One of the last things that I've struggled with in this game is to figure out when to stop tech trading. Before, I would try to keep monopolies on techs and then trade them, even in lopsided techs, once I lost my monopoly. In my current game, I didn't do that.. I held out more, even though I didn't get a whole lot out of my early war extortions. I did have the Great Library and an early Pyramids, but I think the things that helped me the most:
1. I held out longer, and although the AI civs do still trade techs among themselves, it's apparently not as frequent as I feared. (Monarch, Standard size, Epic speed.)
2. I bribed earlier to beat up my tech rival earlier.. instead of giving up the race to Economics, I bribed Monty to attack Mansa Musa and even though MM was first to banking--which I traded for, giving him some backfiller stuff--he lost the great merchant to me. I failed to get the great artist from music or whatever, but I'm used to that by now.
3. The moment after I got Economics, I beelined for Democracy and kept the rest of the world as unhappy as possible after that. I refused to trade happiness resources but freely traded my spare iron and only copper (until I needed the copper back for Statue of Liberty).
4. Instead of my usual willingness to trade, I stopped tech trading with the AI altogether after I got that banking tech from Mansa, except I did bribe Shaka to DoW on Mansa once it looked like Mansa was mounting a comeback in the tech race. (And also because Zululand was freaking HUGE after he reduced Germany to a single city--Shaka was rapidly becoming my tech rival.)
The result was my biggest tech and land lead in recent memory by the early 1600s. I've had games where I was farther along the tech tree, but my rivals were, too. I already had Communism, Assembly Line, Bio, Steel, etc. and was researching Electricity by the time Mansa took the silver medal in the race to Democracy. I might have been even farther along had I not had two Protective civs that I killed early on at a staggering cost (running 10% tech for a while to cope with my war weariness--I didn't mean to fight both of those Protective civs at the same time, but Korea freaking DoW on me just as I was getting started on Japan; fortunately some Korean-cottage pillaging kept me afloat for a while).
This has got me thinking about how the really important part is not when you get to a tech, but the relative position between you and your main tech rival. You can only war so much, and wars put you behind in infrastructure and probably tech as well, while all the noncombatants catch up.
So perhaps after the early wars to get land, and early trading with Alphabet but well BEFORE Liberalism, it would be best to beeline Democracy and bribe them to fight each other to delay the emergence of Democracy elsewhere? Just one or two bribes can create enough bad blood to last the rest of the game, so it's a favorite strategy of mine with or without the Democracy beeline, but combined this really screwed the AIs in my current game.
What time(s) should you stop tech trading to maximize your lead? Ideas?
1. I held out longer, and although the AI civs do still trade techs among themselves, it's apparently not as frequent as I feared. (Monarch, Standard size, Epic speed.)
2. I bribed earlier to beat up my tech rival earlier.. instead of giving up the race to Economics, I bribed Monty to attack Mansa Musa and even though MM was first to banking--which I traded for, giving him some backfiller stuff--he lost the great merchant to me. I failed to get the great artist from music or whatever, but I'm used to that by now.
3. The moment after I got Economics, I beelined for Democracy and kept the rest of the world as unhappy as possible after that. I refused to trade happiness resources but freely traded my spare iron and only copper (until I needed the copper back for Statue of Liberty).
4. Instead of my usual willingness to trade, I stopped tech trading with the AI altogether after I got that banking tech from Mansa, except I did bribe Shaka to DoW on Mansa once it looked like Mansa was mounting a comeback in the tech race. (And also because Zululand was freaking HUGE after he reduced Germany to a single city--Shaka was rapidly becoming my tech rival.)
The result was my biggest tech and land lead in recent memory by the early 1600s. I've had games where I was farther along the tech tree, but my rivals were, too. I already had Communism, Assembly Line, Bio, Steel, etc. and was researching Electricity by the time Mansa took the silver medal in the race to Democracy. I might have been even farther along had I not had two Protective civs that I killed early on at a staggering cost (running 10% tech for a while to cope with my war weariness--I didn't mean to fight both of those Protective civs at the same time, but Korea freaking DoW on me just as I was getting started on Japan; fortunately some Korean-cottage pillaging kept me afloat for a while).
This has got me thinking about how the really important part is not when you get to a tech, but the relative position between you and your main tech rival. You can only war so much, and wars put you behind in infrastructure and probably tech as well, while all the noncombatants catch up.
So perhaps after the early wars to get land, and early trading with Alphabet but well BEFORE Liberalism, it would be best to beeline Democracy and bribe them to fight each other to delay the emergence of Democracy elsewhere? Just one or two bribes can create enough bad blood to last the rest of the game, so it's a favorite strategy of mine with or without the Democracy beeline, but combined this really screwed the AIs in my current game.
What time(s) should you stop tech trading to maximize your lead? Ideas?
