Tech Trading

Hey gang,

Just wondering if you all play with Tech trading on or off?

I've never used it since I started playing mp.

What do you folks do?

i usually have tech "brokeriing" off.

i dont like the fact that if i trade a tech to a friend.. he may turn around and trade it to someone i dont want to have that tech.

mp=multiplayer right? i would have thought no tech trading would be a total given.

Usually tech trading is off in the mp games I played. Most players are too paranoid in their diplomacy. I play with tech trading on, however.

I've played a lot of multiplayer games, some with tech trading on and some with it off. The games I play in tend to be quite large (12-18 players), and with experienced players who are heavily into diplomacy (via PM's and such). (Never played a game with tech brokering on, I dislike that option since it detracts from the thrill of diplomacy.)

Generally for these games I find having tech trading on tends to lead to all the civs eventually forming into two or three large alliances, racing through the tech tree at such a pace that sometimes military units go obsolete before they reach the frontline! However, this can be compensated for by increasing tech costs (by increasing the difficulty level or decreasing game speed).

Tech trading off leads much more to an "every man for himself" scenario, which is alright, but can become obscenely unbalanced if one player starts to pick up a decent GNP lead. (See "Civstats" for the Duniapetu game in my signature for an example of such a game.)

Basically, tech trading on tends to lead to a faster progression through the tech tree, but with most people roughly at tech par. Tech trading off means much slower tech progression through the tech tree, but the tech level of individual players can be very different (as much as a whole era or more later in the game!).

I pretty much always have tech trading on. But then again, I've only ever played, like, one, multiplayer game ().

I don't see much reason to have no tech trading in single player. It makes the game less fun (IMHO), and there's not much point to it when you're only playing against the computer.

I've played about a dozen MP games, tech brokering can be problematic esp. if players and their friends are working among themselves. You can argue that's real life; but it seems unfair if a gamer and his buddies have a pre-existing advantage to start with. If a relationship develops organically among strangers because of the context in this particular game, that's fair and expected. Sigh... a plausible case can and was made for just the opposite.

I prefer TT's off in MP in a typical game. There's definitely strategy to having them on, but one's performance is then correlated much more with human manipulation than civ IV skill. Not that such a thing can't be fun, engaging, realistic, etc (across a large # of games players who are better at it will win more), but it starts to look very much like other games I play, instead of the Civ IV I'm used to.

On the contrary, I find that the skill involved in having to use diplomatic cunning with other players when tech trading is on greatly enhances my enjoyment of the game. In these games there's still the military strategies and tactical cunning involved in winning, but in addition there's a whole extra aspect to the game that tests how well you can interact with people. For me, that (rather than the two dimensional world of trading with the computer) is the highest form of Civving.

Don't get me wrong, I love the occasional game of manipulating humans (or at least attempting to do so), but I play a lot of other online games, and this plotting element on game spy can be unbearable, as people often behave in a fashion that is not in their best interest there. My personal favorite so far was a game where I settled a plains hill and the guy using rome didn't like it. He didn't say anything until I'd already settled though, and then he did absolutely everything he could to make sure neither of us could win (he sat in my territory and used prats to pillage for 70+ turns on quick), meanwhile my neighbor on the other side rushed/killed someone and I wasn't in shape to stop it. In the end, the roman player had 3 cities around 1000 AD, but damn did he whip a lot of prats and send them to me. It was hard, because there was 1 other competent player in there and he wouldn't work with me (probably realized that he had the game won already).

Clearly, the roman player wasn't playing to win, but just to piss me off. I don't want to see that magnified via tech trades, so I can't say I'm a big fan of TT on game spy...maybe with more people who are at least viable (but most good players don't like BLAZING!!!).

2nd favorite story: Someone build roads to "axe rush" me with 6 axes, passing an AI capitol on the way and hitting me with 6 axes around 500 BC. Yeah...EVERYONE in that game was terrible (The AI he passed up quit due to a failed choke on me)...I won easily after witnessing war skills worse than the AI. Again, however, it'd be much harder if 2 slime balls who failed chokes just vassaled to someone and tech whored because they didn't get their way earlier.

Ah, I see - we play in different environments. I've done a bit of Gamespy playing, and I don't like it much to be honest. (Too rushed - but then of course that's your style. )

I tend to play in pitboss games that can last 8-12 months at a turn or two per day. In those games, diplomacy is serious business - literally half of the game strategy revolves around earning the trust of people (and sometimes losing it by backstabbing). I find that a lot of fun.

In the games I play, we don't have such problems with the "mates who always ally", because all of the players know each other fairly well and yet are all fairly wily and competent at diplomacy. Every game is different for us.