Trading World Maps

[MikeEdward]

Please forgive me as I continue asking innane questions.

Remember in Civ3 that we could trade or buy a world map? Does that feature not exist in Civ 4? I don't see that option available during negotiations.

 

[Mesousa]

It's available after discovering Paper.

 

[davelisowski]

Your World Map is only worth 10 gold. The AI thinks theirs is worth a whole lot more.

 

[Snerk]

Speaking of...
What advantage does the AI get when you trade him your map?
And wich times shouldn't you trade away your map?

 

[davelisowski]

Speaking of...
What advantage does the AI get when you trade him your map?
And wich times shouldn't you trade away your map?

Like I said, the AI will only give you 10 gold for your map. It really won't help in deciding any trade agreements. Sometimes the AI will throw their map into a trade (especially if you deny and say "what will it take to make this deal work?"). I try to get the AI maps as soon as I can. Sometimes you can get maps of territories you cannot enter. You can even get the circumnavigation bonus for trading maps (if they stretch around the globe, and beat any ships trying to accomplish the same thing).

The only real advantage an AI gets from your map would be a map of your territory. In addition, they will get the same "bonuses" as you do (non-open boarder territories, circumnavigation).

 

[Toastedzergling]

Your world map can worth some $$$ if you explore more than AI, get an explorer out and let him auto explore AI's land with an open border agreement, if you get optics first you can build caravels and explore oceans, this will make your maps worth a few hundred dollars. Not a significant income but better than nothing. Like in civ3 if you plan to sell it sell it to all AI at once

 

[cabert]

Your world map can worth some $$$ if you explore more than AI, get an explorer out and let him auto explore AI's land with an open border agreement, if you get optics first you can build caravels and explore oceans, this will make your maps worth a few hundred dollars. Not a significant income but better than nothing. Like in civ3 if you plan to sell it sell it to all AI at once

i agree
if you sell your map (a good one, after you circimnavigated the globe) you can have 100+ gold
say there are 10 civs to sell it to, this makes a potential 1000+ gold!

i found that the AI cheats (once more) since it values your map more when you explored more... How does it know?? when you trade maps with an AI, you don't know if it's gonna be just what you were missing to circumnavigate or if it will give you nothing...

 

[BadHorsie]

In terms of how the AI thinks, does giving them a map of your territory change their war tactics or do they become more likely to formulate a plan to backstab you, knowing where your weak points are, that kind of thing?

What I mean is, technically, the computer already knows the map so does it affect the AI's choices?

 

[cabert]

In terms of how the AI thinks, does giving them a map of your territory change their war tactics or do they become more likely to formulate a plan to backstab you, knowing where your weak points are, that kind of thing?

What I mean is, technically, the computer already knows the map so does it affect the AI's choices?

technically the AIs act as if they didn't know the map
So, yes, if you show them what good juicy cities you have, they are more likely to go after them.

But world map isn't unit position. You don't permanently trade a map, with your units on it. It's a one time trade.

 

[kamigawan]

Your World Map is only worth 10 gold. The AI thinks theirs is worth a whole lot more.

The main reason why this is usually true is because the AI does world map-for-world map trading amongst each other all the time behind your back, meaning they already have the maximum coverage before talking to you and therefore it is actually worth more. However, if you are able to make first contact with the other continent (first to caravels, e.g.), your world map will have high value to them - I've sold world maps for around $350 gold before and in rare cases, been able to supplement a favorable tech trade with a world map. The other option is to explore aggressively and then be the first to paper (first to be able to trade). Finally, if you are the first person to reach satellite and uncover the entire map, you can shop that around for some cash.

Regarding obtaining world maps, generally speaking in mid-late game once you have an ally of pleased or better standing, you have a very good chance of getting a free world map (just occasionally try "could you spare this" and you'll eventually get it free).

 

[davelisowski]

Okay, okay. Upon recent advice (Toastedzergling, and kamigawan), and some recent revelations (building scouts), I agree you can bank some $ from selling your map to the AI. I'd rather spend the time building scouts and explorers on other units or improvements though. Plus, if I "auto explore" my scouts, they usually die because of barbs in the fog, and this means more to build another. Should I send them in stacks?

 

[Nares]

Okay, okay. Upon recent advice (Toastedzergling, and kamigawan), and some recent revelations (building scouts), I agree you can bank some $ from selling your map to the AI. I'd rather spend the time building scouts and explorers on other units or improvements though. Plus, if I "auto explore" my scouts, they usually die because of barbs in the fog, and this means more to build another. Should I send them in stacks?

Stacks won't make a difference except to give you one more Scout to push on when the top one dies.

Unless you stack with a non-Scout unit, but that defeats the two movement points of the Scout (unless you're pushing through real heavy Jungle/Forest/Hills terrain, which kills the two movement points already, and makes you wonder why you sent a Scout in place of a Warrior in the first place).

The only real solution I've found is to manually control the Scouts. I too noticed that my Scouts/Warriors routinely ran into Barbarian units if I set them on auto-explore. I suppose this balances the auto-explore's inherent feature to path units towards the nearest hut (ever wonder why it picks seemingly ******** direction to explore in, while leaving large swathes of blackness near your cities?). You assume the added risk of retardo-pathing into (superior) Barbarian units in return for the reward that your units will beeline to the nearest huts (as far as I can tell).

Neither option is particularly worthwhile. But manually exploring is extremely tedious (even if it uncovers slightly more terrain as you can adjust your path to hit a Hill and explore more terrain, whereas the auto-explore pathing will run you right next to it).

 

[jimbob27]

Aye, its blatant AI cheating. They may not be able to see what's been uncovered, but they definately know how many tiles a map trade will reveal to them... otherwize they wouldn't know how much to offer for your map.

 

[cabert]

Aye, its blatant AI cheating. They may not be able to see what's been uncovered, but they definately know how many tiles a map trade will reveal to them... otherwize they wouldn't know how much to offer for your map.

true
it's not cheating, but it's buggy programming

 

[jimbob27]

true
it's not cheating, but it's buggy programming

I wouldn't call it buggy programming. Its the AI cheating, but it's a nessesary cheat. The human player can think "ghandi has had open borders with mostly everyone, I've seen his ships all around my coasts, he was the first to circumnavigate, therefore he'll have a good map".

The AI can't think like this, so they're given a value showing them how useful your map will be.

 

[Araqiel]

I wouldn't call it buggy programming. Its the AI cheating, but it's a nessesary cheat. The human player can think "ghandi has had open borders with mostly everyone, I've seen his ships all around my coasts, he was the first to circumnavigate, therefore he'll have a good map".

The AI can't think like this, so they're given a value showing them how useful your map will be.

Indeed. Also think on it this way, how would the game be enhanced if the AI could only guestimate how many map tiles it would gain by trading with you?

I think it would merely open a potential loopholes depending on how you setup their guessing. At best it would merely add some slight randomness to trading.

Which given that the rest of trading seems to be determanistic couldn't be a good thing.

 

[cabert]

well, i didn't ask for anything to be changed
as a concept, i think the AIs should guestimate (nice word, ), not because it would change anything for the AI, but because it would suppress the exploit of it :

You know the value of an AI's map on one thing: he doesn't value yours very much.

well, that's a very little issue, and i don't feel anything has to be done against it

 

[Roland Johansen]

The fact that map prices are based on the number of tiles both sides know and don't know has nothing to do with AI cheating (I believe land tiles are worth more than sea tiles by the way). Both parties in the trade agreement pay for the exact number of tiles they haven't discovered yet (or have changed since the last map trade), there is no secret advantage for the AI here. The game code works the same for human and AI.

Some people explore more and some less. If you let the AI explore your whole land with units and you don't do the same with the AI's lands, then you can expect to pay more for the AI's maps than the AI pay for your maps.
That the AI's trade maps amongst eachother is sensible programming. It would put the AI at a severe disadvantage if it weren't allowed to trade maps amongst eachother. You can trade maps with the AI and if you choose not to do so, then your relative lack of map knowledge will only increase and the prices for maps will also increase.