Tech trading values

[Quechua]

I'm curious if other players have noticed that there are certain techs that the AI consistently overvalues.

I am playing a 'no research' game on Emperor (I can only research ancient worker techs, all else must be bought or traded), and I've noticed that the AI prices pretty much all techs at 150% of the beaker value. This has been very consistent, and doesn't seem to depend on personality.

But there are two techs that the AI asked for a bit more than 150% beaker value - Guilds and Printing Press. Of course there may be many others I didn't notice or didn't research.

Spoiler :

Don't let the tech gap fool you - I'm about to win an aggressive diplomatic victory

I'm bringing this up because I'm also playing an Immortal aggressive AI game right now, and I was able to pull off a surprisingly fair trade involving Guilds: Guilds and Philosophy for Civil Service, Compass, Drama, Monotheism, and some gold.

Since the AI tends to research the Guilds-Gunpowder path, I typically trade back for them. Guilds is a great tech, but in most games it is overshadowed by Civil Service. But might it be smart to instead prioritize techs that the AI relatively overvalues?

Has anyone else noticed certain techs that are overvalued (for trading, not research priority)?

 

[DaveMcW]

Archery, Horseback Riding, Feudalism, Machinery, Guilds (and several later techs) have a special "AITrade" value in the xml.

 

[Quechua]

Archery, Horseback Riding, Feudalism, Machinery, Guilds (and several later techs) have a special "AITrade" value in the xml.

Yeah, I noticed Machinery too but forgot about it (never bought Archery or HR). Didn't notice it at the time, but my notes also show Feudalism was actually priced less than 150%. Are you sure no Printing Press?

 

[KMadCandy]

Since the AI tends to research the Guilds-Gunpowder path, I typically trade back for them. Guilds is a great tech, but in most games it is overshadowed by Civil Service. But might it be smart to instead prioritize techs that the AI relatively overvalues?

well, if you're looking to squeeze out every penny's worth in a trade that sounds the most logical. but what would that get you?

doing it the way you (and i) do it, learn other things ourselves and backfill in trade, the end result is that the beakers/time/specialists we invested in research gave us not only what we learned but also what we traded for. yes the trade gives them this too, i just optimistically hope i can use the advantage better.

if we learn what we know they really want to learn, and that they'll pay top dollar for, then we'd get more money or beakers for it at first in theory. but
there's a limit to how much money they have (at least that early ), and depending on who's in the game it's quite possible there won't be anyone in the neighborhood that knows CS or philo as a trade option.

i go out on a rampage-for-no-reason and beat folks up a bit more frequently than gandhi does, so i don't get into "eeps my science slider is at 20% and i'm losing gold" situations. if i'm going to declare a war i get massively overprepared first, and if somebody DoWs me then i just panic and i don't look at science for a while *giggle*. so, i don't often have to slow science to a crawl to stop units from going on strike or do massive upgrades, and when i do it's only for a couple turns. so for me, that gold i could get from selling guilds wouldn't convert into a faster tech pace, and i would end up with less total beakers over the same general period of time than i do now.

but in a game where your economy is in the mud from the over-expansion thing, then yeah, i could see how a windfall could mean a huge jump in tech rate. did you mean in those situations? i'm just too chicken to go out there and beat folks up super-early like normal people do *giggle*.

 

[Quechua]

if we learn what we know they really want to learn, and that they'll pay top dollar for, then we'd get more money or beakers for it at first in theory. but
there's a limit to how much money they have (at least that early )

I'm not suggesting to research Guilds for the purpose of selling it - that would be a horrible deal! I'm just saying that it's maybe worth considering that certain techs like Guilds and Machinery have more trading value per beaker invested.

For instance, I remember being surprised once that the AI would accept an even deal of Machinery for Feudalism, since they're the same beaker cost and the AI always seems to want an advantage. If I had researched Feudalism and tried to trade for Machinery, they'd probably get all snobby and ask me to give them some ridiculous extra tech for the trade to happen. So if you can research either and there isn't much immediate strategic advantage either way, it's probably better to research Machinery and trade for Feudalism.

But beyond this, I'm wondering if it's worth factoring the trading value in your overall tech path. If you factor in the extra punch you get in trades, Guilds could actually in a sense be much cheaper than Civil Service. In many situations the two techs arguably have comparable strategic value. For instance, if you have a specialist capital, or low production cities, or if viciously slaughtering your neighbors has dropped your slider rate - a common situation for you, I understand.

But I'm not at all sure about this. There's lots of players more experienced than me here, and maybe someone has picked up on this and incorporated it in their strategy - or can give me a good reason why it's not worth considering.

 

[KMadCandy]

well you said "But might it be smart to instead prioritize techs that the AI relatively overvalues? Has anyone else noticed certain techs that are overvalued (for trading, not research priority)?" but i'm looking at it from research priority anyway, because if they don't put much research priority on the techs you want to trade for, then they won't learn them real early. add in that in most cases you can't get a tech in trade until more than one person knows it, and those won't be available as options for quite some time. so then you'd be limited to money, was how i was thinking. and i couldn't see how that was a good idea *giggle*.

as an example, i love to get machinery from them to get it out of the way without bothering myself, to the point that sometimes i have "here, learn to cast metal, take the tech, it's free!" day for folks i'm confident won't try to beat me up. but sometimes it takes forever and a day for enough of them to get machinery for somebody to put it on the table anyway. probably partly "watched kettle" syndrome.

or if viciously slaughtering your neighbors has dropped your slider rate - a common situation for you, I understand.

*giggle* you do not want to settle between me and the pretty land! i'll slaughter you so bad that you'll feel the pain for days! of course, it'll take me until 1800 AD to actually start the war...

edit:
ps, can you spare some gold for a friend? i seem to have gotten into a bit of trouble. too much conquering before CoL, silly me