Continents and Techs

[Golden Bear]

I've been working on winning at Prince level, using some of the many good suggestions in Vel's threads - chopping to expand... etc.

I usually play continents and either epic or normal speeds.

I have been finding that when I play continents, I do well at keeping in touch with tech advances and even leading my neighbors...

Then we find the next continent and I am suddenly 3 to 6 techs behind. In response, I am now playing Pangea and am 4 turns away from launching my spaceship - around 1940.

How do people deal with this separate continent tech-jumping situation?

[Yosh]

I wouldn't worry too much about tech differences in terms of individual techs; any level above Noble pretty much gurantees that you will be behind on total # of techs!

The key is to have the *right* techs for your strategy - the beeline, in other words. Focus on the techs that you HAVE to have for your strategy (war techs for the warmonger, trade techs for the financier, etc), then backfill the techs you miss with trades - that one tech you just finished could (and if you are beelining correctly) be worth 3-5 older ones from the AI!

The reason you are "behind" on the continents is that you aren't trading with the civs that you can't see, while perhaps the other civs on your continent DO see them, and are trading tech! What this means is that you cannot neglect exploration - once you get carvels, it behooves you to construct a few and send them out exploring, if only to make contact with other civs!

I hope this helps, and anyone else please feel free to correct me where/if I'm wrong!

[cal_01]

A potential warning: many tech trades with the AI will be lop-sided in that they won't accept trade techs with equal beakers.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by cal_01
A potential warning: many tech trades with the AI will be lop-sided in that they won't accept trade techs with equal beakers.

Under normal circumastances: Yes.
This depends on what techonlogy you try to trade with.
In most of my games, the repetitive pattern seem to be that almost all A.I players have several Tech I do not have. Theese include Monarchy, Meditation, Sailing and Iron Working The only tech I have they don't have is Alphabet. In most cases, the A.I will trade me techs worht MORE beakers than what Alphabet is worth witch could be due to the fact I'm the only one having that tech or whatever...

[xenophile58]

Isn't Alphabet the tech required to enable tech trading?. If the AIs don't have it then they can only trade techs with civs (including you) who do. That might be why they are prepared (for once!) to give you the benefit of the trade?