The Perfect Elephant Rush

[AbsoluteZero]

Nice thread. I have a question for AZ regarding his predilection for the "stop trading with x" diplo action. How effective is this? I have found that in the past when I've used it to cut off a civ's metal trade or something like that that it doesn't seem to last very long. Civs seem to reopen trade relations within a few turns, effectively making it a waste of techs (or whatever you used to bribe), as well as another blatant anti human bias since we are often stuck with refusal to talk lasting millennia or the entire game.

Was I just unlucky? Do I need to look at this again as a serious diplo option? Can you actually stop AIs from tech trading with this? I thought it was just for resources and open borders...if we can isolate AIs with this action alone (I always thought switching their religions or civics was necessary) then it's pretty powerful and definitely worth using.

I'm pretty sure when you say stop trading with x, it's the same as when the AI demands you to stop trading with x. That is: All resource trades and open borders are cancelled and you can't even talk to that AI for a while. Even when it wears off, the diplo hit for "you stopped trading" with us remains, and since most AI's have to be at least cautious to trade techs you can destroy tech trading merely by driving down relations. That's also another reason to start wars, lasting bad diplo between AI's.

 

[NihilZero]

Cool. I'm going to have to experiment with this a bit.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

I would hope that it is the same for AI as it is for us. Please.

 

[Jet]

I don't know about this specifically, but in general diplo can't be the same with the human, because the human
* doesn't role play
* doesn't display a set of +/- diplo modifiers for the AIs to read
So the AIs have to make do with what little information they can get. It ends up being different in certain ways (I forget how) from AI-AI diplo.

 

[Mylene]

Just wanted to take the chance to speculate about how powerful tech brokering is, for the human player

If you teched everything yourself that you used to make the AIs stop trading with each other, declare war etc - impressive.
If you shopped around, i think it is a good example why tech brokering makes things easier.
The AI isn't smart enough to trade with everyone (which would benefit them way more than sitting in a corner of course and then backstab), human players dont stop trading cuz they don't like a leader's nose

 

[AbsoluteZero]

Just wanted to take the chance to speculate about how powerful tech brokering is, for the human player

If you teched everything yourself that you used to make the AIs stop trading with each other, declare war etc - impressive.
If you shopped around, i think it is a good example why tech brokering makes things easier.
The AI isn't smart enough to trade with everyone (which would benefit them way more than sitting in a corner of course and then backstab), human players dont stop trading cuz they don't like a leader's nose

Most the bribing is done with techs which are self-researched. This is true in any game. In fact there was a game with tech brokering off which I played part of where I bribed like 3 AI's on mansa around 1000 BC IIRC.

I don't understand the logic of saying no tech brokering makes the game harder. It slows down the tech pace which is always easier for human domination. It's like playing on a slower speed, it gives you more turns to use a certain tech advantage.

 

[Mylene]

Maybe iam on the wrong track, who knows
It's great to chatter with you @AZ, hope iam not too annoying

 

[NihilZero]

Somebody posted a no tech trading game here a few months ago, and it was pretty darned easy (although it was Darius with a lot of land ). I was quite surprised, no tech trading seems to help the human rather than the AI.

 

[ColossusXXIII]

Most the bribing is done with techs which are self-researched. This is true in any game. In fact there was a game with tech brokering off which I played part of where I bribed like 3 AI's on mansa around 1000 BC IIRC.

I don't understand the logic of saying no tech brokering makes the game harder. It slows down the tech pace which is always easier for human domination. It's like playing on a slower speed, it gives you more turns to use a certain tech advantage.

That was my hatty flanking game, I remember that without brokering, you got 3 Ai's to dog pile mansa. but with brokering on you could have started a world war. I think brokering on makes the game easier personally, Ai's can easily be isolated and traded with, you can rely on their poor relations with other Ai's to keep their lips sealed. Also Ai's rarely trade military techs, so even if you were to trade hbr away. It is unlikely that an Ai would turn around and trade it. Brokering on helps the human way, way more than the AI IMO. With brokering on, I think you can get over 10 techs just for Aesthetics alone.

 

[Mylene]

Hi Colossus
Nice to see that iam not alone with this opinion.

 

[Gwaja]

I think I will try putting on "No Tech Brokering" setting on a future Emperor Series games. It should be interesting.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

That was my hatty flanking game, I remember that without brokering, you got 3 Ai's to dog pile mansa. but with brokering on you could have started a world war.

Maybe, depends on the what AI's you have to work with.

Ai's can easily be isolated and traded with, you can rely on their poor relations with other Ai's to keep their lips sealed.

Isolating AI's is not easy at all. Takes careful planning and in some games it's just impossible because some AI's won't bribe to stop trading or war. You can't totally shut down AI trading, I've never had a game where I could do that. I'm usually able to split the AI's up into say 2 or 3 trading blocs. Slows down teching a little, but tech still moves way faster then it did in you're non-tech brokering game.

Also Ai's rarely trade military techs, so even if you were to trade hbr away.

Depends on the AI, usually when 2+ AI's get something its out there.

With brokering on, I think you can get over 10 techs just for Aesthetics alone.

Unless you're trading for minor techs like archery there is no way you're getting that many techs with Aesthetics. Not on deity anyway. Problem is there are only 6 AI's, you aren't likely to be able to trade all 6 Aesthetics. Maybe 3-4 if you're lucky. So that's like 4 techs max.

And the techs you get are probably not going to be re-tradeable, the other AI's will likely have them already.

But maybe you guys should make a game and we'll test this out. You can even have no vassal states which some people seem to think makes the game harder.

 

[ColossusXXIII]

in many games, I can trade Aesth to 5 or 6 Ai's (assuming contact). Usually the 1st trade is for alpha, then if you're lucky/quick enough you can start trading even really minor techs like writing to backwards civs. then often you can trade alpha to at least one or two civs for all the backfill techs (fishing, sailing,myst, poly, med, pott,archeryetc.) or stuff like iron working. then you can trade Aesth to a 2nd civ and get math. wait a couple turns and get monarchy or more backfill. can do the same for calendar with a 4th civ. Anyways from just 3-4 civs with brokering on, and normal game conditions you can trade Aesth, plus combine it with other techs and get ten techs for it. Ofcourse some would be minor techs, but they're still saving you a few turns each at 100% slider around the early classical era. I've often gotten Alpha, math, IW, Poly,Sail,Arch,Masonry,medit, fishing etc.

Also I often can say trade aesth to ghandi for alpha, then turn around and trade it to mehmed to Dow on ghandi, then combine alpha and aeths and trade it to warmonger x to then Dow on the next guy. With brokering off that gambit doesn't work.

obviously everything is situational and theoretical, but IMO tech brokering benefits the human more than the Ai in most cases. At least on Deity, I never really play on lower difficulties. But then again, I don't always win either...

 

[ColossusXXIII]

AZ when I said Isolating, I meant making them enemies through diplo. I find actually stopping trade is unnecessary, as long as you can keep wars and religious rivalries going. For instance trading construction to a hated Tokugawa or ragnar who's being dog piled by another religious block. You don't really need to worry about them trading it away too much.

I find if you trade strategically with the Ai's while tech brokering is on, you can still maintain tech leads and worry less about proliferation. Even Mansa, if he's in a bad diplo spot might not be willing to trade tech with other Ai's. Rare but possible.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

I think mansa trades at furious so unless you have all the AI's ganged up on him he will still be trading.

A lot of what your saying sounds good in theory but in practice it just doesn't work that way.

It's obvious you guys aren't going to believe me with arguing alone. I'll make a game with tech brokering and vassal states off and we'll see how hard it is.

 

[City Raider]

I'm not sure if brokering makes it easier or harder, but I like trading so I leave it on.

I also think some of you are over estimating how much you can actually "broker" a tech. Unless it is different on Imm or Diety. I play on Emperor and I can take the Aest example.

First, you are assuming you met 5-6 trading partners by the time you research Aest.

Second, the ability to broker a second tech and get some value out of it diminshes as you continue to trade. What I mean by that is this:

Say I research Aest so I can trade. Assume I met 5-6 AIs and only one other AI has Alpha.

Trade 1 - Aest for Alpha

Now I have to decide do I trade Aest or Alpha around? It really doesn't matter, b/c you end up with the same results since you only need one of these techs to get everything you need.

(Trading Aes around)

Trade 2 - Aes for Math
Trade 3 - Aes for IW
Trade 4 - Aes for Sail, Med, Poly, etc.
Trade 5 - Aes for Priest, Mono, etc.

At this point you pretty much have everything up to date. Now you still have Alpha to trade, but you know what, there really isn't anything to trade it for. Maybe you can find someone who has Monarchy and package Alpha with something for that but that is about it. At this point all the techs are worth more than Alpha and you'd need some AI to have researched that far (along another branch) be missing some basic techs (including Alpha) and be willing to trade this other advanced tech right away.

You'll get the same results even if you decided to broker Alpha around instead prior to trading Aes. You are essentially "stuck" with one of the techs after you get the most out of the other.

I just don't find that I'm able to acutally "broker" a tech all that much. I trade a ton, but usually I'm trading my monopoly techs cause all the AIs have kind of the same techs. Sometimes I can broker things like the religious techs like Theo or DR but in most cases it turns out they end up being throw aways in a trade that might save me a turn or two of research or a tiny bit of cash but nothing big or game changing.

I find my big trade chips are Aes, Lit, CoL (if I oracled it), Phil, Paper, and Edu. With these you can pretty much get everything you need. Also as techs get more expensive and you research what you want, any broker-able techs just isn't worth that much more than maybe a throw away in a deal.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Another quick thought about tech brokering:
As the human player, you only have 1 set of techs that you can broker.

6 AIs will have up to 6 sets worth of techs to broker. Let's say that some of them are researching the monopoly techs and that on average, 3 of the AIs get each tech from brokering.

Disallowing the human player from tech brokering only removes a small amount of trades. Disallowing the AIs from tech brokering is essentially stopping 3 AIs from getting each tech without resorting to self-teching. On that basis, turning tech brokering off definitely hampers the AIs as a whole more than the human player.

When you consider the fact that one of the biggest things stopping AIs from trading with each other is their "won't trade unless X percentage of other players in the game already know the tech" behaviour, then it's easy to see that once most of the AIs have passed this threshold, techs will go quickly... so, if only 2 or 3 AIs don't know a tech, it'll only take a couple of turns for it to get traded around. If you disable tech brokering, though, those backwards AIs will not be able to leverage a lot of the techs that they got in trade for other techs that they got from other AIs... drastically reducing the amount of trades.

If you think of an AI as an individual player, then yes, it seems like allowing tech brokering might favour the human player, but when you consider that AIs without trading inhibitions will trade like mad (and those in the bottom half of the scoreboard can completely ignore WFYABTA limits), it's not hard to see how the "AIs as a whole" benefit hugely from tech brokering and are thus severely weakened when this ability is disabled.