Doing Trade

[LordValuna]

Two questions I havent been able to figure out.

1) When you use boat bridges to send caravans/freight over long distances to collect high trade, what is stopping the AI from crushing the poor fleet. I have enough losses just from single boats being sunk, course I have the disadvantge that they are sometimes loaded

2) How do you find the caravans/frieght for trading when they are needed for wonders? The early wonders COP, Marco Polo and Collossus are usually the tightest races. But even later I find myself hording vans in the midde game, Leo's/Mag Later is ok

 

[Ace]

1: This is the hardest...form alliances, or at least, peace with the AIs, escort your ships with combatant ships, or just suppress the AI navies.

2: Build more cities early on. By the time you get trade, you should have 10+ cities and never really stop building cities until you run out of land. With enough cities, you can generate enough vans to trade and build the essential wonders AND build settlers to continue expanding. One way is to adopt the van-settler pattern. Once a city is a going concern, size 2 or 3, build a van, than build a settler, repeat continously until the need for infrastructure causes a brief pause. Remember, you don't need to build all the wonders, just the ones that have to be in the correct city, Col, copes, Newton, and the essential happiness ones. All the others can be captured later, if you let the AI build them.

3: Trade is just as important as WOWs! Besides the coin and beaker bonus, each trade route adds trade arrows to their cities, increasing your science and taxes (and lux when needed). In addition, trade funds itself. Take the coins from a delivery and reinvest in more vans.

 

[SCG]

Two questions I havent been able to figure out.

1) When you use boat bridges to send caravans/freight over long distances to collect high trade, what is stopping the AI from crushing the poor fleet. I have enough losses just from single boats being sunk, course I have the disadvantge that they are sometimes loaded

I have a tendancy of founding a series of port cities close enough together so that a ship can traverse without being in the open for more than a turn. That also helps with happiness if the ships have an attack value and you've already moved from monarchy to a representative govt.

Of course, sometimes there's not much you can do about it, so escorts and scouts can alert you to trouble before something catastrophic happens.

Proper diplomacy can also help of course as Ace mentioned. in the april 08 GOTM, i managed to stay allied with every single civ for the entire game granted, the powers that be set the game on chieftan, so it was inevitable that i would out-research the AI and always had tons of extra techs to pacify the AI

 

[LordValuna]

Proper diplomacy can also help of course as Ace mentioned.

So I guess sneak attatcks on my part are out. Even without the sneaks I usually could only get 1 ally and they rarely gave me anything. I'm switching to civ 2.42 next month to see if I can get allies

inevitable that i would out-research the AI and always had tons of extra techs to pacify the AI

but if your tech bombing, the AI will have the tech for the wonders and its a race (yes, you have the advantage, but now your using vans for wonders instead of trade). Even if just giving to Purple, then they can go for the wonders

 

[SCG]

So I guess sneak attatcks on my part are out. Even without the sneaks I usually could only get 1 ally and they rarely gave me anything. I'm switching to civ 2.42 next month to see if I can get allies

you need to make sure the AI is happy with you before you ask for stuff, whether its gifts or maps or an alliance. It doesn't have to always be worshipful, but I've had better results if they are. of course 2.42 keeps the AI happier than MGE does, so it takes less effort to get someone back to worshipful

but if your tech bombing, the AI will have the tech for the wonders and its a race (yes, you have the advantage, but now your using vans for wonders instead of trade). Even if just giving to Purple, then they can go for the wonders

its usually quite a bit more efficient to build using caravans instead of letting a city build one wonder over 30-50 turns. you can rush caravans in smaller cities at much cheaper prices than wonder rushing, and besides, you can often use the food caravans to unblock commodity supplies in key cities.

 

[LordValuna]

In GotM77 (replay) which is war I lost some naval units
my early trade within the cities was ok, before Nav & Inv
after i didnt trade overseas, didnt build much of a navy either and was getting 40-100g for the routes except for a juicy Uranian from Paris to Moscow, but that was so late it didnt matter. The one overseas trade I remember got 700g

So if I can do more overseas trading with boat chains I can pay for all the rush building of wonders and improvements

will try my best next Gotm

 

[chieflookout]

While we're on the subject of trade, say you have a big AI city overseas from the trading city, with routes. If you take over that city, will the arrows from the routes shrink, and, if so, is there any way to override existing routes for better ones?

 

[Ace]

That's one of the no nos in the trading game. Never, ever, conquor you best trading city. You will lose mucho trade arrows and your target city for additional trade bonuses. If your going for victory by conquest, save that city for last!

You can always "run-in" new trade routes to a city, but they will only show in the city's 3 routes if they are better than the existing routes.

 

[SCG]

if you do want to replace a trade route, one way to increase your chances is to decrease the # of trade arrows in the city you want to replace just before delivery. you can make the game think that your size 21 city with 100 trade arrows really is a worthless backwater not worth trading with if you turn every citizen into an entertainer before the delivery and back after - but Ace is right, if you have a good AI trading city, you really want to do just about anything to keep it as such - the foreign city trade bonus is huge. (or is it the domestic trade penalty is huge?...)

 

[chieflookout]

kk, thanks guys!!

 

[LordValuna]

Well I mananged to get all Ai's allied in GotM77, I first tried editng my cities from a .sav file to size 1, but I was still Supreme and the AI's refused to be pawns in my plans. Then I restarted and went straight for Trade, no Monarchy/Republic also making sure I spent all my money, well in 925 bc Marco Polo is built I'm pathetic and everyone falls in line and becomes an ally. I did basically the same as always (gifting tech) but was not supreme. they even threw in 200g which has never happened for me. Now see if I can do it in GotM. tricky part is not to be supreme, I build a lot of settlers early.

 

[LordValuna]

I retried GotM77 begining, to get all 6 AI to ally, failed on my first turn after Marco Polo.
but next turn I tried again , this time I was able to trade for map making which Greek refused to trade me on previous turn, then everyone allied(everyone was gifted or traded for mapmaking). Has anyone noticed if map making helps to allie? (in addition to being required for maps)

If everyone was allied, the ship chains would be very safe

 

[Peaster]

Lord V: I'm curious how bad you are getting hurt by the AI. Is it really such a big problem?

Losses at sea don't have a big effect on my games. I use ship chains from about 500BC til the end, often to/from civs I'm at war with. I guess I build about 50 triremes per game and lose approx 2 of them to AI or barb attacks. I never ally with AIs, and only make peace when they pay me (or when I am unusually vulnerable). I don't know why you should have more problems. Just guessing here -

* I usually build LH pretty early, so most of my triremes are vets. They have a big advantage, especially on defense. My games are usually too short for a Leo upgrade to caravels/etc. In that case, I am usually way ahead of the AI in tech and power, and they don't bother me much.

* I like to build outpost cities fairly near the AI homelands. When the AI sneak attacks me, they usually do it on land [usually with only one attack in that turn] so my ships are fairly safe. Once we are at war, I'll be more cautious with my ships, especially loaded ones.

* Ideally, cargo goes from my port to an AI port in one turn. So, most of my boats are empty by the end of my turn, and any surprise losses at sea aren't so bad.

Having said all that, I just lost two heavily loaded caravels in GOTM16 as they passed an enemy port. This was mainly my own carelessness; I had not seen any ships from this AI in many turns, but they had just declared war, and had also gotten Navigation. This loss hurt, but it's unusual and it didn't change my game plan.

 

[LordValuna]

not two bad, one loss but I only built 3 this game plus 1 where the city I was citing in got destroyed from underneath him
so in percentages I couldnt see building 6 or 8 and having 2 or 3 losses

(edit) it was more the threat of losses and laziness

 

[Terrapin]

LV, are you using the ship chain trick? That's what Peaster is talking about when he says his cargo goes from port to port in one turn.