Trading (mainly for beginners, but others may find it useful)

[hbdragon88]

But Catherine generally is a cheap one anyway - what I've read in the forums. She pays low for techs, demands absurd amounts for techs, and so on.

In that case I smashed the keys Ctrl + Alt + Del and shut it down manually - then told myself never to do that again w/ Catherine.

 

[DoTheMath]

Originally posted by sabo10
So Bamspeedy just verified what I've always suspected, that once you see your map it's worthless to the other civs cuz they get it from the civs you sold it too, so tell me Bamspeedy, a good plan would be to time selling your world map just for the right time and then try to sell it too all the civs on the same turn??

I sell the world when I want an expensive tech, like Monothesism or Theology(on a huge map) OR when someone declares war on me to get enough alliances to get them in trouble.

 

[shamboMF]

How about luxury trading? What are the benefits and where can you see them 'in game'?

At the moment I am playing the Indians, I have never broken a treaty and have only been involved in one conflict and that was provoked by the Maya AND YET people won't trade with me or give me very bad terms, in fact most of them don't have any gold but even the ones who do don't seem willing to trade...

What is going on?

 

[Bamspeedy]

You may not have intentionally broken a treaty, but did you unintentionally break one?
When the Mayans declared war on you, did that cut off a trade route between you and another civ you were trading resources with?

"..very bad terms." What?, do you mean they charge you too much? Luxuries are priced based on the # of citizens they will make happy. If you have a huge empire, then they will charge you a ton for luxuries because it would be making many people happy for you. If they have a small empire, then they won't pay you much for your luxuries, because it doesn't make very many people happy for them. Basically, you probably won't be able to trade 1 luxury for 1 luxury if you are bigger than them. You will have to give them 2 or more luxuries for 1 luxury, or give them 1 luxury and some gpt for 1 luxury. Oftentimes, if you are really big/have tons of population you would have to give them 6 luxuries (and some gold) just to get 1 luxury, which makes it not an ideal option (just take it from them if you are that strong).

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by shamboMF
How about luxury trading? What are the benefits and where can you see them 'in game'?

You see the immediate benefits of luxuries in the number of happy citizens in the City screens. The actual benefit may then show up in your treasury or in your production rate or both, as they may allow you to reduce your per-turn spending on entertainment or turn more citizens into productive workers or both. The treasury boost may then allow you to increase your research spending or to spend in more trading. As usual in Civ3 there are many ways to translate an improvement in one area of your empire into a different actual benefit.

Each luxury that a city is connected to is listed below the main picture in the city screen, and the amount of happiness it generates in that city is shown next to it. They each improve the happiness of one citizen before you build a market place. With a market, the more luxuries you have the more happiness the later ones generate - the first two still make one citizen happier, then next two make two happier, the next two affect three .... Eight luxuries will improve the mood of 20 citizens.

I say "improve the happiness" here because the effect is often wrongly described as "making happy faces". If you have a lot of unhappy people then a few luxuries may only make some of them content. It's two steps from unhappy to happy, and each happiness "point' makes one citizen one step happier. You need at least as many happy people as unhappy people in each city at the end of every turn to prevent disorder. You can use the city governors to regulate this, but they'll not do a very precise job of it in my experience

 

[mac224]

Next time this happens, I'm doing a D-Day for trade purposes. Found a city or conquer one on their isolated backwater, build a harbor and connect up with their ridiculous capital for the luxury in question. Now it's too late to bother in my current game. This would also prevent the other AIs from stealing the happy juice out from under me.

Not too unrealistic. Isn't this was the UK and Portugal did to India, and the USA did to Japan, in the 1800's?

mac

 

[jst666]

Luxuries are priced based on the # of citizens they will make happy.

Because of this issue someone posted an exploit here:
Since with marketplaces your 3rd luxury makes 2 ppl happy, just pillage all your luxuries while having enough workers on the spot to remake the road on same turn. Personally, I would never bother...

 

[Coinich]

I used this strategy with much success in my current game. Wallowing in gold. This is great. Only caution is that you need to keep up with what's going on. The more civs - the harder it is. But I have never been happier with negotiating. Thanks so much!

 

[Shortyman]

Just wondering, how did you re-new the trades that you have made. I have traded my luxuries away in the start of the game for cheap and they keep it for the rest of the game. They paid me 10gp for it.

 

[AlanH]

In F4, select the civ you want to renegotiate with and click the "Active" button. You see a list of active trades and numbers in brackets indicate how many turns the trade will run before it expires. Expired trades have no turn count. Click an expired trade to put it onto the New trades table and renegotiate it. Before you do so, though, make sure the civ has extra gpt available and is willing to pay it for something else. Otherwise you may lose what you have.

 

[Desertsnow]

If you sell your map to any AI civ, once you end that turn, your map is worthless because the AI will now sell your map to everyone else. I had luxuries to trade, that's what really helped me.

I know I'm responding to a very old post, but I had to comment on this. This can't always be true; in my current game five or six civs asked for my map within about three turns. Is this normal?

 

[wilbill]

The AI places a pretty high value on maps. Probably higher than most players do. If the map you traded was very valuable (a lot of territory "unknown" to the AI's) it's possible that they didn't all have enough gold to trade for it and are coming to you for a better deal.
It's also possible that they did trade for it and are just pestering you. The AI sometimes proposes trades for your map just a turn or two after completing a trade for your map. Just a quirk.

 

[Arklain]

Don’t give the computer any thing! Make them work for it! If you must them give them an old tech or a dead end tech!