diplomatic trading?

[guermantes]

Do I gain/lose anything (apart from diplomatic goodwill) if someone offers me 1 corn for 1 wheat ?

[trev]

You gain diplomatic points with person you traded with, but lose points with their enemies

[trev]

Also if you have 2 wheat, you will not lose health for the wheat, but you will gain health for the corn

[guermantes]

Originally posted by trev
Also if you have 2 wheat, you will not lose health for the wheat, but you will gain health for the corn

Huh? If I have 2 wheat don't I get 2 health from them, one of which would be traded away for the corn?

[arthurdent2k]

AFAIK you only get the bonus once purely for having it. Any excess wheat etc. are for trading.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by guermantes


Huh? If I have 2 wheat don't I get 2 health from them, one of which would be traded away for the corn?

Nope. IF you have at least one wheat, your whole empire gets +1 health (+2 in any city with a granery). So if you have 2 wheat, your whole empire gets +1 health. If you trade one for corn, and now have 1 wheat and 1 corn, your whole empire now has +2 health.

[cynyck]

You are also giving the trading civ a health bonus. I will always consider how badly I need what's offered. In your example, if I am flush with health resources and my cities are next to fresh water and/or have lots of forest in their fat crosses, then I would think about refusing the trade to avoid giving someone else a health bonus.

Of course, there are other considerations at that point. Where am I in relation to the trading civ? Is she the leader? Then I will refuse to trade even if I need the bonus, look for another trading partner when its my turn, and if there are none, re-evalutate if I really need what is offered. The trading civ will most likely still need the trade at that point.

There are still other considerations. For instance, does the trading civ have a happiness resource instead, and do I need a happiness bonus?

But the overriding consideration is do I really need the bonus? Because even then, this game is really about you versus all the other civs so in a one-on-one trade your benifit has value in relation to all the other civs. While the trading civ's benefit also has value against all the other civs, I only care about how it affects me. I guess what I am trying to say is that in a trade my benefit will increase my point total (by being able to increase my pop total) against all the other civs, but if I am near the top and my trade helps number six rise to number five, I really don't care.

[TheRockit]

Interesting Yosho... I have no idea why I never realized that the health bonus from multiple instances of the same resource do not stack with each other empire-wide. Do they stack in an individual city?

[Yosho]

Originally posted by TheRockit
Interesting Yosho... I have no idea why I never realized that the health bonus from multiple instances of the same resource do not stack with each other empire-wide. Do they stack in an individual city?

Nope, the health/happiness bonus from the same resource never stack.

[couerdelion]

Very cynyckal,

The example given is an offer that I would almost always take although you do raise some important questions. What you ought to highlight is whether or not you will, at some future date need that corn. There is every chance that the corn will be traded to someone else and if you then run into health caps, you may regret throwing away one of the best sources around for health.

When it comes to health resources there are four main groups
1) Grain (Rice, Wheat, Corn)
2) Seafood (Fish, Clam, Crab)
3) Livestock (Cow, Pig, Sheep, Deer)
4) Luxury foods (Spices, Wine, Sugar)

The final health resources of Bananas is a bit of a loner.

Health bonuses for the first group are likely to be more beneficial because once you have a granary the health bonus in the city will be +2 for each of these resources. The extra bonus for group 2) comes with a harbour which not only comes later than a granary but is going to be limited to your coastal cities. The bonus for livestock comes with supermarkets so has minimal effect on any game.

In most games that I play, health caps usually start biting at some stage and, although the costs are not too serious, solving them early can save a lot of time and effort later.

It is however, important that, when looking at health, we also take into account happiness. This is a much more serious cap and, given a choice, should be addressed in preference to health problems.

Here there are a number of groups
1) Precious metals (Gold, Silver, Gems)
2) Luxury goods (Silks, Fur, Whale, Ivory)
3) Luxury foods (Spices, Wine, Sugar)
4) Cultural goods (Dyes)
5) Religious goods (Incense)
6) Late game commodities (Rock n Roll etc)

Once again I’ve put these in an order of preference that will hold generally for most of the game. Group one get the extra happy bonus when you build forges while 2) will come with markets.

But we now have a sort of ranking for both happiness and health resources. We can then rank these by desirability based on our current caps for happiness and health and with some allow for how these might change in the near future. The current position is available at a glance by going to the Civ manager screen which lists all your cities and their basic stats (which includes the happy/health levels). You will then be able to use this information to give you a simple prioritisation of those resources we need to get through trade.

We should then consider what resources we have available to trade to other civs and which ones are available for them to trade with us. For example, you might have SURPLUS of wheat(1), fish(2), cows (1), and sugar (2). This will allow you to six trades without losing the happiness and health benefits of your existing resources.

On the other side of the equation, you can see what resources other trading partners have available to trade (use diplomacy screen) so you can check down your priority list to see which of these you want most.

At this stage you will then have to go an speak to each of your potential trading partners to find out what they might need. If all they want is wheat then you are in a bit of a fix since you’ll only be able to make one trade. However, it’s likely that one of them will need sugar, another wheat etc so there’s a good chance of you making a worthwhile trade with most of your available resources.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that you might even choose to trade a resource which you do not have multiple supplies of. This might be because you prefer to receive the resource that you can get from a trade rather than the one you already have. An example of this would be a pig for rice trade. Both of these give a health bonus but the rice will give +2 health in any city with a granary so the trade is beneficial to you. Alternatively, you might be closer to happiness caps than health caps so your demand for happiness resources will be high enough for you to trade away health bonuses for happiness.

The final element to consider in trading is who you are trading with. The diplomatic playing field will have some influence over your resource trading decisions so that you will prefer certain partners to others. I would tend to ignore considerations of how other civs benefit when framing a deal. Of course, I’ll try to give them the worst deal I can (eg pigs instead of wheat, incense instead of gold), but I tend to believe that trading is one of those “must do” things in the same way as tech trading. The AI civs will trade amongst themselves anyway and they will get mutual benefits from these trades just as the would if they traded techs. The only way that you will keep up with them is to join in the trading and hopefully to trade more than your rivals.

[zabrak]

A fine analysis, couer, but I'm puzzled why you left bananas out of the luxury foods category. It behaves in exactly the same way as the other three - a native +1 happy, and an additional +1 healthy in cities with grocers. Is it because bananas, unlike the other three, tend to grow in jungles?

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by zabrak
A fine analysis, couer, but I'm puzzled why you left bananas out of the luxury foods category. It behaves in exactly the same way as the other three - a native +1 happy, and an additional +1 healthy in cities with grocers. Is it because bananas, unlike the other three, tend to grow in jungles?

Bananas are not the same as Spices, Wine and Sugar because their basic benefit is +1 health

[Overcast32]

So - I think I know the answer already, but let's say I have no luxury foods at all - I trade 1 Dye for 1 Corn. The grainaries still get the benefit even if I'm just trading for Corn, correct?

[zabrak]

Bananas are not the same as Spices, Wine and Sugar because their basic benefit is +1 health

D'oh! You're right, of course. That's what I get for playing on arid maps and not having actually had bananas since sometime in February.

[Lord Chambers]

Originally posted by Overcast32
So - I think I know the answer already, but let's say I have no luxury foods at all - I trade 1 Dye for 1 Corn. The grainaries still get the benefit even if I'm just trading for Corn, correct?

Yup.