Trading tips for the honest

[Victoria]

Ignoring exploiting tradng bugs, just throwing out there a discussion for trading in general.

For example.

I meet pedro and offer to sell him my fine cotton shirts and he only wants 2 GPT for them.
If I send an envoy and then ask, it is still 2GPT.
But if I wait a turn then offer my shirts he has wormed to the idea, my envoy has been looking good in her fine cotton shirt and he then offers me 4GPT next turn.
The same will work by giving him a gift first, even 1 gold piece will do. It warms him to the dea I am nice to do business with and next turn he will give me a fairer price.

I also note some civs are tighter than others and I do feel this is built into their nature in the game. namely the traders themselves are the hardest bargainers, Mansa Musa and Philip are good examples. Offer up your cotton shorts to all civs and you will find they never give a great price.

 

[nzcamel]

In my experience they also will gradually, often enough, react correctly to being rebuffed if they can't find what they want elsewhere. You can negotiate a better offer further down the track.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

My tip is a simple one - don't forget to sell your excess strategic resources (preferably to a non-threatening neighbour).
It's so easy to forget selling off surplus horses and iron, but it really helps your income in the long run.
Having 50 horses at the cap for 100 turns is just a tremendous waste of potential income, which you could have used to buy the odd builder, trade for great works, attract a great person or what have you.
Easily one of the easiest sources of gold if you (like me) often forget to sell off your surplus at a good market rate.

For best results, try to be on friendly terms and find out which of the AIs doesn't have the resource to begin with, (s)he'll usually pay (way) more.

 

[MrRadar]

My biggest tip is: do all your trades in luxuries and open borders for gpt with everyone in bulk, on the same turn, every 30 turns. That way you'll have to suffer just one turn of pain, but then you'll have 29 turns of serenity and peace of mind. For example, set t30, t60, t90, t120 etc. as your trading turns. Yes, it is possible that you'll improve or acquire elswhere some duplicate luxuries that will stay unsold for some time, but resist burdening yourself with more frequent trading turns - serenity is worth more
Unless you're trying to cut some turns from your victory time, such pattern will not diminish your chances of victory as such.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

My tip is a simple one - don't forget to sell your excess strategic resources (preferably to a non-threatening neighbour).
It's so easy to forget selling off surplus horses and iron, but it really helps your income in the long run.
Having 50 horses at the cap for 100 turns is just a tremendous waste of potential income, which you could have used to buy the odd builder, trade for great works, attract a great person or what have you.
Easily one of the easiest sources of gold if you (like me) often forget to sell off your surplus at a good market rate.

For best results, try to be on friendly terms and find out which of the AIs doesn't have the resource to begin with, (s)he'll usually pay (way) more.

I find it more fun to sell strat resources to aggressive civs on other continents, particularly if there's more than one and watch the fireworks fly! #armsdealeroftheworld

 

[japanesesamurai]

Yes trading is an excellent way to do proxy-wars. I sometimes just give away strategic resources to a victim of an aggressor to potentially prevent the aggressor from snowballing too much.

I wish spies could offer more intel on ally/enemy research and stuff like that. In civ V the world knew if a player completed the Manhatten project. In VI you dont have this information. Thus providing uranium to your ally to fight your nemesis is a bit of a gamble

 

[Linklite]

Yes trading is an excellent way to do proxy-wars. I sometimes just give away strategic resources to a victim of an aggressor to potentially prevent the aggressor from snowballing too much.

I wish spies could offer more intel on ally/enemy research and stuff like that. In civ V the world knew if a player completed the Manhatten project. In VI you dont have this information. Thus providing uranium to your ally to fight your nemesis is a bit of a gamble

You can know, but it's through diplomatic visibility. Perhaps an espionage method/alternative method would be better.

 

[TheFinalChiTown]

To get the most out of trading you have to blur the line between honest and exploit . A few of my favorite tricks:

1. If you're hated by most and meet a new civ, trade whatever you can with them on that turn because they will likely denounce you the next.
2. If warmongering, declare joint wars as much as possible (with the highest bidder, of course!).
3. The AI will always buy strategics until they have 40 stockpiled.
4. Certain AI's buy diplo favor for a premium: Canada, Georgia, Sweden, sometimes America, sometimes Mongolia.
5. If an AI doesn't have gold to trade, buy their diplo favor and sell it to someone else.
6. Not a trading tip, per se, but if you can get your GPT high enough early in the game, the Land Surveyors policy becomes extremely powerful, especially in conjunction with Magnus.
7. +1 for #armsdealeroftheworld.
8. To get the +3 relationship bonus for open borders, you only have to sell yours, not buy theirs.
9. Probably the most controversial: selling luxuries to the AI then declaring war on them immediately after.

 

[Pfeffersack]

The AI will always buy strategics until they have 40 stockpiled.

That is true for Iron, Horses and Niter. For Coal, Oil and Aluminium the limit is 22 and the last time I was able to check for Uranium it was 62(!) here:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...for-excessive-prices-60-gold-per-unit.658754/

Sadly, selling all kind of the strategic ressources suffers (to a varying degree) from the problem that the AI will (in case of the three early ones) not always and (for the late-game ones) never accept buying up to their storage limit in one trade. So this part of the trading is still more of a clickfest than it needs to be.

 

[Pantastic]

One thing I notice is that AIs tend to sell things for a lot cheaper than they will buy them. I can get a lot of excess resources for 2gpt, when the AIs will buy mine for 3 to 10 gpt. Once there's a decent amount of resources in the world market (figuratively speaking), I often end up selling all of my resources to high bidders (definitely as many 8-10 ones as I can, then the highest of what's left) and trading for AI resources to cover my amenity needs, since I can afford get 2-5 resources for the money I make selling 1. You do have to sell and buy as separate transactions - if you put resources on both sides of the trade, the AI will generally treat them as equal value.

I usually do play with higher resources on the map, which may affect this, and currently use Emperor difficulty. I've also been doing 'mostly peaceful' games, so usually can be on decent to good terms with most AIs.