Trade With Me, Damnit!

[maxcavsm]

I'm playing noble/large as the Arabs. I'm going for a cultural victory. I bee-lined and founded three religions, sped up to Alphabet to start tech trading, and the only other guy I have contact with on my massive continent (actually, the only guy ON the content) won't tech trade with me. I keep getting the "We don't want to trade this tech at this time."

I finally got currency and started selling him MY tech for all of his gold, but he still won't part with his tech. He's pissed at me because 1) our borders are touching and 2) he doesn't like any of my religions. I'm assuming that's why he's not working with me.

I even opened my borders to him, but still nothing. Are there any other tricks that I can use to get him to trade these techs to me so I can get caught up? I'm having to learn things like "fishing" and "metal casing" instead of continuing up the chain.

[xenophile58]

Change to his religion. Missionary him until he changes to one of yours. Wait until he's built whatever wonder is associated with the tech. War and conquest/raze until he wants to give stuff away for peace. Find the rest of the world (and missionary them).

[maxcavsm]

Ah, thank you. That should help things.

[kotaro24]

Your neighbor's name isn't Tokugawa by chance? He's known for being difficult to trade with.

[Willem]

It's all about diplomacy. If they like you they'll trade. Switching to their religion makes a big differenc in the early game, though it will still take some time to get on their good side after that.

[IVZanIV]

If the technology you are attempting to trade for gives a wonder which the AI has not built yet, they have a tendancy not to trade it just so they can get that head start on the wonder. If this is not the case, I apologize.

[CerberusIV]

It's not just techs that give wonders the AI won't trade, the problem seems to be ANY tech that one AI has and it doesn't know anyone else with that tech. I'm stuck on a continent with Cyrus, he's adopted my religion and relations are good but he won't trade ANY techs (including horseback riding - which doesn't give a wonder - and I don't have horses to take advantage of it anyway).

I get the impression that the AI will only trade techs that a certain number of other civs have. If so that is stupid when there are 2 civs on an isolated continent. If Cyrus doesn't trade with me he has to research ALL his techs, as I do.

I hope this gets altered in a patch so that an AI isolated with the human player is a bit less reluctant to trade techs when it has no contact with anyone else.

[Hauptman]

(including horseback riding - which doesn't give a wonder - and I don't have horses to take advantage of it anyway).

Horseback writing is a military ONLY tech. The ONLY thing you could do with it is attack him, so that is why he wont trade it.

The AI cheats, it knows whether its the first to a tech, even if it doesnt know anyone else out there. so in effect, even if trapped on an isl with you, it knows when horseback riding isnt all that important anymore for the rest of the world.

[Vynd]

I've had a similar experience where I started out an archipelago game in between Mao and Tokugawa. I could do much expansion so I concentrated on wonders and did the whole Oracle CS Slingshot thing. Both Tokugawa and Mao were pleased with me, had no border issues, and shared my religion. I figured they'd be delighted to trade me stuff like hunting and bronze working to get my Alphabet, Code of Laws, and of course Civil Service. No dice.

Mao and Tokugawa had pretty much identical techs. So this wasn't an issue of "I'm the only one with this tech so I won't trade it." They were in contact with each other, so it wasn't some sort of "I won't trade with my only competition" issue either. So I figure that, like Kotaro24 said, some leaders just don't like to trade techs. Both of them eventually came around, but only many turns later when opportunities for trading weren't as good.

[gunkulator]

It seems like even the difficult AIs still trade amongst themselves. What annoys me is that I'm out of the loop. Once you get even a little behind and have nothing to trade, they all zoom ahead. I may be able to out-research 1 or 2 AIs, but not all of them.

In Civ3, the more civs that knew a tech, the cheaper it was to research. Civ4 needs this.

[maxcavsm]

The first time, no, it was Saladin.
The second time I tried, I did everything required to get into his good graces, and it turned out to be Tokugawa. I didn't realize how tough he was to deal with until I just checked this today and saw someone talk about him.

And here I thought I was doing something wrong.

I ended up starting over again, and trying a third time, and this time with Monty, still had the same problem. Guess it's just not that easy.

[nbarclay]

One thing that's worked for me at times when I've wanted to make deals and an AI wasn't interested, if I have enough tech lead over the AI in question to be willing to take the chance, is to give an AI a relatively inexpensive tech in an effort to improve relations enough that the AI will be willing to trade. Successes are somewhat sporadic, but they do happen occasionally, probably especially when the AI and I hadn't previously had any deals to make a trade relationship a favorable factor in the AI's attitude toward me.

Nathan

[Crossfire]

gunkulator, techs do get cheaper the more times they have been researched. You do often need to gift the AI a few things before he will start trading with you. This is especially true of civs like Tokugawa. If you have paper researched, your world map is a great gift. The AIs usually scout really well anyway so I figure I am not giving much away anyway. You can also gift small amounts of gold away to get on their good sides.