Finished a playthrough on Diety

[Rodnok]

Well, I decided that the Start as Minors isnt worth it. Feels too much like real-time strategy games from 90s with all that fighting and no diplo (No one wanted to establish peace even with Writing, although I was bored to play some longer time after that). AI cant even mount any decent attack.

So I browsed again through the list of the civilizations and came up with Charlemagne for my next try - philosophical&aggressive is a pretty good combination, landsknechts can use copper too and rathauses could significantly help with my financial problems. No tech difusion this time, no tribal villages. Ruthless AI again (which is a step above aggressive AI, so this is used automatically). I went for BW immediately and discovered a source of copper right under my capital! Not to mention it was plains/hill and gold/plains/hill was right next to it. Even though I moved my initial settler there away from the river it was huge. I didn't need Wheel yet, so I went for Great Wall "as usually" to get that Philosophical bonus on track. And I decided to use the Agressive trait to max, so I researched Iron Working then and started to build swordsmen to conquer barbarian cities. 2 workers chopped like mad to build The Wall and then The Army of Mordor. Funny that the capital had size 1 for a veeery long time.

I think I conquered 3 barb cities, found 1 more myself. Viking had attacked me, but I defeated him and got another city . During the Alphabet research a Spy was born and I helped my newly born former-barb friend Mansa against Justinian's hordes - he would be very strong otherwise with me on his "next to kill" list. So I had mostly spearmen in Mali cities to kill his horses.

I believe the game would be playable, not a winning position yet, but still very interesting. But when we finally got Alphabet a disaster came... no one wanted to trade techs with me! I got one deal (Writing partially and Archery) before but then everyone says "we would have nothing to gain" even though I have something nice... Even my great friend Mansa who is usually mad about tech trading...

Then I took some break and then... I tried it again with someone else . Discovered Iroquis in the list. They have a bad UU (well, a better scout has its uses, but some fighting guys would be nicer) but a very interesting building. Barracks which allows to employ 2 spies and produce 1 culture! And it is available immediately. So I dont have to build Great wall or research for Mysticism.

They got two leaders: Logan (organized&protective) and Hiawatha (spiritual&organized). Although I like spiritual leaders and protective trait isnt anything great, here I felt I will really need Logan. Organized is good too for little less financial burden initially and a stability bonus. So I took Logan with the same settings as before (I just turned off Choose religions). His starting techs Agriculture and Hunting give a nice hint where to pursue my research and there wasnt much forest available anyway. So no initial chopping this time! I went for Archery, AH, Mining (for gold in my third city), Pottery,Writing and Alphabet. And the same situation has happened again. Ho Chi Minh (a former barbarian, we even had a brief war) was willing to make one trade for Alphabet, but everyone else is just saying "we would have nothing to gain". Even though they lack Writing or Alphabet...

I am not sure if it should be like that on Deity, but it seems I am done here. Its impossible to research everything yourself (even with some stealing with spies), when AI trades and it would be boring anyway. Maybe I will give it one more last try without Ruthless AI (or even without Aggressive one), to discover what is causing this. But Marathon games are pretty long, it will take a lot of time to get to Alphabet again (and quicker speeds are much harder). I also suspect turning off the Tech diffusion might be the cause... as Jared had some tech trades in his Deity game.

Played in the last 0.9.10 build. Iroquis position is bad as the Khmer attack there all the time from their corner, but I played it to survive till Alphabet. As its currently impossible to upload attachments here, I placed the saved games there, if anyone wants to peek:

http://kondor21.sweb.cz/rodnok_deity.zip

 

[phungus420]

The reason they wol't trade with you is that you are playing Ruthless AI, specifically this logic is blocking the AI from trading:

From CvTeamAI -specifically the tech trading function

/************************************************************************************************/
/* Afforess	                  Start		 03/19/10                                               */
/*                                                                                              */
/* Ruthless AI: Don't Sell Our Military Secrets                                                 */
/************************************************************************************************/
	if (GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_RUTHLESS_AI))
	{
		if (GC.getTechInfo(eTech).getFlavorValue(GC.getInfoTypeForString("FLAVOR_MILITARY")) > 3)
		{
			//We don't want to spread military techs when we are gearing for war
			//If there is tech brokering, selling the tech to anyone could get it in the hands of our enemy. If there is no brokering, just worry about the current team.
			if (getAnyWarPlanCount(true) > 0 && (!GC.getGameINLINE().isOption(GAMEOPTION_NO_TECH_BROKERING) || AI_getWarPlan(eTeam) != NO_WARPLAN))
			{
				return DENIAL_NO_GAIN;
			}
		}
	}
/************************************************************************************************/
/* Afforess	                     END                                                            */
/************************************************************************************************/

In more plain english, the algorithm is as follows:

If playing Ruthless AI
If the tech has a military flavor of greater then 3
if the has a warplan (The AI is at war or is planning to attack)
if the game is NOT No Tech Brokering OR the AI has a warplan against the team attempting to trade
Do not trade the tech - Nothing to Gain

 

[Rodnok]

Thanks phungus. I thought it has something to do with R. AI, as I noticed already they often dont want open borders just for free or cancel it frequently. Thats actually cool and interesting.

Well if they treat everyone as such, it doesnt sound like entirely bad situation. But it changes my research priorities, that race to Alphabet was unnecessary then, at least in the second game.

I will try no tech brokering option too. Wondering if it makes the game easier.

I was considering playing without aggressive AI too, but it makes the game more boring and an AI might still attack - maybe even more of them will in the same time, if they see a weak opponent like me. In my games I had usually just 1 opponent at once, so its still playable.
And they lose a lot of production in wars between them and more succesfull warmongers have problems with revolts then .

 

[Rodnok]

However, isnt there another reason for it too? I looked at techs in xml: Code of Laws has military flavor 2, Mysticism doesnt have this at all. However, as the screenshot shows, they are all the same, Nothing to gain.

http://img857.imageshack.us/i/nothingtogain.png/

 

[phungus420]

Could you upload the save for me? That way I could take a look at it, and isolate specifically what is causing the AI to reject nearly every tech trade, then tweak things if I think they need to be changed.

 

[Rodnok]

Yes, I uploaded both of them in that previous post. Its a zip with two saves as an external link, because attachments to CFC dont work currently:
http://kondor21.sweb.cz/rodnok_deity.zip

I think this didnt happen in my previous Immortal games and I used Ruthless AI there with the same settings. However these were played under the previous version of LoR so I cant check the saves quickly. I will try to install it today.
Edit: I just remembered that these previous games without trading problems were with Tech diffusion on. I turned it off just when we had that discussion in this thread that its too strong and started only these two games since. Maybe there could be a problem causing this. However I searched yesterday in LoR Source directory for all DENIAL_NO_GAIN and didnt find anything more related to techs...