AI, tech rate and Tech trading

[EscapedGoat]

The AI is totally dependent on tech trading to be technologically competitive. Why is this the case? here is my analysis:

The general tech rate of the game, provided everyone trades, is a function of the number of civs and the individual civs research pace. Let's say that you and the AIs individually research at a pace of 1 tech pr x number of turns, i.e a tech rate of 1/x.

With everyone trading and assuming everyone reasearches a different technology(ok a bit unrealistic), if you have 5 AI in the game and you, the general tech pace will be (1+1+1+1+1+1)/x technologies pr x turns, i.e 6/x.

This is why isolationism does not work. You might think: 'I am not gonna help the AI, I will do my own research'. If you are going at it alone, you are researching at a pace of 1/x while the AI crowd are researching at a pace of 5/x. Clearly, you would have to produce the combined research of 5 AIs just to stay in the tech game. This is possible on lower levels, but not on the higher ones. You HAVE to be 'in the loop' for tech trading, or you are screwed.

Let's say you, through cunning use of specialists, academies and maybe the great library manage to get a tech rate DOUBLE that of the AI civs, i.e 2/x. 'Great, now I will easily win the tech race' you say? Wrong! All you have done now is increase the tech rate of the game marginally, from 6/x to 7/x. Because isolationism is impossible and everyone is in the tech loop, everyone is benefitting from your increased research speed. If you do manage to pull ahead, you will not have anyone to tech trade with, and you will revert to a tech speed of 2/x. The AIs however, are researching at a combined speed of 5/x, and will soon catch up. This means there is a built in mechanism in the game to prevent technological superiority. If someone pulls ahead, the rag-tag tech trade crowd WILL catch up!

Let's say you have a choice between doubling your tech rate, military power or culture production. Which one should you double? Answer: probably not technology production! Because of the way tech trading works, you are not going to pull ahead this way. You are much better off producing a bunch of military units instead, because your military power is individual. So by doubling your research, you are changing the tech rate of the game from 6/x to 7/x. By doubling your military you are doubling your military strength from 1x to 2x.

Of course, there are benefits to having a 2/x science rate. One of these is that you are likely to get to the 'key' techs, like religion and free specialist techs first, and you can leverage a tiny tech lead on military techs to a HUGE military advantage, for example at the discovery of gunpowder, or a peacefull advantage like to build a wonder first, etc.

This all becomes very evident if you turn tech trading OFF in the custom game setup. It's like dropping a few difficulty levels. The biggest bonus to the AI is not starting with free units etc, it's the tech trading! The AI uses rampant tech trading as a crutch, because it is simply not very good at maximizing research like the Human can do.

I am not sure how I feel about this. It makes being a science behemoth less attractive than I like. That's why I often ramp up the difficulty a bit and play with no tech trading instead. This way, there is more of a payoff: should I make more military units, or should I boost my research to not fall too far behind? In the 'normal' tech trading game, it's basically a no-brainer to make military, because even if you are the slowest researcher, it makes no difference because you can allways trade your way up the tech tree, and use your superior military for extortion of techs. It's basically a very sound strategy to be a militarist with weak research, and, ironically, a less efficient strategy to be a super science optimizer with weak military.

[Heroes]

Interesting idea ... But if you are too terribly behind, wouldn't you have no tech to trade with others?

[Diadem]

It's an interesting analysis. But there's a few points you seem to overlook.

First of all, not everybody works on different techs. This greatly reduces the combined speed, and increases the benefit of having a high individual speed.

Secondly, the AIs are often unwilling to trade key techs. I am not sure if they have this policy amongst eachother as well, but I think so.

Thirdly trades are often lobsided. An AI won't trade beaker for beaker with you, unless he likes you a lot.

Finally, you need to have techs the others do not have, if you want to be able to trade at all. Depending on trading for you tech is a dangerous gambit. If you fall behind you'll never catch up again.

[Zan]

My personal solution to fight AI sharing techs is, not fighting for the great tech advantage, just for the first place.


Let's assume everyone is at tech level A. There are K AIs and you are thinking about how fast to research.

Case 1: You research as fast as the AIs (leaving a lot for military).
The AIs trade every tech between themselves (this isn't really so, but the effect is only cuantitative)
Result: You are at tech level A+1. The AIs are at tech level A+K. However those K are same level techs.
Utility: You can use your military to crush some AI and take the techs as a payment for stopping war.

Case 2: You research tech faster.
Result: You are at tech level A+2 and the AIs are at A+K. However, your 2 are linear advancement while the AI grow by sharing, so each of their K are a single step ahead.
Utility: You've got a more advanced tech while they have more of the less advanced.

This might seem a low benefit, taking into account the AIs are getting more "research cost" done. However, you have a tech none of them has.
If you keep your tech to yourself, you'll eventually have to research same-level techs, and the AIs are faster doing that. On the other hand, if you quickly trade your more advanced tech with every one of the AIs, you can get huge benefits in a single turn.

First, Get every lower tech they've all got by sharing. As your tech's beakers * K is greater than the sum of their techs beakers, the extra margin is what you use to:

- Get money while emptying their treasury. (Better than generating it yourself).
- Instant friendlyness with tech gifts.
- Create wars between AIs in exchange for your tech/s.


This behaviour, combined with each AI not researching different techs, and the benefit of reaching some techs first, make the strategy of outresearching the AI useful.

[Cardozo]

An Isolationist will be behind, but not as far as you might think.

First off, they do some duplicate research, so 5 AI's is more like 3x than 5x.

More importantly though, each generation of tech is exponentially more expensive than the generation before. If there are five 2000 beaker techs, and the next generation is five 5000 beaker techs, it should be obvious that the Generation 5000 costs just as much to research as all the previous generations of tech combined (or almost as much, anyway). This means than an isolationist with at least a decent science rate should be no more than one generation of tech behind a trading Civ.

My observation of isolationist Civs (whether by geography or because they're Tokugawa) seems to bear this out. Only Civs with geography-induced crappy science or with personality disorders (or both, as was Alexander's case in my last game) fall super far behind.

[joncnunn]

What matters most here is the makeup of the state religions.

AI Civs usually refuse to trade techs with anyothe with a different state established religion than their own. (Because of the diplomatic penalty) Conversely, civs sharting the same state stablished religion will usually become best buddies.

So if one state religion is predominant, watch out for that block post-alphabet, it's going to be doing a lot of tech trading.
In this enviroment, it may be diplomaticly benifital to switch to that religion to join that trading block.

But if the state religions are all different, say 3 AIs each founded their own religion and naturally established it as a state religion, the AIs aren't going to be cooperating.
In this enviorment, it may be diplomaticly benifital to switch to no religion that to establish yet a 4th religion.

[Drachasor]

It is still worth it to have a higher research rate. A higher rate means you can get a bit ahead of the AIs. Maybe you'll only be ahead by 2 or 3 techs, but that's still a lead (you trade 1 tech of the 2-3 to the AI each time you research a new tech, thereby gaining research the AI does too).

This can be a very potent military advantage. Having Riflemen and Cannon when the AI has Musketmen is a massive advantage (and often you are very close to gaining Infantry, a larger advantage, from this position). Having tanks when the AI doesn't is also a big advantage. Of course, having bombers when the AI doesn't have planes is one of the biggest advantages you can get in the game.

-Drachasor

[Shaka II]

I don't have an answer to tech trading other than pursuing the ones that they haven't and trading up. It's hard to out research them at the higher levels, unless there is either no tech trading, or a lot of war, which can have a similar effect. So the way I propose is not to disable tech trading necessarily, but to have more war, either through diplomatic means (paying them), or by selecting the aggressive AI option. If more Civs are at war with each other, they can't be tech trading so much. Plus ancient and medieval wars are more fun.

I would say in comparing Civ4 to Civ3, it seems like the AI is getting too friendly, except for some of the most aggressive leaders like Tokugawa, Napoleon, and Alexander, while Washington and Elizabeth sit back and research the pants off everyone else.

In Civ3, a viable option was to stop research after Iron Working and pay for tech, until all of the infrastructure was in place, universities, etc., then start to take over as tech leader. A great advantage was the ability to develop a sizable military and wage early war without falling behind in tech. I haven't tried this in Civ4. Also Civs won't always sell or trade a tech, so this might not work in Civ4.

Has anyone tried the aggressive AI option?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Shaka II
In Civ3, a viable option was to stop research after Iron Working and pay for tech, until all of the infrastructure was in place, universities, etc., then start to take over as tech leader.

While a lot of people were going cash & buy-tech in the first versions, subsequent patches & XP did rebalance the game towards research. I'm sure that eventually it did pay to discover your own tech.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


While a lot of people were going cash & buy-tech in the first versions, subsequent patches & XP did rebalance the game towards research. I'm sure that eventually it did pay to discover your own tech.

I played with V1.29f, was there a later one?

I prefer to play doing my own research, not buying it, unless it is to catch up. I think research is integral to the game experience of civilization advancement. But it would be nice if there was a little discouragement to the rampant tech trading. If it handicaps the AI too much to disable tech trading all together, then I would propose finding other ways to reduce it. Maybe there are enough ways using the default conditions for a very good player. I was just thinking that if there was a way to make the AI be at war more often, and not just with me , than it might inhibit tech trading enough. Certainly when peace was declared there would large amounts of tech trading, but overall, it should reduce it. Also, being at war more often forces more military development and causes weariness that slows down tech research.

I'll try it next game. Who knows, it might make the game harder instead of easier. I wonder what a more aggressive Tokugawa, Napoleon or Alexander would be like?