The Ailing Civilization Strategy

It's a strategy devised to catch up techwise, obtaining numerous techs in a short span of time through trading.

When I'm lagging way behind in the tech race at, say, Emperor level or above, I look at the Power Chart and trace a feable civilization with high culture (which probably means it will be ahead of me in tech).

I check it is at war at present with TWO or MORE civilizations and has five or less cities left to be annihilated.

I contact them, and strike a deal to exchange all the gpt they ask of me for as much techs as I can possibly afford (depending upon the cash I'm generating, I adjust the tech slide to zero before the deal, so as to make all the cash per turn available, the AI knows how much you make per turn).

Thus after about a couple of turns, the civ is wiped out and I have kept 5 techs or more at the least, aswell as all the money I do not end up paying because there is no one whom to pay it to. Plus I'm still honourable before the eyes of all civs because I stood true to my word and paid whilst they were alive (I do not have to declare any war to safe myself from paying what I owe them).

Regarding the reputation hit: no one has ever declared war on me for using this technique and I always make sure to keep the AI happy by means of signing ROP or giving them luxuries for free (very rarely, unless I am weakling militarily) or below the market price or simply by giving away a small amount of lump gold. I do this in the same turn the ailing civ gets wiped out so as to keep up my good reputation. I do not have problems regarding this issue. And as I say I continue doing it through out all the game until I catch up and then set the science bar to the max allowed by my Economy (even with a great loss per turn, e.g. 400 gpt, because I will have already made sure I had cash saved for this moment) and investigate a tech which I know the AI will not research (such as TOE). I pursue from this moment forth what is known as the Tech Broker Strat once I'm even in research with the tech leader.This technique (the ailing civ strat, ACS ) is great for catching up techs in such a short span of time and at no cost really (well, almost). The point is getting all the techs you can within one single bargain, you can then trade them off with other civs and so on.

Regards to fellow civ sisters and brothers

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117398&pagenumber=1

Great idea; actually I have used a variation of this in my games. It works like this: when you are at war against civ A and they have only one city left, sign a military alliance against civ A with civ B and pay for that alliance as much gpt as you can. After that you should be able to sell any techs you have for civ B for a large amount of gpt. Then, take out the last city of civ A, and civ B ends up paying you huge amounts of gold which will bankrupt them soon. You should try to sign as many mil alliances and gpt deals against civ A as possible. I was able to get with this trick about 300gpt from other civs. I must confess this is a shamelessly cheap exploit.

I was pretty sure that if you are paying gpt to an AI who gets wiped out, then you get a reputation hit.

However, crystal, your idea of setting up gpt deals to other civs so that they can afford to buy your techs sounds very good, and I don't see why it would hit reputation. I will try to give that a go. I hope no one in gotmland thinks it uncouth.

And of course, welcome aboard Drakan.

Smart thinking Crystal, I'll try that one in my next game.
Thank you Offa, you are very kind.

Regarding the reputation hit, it might be as you say. In any case no one has ever declared war on me for using this technique and I always make sure to keep the AI happy by means of signing ROP or giving them luxuries for free (very rarely, unless I am weakling militarily) or below the market price or simply by giving away a small amount of lump gold. I do this in the same turn the ailing civ gets wiped out so as to keep up my good reputation. I do not have problems regarding this issue. And as I say I continue doing it through out all the game until I catch up and then set the science bar to the max allowed by my Economy (even with a great loss per turn, e.g. 400 gpt, because I will have already made sure I had cash saved for this moment) and investigate a tech which I know the AI will not research (such as TOE). I pursue from this moment forth what is known as the Tech Broker Strat once I'm even in research with the tech leader.

This technique (the Ailing Civ Strat) is great for catching up techs in such a short span of time and at no cost really (well, almost). The point is getting all the techs you can within one single bargain, you can then trade them off with other civs and so on.

In a game I played, the Iroquois were about to be wiped out and I traded 10 techs from them in a single deal. They refused to trade more techs because I just couldn't afford more, I only lost like a thousand gold or so in the following two turns (500 g in each turn), but I saved so much money on the long run, plus I was immediately on par techwise with everyone else at Emperor...So, If a tech has a cost of say 2.000 gold each*, 10 times 2.000 is 20.000. I only paid 1.000 for them really, saving myself 19.000 gold, and whats more, the chance of catching up in time (saving sooooo much time), and beeing able to "see" in the map new strategical resources.

*= the price of techs depends on various factors:

1.The size of the map you have chosen
2. the number of civilizations alive in your game (it's enough if you only leave them with one city). The more civs, the cheaper the tech once it's available.
3. The level of difficulty you are playing at. At Emperor the techs will be 1/.8= 1.25 times more expensive than Monarch. At Demi-god 1/.7=1.43 times more expensive and so forth. (Arathorn takes the credit for this).

There's a utility that prices techs in the utilities forum:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=38631


"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail"

you will not get a rep hit from this, it is a good method, and it is cheap, but oh well.

how can you be sure that the AI you are trading with will survive (even though he may only has one single settler sitting in a small boat somewhere)?
u will seriously cripple your own economy.
and suppose if the AI was eliminated after 19 turns...

You just cannot davidcrazy. It is just an educated guess, a gambit. During normal gameplay there is really no need to check the Power Chart because you already know who is superior to you in techs. You just check regularly until you are certain they have 5 or less cities. In my experience, an AI civ at war with TWO or MORE civs with only 5 or less cities left does not make it past 4 or 5 rounds.

Obviously there is a risk to this strat, but you work it out in your head if it is worth pursuing or not. In my experience I have yet to play a game in which they survive given the conditions afore mentioned.

BTW this strategy works even better when at the begining in C3C you choose the AI's civs to be more agressive than usual. The frequent wars that will be unleashed will help you out all the more to pursue this strategy providing you survive and get along well with everyone by means of lux trading and/or RoP agreements.


http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117398&pagenumber=1

Another good method is: Note MPP between AIs. Make gpt deal and attack his(her) partner.
They will declare war and you get what you ask for free. (Reputation will remain clean)

I once started a war with a strong civ, and realized that since there was another civ that they actively traded with and were in the same culture group, there was a high chance that they would sign an MA. So I bought as many techs from the other civ for gpt, and the next thing to happen was they did sign an MA and it turned out that I didn't have to pay the gpt. Got a lot of free stuff.

To maximize the chances of getting civ 2 (the potential ally of your enemy) to sign an MA against you, you should try to make them furious by demanding cities and also make sure they are as strong or stronger than you are, because if the civ is weaker than you in terms of military the chance of them signing an MA goes down quite a bit.

EDIT: wrote second paragraph

Lots of useful tips here . Until I read this I didn't know about the possibilities in making money by trickin rivals to break deals and how deals ended when a rival was wiped out. Will definitly try this from now on.

You're welcome Daghdha