Calculating Cash in tech deals

[Qactus]

...But the most practical way to just figure out is to start high "Give me 20gpt! No...?", go low "Well, 10gpt... Yes." then in the middle "How about 15gpt?" and then wiggle abit "Ok, 10 but not 15, how about 12? Ok thats fine."...

Yes, this is exactly how it is done and how Monty Python taught me.

Me: "Ten? Are you trying to insult me? Me, with a poor dying grandmother? Ten?!"
AI:"All right. I'll give you eleven."
Me:"Eleven?! Did I hear you right? Eleven?! This cost me twelve. You want to ruin me?!"
and so on...

 

[Major Tom]

The haggling approach is the one I always use, as far as I know you there is no penalty in how many times you talk to an AI in a turn, so I just start high and reduce bit by bit until I find the max they will pay.

Question
How does the fair trade value work (ie when you get +1 rep when they say your trades have been fair). Is there a way to calculate what consitiutes a fair trade?

This is a good question. I don’t know, but should be possible to calculate in a spreadsheet. Over the years I frequently give in on demands more often, getting +4 fair trade and avoiding -2, count that as 6 diplomats points for something they soon have anyway. Another case is city gift, +5 instantly (included liberation bonus).

 

[krikav]

Fair trade is dependant on how much excess you have given to the AI, divided by the number of turns you have known each other.
So the turn you meet toku, gifting him 10g might be enough to jump up to pleased and make him open borders.
However if you have known him for 100 turns, you have to give him quite abit of stuff to get that bonus.

Same thing with "You have traded with our worst enemy.", also dependant on the number of turns you have known each other.

 

[Major Tom]

Here is something for number crunchers. Everything without partial tech:

He offers Theo (845)+260 coins for Philosophy (1352).
Theo known by 3, philosophy by 1.

Alternatively:
He offers HBR(422)+calendar (591)+90 in cash for philosophy.
HBR known by 4, calendar by 2.

What the heck. 1,9500 conversion in first. Around 3,5 in other.

There is one unknown isolated AI who also know philosophy but he should be left out, I think.

 

[Major Tom]

Here is something for number crunchers. Everything without partial tech:

He offers Theo (845)+260 coins for Philosophy (1352).
Theo known by 3, philosophy by 1.

Alternatively:
He offers HBR(422)+calendar (591)+90 in cash for philosophy.
HBR known by 4, calendar by 2.

What the heck. 1,9500 conversion in first. Around 3,5 in other.

There is one unknown isolated AI who also know philosophy but he should be left out, I think.

Ok, think I solved the Theo-Philosophy trade:
Take the beaker differential and divide by 1,95. That is the cash he offers.
507/1,95=260 coins.
507 beakers on deity is for him factor 1,30 lower (tech speed), then take the hard coded 2 for 3 conversion rate.
Apparently no known deduction. Strange.
Also there may be a deduction on 1 coin or 2 due to rounding sometimes.

However, this does not work at all in the next example. Perhaps he had hammers in MoM?

 

[krikav]

They never offer techs they are building the wonders for. If he had hammers into MoM he wouldn't have traded it. It would have been red and said "We have our reasons..."

 

[floydmcw]

This thread cleared up a misconception: I always thought there was a "cold trading"[*] penalty for techs that you have not put beakers into. Apparently that is not true.

[*] Analogous to the "cold whipping" penalty you pay for whipping something with zero hammers invested.

 

[Major Tom]

This thread cleared up a misconception: I always thought there was a "cold trading"[*] penalty for techs that you have not put beakers into. Apparently that is not true.

[*] Analogous to the "cold whipping" penalty you pay for whipping something with zero hammers invested.

Right. In the example in opening post where you put in 117 beakers you get 60 coins from my formula. Actually he declined 60. I lowered directly to 55. Accepted. Maybe there was a rounding down so correct amount was 59. I missed out 4 coins!

 

[Major Tom]

Here is a strange one. You are paying.

You offer music (1015) for machinery (1183) where you have put 417 beakers in. Net machinery 766. From @coanda list this weapon tech should be scaled up 10%, so we are at 843 beakers worth for machinery in AIs mind. He can tech music self with 30% reduction (deity), so music worth 780 in his mind. Difference is 63 in his favour and you have to pay. According to 3/2 conversion this should be 40 coins.
But here’s the trade screen:
AI#1 wants you to pay 15 coins. AI#2 wants you to pay 65 coins.

Go figure out.

Edit: On a side note, 417 of 1183 is 35%. Sorry @krikav your 20%(80%) rule wouldn’t work without offering cash. Same for @Fippy your 30%ish would not work either without opening the purse. The number is 35+ in this case.

 

[coanda]

How many players were there in the game that the AI civ knew, and how many of them already had discovered Music / Machinery?

The tech scarcity multiplier is going to be anywhere from 1.5x to 2.0x, which means it could be anywhere from the AI offering you a couple hundred gold, to you needing to pay them a couple hundred gold.

 

[Major Tom]

How many players were there in the game that the AI civ knew, and how many of them already had discovered Music / Machinery?

The tech scarcity multiplier is going to be anywhere from 1.5x to 2.0x, which means it could be anywhere from the AI offering you a couple hundred gold, to you needing to pay them a couple hundred gold.

See screenshots. Heavy spoilerish for current NC game.

Spoiler :

 

[Nick723]

I pay gold for tech quite often.
Sometimes I pay alot of cash.
It really depends on where you are in the game.

Not sure what situation Lain was in that you mention, but I'm guessing it was a situation where the goal was to keep slider at 100% just reaching some key tech..?

An example would be the trade he makes at around 17:30 in this video (Astro for Engineering). He could have got a much ‘fairer trade’ picking up philosophy but declined to pay gold.

That said, on rewatching parts 4 and 5 of this to try and find an example, he actually does pay cash for tech quite a lot...so my point is kind of invalid anyway haha!

 

[krikav]

Ah, yeah 300g for Philosophy sounds like a bargain. But right there he was going for gunpowder->chemistry->steel, and 300g there was roughly 6 turns worth of deficit research.
One reason to not trade for it, is that in all likelyhood he would be able to get it for "free" later on, trading for example gunpowder<->philo or something like that.

 

[coanda]

I don't know man... I've stared at that code for a good ten minutes now and I have no idea why one AI would be demanding 15 gold and another 65. It should be about 30 for each, unless one of them has some beakers put into Music already (in which case it would be higher than 30). I'm guessing there's something going on with the "What would make this deal work" function, which I think is calling cvPlayerAI::AI_counterPropose(), which is a pretty abstruse function.

Also for everyone regarding why you might prefer to trade for gold instead of techs... gold definitely is far more efficient if you have the time to convert it into beakers and don't need the benefit right away. For the same amount of trade-bait that would buy you a tech worth 200 beakers from an AI, you could get 300-400 gold. And that 300-400 gold you put towards the tech of your choice, which will probably be a monopoly or near-monopoly tech you can immediately trade around to all your neighbors for a big boost. Whereas the 100 beakers will probably be a commonly known tech; most of the civs won't even want it from you, and those who do will not value it as highly as they would a monopoly tech.

 

[Major Tom]

I don't know man... I've stared at that code for a good ten minutes now and I have no idea why one AI would be demanding 15 gold and another 65. It should be about 30 for each, unless one of them has some beakers put into Music already (in which case it would be higher than 30). I'm guessing there's something going on with the "What would make this deal work" function, which I think is calling cvPlayerAI::AI_counterPropose(), which is a pretty abstruse function.

Also for everyone regarding why you might prefer to trade for gold instead of techs... gold definitely is far more efficient if you have the time to convert it into beakers and don't need the benefit right away. For the same amount of trade-bait that would buy you a tech worth 200 beakers from an AI, you could get 300-400 gold. And that 300-400 gold you put towards the tech of your choice, which will probably be a monopoly or near-monopoly tech you can immediately trade around to all your neighbors for a big boost. Whereas the 100 beakers will probably be a commonly known tech; most of the civs won't even want it from you, and those who do will not value it as highly as they would a monopoly tech.

Oh, there is really a counter proposal function. That might explain some peculiar results. Anyway, thanks for shedding light over this. I am afraid there’s still some haggling to be done .
Btw, agree on your gold for beakers philosophy. The leverage is appealing. However, in practice they do not have fat bank accounts too often, but worth checking especially when a wonder finish, an lot of fail gold land on their accounts. Another downside is that you fuel their tech advancement.

 

[Major Tom]

@coanda
Here’s something about tech known. I first offered philosophy and music to X buying 3 small techs and I had to pay 155. Exited to consider.
Then I sold music to a known guy B.
After that I approached A again with the same deal but now I had to pay 220!

 

[coanda]

Techs are worth less when more people know them, so when you sold music to player B, player A started valuing it less highly. 780 beakers (default cost of music) x (1 more player / 6 total) x (0.5), about 65 more gold needed. Which is, conveniently, 220 - 155.

 

[Major Tom]

Techs are worth less when more people know them, so when you sold music to player B, player A started valuing it less highly. 780 beakers (default cost of music) x (1 more player / 6 total) x (0.5), about 65 more gold needed. Which is, conveniently, 220 - 155.

This make the order of trades important under certain circumstances when trading around your monopoly tech. You need to take into consideration size of bank accounts and tech wanted to get max utility. I think.

 

[gavenkoa]

Same thing with "You have traded with our worst enemy.", also dependant on the number of turns you have known each other.

Does that mean with a time you can trade with worst enemy but on day first from the contact you will be punished?

In onther word it is better to wait a bit after the contact?

 

[krikav]

@gavenkoa
Yeah, thats correct.
But say I have known Monty for quite some time, and then I meet Hatty and they are each others worst enemies.
If I trade some small stuff with Hatty, Monty won't raise his eyebrows since I have known him for a long time.
Hatty will give me a -4 diplo hit right away if I trade Monotheism for Meditation with Monty though, but if I'm worried about Hatty being annoyed with me, then I can gift Hatty 10g too, and that will give me +4 with her, and Monty won't care.
So it's easy to get them to cancel out.