Advice on first BTS game.

[Rycheman]

I've just got BTS for xmas and am playing my first game as Willem of Dutch on Noble ,medium and small map ,epic speed.

Already there are a few things that are puzzling me.Firstly,tech trading.I'm on a medium continent with Ragnar and Mehmed,who are both pleased with me but will not trade any techs.I have Alphabet,which i had to gift to Ragnar when he made a request for it.However,both of them will not trade with me and on the tech screen under "will trade " nothing is listed.Their techs are redded out when i click on diplomacy.I don't understand why,is it cos i'm leading on score ? Never happened on Warlords.

Anyhow,i thought give the new Espoinage system a try and steal a tech from them.So i built a spy sent it to one of Mehmed's cities clicked "steal a tech" expecting to be given a choice,when i was only offered the cheapest tech,which i can research in 2 turns,useless.How do you get to choose the tech you want ?
I also don't understand how they have so many techs that i don't.They are both on poor land cos i blocked them off from expansion,only have a few cities with not much research capabilities.Yet they have Compass ,Construction,Currency,MC,i have none of these but am leading in score and have built no wonders.None of this makes any sense to me.Can someone please explain ?

 

[IDave]

Well on your espionage question, the more expensive the tech, the more espionage points it takes to steal it, so thats why you can only steal the cheapest tech they have. If you build up more EPs against them you can steal the more expensive techs. Also leaving a spy stationary in their city reduces the cost by 10% each turn for up to 5 turns, so leave her there for 5 turns and stealing it will be half price, so you might be able to steal a more expensive tech that way.

On the trading question, what does it say when you hover the mouse over the redded out tech? It might well say "we don't want to start trading this tech away yet", it's coz you are on an island with only 2 others, if no one else knows a tech that the AI has it will consider it a monopoly tech and will not trade it, also Ragnar and Mehmed are not really good to trade with anyway IMHO.

I know you said their land is crappy, but do they have nice capitals? If so then i'd tech to macemen, destroy them both with maces and trebuchets and then you have the whole island to yourself to tech to optics-astronomy and take over the world.

 

[TM Moot]

Assuming you haven't clicked 'No Tech Trading', I guess some Civs are more keen to swap techs then others. I seem to recall the Ragnar doesn't trade much when I've come across him, not sure about Memhed though. Have you got any techs they haven't got? Perhaps they are redded out because you have nothing to offer in return?

Your score is probably boosted by lots of units and large cities, if you look around the forum there are posts regarding the exact make up of Civs scores.

I have only tried espionage once or twice, I guess when you steal techs it might depend on how many EP's you have accrued. Just keep sending spies and bag the rest!

 

[LlamaCat]

go to the new Epsionage screen and review what choices you have, before sending a spy on a mission. On that screen, you can click on the AI's cities and it will list different costs for each city for each type of mission. Some missions won't even show up on this screen until you have a lot more points though.

One thing to keep in mind is that for stealing techs, you often need a LOT of espionage points... sometimes a massive amount, especially later in the game. The best way to steal some techs is to get a Great Spy and have him infiltrate another AI first, giving you something like 2,000-3,000 spy points. Then you can start stealing a bunch of techs (assuming they have techs you don't!... there are a lot of factors, so use the espionage screen and other diplomatic/information screens to get as much info as you can first)

 

[MrCynical]

Already there are a few things that are puzzling me.Firstly,tech trading.I'm on a medium continent with Ragnar and Mehmed,who are both pleased with me but will not trade any techs.I have Alphabet,which i had to gift to Ragnar when he made a request for it.However,both of them will not trade with me and on the tech screen under "will trade " nothing is listed.Their techs are redded out when i click on diplomacy.I don't understand why,is it cos i'm leading on score ? Never happened on Warlords.

The AI generally won't trade you a tech if you know of no other civ with it. If you have only two contacts a lot of techs may end up redded out simply because they're monopoly techs. They also won't trade tech for wonders they are working on, and there are a few more early wonders in BtS, so watch out for that. Finally, "Pleased" is not always sufficient for tech trading, though for Ragnar and Mehmed that probably isn't the problem.

Anyhow,i thought give the new Espoinage system a try and steal a tech from them.So i built a spy sent it to one of Mehmed's cities clicked "steal a tech" expecting to be given a choice,when i was only offered the cheapest tech,which i can research in 2 turns,useless.How do you get to choose the tech you want ?

It only shows those missions that you have enough espionage points to carry out. The more expensive a tech, the more EP it costs to steal, hence you only had enough EP against that civ to steal their cheapest tech. To steal a more expensive one, you need to either increase your EP output, or divert more of it to that civ.

They are both on poor land cos i blocked them off from expansion,only have a few cities with not much research capabilities.Yet they have Compass ,Construction,Currency,MC,i have none of these but am leading in score and have built no wonders.None of this makes any sense to me.Can someone please explain ?

So you're leading on score, but have no wonders and less tech (which both boost score?) You must therefore have a much higher land area or population. That says overexpansion to me, and the maintenance costs will kill your science rate. If you can improve your extra land and cities, you can push your science rate back up and overtake them, if you're careful. One alarm bell is that you don't have currency - you need that early if you're trying rapid expansion.

 

[Rycheman]

Well on your espionage question, the more expensive the tech, the more espionage points it takes to steal it, so thats why you can only steal the cheapest tech they have. If you build up more EPs against them you can steal the more expensive techs. Also leaving a spy stationary in their city reduces the cost by 10% each turn for up to 5 turns, so leave her there for 5 turns and stealing it will be half price, so you might be able to steal a more expensive tech that way.

ok,so i decided to try to leave the spy in a city for 5 or so turns.After 3 turns a message appears on the screen"Mehmed has stumbled on your spy in one of his cities",or words to that effect,WTH.So i looked in the game manual which quotes"spy units cannot be killed normally"my spy has disappeard obviously dead.I thought it must have been intercepted by one of Mehmeds spies ?
What i don't understand is that a few turns later i got the same message saying i had "stumbled on one of his spies in my city" How did this happen i didn't even have any spies and had reduced my esp. slider to nil ,cos i figured it was a load of crap anyway and better to have the research slider higher..Is this just another game addition that's not really worth using,a bit like the vassel system in Warlords.

Oh,btw,i misread the tech screen and was actually miles ahead of the others.I was looking under the "can now research" column thinking they already had those techs

 

[futurehermit]

Spies have a chance of being caught every turn they are in rival territory. This chance increases if the rival has built security bureaus iirc.

They are worth using, although you can win without them, but you need to build more than one. It is possible to do a lot of damage with espionage, but you need a small army of spies and you need enough espionage points.

One of my favourite uses of espionage is to slow down my closest space-race opponent. Just dedicate all your espionage to them, send out a pile of spies, and do damage: Destroy tile improvements, destroy buildings (production/science/happy/healthy), poison water and foment unhappy (works well in combo with destroying happy/healthy buildings), etc. etc. Focus mainly on their key science and production cities.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

Ragnar is a horrible tech trading partner. He can be nearly as bad as Toku.