trading techs

[cha dawn]

I noticed that the a.i. refuses to trade techs with me (even if they were friendly to me.
Has this anything to do with the better a.i. mod or is it typical for ffh 2 ?
I have to mention that i was the number one in the game.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I think that in addition to diplomatic relations, personality traits effect willingness to trade techs. I believe that good civs are more willing than neutral,neutral are more willing than evil, and that leaders that have a high value on science try to keep others from learning too much. The Amurites are very stingy about technology, but the Elohim share much more often.

 

[Sarisin]

Two things I find annoying about 'tech trading' in the game:

1. You cannot make certain techs off-limits like AI civs can do and you are constantly pestered to trade ...or worse.

2. You cannot threaten AI civs with techs like they can threaten you: Give me Animal Mastery or you will die type crap. You also cannot threaten with resources: give me Reagents, etc. You can only demand Gold tribute, which is nice, but why shouldn't the human player be able to demand techs too???

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You can demand techs and resources, but only if the AI doesn't like you very much. Depending (I think) on their opinion of you, you will have either the "Could you spare this for a friend" or the "We demand you give us this for tribute." The latter hurts diplomatic relations.

 

[Gamestation]

Two things I find annoying about 'tech trading' in the game:

1. You cannot make certain techs off-limits like AI civs can do and you are constantly pestered to trade ...or worse.

2. You cannot threaten AI civs with techs like they can threaten you: Give me Animal Mastery or you will die type crap. You also cannot threaten with resources: give me Reagents, etc. You can only demand Gold tribute, which is nice, but why shouldn't the human player be able to demand techs too???

1. You can do that all the time. Just tell them no immediately. The redline is just to help you figure out that the AI will not trade a tech no matter what and gives you a reason why ("We fear you are becoming too advanced", "We just don't like you enough", "We'd prefer to win thank you", etc)

2. You can demand techs with trade, it's just that they may say no immediately just like you would. At that point, back up your words or remember them in the future. Then sue for peace after beating them up in a war.

 

[sixs_monkey]

Wouldn't it be nice if a solo player -could- go to his tech tree and mark techs individually as being "Off limits", "Gonna Cost ya", or "Sure, let's talk" so as to pre-empt annoying requests by various puny AI leaders?
Personally, I tend to play with No tech-trading allowed so as to maintain my edge in Science!

 

[Sarisin]

1. You can do that all the time. Just tell them no immediately. The redline is just to help you figure out that the AI will not trade a tech no matter what and gives you a reason why ("We fear you are becoming too advanced", "We just don't like you enough", "We'd prefer to win thank you", etc)

2. You can demand techs with trade, it's just that they may say no immediately just like you would. At that point, back up your words or remember them in the future. Then sue for peace after beating them up in a war.

Yes, but my point is why should I have to endure endless popups asking for the same tech or resource? I must have been asked for Nature Mana 15 times in my current game. Let me redline it, pleeeeeeeease.

On my other point. I have a billion of my troops on the border. Why can't I say, "Give me Animal Mastery or face the consequences?" I can only ask for gold. I don't want to trade. I just want that tech or else.

If he turns me down, WAR. If he gives me the tech, uh, maybe WAR too.

But, I cannot demand like the AI can.

 

[Gamestation]

Yes, but my point is why should I have to endure endless popups asking for the same tech or resource? I must have been asked for Nature Mana 15 times in my current game. Let me redline it, pleeeeeeeease.

On my other point. I have a billion of my troops on the border. Why can't I say, "Give me Animal Mastery or face the consequences?" I can only ask for gold. I don't want to trade. I just want that tech or else.

If he turns me down, WAR. If he gives me the tech, uh, maybe WAR too.

But, I cannot demand like the AI can.

Well with the exotic foriegn advisor I suppose that the AI showing up to propose a trade is rather obsolete. I think you can use the editor to permanently stop all AI initiated contacts. Under the leaders tab on lines 145-147 are the contact rands involving trades. I think setting all of those to 0 will prevent all the leaders from contacting you to make a tech, resource, or map trade.

On the demands thing, if another human had a billion troops on your border, it's a pretty safe bet that nothing you could do now would stop that person from attacking anyway. Why should the AI give in to your demand? A peace treaty guarantees a civ ten turns of no attacks from another, a demand guarantees nothing when it is made by a human. Of course maybe you would like the option of signing a non-aggression pact so that you could recieve free techs from an AI that you could annihilate but do not feel like doing so immediately?

 

[cvlowe]

I turned off tech trading for this very reason, plus the AIs always share with each other, while demanding from me. They can waste their time researching the same as me!

 

[Xanikk999]

On the demands thing, if another human had a billion troops on your border, it's a pretty safe bet that nothing you could do now would stop that person from attacking anyway. Why should the AI give in to your demand? A peace treaty guarantees a civ ten turns of no attacks from another, a demand guarantees nothing when it is made by a human. Of course maybe you would like the option of signing a non-aggression pact so that you could recieve free techs from an AI that you could annihilate but do not feel like doing so immediately?

Your giving the AI thinking too much credit. There should be some way for your demands to be met, and if force wont do it i dont see what will.

Thats what i hate about the diplomacy in civ4, at least in civ3 they would cave in if you had superior power.

 

[Sarisin]

Well with the exotic foriegn advisor I suppose that the AI showing up to propose a trade is rather obsolete. I think you can use the editor to permanently stop all AI initiated contacts. Under the leaders tab on lines 145-147 are the contact rands involving trades. I think setting all of those to 0 will prevent all the leaders from contacting you to make a tech, resource, or map trade.

On the demands thing, if another human had a billion troops on your border, it's a pretty safe bet that nothing you could do now would stop that person from attacking anyway. Why should the AI give in to your demand? A peace treaty guarantees a civ ten turns of no attacks from another, a demand guarantees nothing when it is made by a human. Of course maybe you would like the option of signing a non-aggression pact so that you could recieve free techs from an AI that you could annihilate but do not feel like doing so immediately?

I'm not one to use the editor as I am sure I will somehow mess something up and regret it.

My point on the demand issue is that I can't even make the demand. I cannot demand a tech from the AI, while I often get demands, usually unreasonable ones, of techs from AI civs.

The same for resources. I get demands from AI civs for resources all the time - give me Iron or you will die threats. Again, it is something I cannot do.

I just think if the AI has the capability to make these demands, the human player should have the same capability.

Why not make it consistent like Gold? Both AI and human players can demand gold.

 

[Miloe]

same thing with demanding war on another civ. you get asked into war 100 times in a game but you cant ask any civ to join a war with you

 

[Jean Elcard]

same thing with demanding war on another civ. you get asked into war 100 times in a game but you cant ask any civ to join a war with you

I have to second this. Seems to be an impossibility to talk someone else into war.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Same here. In my current game I (Hannah, founder of OO, owner of its patriarch) had 6 OO civs friendly towards me (something like +22,-1 for each) and unfriendly towards the weaker Fol, RoK, and AV civs I was at war with and could not convince a single civ to join the war (until using the Patriarch).

 

[Sarisin]

I guess it was some version of vanilla civ that let you bribe AI civs to go to war with you. You could do the same thing when they asked you: if you give me Feral Bond and 500 gold I will go to war.

I'm not sure why you cannot do this in FFH2.

I agree that even if you try your best to butter up other civs with gifts, etc. they will still have the declare war screen redlined.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Theoretically, you can bribe other civs to join you in a war now, but it doesn't seems to work in Fire (it worked fine in Light, iirc). Civ IV never let you negotiate if they asked for it, but Civ III didn't have a seperate screen for the initial requests and the negotiations, so you could always try to work things out. Why doesn't it give the option to negotiate when someone asks you to adopt there Religion/Favorite Civic or to go to war? It lets you negotiate when you are trying to do the same (not that they are likely to agree). Personally I kinda miss Civ III's Foreign adviser helping out in negotiations. The reddened options tell you what the other civ is not willing to trade, it doesn't help you know How willing they are. You cannot know if you are getting a good deal or not. In general, I think that diplomacy deteriorated between III and IV, because of the lack of advisers, inability to trade workers, and most importantly the requirements that you can never mix instant and turn based trades or ever truly negotiate the end of a war (what real wars ever ended with a treaty that gave absolutely nothing to one side?). I also think it would be nice it it let you ask others to adopt civics and religions that you haven't officially adopted and to ask that a civ return to no state religion. It makes sense that you should be able to get your alies to comprimise instead of wholeheartedly adopt you beliefs (if you have Public healers, you could try to get someone with fend for themselves to adopt protect the meek, or if you are AV you could get an Order civ to serve the Overlords, perhaps as their first step on a path towards becoming evil. Cassiel should try to get you to abandon any state religion.). It would also be nice if you could pause a negotiation for a little wile, so you could determine which warring party offers more for your military aid, or so you could graft your religion/civic required units into flesh golems.

 

[Gamestation]

I guess it was some version of vanilla civ that let you bribe AI civs to go to war with you. You could do the same thing when they asked you: if you give me Feral Bond and 500 gold I will go to war.

I'm not sure why you cannot do this in FFH2.

I agree that even if you try your best to butter up other civs with gifts, etc. they will still have the declare war screen redlined.

Okay THIS you have right on that something is wrong. The player should be able to bribe the AI into wars with one another. That is an important strategic aspect of the game from vanilla that allows you to survive an encounter with Montezuma or to kick down Mansa Musa a few notches. This could probably be applied in FFH 2 by getting Varn Gosam to not act like an idiot and declare war on all of his friends even when he has enemies all around him.

I looked at the leader personality files and found that almost everyone has a declare war refuse threshold of FRIENDLY. What this means is that these leaders will indeed never allow you to ask them to go to war. Did Kael and co. forget that the threshold determines the level that you have to get OVER in order to remove the limitation and not just REACH? Maybe the expectation was the warscript would cause enough wars anyway without the need of the player coercing the AI?

 

[m_user]

So it is possible to trade tech with AI?

You know, I was playing with Ljosalfar some time ago and during the game I was unable to trade tech with anyone. The only time I could get tech from an AI was when the svartalfar were suggesting that I should stop razing their cities.

So get this: I was good neighbours with the Amurites. We traded resources and had open borders, same religion and so on - occasionally they would request tech and I would gladly give it to them because they we're the strongest ally on the map, and we were getting along well.

Then... "The you know who" began rolling over Amurite borders and they were like: "Heelp! Give tech, let's go to war together!".

And I was like "Sure thing meight, anything for a brother in faith"

And I marched with Yvain, Gilden and the gang across the continent, pushed back the threat and EVEN cleared the land a bit for the Amurites. And the whole time they were just sitting on their arses.

So I was getting my hopes up - now would they trade tech with me?
But still the Amurites went: "Sorry we don't trust you enough"

Man - for a moment there - I considered going forestal on their asses.

 

[Gamestation]

So it is possible to trade tech with AI?

You know, I was playing with Ljosalfar some time ago and during the game I was unable to trade tech with anyone. The only time I could get tech from an AI was when the svartalfar were suggesting that I should stop razing their cities.

So get this: I was good neighbours with the Amurites. We traded resources and had open borders, same religion and so on - occasionally they would request tech and I would gladly give it to them because they we're the strongest ally on the map, and we were getting along well.

Then... "The you know who" began rolling over Amurite borders and they were like: "Heelp! Give tech, let's go to war together!".

And I was like "Sure thing meight, anything for a brother in faith"

And I marched with Yvain, Gilden and the gang across the continent, pushed back the threat and EVEN cleared the land a bit for the Amurites. And the whole time they were just sitting on their arses.

So I was getting my hopes up - now would they trade tech with me?
But still the Amurites went: "Sorry we don't trust you enough"

Man - for a moment there - I considered going forestal on their asses.

That's just the Amurites. The leaders will never trade techs with you. You'd be better off trying to become friends with the Svartalfar than to get a tech from the Amurites.

 

[Kael]

Okay THIS you have right on that something is wrong. The player should be able to bribe the AI into wars with one another. That is an important strategic aspect of the game from vanilla that allows you to survive an encounter with Montezuma or to kick down Mansa Musa a few notches. This could probably be applied in FFH 2 by getting Varn Gosam to not act like an idiot and declare war on all of his friends even when he has enemies all around him.

I looked at the leader personality files and found that almost everyone has a declare war refuse threshold of FRIENDLY. What this means is that these leaders will indeed never allow you to ask them to go to war. Did Kael and co. forget that the threshold determines the level that you have to get OVER in order to remove the limitation and not just REACH? Maybe the expectation was the warscript would cause enough wars anyway without the need of the player coercing the AI?

I think your right. I think I got DeclareWarRefuseAttitudeThreshold and DeclareWarThemRefuseAttitudeThreshold backwards. I will check them out.