Do you think diplomacy is stifled?

[ghen]

In my current game I chose super expansion over technology mongering.. so I had a huge managable debt until courthouses, but a ton of cities in an island map. I had tons of resources but not many techs.. I would love to trade resources in addition to gold for some techs, but the game just doesn't allow it.
Why?!

[smithldoo]

Quick reply,
ABSOLUTELY.

Much preferred civ 3.

Should start a poll, bring back civ3 diplomacy, also,

bring back civ 3 graphics (so people like us who got sucked into believing the system requirements) can actually play the game without a struggle.

[Arrian]

The buying/selling tech for gold per turn was taken out primarily because it was soooo expoitable. Essentially, the AI cannot handle those trades (even the new 'n improved CivIV AI). It is, I'll grant you, an example of simplifying the game (reducing options) to protect the AI. I understand why it was done but at times I too feel that diplomacy is pretty limited.

-Arrian

[Fosse]

Was the problem with the AI and those trades that the AI couldn't properly value tech and resource costs compared to each other, or that the human would end the deal by pillaging or declaring war?

I would like to see GPT, at least, brought back to all deals. A simple way to handle the exploit side is, like GalCiv did, make all debts continue to be paid even though you're fighting.

More realistic, and a middle ground in exploitability, like SMAC have GPT payments suspended during war. You can, of course, always simply wipe out the civ...

The only thing I'm bothered by is the inability to trade GPT for either a lump sum or a tech. Tradeing resource for GPT or resource is fine with me.

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Fosse
Was the problem with the AI and those trades that the AI couldn't properly value tech and resource costs compared to each other, or that the human would end the deal by pillaging or declaring war?

I would like to see GPT, at least, brought back to all deals. A simple way to handle the exploit side is, like GalCiv did, make all debts continue to be paid even though you're fighting.

More realistic, and a middle ground in exploitability, like SMAC have GPT payments suspended during war. You can, of course, always simply wipe out the civ...

The only thing I'm bothered by is the inability to trade GPT for either a lump sum or a tech. Tradeing resource for GPT or resource is fine with me.

I think only civs that are of "Friendly" status should offer GPT deals. Anything lower and they don't trust you enough to do it (to maintain the balance and limit the exploit).

[Fidel]

diplomacy is absolutely stunning. no way to rip off AI like you could in civ 3. i have no idea why anyone actually enjoys tech whoring.
AI now behaves like it should. last night a christian coalition of saladin, alex and tokugawa brought me down. they declared war on me (sometimes two together, sometimes just one), kept me in state property thingie, i lost space race by one turn on saladin, and even ceasar tried some incursions when he saw my forces stretched. they skillfuly denied me crucial techs and huana kept his annoyed posture to make me appease him all the time.
this was good. i was beaten by one turn, but it feels zillion time better than civ 3. btw, noble level..., no aggressive ai, 2 out of 10 civs eliminated and plenty of wars...

[ghen]

GPT x10 should equal the total value of the tech traded. The deal should then cancel after 10 turns automatically like the peace treaties do.

Every resource has a $ value because trades are 10 turns long, unbreakable except by war. War has its damaging diplomacy side effects as well, and there should be an extra -1 that all friendly civs to the defending civ get for the attacker breaking a 10 turn trade agreement.

Saying the AI can't value techs versus resources versus GPT is entirely due to lazy programming.

[Datajack Franit]

the AS (where S means stupidity) couldn't understand the actual value of money within the game, so it was basically turned off in Civ4- I always play with No tech trading, the AI gets an awful advantage as soon as they meet another

[Sirian]

Originally posted by Arrian
I understand why it was done but at times I too feel that diplomacy is pretty limited.

The old method was even more limited, in a real sense. It had only one right choice.

Diplomacy itself has not been curtailed. Human to human, you can still make all the same old deals. (You can even structure a trade of resources for techs, though admittedly you have to do it in two steps instead of one.)

What changed was the AI'S WILLINGNESS to agree to certain deals.


Are folks really calling for us to dumb down the AI back to its lobotomized Civ3 level of (in)ability? Shall we yank the plug on new and improved AI, and give you back the sucker to rake over the coals?

So in SP, trading on the whole is less, but it is NOT because options were pulled off the table. Rather it is because the AIs on the whole are much more reticent to trade. They won't ever trade away a monopoly tech, nor a tech that enables a wonder they are constructing. They won't cheaply trade strategic resources, either.

The AIs don't trade more with one another than they do with the player. Try it! Click the No Tech Trading game option under Custom Game options and notice no significant falloff in AI performance relative to the player!


I understand and expect that some players simply won't like the change, and this will be for a variety of reasons. For some, it's because the old way was not only more familiar, but easier, and not everybody actually wants the game to be harder. (They -can- try turning down the difficulty level in Civ4, though!) For some, they get a thrill out of playing the broker -- but the broker is the ONLY right choice in Civ3, while in Civ4 it is the Researcher who thrives, where the more open tech tree offers up multiple valid research paths and priorities at almost every turn.

In order to make Research a valid and fun path, we had to kill the Broker. It's one or the other. No matter what you set the beaker-to-coin ratio at, Brokering dominates Researching. That's the clearest economic lesson in Civ3, where across the early vanilla patches, Soren tried every possible relationship between beakers and coins.

A. If it costs more coins to buy a tech from an AI than it does to research for yourself, then you self-research and sell to multiple buyers at inflated prices -- the original Civ3 tech-whoring, an endless snowball of cash.

B. If costs more beakers to research than it does in coins to buy, you never research, but only buy, unless your research power so greatly outstrips your rivals that you've already won the game outright anyway.

C. If they cost the same, you still always buy, because cash is versatile and you can delay the choice on what to invest in, waiting for the right "N-fer" trade deals to come along.

No matter which of these relationships exist, brokering negates researching. The money dominates, leaving the same stale, repetitive economic strategy to be played over and over and over without variation. Option A is the worst of all because you snowball from anywhere. At least options B and C leave you at the mercy of what the AI chooses to research next.


Sometimes you have to remove one hopelessly unbalanced and un-balance-able option to free all the other options it was holding as caged slaves.

If there is only one right choice, you're not looking at a "strategy" game!


- Sirian

[greggbert]

Or just eliminate GPT entirely and let civ's go into the red to pay you off! The merchant federation or something will break your fingers if you dont pay back!

[ghen]

Sirian: I completely understand the willingness programming and feel that it works well. What I'm concerned about is what if I want to trade cities for techs, or resources over 10 turns for straight cash now? The diplomacy window just doesn't allow those as choices at all.

You can still sell techs for gold, but as you rightly said the AI is a bit smarter as to the values of those trades. I'm talking about what stuff can't possibly be traded ever.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by smithldoo
Quick reply,
ABSOLUTELY.

Much preferred civ 3.

Should start a poll, bring back civ3 diplomacy, also,

bring back civ 3 graphics (so people like us who got sucked into believing the system requirements) can actually play the game without a struggle.

So if you want Civ3's graphics and mechanics, why don't you just, uh, keep playing Civ3?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Sirian

C. If they cost the same, you still always buy, because cash is versatile and you can delay the choice on what to invest in, waiting for the right "N-fer" trade deals to come along.

This misses a very important point. If you buy, unless you can broker a multi-step deal with multiple civs to get your gold back, your gold ends up fueling the economy of whatever civ you buy from. If you do your own research, it doesn't. One of the most powerful strategies in Civ 3 was to gain a tech lead (at least in a particular branch), sell tech for a lot of gold per turn, and use the resulting income to help speed up further research in order to maintain the tech lead. Civ 4 takes away that ability, which I regard as good for balance - especially now that big civs can trade for resources on a one-for-one basis instead of needing to trade away tech (or massive amounts of gold per turn) to get resources.

My one really serious concern about Civ 4's tech trading mechanics is what happens when the tech an AI researches is slightly more valuable than what a human researches. If the AI is willing to accept a deal that is in the human's favor, that's potentially open to exploitation. If the AI refuses to make the deal with reasonable use of human gold to make up the difference in tech values, that makes the ability to trade contingent on choosing relatively valuable techs to research and thus interferes with flexibility in choosing research paths. I haven't played Civ 4 enough yet and don't know its mechanics well enough to know whether that issue has been addressed adequately or not.

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by nbarclay
My one really serious concern about Civ 4's tech trading mechanics is what happens when the tech an AI researches is slightly more valuable than what a human researches. If the AI is willing to accept a deal that is in the human's favor, that's potentially open to exploitation. If the AI refuses to make the deal with reasonable use of human gold to make up the difference in tech values, that makes the ability to trade contingent on choosing relatively valuable techs to research and thus interferes with flexibility in choosing research paths. I haven't played Civ 4 enough yet and don't know its mechanics well enough to know whether that issue has been addressed adequately or not.

So far tech trading with the AI seems pretty balanced. If techs take about the same amount of beakers to research then the AI will usually trade with you. Sometimes they won't, but then that's probably due to the tech being linked to a wonder that is being built (as Sirrian mentioned). If you try to trade a tech of less value (yours) for a tech of higher value (AI's) the deal is usually refused. Sometimes gold will help make the deal work, however.

I am personally enjoying the AI in it's current form. Although, I have yet to succeed in asking the AI for help in the tech department.

[ghen]

The trades will be more favorable to you of course if the trading AI in question likes you better.. You can get some great deals from your friends to the tune of about 10-20% research difference in the traded techs.

All this is great, but it is all completely pointless to my original rant. Why can I not trade anything for anything? Its not hard to put a dollar amount on every tradeable item (well cities might be hard, but not impossible.)

If you're afraid of the human taking advantage of the trade system by going to war and breaking it, add negative diplomacy to everyone else like civ3 did. (the patched civ3.. not 1.00 which was broke here )