expose to the buyer. Although I guess there's also a non-variable base-cost, because AFAIK it's (still) possible to sell your WorldMap to the same AI several times during the same turn, even if you haven't exposed anything new since the previous sale.
As far as calculating values for diplomatic agreements, I have no idea what's involved -- except that the value of an RoP is based on relative territory sizes.
There must be an internal calculator that every civ has to figure out how much to pay you for your items, and vice versa, and which items it will sell or purchase at all.
Yes indeed -- that's what your Foreign Advisor is comparing against when he assesses your offers to the AICivs, and how the AI-leader decides what it will give for something you're offering.
As far as I can tell, the AIs will never
sell anything to the human player for a lower total than its calculated current market value
for the human (at higher levels, AICivs do give each other trade discounts) -- but it doesn't care how it does that. So if you still have a clean trade-rep, the AI will make a 20T-deal any which way you like, so long as it's got the full value at the end of it, e.g. if an AICiv thinks that a Lux is worth 20gpt to you (i.e. 400g over 20T), any one of the following payment combinations would be acceptable:
- a straight 400g payment up-front (I don't think the AICivs charge 'interest' if you have a clean rep -- although I could be wrong)
- 20gpt
- a tech worth 300g + 100g
- a Resource worth 10gpt + 100g + 5gpt
And the AICivs always seem willing to buy something they want, if they can afford it -- and then DoW you, of course (especially if you sold at a lower price than you should have!)
The only restrictions on sales come with AI attitude (a poorer attitude raises the prices it charges you) and your trustworthiness -- i.e. whether or not you've ever (been known to have) broken
any kind of per-turn deal with anyone. If you have a busted trade-rep, the AI won't accept per-turn payments (gold or resources) in return for one-time goods (techs, workers, lump-sum gold, etc.) -- it will want up-front payment in one-time goods at current market value, and if you can't afford that, then tough. That said, it will (I believe) still sell per-turn goods for per-turn payments -- although at a higher price than if you still had an intact trade-rep (because if you break this deal, it no longer has to supply the goods)
I remember in the original Civ 3, you were able to trade a captured major city for other small cities, then capture that same major city in the same turn. It was an exploit, basically you can take over an entire civ in one turn by only taking one city. Someone working in Conquests changed this bug, so that the Civ calculates differently (although I was able to get the city called Asyut from the Egpytians when they were asking to make peace for me and I accepted the peace along with Asyut). You can find Asyut in the mapfile I uploaded at the link above.
With respect to city-sales, from what I've seen during my limited C3C experience, the C3C AIs will
never sell cities, no matter how useless -- nor give them up to preserve themselves in the face of my obvious military superiority, for any price
The AICivs don't generally seem particularly keen on buying cities either, even when the asking-price is negligible (no 1-dollar real-estate deals here!) -- although they
will happily take them as gifts. If you've done the AI sufficient damage, extorting (additional) cities during PT negotiations
is possible, and I would assume you could also swap cities with them at that point, if you wanted to -- although having gone to the trouble to build/ capture your cities in the first place, I'm not sure when/ why this might be desirable.
