Tech Trades complaints

[Mantic0re]

In the last few games I've noticed an inability to trade for certain key techs in a reasonable time with average tech partners. (Zara, Brennus, Hannibal, Justinian, Ottomans, English, Germans, America)


Putting a turn into a tech for trade quickly becomes "I discover XXXX in 1 turn and now you want to F#$%ing trade". This is most frustrating when the tech I need is important enough to stagnate my economy but the tech is often preferred by the AI.


Examples:
Surrounded by jungle and no one will trade Iron Working for Alpha / Math.
Monarchy at any time before I've teched Currency and/or Caste System.
Metal Casting ever. I can pick this up with Capitulation deals.


I don't get it. The first two don't give access to Wonders, MC often goes early. I don't think my tech rate is that impressive but if I'm gonna be forced to do this much heavy lifting I'd rather not throw the AI techs at 5-10% of their total value to shave off a turn of research. It seems like I'm benefiting them more than I am myself.


When they don't know the tech I guess I under-estimated my tech rate and should have self-researched it. But I see a lot of "don't want to trade" techs that irritates me.


GRRRRRrrrr!!!!!

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Iron Working is usually held back because of it's access to iron and swordsmen. From what I've seen, the AI is less than willing to trade this tech very early on to protect their power advantage. The AI is too dumb to realize that if the player has copper, its efforts in holding back Iron Working are pointless.

Monarchy has similar early game implications. The AI wishes to protect its advantage in being able to grow cities much larger in the very early game. From what I've seen, they will be more willing to trade Monarchy as the early game progresses along.

Metal Casting is a rough one. I've noticed that most AI won't trade it until Colossus is built. Once it is built, though, MC can usually be picked up (albeit at a pretty bad conversion rate).

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Possibility : Expand more to slow down your tech pace and match the AIs' willingness to trade. When your economy will kick in, you will be in equal or better position than a more compact Empire with better research.

Or change your techpath. Entry in the classical era matters.
E.g. : Aesthetics. It is considered a good entry point because the AIs research it later than sooner. However, this holds if, and mostly if, you're backwards.
If you're the most advanced one, then researching straight to other techs (Maths, Alpha, CoL and Metal Casting all come to mind ; Monarchy as well) makes sense. In that case, you're not researching the tech to trade it but just because it is an important tech.
E.g. : go CoL -> Aesth. Keep CoL, trade Aesth.


Iirc, military and wonder techs aren't traded as easily as other ones.

 

[Um the Muse]

You could also turn off tech trades

What do you mean by "entry into the classical era matters," BornInCantaloup? Your entry or their entry? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

 

[WonderCrush]

Personally I do not trade for tech with the AI but rather will buy it from them or if they are substantially weak in military will demand it in tribute.

I also tend to build the Great Wall and beeline to COL so my courthouses add to my espionage, I will convert to my neighbors religion and focus my espionage on them so my spies can steal the Tech I do not already have.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

You could also turn off tech trades

What do you mean by "entry into the classical era matters," BornInCantaloup? Your entry or their entry? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

I meant the player's first classical era tech.
What I had in mind is : the trade value of Aesthetics decreases when the player is ahead of the AIs.

When ahead, it makes sense to just research a good tech instead of a trade bait (which Aesthetics is, if you're not going to build wonders).
Going Alpha/Maths is a strong option. Alpha guarantees trades. Maths gives better chops. Both lead to useful techs, such as Currency and Construction.
One will get to Currency sooner with "Alpha -> Currency" than "Aesth -> wait for the AIs to trade Alpha -> Currency"

When ahead.

 

[Seraiel]

I'd really like to help, as tech-trading is a specialty of me, but I don't understand his english. What are the AIs saying, why isn't he getting the techs? How does he play, could it be that he causes the AIs to deny tech-trades? Is he aware of that some AIs aren't willing to trade until a certain amount of AIs have access to a tech, others, will trade earlier. Has he done Math on how many Beakers he has to invest to make up for the discounts the AI gets? Does he maybe have Vassals screwing up his relations? About which difficulty lvl are we talking?

Sera

 

[Mantic0re]

I just needed to complain.

I'm playing Monarch now and my last three starts had above average (not extremely better than average, just good) Bureau capital starts. In earlier games I had to research trade bait but my research rate in these recent games was much better than I expected so researching trade-bait techs didn't work well.

I've not learned how to estimate the AI tech rates yet. I'm surprised at the differences in these games. I really need to start paying attention to my bpt at certain milestones.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I'm a monarch player, as well. On monarch, teching specifically for trade bait is much less important than on Emperor+ particularly if your tech rate is high. Trade brokering is pretty weak on monarch as well. If I have a commerce-poor start, I usually rely on writing-library-scientist specialists to get to trade bait techs like Aesthetics or Alphabet and using those to backfill while moving on to currency.

But if I have a lot of early commerce (multiple FIN seafood resources or gems, gold, etc), I generally find that teching Aesthetics for its trade value is near to useless. With higher commerce starts, I find it more beneficial to go up a particular branch of the tech tree that would directly benefit me and only backfill / trade at a point where a trade would actually be beneficially to me. Knowing the AI tech rates isn't as important on monarch as knowing how your own tech rate will affect available trades.

 

[Yamps]

FYI, the AI will always trade you Monarchy and Alpha, even isolated. Assuming that they like you enough and that you have enough to offer. It's often useful to partially research Alpha/Monarchy yourself to reduce the cost if you don't have enough tech for the trade.

 

[civvver]

Like Seraiel said there many factors involving tech trades and why a civ might not trade it to you. We wouldn't be able to tell you exactly why without a save.