Selling the Alphabet

[Verrucosus]

Generally speaking, tech trading is good. Even if your partner gets more from you than you get from him, the comparative advantage gained over those opponents not involved in the deal is usually worth doing it. There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes, you may want to deny a certain technology to other civilizations because you need a bit of time to use it exclusively (e.g. wonder technologies (that could allow other players to beat you to a wonder that you want) or military technologies that may (indirectly) get into enemy hands. However, as a rule, tech trading is too profitable to leave it to the other empires.

In this context, the Alphabet is a special technology, because its exclusive possession gives you a monopoly on the tech market. The choice is not between profit from tech trading and some other benefit, but between profit from selling the Alphabet now and the benefit of being able to do other tech trades while other powers cannot because they lack the Alphabet. Making this choice requires considerations of a different kind than those usually involved with the decision whether to sell a technology, so I wonder if anyone has developed a general policy on this issue.

Just in case the answer is "It depends" (as it might well be), here is some background of my current game that has prompted me to ask about this:

I play Greece on an "Inland Sea" map, Noble difficulty and marathon speed. It's around 200 AD and Greece is at the eastern coast of the sea. I have gained a tech lead because my initial scout popped two other scouts in the first villages he entered, and these three guys made lots of easy money as they circled the inland sea in the first 2000 years or so of the game. I was able to research at 100 % for much longer than I usually do, but recently troop upgrades have drained the treasury and my expansion has forced me to lower research to 60 % in order to pay maintenance. I just got "Code of Laws", so courthouses should help here.

Diplomatically, things are a little awkward right now. Asoka, in the south-west, is friendly, but everyone else (including Kublai Khan in the north-west) is cautious to furious. There are two religious groops, the Buddhist empires of India (founder), Greece and Mongolia in the east, and the Jewish empires of Egypt (founder), Aztec and Japan in the West. France (west of India) is following Hinduism which was founded there. Louis XIV is in second place behind me and at war with Asoka.

Louis just showed up in a furious mood and offered me his 1150 gold pieces for the Alphabet. Instinctively I said "no", but then I stopped to ponder and finally post here. At this point only Asoka and myself have the Alphabet, but Louis cannot get it from Asoka because of their war, so I'm enjoying a tech oligopoly at this point. It won't last forever - everyone has Writing by now -, but as long as it does, it's very nice. On the other hand, given my low research rate those 1150 gold pieces are very shiny and tempting to me. Also, if I sold the Alphabet not just to Louis, but to everyone else for a discount (in order to get their cash myself and prevent Louis from making a profit), I could make even 2000 gold from it. Well, I'm torn.

(The game description turned out a little long, but it may be helpful when discussing the Alphabet question.)

[Quillan]

My opinion is that, in this case, you are justified in selling it. Since you say that everyone else already has Writing, it's only going to be a matter of time before one of them developes Alphabet. When they do, you can be sure that civ will trade it around. My suggestion to you is to sell it to Louis for everything you can get, but do it during your turn rather than his. Then, sell it to every other civ for whatever you can as well. That way, Louis won't be able to sell it off for an increase of his own. I normally wouldn't recommend it, but almost certainly at least one of them is researching Alphabet right now.

[Arrian]

A big factor would be what you can do with that 2000 gold. If you can turn it into an immediate military advantage (say, upgrading a bunch of axes/swords to macemen), it may well be worth it. Or you could use it to jack your research back up to 100%.

It sounds like your world's diplomacy is quite fractured, so the tech trading between AIs won't be that bad.

I'd probably do it. When you do, take note of any other techs that some AIs know but others do not (ones that are likely to be traded). If you can, trade those techs too, or even gift them (this can help relations).

-Arrian

[uberfish]

Trading alphabet is actually a good move sometimes if you don't have any other good tradebait. I've had openings where I skipped a lot of basic ancient age tech in favour of getting alphabet relatively quickly, then found everyone already had writing. So it was trade alphabet around and get the entire ancient age tech tree, or waste a lot of time researching them all myself.

For 1150 gold I'd definitely sell it.

[Shaka II]

I usually don't trade alphabet until one other civ has it, as in your case. Generally the AI won't trade techs if only two civs have a tech. It could still take very long for another civ to reach alphabet, since they often research writing and then go off in other directions, but it's probably not worth taking the chance. The latest I've traded alphabet was after researching civil service, when still no one else had alphabet. I only checked diplomacy screen every 5 turns or so. They need an indicator to tell when another tech discovers alphabet.

In my present game, I discovered monarchy after alphabet, to get hereditary rule and happy faces, using it to trade up. My big break came the very turn I discovered civil service, Mansa Musa had 2,000 gold. So that along with trading for construction and currency set me up nicely. I won't sell tech below a certain level. Often the AI has only a small amount of gold to offer. In that case, I'll wait until they have more, or a tech that I need.

[couerdelion]

In this case yes

I’d agree with the others here for the simple reason that 1150 gold is a great price to get for it and if you trade on your turn you might try to sell to anyone else who has the money to buy it – I am a little confused how Louis has managed to get so much money at that stage in the game. The biggest problem with tech leads can sometimes be that other civs don’t have enough money to buy some decent techs.

There are actually a lot of techs that you might want to withhold. In addition to those you mention, others might include

Optics – If you are ahead in discovering the world with geographically separated groups
Astronomy – Keep for as long as others have trade resources that you need.
Wonders techs – Including those leading to techs giving a “first to find” advantage

The latter can be a little difficult to spot in this new multi-path tech tree. It’s particularly annoying when the Science manager is different from the tech tree sheet and even the Science manager doesn’t show all the tech routes available.

[Aginor]

Why you beeline to Alphabet and trade, trade, trade that puppy:

There are 7 civs in the game. The number of dyads (pairs of civs) is equal to N(N-1)/2 = 7(6)/2 = 21, of which you are a part of six.

You get Alphabet first. Given the number of tech choices out there, cool options for things to pick up include:

Code of Laws
Iron Working
Mathematics
Monarchy
Construction
Currency
Calendar

several of which are likely to already be out there.

Now, of course the first move is to start backfilling with the lower end techs early in the beeline in order to open up all of these lovely higher end options.

Once you've done that, you've got six dyads you can do business with. It's a simple thing to maximize which techs you get from whom in which order so that you can trade Alphabet + X for something higher order (as needed and available).

By trading Alphabet to *everybody* that just isn't crazy backward in techs, you prevent everyone concerned from getting any benefit from it other than what you give them for it. So basically they get 1 tech for 1 tech, you get 4-6, plus the backfill on the stuff you skipped along the beeline (Masonry, religious techs, Archery, Sailing, etc.)

It's by far the most effective way to make use of your early science. While everyone else benefits going forward from the ability to tech swap, you get a substantial horizontal lead at the Classical level on the field. If you develop your research properly, this should at least keep you in a parity situation going forward (particularly if you go hit Lit right away and slam the GL up before the AIs can switch over to chasing Lit).

[couerdelion]

Perhaps I should clarify what I think you are saying

Originally posted by Aginor
Why you beeline to Alphabet and trade, trade, trade that puppy

At first reading I thought you felt it was a good tech to trade. However your explanation suggests rather that you would trade “other” techs for the lower order techs and THEN trade Alphabet, hoping to trade it several times and relying on the fact that this will be a valuable tech – though why the AI doesn’t then research it if it is so valuable is beyond me.

Actually this trading technique doesn't explain why you should offer alphabet in those techs since you then allow other nations to trade. This would still be a good reason to withhold it for a while.

One problem with trading with one-nation-then-another approach is that I’ve noticed the information on the diplomacy screen remain unchanged even if the tech you have just acquired would reveal a more advanced tech that you might also want (you can’t acquire Currency and then find out that your rival also has Calendar). This might just be that I don’t know what the diplomacy tech trade options reveal but I know it doesn’t reveal everything that I have which they need. It seems that it’s just those things that they can research. My guess is that you might offer Paper, say, for Astronomy but not then trade Education since your AI civ does not know that he has this until their turn comes up.

[-SafaN-]

the main question of this thread is the alpha for cash trade, i agree that using alpha to get other techs is always good if u can fill the whole classical era with it. For gold its another question

On the last posts: i also noticed that when u trade for eg bronze working u won't be able to trade for iron working THAT TURN. Even not with other nations. Its like the recalculation of available techs only happens once each turn and not after every trade. Foreign advisor says something like "not able to trade"

[Shr3dZ]

I would prolly trade it too, the only thing that makes me consider it further is that youre playing at marathon speed, which means you could hold this advantage for quite some time still no?

[uberfish]

The computer trades alphabet around less than you'd think, I have traded it to 3 out of 5 civs on my continent and still had it available as a trade option to the other two a good ten turns later. I suspect this is because most of the AI players tend to research quite broadly in the ancient era, and thus don't have anything good enough to offer the other AI players for it.

[Calvin Vu]

Besides trading, Alphabet gives you a leg up on Literature and the critically important GL. If you're fairly secure that you will get the GL then you should trade. If you haven't even started on researching Literature yet then it's tough to decide. You might lose the GL to Egypt and may very well lose the game.

Usually, I only trade Alphabet after I have built the GL (or close to it) and have already got much more advanced techs. I could never sell any techs for even half the amount you mentioned though so I have no idea what I would decide in that case, probably a "sell" since Louis couldn't be your main tech competitor if he has that much gold lying around.

I just started getting away from playing Financial civs and am playing Greek myself at Monarch level (at least that saves me from that moody and crazy Alexander ). I don't remember the exact year (it should still be in the BC) but I've already got Alphabet, CoL, CS, Paper, Mathematics and researching Calendar to help raise the happiness cap before going with Education (with Oracles, GL and NE already built and yet another GS just popped up, I'm way ahead of the rest of the AIs to wait for Calendar in a trade). When trading with Louis (yeap, I ran into him too), even though one or two other civs already got Alphabets and I don't care much about monopolizing it any more, I still trade CoL instead of Alphabet for his Pottery even though CoL costs more. That "good deal" will keep him (most powerful civ) happy for a while since I refused to give him an expensive tech previously (-2 diplomatic points) so he won't send his axmen and archers to my border.

That's another thing to consider. Louis probably has a big army. If he is right next to your border, you should build up a good diplomacy with him, including giving him some cheap techs for free. I don't know how he manages to get that much gold !! Probably he doesn't reasearch at all due to the war.

BTW, I played as Greek on a large Inland sea map yesterday also. In-sea map seems to be much bigger than pangae so itwas quite a chore managing some 40 cities after eliminating the Roman and the Malinese on the western side of the map. I didn't even want to think about going for a domination victory just to save the hassle of moving troops around.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
I would prolly trade it too, the only thing that makes me consider it further is that youre playing at marathon speed, which means you could hold this advantage for quite some time still no?

Speed is relative for most building and research as far as I know, but it can make a big difference on the ground with military units with marathon. So, if you have a tech advantage such as construction, and the AI can't trade for it to make catapults, that's very nice.

couerdelion - I think it's necessary to research a parallel tech, such as monarchy to trade for the upper level techs like mathematics, iron working, and horse backriding. The AI usually has mathematics by the time you are in this situation, so mathematics is not a good one to research. It's the one to trade for, along with the others, backfilling entirely, and opening the door to research construction or code of laws. The AI will research calendar and currency for you, so usually there's no need to go for those. But construction I like for catapults.

As to what path to take for alphabet, I guess it depends on what starting tech and strat you're going for. Firaxis did a great job introducing the variety of ways to get there.

As far as why the AI doesn't put a priority on alphabet, I don't know, but it allows a way to level the playing field in the early game. I like it this way.

[Caligula 37 AD]

Originally posted by Calvin Vu
I don't know how he manages to get that much gold !! Probably he doesn't reasearch at all due to the war.

I'd guess he just lost a wonder, or cashed in a Great Merchant. The AIs don't usually have a lot of dough, but I've seen it too.
- C

[Yosho]

For that much gold? Sure. See if you can sell it to everyone, though.

(shrug) One game, I made a beeline for Alphabet, hoping to start trading first, but I had some economic problems, an expensive war, and by the time I got there, I got Alphabet first, but the AI players were way ahead in everything else. So I just sold alphabet to everyone, and got 5 techs and some gold for it, which got me caught up in the tech race.

(shrug) It's all situational, but there are pleanty of times it's worthwhile to trade a tech.