Extortion for Fun and Profit - Tech Trade Discussion, 550 B.C.

[Octavian X]

Poor, poor Cathy...

While making the usual rounds, checking for tech trades, I happened to notice we were strong comparted to Russia militarily, AND that she has a Code of Law. As if to tempt me further, our peace treaty is up for 'renewal...'

If we renegotiate peace with Russia right now, we have four good options available to us, all of which involve play with a world map.

[b]We Want...	We Offer...
Russia
Deal #1--------------------[/b]
Peace Treaty	Peace Treaty
Code of Laws	96g

[b]Deal #2--------------------[/b]
Peace Treaty	Peace Treaty
Code of Laws	35g
		World Map

[b]Deal #3--------------------[/b]
Peace Treaty	Peace Treaty
Code of Laws	151g
World Map	World Map

[b]Deal #4--------------------[/b]
Peace Treaty	Peace Treaty
Code of Laws	212g
World Map

Of course, if we are feeling nice, we can buy the tech outright from India.

[b]India
Deal #5--------------------[/b]
Code of Laws	World Map
		161g

[b]Deal #6--------------------[/b]
Code of Laws	216g

What say ye, citizens? Should we make a trade? If so, which one? Or is there some option I've gone and missed altogether? Please, discuss!

 

[Rik Meleet]

Yes to trade

I think our WM is kinda known already. So giving it up wouldn't hurt a lot. I prefer Russian deal #2.

If we don't want to include our WM, we should go for Russian deal #1.

 

[Chieftess]

I don't think many AI units have been in our back-country yet. (a.k.a., the desert). The AI knows where the oil and saltpeter are, and will settler there. So, that's a no to the maps.

 

[RoddyVR]

deal #1 seems good. i agree with chieftess that we should nOT trade away our WM.

 

[ravensfire]

Go with #1 - until we see the AI exploring in our turf, or until we have them fairly well blocked off, we need to keep our secrets.

-- Ravensfire

 

[tao]

If we throw in a ROP to Russia, it will lower the price by 60g (deal 1 costs only 36g). Since our north is open country and our few roads can easily be blocked, we don't give up much.

Maybe in 20 turns we want to declare war and capture 2 or 3 Russian settlers ....

 

[Bootstoots]

Can't the AI already see the full map? If so, I would support deal 2 with Russia.

 

[RoddyVR]

why would the ai already see the whole map? i dont think we've traded it away already. and no they dont start "officialy" knowing the whole map. they do seem to know where to settle as if they know the map, but they dont know the map as far as trading goes, and iirc the price of revealing land on a map goes up as the game progresses (if its like the last land they dont know of they'll pay more for it, or am i confusing logic with game logic, lol)

EDIT:

ROP, great idea if it gets us more gold/makes us loose less.
does an ROP give territory map with it? never done ROPs before.
if it does then we should trade that to everyone else if we do the ROP.

 

[tao]

As I tried to tell those not knowing it before, the AIs know the complete map because this is the way the game is programmed.

Regardless of this fact, the AI pays map values, if you sell the map to them. Which we stupidly didn't do.

If you sell the map, the AI does not explore the now officially known areas. Therefore it does not make contacts in these areas. Another very very good reason to sell maps.

The AIs have an intrinsic knowledge of barb hut locations (I also said this already). If we get the AI world maps, we know where the camps are.

ROP is independend of map knowledge.

 

[tao]

IMHO the poll is far from listing the best trading sequence. We want to buy CoL (I'm in favor of deal #5), but what should happen afterwards is that we acquire the world maps by a clever sequence of tradings. There is absolutely no need to buy it from Russia in the first step. Why don't we trade literature to Babylon? We have absolutly no chance to build the Great Library; maybe Babylon builds it for us.

Edit/add: I now had the time to work put and propose the following sequence of deals:

I suggest the following sequence of deals tt_3 :

[b]We Want...		We Offer...[/b]
Step 1--------------------------------
Russia
peace, rop        peace, wm, rop
col, tm, 3g           

Step 2--------------------------------- 
Babylon
wm, 43g           literature, wm

Step 3--------------------------------- 
Russia
wm                wm

Step 4--------------------------------- 
Germany
wm, 39g           wm

Step 5--------------------------------- 
India
wm, rop, 82g      wm, rop

Step 6--------------------------------- 
Babylon
wm, 1g            wm