Lopsided Trade or Shrewd Opponent?

[zeeter]

Here's an interesting one. I had a trade agreement with the Zulus. I was giving them two luxuries for one of theirs. They came to me when it was over and declined to continue, of course. Instead of trying to bribe him to continue by offering money or more luxuries ( I had four that he didn't), I went a different way.

I put each one up on the block and told him to make an offer. The first one got me 250 Gold plus 21 per turn. The second got me 180 (the remainder) and 9 p/t. The third got me 21 p/t plus his world map. The fourth got me 21 p/t plus something else I cant remember.

Granted, I didn't get any luxuries for this, and had to counter this by raising my luxuries up by 10%, but still, when in the next turn I went to anarchy enroute to democracy, I was making 72 gold per turn. Not too shabby.

Has anyone else ever gotten such a lopsided trade, or am I missing something?

 

[Ozymandius]

I have an extensive empire covering about 65% of the world...near domination. I need two more luxuries to make my citizens really happy.
India, annoyed with me, offers to trade INCENSE with me for:
furs, wines, Gunpowder, Banking, world map. 7 gold per turn and 2002 gold.
Aztecs, also annoyed, are willing to trade SILK for furs, wines, Printing Press, Education, world map, 33 gold per turn and 2,002 gold.
And Honest Abe, who has five incense, wants, iron, horses, Theology, Engineering, World Map, 28 gold/turn and 2,002 gold

When I want to sell my luxuries they don't want it or give 2 gold per turn or just a map.

Why the large discrepancy in buying or selling?

 

[skaternate]

I believe that the big difference is do to how many luxeries you have, AND THE EFFECT OF MARKETPLACES IS TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION! I you have five luxeries your next luxery is worth more than just one happy face, if you have only one luxery, the luxeries are cheap, the more you have the more they cost

 

[Zoke0]

My opinion is hat the less the availiablility, the more a rival while demand. For exmaple, in my game Germany has the only silks and there price isreally expensive for it, but Persians who aren't close to the only with a certain luxerie have a cheap price for it. So from this I really belive the price is based on the availabilty of a luxerie. They sound like modern salesmen to me! Who thought Civ 3 would have a tint of monopoly?!

 

[Maple]

I've had a similar thing happen to me. Once, good ol Bismark came to me offering 712 gold for a saltpeter. I counter-offered, asked him what he would offer for it, and got 49gpt instead. Doesn't sound like much, but it was a 300 gold difference from his previous offer.
Same turn, I offer Joan iron for whatever she can scrape up. She was the dominant power in the world, owning about 40% of the world. (It was a 8 civ game) She had maybe 8 saltpeters and was terrorizing the Americans with hordes of Cavalry.

She offered me 112 gpt for the iron.

Why did she do it? Iron was outdated in the game, it couldn't have been used for iron works, and she already had a single source of it in the french-controlled battlefield near America.

 

[zeeter]

Maple - if a civ already has a resource/luxury, my experience is that the resource won't show up as an available trade item. Most likely, Joan was trading that one Iron to someone else because she didn't need it, but then needed it when she went to war so had to either pay you for it or go to war with the civ she was trading it to.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Ozymandius
I have an extensive empire covering about 65% of the world...near domination. I need two more luxuries to make my citizens really happy.
India, annoyed with me, offers to trade INCENSE with me for:
furs, wines, Gunpowder, Banking, world map. 7 gold per turn and 2002 gold.
Aztecs, also annoyed, are willing to trade SILK for furs, wines, Printing Press, Education, world map, 33 gold per turn and 2,002 gold.
And Honest Abe, who has five incense, wants, iron, horses, Theology, Engineering, World Map, 28 gold/turn and 2,002 gold

When I want to sell my luxuries they don't want it or give 2 gold per turn or just a map.

Why the large discrepancy in buying or selling?

Because the AI wants a fair trade. Simple as that A rough guess is that you had 50 cities, and marketplace in 40 of them, and it seems you already had 6 luxuries, thus a 7th would give you 40*4 + 10 = 170 more happy faces in your empire. India would probably not gain as much as 50 more happy faces even for furs and wines, so it's not strange that it also wanted a few techs and some gold.

If you came to me and suggested a trade that would give you 170 happy faces and me 50 happy faces I certainly wouldn't consider that fair.

 

[Ozymandius]

Nice One that was a nice explanation. I think though that I will reduce my gold holding so that I wont' be asked for so much cash