Tech trading is / is not a bore (delete as appropriate)

[Dominae]

Originally posted by couerdelion
So why would barbarians be such a major problem in this game?

The Huge map and the local geography in this particular scenario mean that you have to deal with a steady stream of Barbs in this game. It feels a lot like (exactly like) Raging Barbs. Compound this with the fact that there's Jungle everywhere and no metals within reach, and you have an interesting early-game to play out.

The above is probably a spoiler. However, since the purpose of this exercise is to determine if the scenario is winnable, spoilers should not skew the results any. I myself started over after making the mistake of trying this one out late at night: half an hour into the game and a billion clicks later, I had fallen asleep.

What is even more confusing to me is that the three games you talk about all seem to be running into problems with barbarians while your gripe here is that the AI will never trade with the human on a “fair” basic. I usually find that barbarian problems are effectively over by the time I have Alphabet.

p.s. Allowing animals to kill a settler is a basic mistake. Someone playing at emperor level must clearly be punching above their weight if they let this happen

You should probably try the scenario out before making such statements. mdrago is generalizing by saying that all Emperor games are too difficult, which we know not to be true. But he's given us a particularly tough scenario to prove him wrong with, and (in the interests of a fun challenge) I think we have to respect that.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers


You need to capitalise three of the letters - CivWarlordsSave

It should load then.

RJM

Thanks - didn't know it was case sensitive.

[Blake]

I haven't found this start to be all that challenging. I started out with worker first to mine the gems asap before jungle spreads over them. Then growing to size 4 while pumping out warriors, at size 4 I trained a settler to settle on the sugar (being sentried by 3 warriors to keep barbs at bay) then grew to size 5 and whipped a settler to settle the rice/ivory site to the west.

My tech path has gone: Agriculture, The Wheel, Hunting, Archery. On Marathon, I just don't like spending like 30 turns hoping for copper and then another 15 turns hooking the copper up... I just get archers and whip out as many as needed to kill all the barbs that try to wreck my improvements, 1 pop gets whipped into 2 archers so you can get archers really cheaply.

After that Bronze Working, Pottery, Iron Working. I haven't finished IW yet so I don't know what the metal situation is, but I do have a strong core of Archers who have been cutting down any barbs.

If there is Iron, I'll get Praets, if there isn't I'll just head straight to Construction while continuing to hold the line with archers. IW is needed to cut the jungle anyway.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Blake
My tech path has gone: Agriculture, The Wheel, Hunting, Archery. On Marathon, I just don't like spending like 30 turns hoping for copper and then another 15 turns hooking the copper up... I just get archers and whip out as many as needed to kill all the barbs that try to wreck my improvements, 1 pop gets whipped into 2 archers so you can get archers really cheaply.

That speaks to my inexperience with Marathon: if you beeline for the metals, Barbs will be all over you before you can do anything about it. This is probably one of the few games I've played where Archery seems to be a necessity.

Good call on the Gems - did you reload to do that, or figure it out the first around (at the expense of farming the Corn)? If the latter, I'm impressed!

[mdrago]

I'm really happy to see that someone is actually trying to conquer this monster!!!
I can't help myself feeling like an idiot for not finishing the scenario, but is reasurring to see that actualy "someone else" is saying that this isn't a "piece of cake"
And no, the "Raging barbs" is not turned "on", its "off".

For what Blake has told, i can now identify 2 mistakes i been making:
- Not getting archers rigth away
- Creating the 1st settler to quickly

In the last try i spend a lot of time going for Poly (to found Hinduism), and perphaps there is the problem too... as you know, founding a religion have BIG advantages that really helps in this kind of scenario... it's to tempting and, Hinduism and Judaism are the only chances you have to found a religion, coz later you fall behind in the tech race.
I really hate to wait to much to train the 1st settler, but looks like i will need to try the Blake way.

I will give it a shot tomorrow nigth.

Thanks Blake & Dominae for trying!!!
Spike, couerdelion and RJM, i hope to hear from all off you soon

[rjmatsleepers]

Here is my rather feable effort. After getting BW from a hut, I realised that there was no copper nearby, so I went for Archery, hoping to get Horse Archers in due course. My research path was Agriculture, Hunting, Archery, The Wheel, Pottery, Writing, Alphabet and Horseback Riding. After discovering Alphabet there was an orgy of trading for Mysticism, Sailing, Masonry, Animal Husbandry, Iron Working, Meditation, Priesthood, and eventually Polytheism, Mathematics and Monotheism.

If I continue I will aim to establish a city north east of Cumae (try to get access to the iron) and capture Minoan - by force or culture.

I must say I find marathon very slow

RJM

Edit - I can't attach the save; too big! So most of the above won't mean anything. Perhaps I can do a screenie.

[couerdelion]

Actually, I don’t think I can test this out. I avoid Marathon games because they take too long and Huge maps always used to make my computer complain. It would take too long to get anywhere with this.

My lack of experience with Marathon would certainly have seen me missing the point about Archery. It’s rather obvious now that it’s been mention but I see now that Marathon gives a more serious barbarian threat than Epic simply because all military aspects in Marathon are strengthened and Barbarians are probably the strongest military in the early part of the game. So it might give the impression of a raging barbarians game which would require the sorts of tactics you use in a standard RB game.

Sorry if you took anything the wrong way. Although, I still believe that losing a settler to animals is the sort of mistake that you should only make once. Other units should make sure that a square is safe if a settler is going to finish there. I know that getting hit by a two-move animal is unlucky but there are enough of those animals. The loss of a settler is just too much to risk to purely random events.

[mdrago]

RJM, did you actually manage to get any of these techs you mention, i mean, the AI trade with you? If so, what where the "prices"?
I will also like to know how is the score in your game rigth now to get an idea of the progress.
Thanks!

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by mdrago
RJM, did you actually manage to get any of these techs you mention, i mean, the AI trade with you? If so, what where the "prices"?
I will also like to know how is the score in your game rigth now to get an idea of the progress.
Thanks!

I got all the techs I mentioned in trades. The first seven came straight away; the others later. Mostly I had to swap a tech at around a 40% discount - ie if it cost me 1000 to research it, I got something worth 600. Writing, Alphabet and Iron Working were the main techs I traded with.

My score at AD 1 is 226, compared with 417 for Napoleon who is the leader among the civs I have met. I am bottom, a little behind Tok. I have no religion. The only religion among the civs I have met is Confucianism.

If a warlord save is too big to post, comparison games will be rather difficult!

RJM

[mdrago]

Looks like Alphabet it's a key tech for the AI and that's why you only get a -40% penalty, which, in my experience, it's rather "fair".

Do you think you'll be able to exchange any techs in the future now that everyone have Alphabet?

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by mdrago
Looks like Alphabet it's a key tech for the AI and that's why you only get a -40% penalty, which, in my experience, it's rather "fair".

Do you think you'll be able to exchange any techs in the future now that everyone have Alphabet?

Three of the exchanges took place long after everyone had Alphabet. Currently, five civs are willing to exchange techs. If I could discover something they wanted, the trades would continue.

As far as the other civs are concerned, we haven't discovered currency yet, but in due course I expect they will buy my techs.

RJM

[couerdelion]

That sort of tech trading, particularly giving Alphabet, doesn’t sound much like the trades I would have made unless I knew that this was owned by at least one other AI. By giving this to the AI you lose your monopoly on trading which is the whole point of researching it quite early. You can then use the monopoly to acquire further tech monopolies which you can leverage for a tech lead.

I’m not sure about the 40% discount also. At around the time where you start to trade there may be times when you have to do this to open up more valuable trades but it seems a bit of a steep discount to me at this stage.

Personally, I have found that the early tech trades have been a fair bit more profitable than even this and would be interested if others are getting better deals and managing to maintain their trading monopoly.

As a side issue, if you can maintain the monopoly then currency also becomes a bit more important because you can sweep up any lose change that the AI has amassed in the early game. I usually spend this supporting further tech advances so the money soon disappears. But 60% would probably be around a minimum price I would sell a tech unless I had lost my trading monopoly and by selling the tech to them I can avoid AI trading.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by couerdelion
That sort of tech trading, particularly giving Alphabet, doesn’t sound much like the trades I would have made unless I knew that this was owned by at least one other AI. By giving this to the AI you lose your monopoly on trading which is the whole point of researching it quite early. You can then use the monopoly to acquire further tech monopolies which you can leverage for a tech lead.

I’m not sure about the 40% discount also. At around the time where you start to trade there may be times when you have to do this to open up more valuable trades but it seems a bit of a steep discount to me at this stage.

Personally, I have found that the early tech trades have been a fair bit more profitable than even this and would be interested if others are getting better deals and managing to maintain their trading monopoly.

As a side issue, if you can maintain the monopoly then currency also becomes a bit more important because you can sweep up any lose change that the AI has amassed in the early game. I usually spend this supporting further tech advances so the money soon disappears. But 60% would probably be around a minimum price I would sell a tech unless I had lost my trading monopoly and by selling the tech to them I can avoid AI trading.

You're probably right. I'm more used to playing at a lower level where I use the tech trades to help me through to CoL and CS. I generally take whatever I'm offered in addition to the tech I actually want. So if it's the only way to get Priesthood (for example), I'll trade alphabet for it. In this case, I felt that if I didn't trade fairly quickly, I would fall further behind and another civ would get the benefit. I've played at marathon so rarely, that I have no feel for the time scales involved.

As far as the Alphabet monopoly is concerned, I know that a lot of people take the same view as you. My experience is that I get more benefit from making the trade than trying to maintain a monopoly. How soon are you willing to trade Alphabet - as soon as one of the civs no longer wants it? Presumably this is a few turns before they will discover it themselves.

As far as currency is concerned, I felt that I had little chance of researching it in the near future

RJM

[mdrago]

RJM, any chances that you post the save?
It'll be great to take a look

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by mdrago
RJM, any chances that you post the save?
It'll be great to take a look

I tried to post the save, but it exceeds the permitted size limit.

RJM

Edit

Appaarently Warlords saves are not allowed in the files section, but I have changed the extension to fool the system. You will have to change it back to open it in Warlords.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/24032_mdragoAD-0001.Civ4SavedGame