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

[mdrago]

Great, i will take a look in a couple of hours when i get home!

[mdrago]

Ok RJM, i just looked at your game.

The summary:
- 3 cities
- 5 pop total
- no army

Things that need to be worked on in order to stay competitive:
- the Tech issue! (the most difficult, by far)
- the war problem... if someone is going to declare war, there will be serious problems

But i don't know why i'm telling you something you already know

The problem is "how" to work in these points!

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by mdrago
Ok RJM, i just looked at your game.

The summary:
- 3 cities
- 5 pop total
- no army

Things that need to be worked on in order to stay competitive:
- the Tech issue! (the most difficult, by far)
- the war problem... if someone is going to declare war, there will be serious problems

But i don't know why i'm telling you something you already know

The problem is "how" to work in these points!

An accurate summary, but I would expect Blake or Dr Spike to post a save that's better than this.

I attempted to protect Rome's developments (particularly the corn and the gems mine) with a ring of archers based on wooded hills or using the river for protection. That worked fine as long as the barbs took the bait, but from time to time a barb unit slipped through. I had to attack it, and therefore suffered some losses. Incidentally, I'm not sure how good or bad my casulties were - I lost 2 warriors (one of which was the initial warrior that I lost to a bear while exploring) and 5 archers in the process of killing 10 axemen, 17 archers and 13 warriors. In my normal games I wouldn't experience anything like those losses, but on the other hand, I wouldn't meet so many barbs.

Anyone who has more experience than me at exploiting pop whipping will produce units more efficiently which will allow other uses for the resources. Some cottages would have been good, but protecting them would have been difficult. Perhaps I should have been willing to chop a couple of forests.

I look forward to seeing other people's efforts.

RJM

[mdrago]

mmm... no more brave players around?

[rah]

Maybe this weekend.

[Arrian]

My computer would wet itself if presented with those settings. It can handle most of the settings, but Huge 17civs would be brutal.

Plus, I've never played above Monarch, and have only played Marathon once or twice. Given that, I'll pass.

-Arrian

[Blake]

Here's my 1AD save.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=6937_BlakeAD-0001.zip

The world has split into Conf (the big block, led by Korea) and Hindu (the small block, led by Mansa Musa). I decided to side with Conf because it spread to my cities and my neighbors were mostly conf and I fear Monty/Shaka (especially both of them at once) much more than Napoleon.

Anyway just before 1AD I found an American city and since absolutely no-one liked him (except Mansa Musa who I'd already flipped off and Wang Kon who likes me lots and is pacifist and always trades techs), so there was this exposed American city I razed for the cash, unit exp and so I can extort something out of Washington later. Unfortunately closed Mali borders prevented me killing more American cities (no interest in conquest, just want to burn cities for cash and exp and some sword-point research).

Anyway Napoleon is most likely coming for me, but I have designs on his cities anyway and since he's no longer Aggressive he can't go toe-to-toe with Praetorians.

Diplomacy is utterly critical, you need to pick on the weak nerdy ones who no-one likes, otherwise wait for an AI to attack and then beat the snot out of them. Avoid declaring wars if it'll cause +1 with your potential friends.

So my plan is pretty much smack Napoleon around until he sees sense, and then crack open Mansa Musa until he cries uncle and gives me tech, that should expose more American cities so Washington gets to enjoy Round Two, and after that Napoleon will probably be ready for another beatdown and then Mansa Musa will have some more tech for me to extort... Since those 3 are hindu's no-one will care that I'm beating them up and I can probably bribe Shaka/Monty onto them to stop them harming me.

The biggest problem will be a simultaneous Shaka/Monty dogpile, but it's much more likely that Shaka will go after Mansa, Monty will probably attack me unless I bribe him off but Monty is a joke.

Augustus is an unstoppable conquering juggernaut once, Praets and cheap courthouses and free culture... so nice.

[Blake]

Here's a screenshot (rotated 90 degrees so it fits better):



Notes on being successful:
I moved Rome onto the hill on the river, since that would still have both corn and gems in radius. Rome got whipped A LOT to fight off barbs, as long as it could work both the corn and gems I wasn't too worried about whipping it. Being on a hill is always good although this move was not important.

My second city, Bananasprinkles was founded ON the jungle sugar, this is the ONLY possible spot to put a second city, that spot has +1f in the city tile and brings in corn and bananas (farmable) and the gems, with so much food in Bananas it greatly boosted my growth (Bananas was alternately whipped and then stalled to train workers when there was too much whip anger).

My 3rd city was Ricies, founded ON the rice in the jungle - note that I sent out a lot of scouting warriors to find such sites! the reason for founding on the rice is that it gets that extra food in the city so much faster. Upon border expansions it could work a grassland forest, the ivory got camped for +1 happy everywhere and later with the jungles cut down Ricies became an excellent city - but until then it mostly just claimed and protected the ivory and surrounds (I whipped an archer out of it to help protect that area).

Antium came next for what should be REALLY obvious reasons, IRON IRON IRON IRON PRAETORIANS! Again the scouting paid off with the iron being revealed. With the Pigs and Iron Mine it quickly became my military pump and has done nothing but focus on basic infrastructure and then pump out praets - it has no Library despite them being cheap. Note also that I built a road to Korea out the top of Antium - this road was PRETTY DARN IMPORTANT so I could get trade with Korea and it turned out it let Conf spread to me! Without that road I'd be in a bad position.

Next up, Cumae. I founded Cumae soon after researching Iron Working, it has three purposes:
1) Work the gems there.
2) CHOP AN ARMY OF PRAETS FROM THE FOREST, always try to claim a large forest if one presents itself, the chopped units will do great work. The city itself is a joke so wont need the health.
3) Secure that area and help take the pressure off Ricies which is already bordering Monty and Shaka! Without Cumae Ricies would additionally be bordering Mansa Musa. I also built a road to Mansa Musa from Cumae, which let me trade and let Hinduism in. That didn't turn out to be important but it's good to have options.

Final city is Neapolis, which claims Rice and Horses. I founded it mostly for the Horses but I also didn't want another civ (probably Korea) muscling in on Bananas, the site will be plenty profitable with mass cottages and it has ample forests for some chopping.

At this point I probably wont found any more cities except maybe one near Bananas to claim the forest in that area, mostly I intend to let the clear the jungle and I'll just come in and take the built up cities with Praets. Key techs are Construction (catapults, elephants), Currency (economy), Calendar (resources) and Code of Laws (courthouses), I'll probably self-research a couple and extort the others out of praetorian victims.

[rjmatsleepers]

Good stuff, Blake!

I need some time to absorb it, but I've got a feeling I'll learn a lot from this.

(And zipping the save - why didn't I think of that )

RJM

[Blake]

Update:

After a few turns I notice that Napoleon no longer "hAS enough on his hands" meaning he's NOT coming to get me anymore .
I check diplomacy and it turns out that Mansa Musa has no friends - err, I mean his only friends are people who already hate me . Normally Mansa Musa's Skirmishers cause some pause, but Praets don't care about skirmishers and in any case the larger armies of a warmonger can present more difficulty than a few Skirmishers, so my mighty Praets thunder into Mali territory and start taking cities left, right and center. I don't burn them because they have good positions or will create shields against French aggression. I capture a lot of workers in the opening moves and set them all to chopping out more praets.

I bribe Shaka onto Mansa Musa for the price of Alphabet, considered doing monty too but decided to leave Monty low-tech for trading purposes...

my Praets push into Maliland with impunity, after plowing through some Mali cities they discover America who had been blessed by the starting point gods and was playing OCC , he was literally left with just his capital after I'd burnt the American city earlier. I put him out of his misery at the loss of 2 praets, I would've liked to extort something but you can't extort anything without taking cities and he only had the one city... So RIP America. I kept Washington because it had mad seafood.

The Mali core is finished off shortly later, with the mali capital dying without fuss. Unfortunately Mansa Musa STILL wont give me a real tech for peace. I finish research Construction the old fashioned way, Monty didn't have it yet so I managed to trade Construction+210g for Calendar (w00t!) and my next tech is set to Compass (it's great to trade around). My research was done through a combination of build research and gold from city sacks - my economy had long since redlined.

Napoleon declares war on me (like clockwork) just after I was finishing off Mali, one city is ceded to him with the Praetorian retreating, but the next two cities are both on plains hills and before Napoleon had even started thinking about how to continue the war, there is over a dozen Praetorians on that frontline .

Mansa Musa had finally ran out of cities for me to take and STILL wouldn't cough up Currency but I knew he was close to the breaking point, I put a single turn of research into Currency and that lowered it enough that he would give me currency for peace. You know what Currency means right?
Forums . Marketplaces are always critical with a redlined economy and Forums are a bit nicer again. Pretty much all of my cities start building Forums, but I don't whip them because my cities need to grow.

My first GS is born, I could have used him to lightbulb Compass which no-one else had - that would've let me trade for Code of Laws and maybe Metal Casting - but I felt no urgent need to get trade fodder so made an Academy in Rome (if I didn't have Forums to build, then lightbulbing Compass and trading for both Currency and Code of Laws would've been a winning move).

Napoleon is rather surprised to find that the civilization that crushed the Mali and Americans without breaking a sweat is proving to be no pushover, in fact Napoleon discovered that he was losing cities to the elite Praetorian forces.

Compass came in, funded in part by French donations to the Roman Empire (city sack bonus ), Wang Kon had COmpass already. I trade Compass to Monty and Shaka for Code of Laws and 1200 gold. The first round of courthouse whippings increases my GPP from 51 to 91 in a single turn.

Napoleon loses another core city to Rome and I decide that I've beaten as much as I can out of him - I give him peace for a mere 720g. I want to focus on infrastructure buildup before resuming the beatings, I have courthouses, forums, colosseums and soon Forges to build everywhere.

Here is the tech screen at 636AD.



Note that I'm researching Metal Casting at 100% research and can sustain this pace for at least another tech (I have that much extorted and swindled gold stowed away).

Now tell me who tech trading is benefiting more
Note: Most AI's have Monarchy along the priesthood line and one has Theology, I don't think any have Feudalism yet although Wang Kon is as far as Philosophy. Hannibal has Metal Casting but no Compass. Basically I'm at near enough to tech parity - the techs I don't have just don't benefit me. There's a whole stack of AI's backwards enough to buy my techs or for me to beat gold/tech out of them, so I can sustain high tech rate indefinitely now.

edit: Now I want to say that this kind of war of oppression wouldn't work without tech trading - I'd be stuck at 0% economy and I wouldn't have been able to trade for Calendar, CoL and Currency, I also wouldn't have been able to extort/swindle huge stacks of gold for deficit research. Tech trading/bullying is uber powerful for warmongers and for anyone with an expansive empire with an insatiable appetite for gold to fund research. This isn't so true in Better AI where the AI's no longer let themselves get swindled for all their gold, but even then it's pretty handy with extortion and such...

[mdrago]

Impressive!!!
Still can't believe it!!! Even reading 3 times you explanation, i don't know how you do it!!!

Looks like the trick is extorsion

I will try the map again following your same path, altough I'm not a warmonger, but looks like it's the way to go...

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Blake
Update:
edit: Now I want to say that this kind of war of oppression wouldn't work without tech trading - I'd be stuck at 0% economy and I wouldn't have been able to trade for Calendar, CoL and Currency, I also wouldn't have been able to extort/swindle huge stacks of gold for deficit research. Tech trading/bullying is uber powerful for warmongers and for anyone with an expansive empire with an insatiable appetite for gold to fund research.

Your game is a very nice demonstration of the argument that tech trading favours humans on tougher maps/levels.

[rjmatsleepers]

I have now had a chance to look at Blake's position at AD 1. (It will take a bit longer to learn all the lessons). Despite Dr Spike's comment, I don't think Blake's AD 1 save says anything about tech trading - he is still researching alphabet.

I was surprised how close my score was to Blake's - OK, I know about the limitations of the score, but none the less I was surprised. I suspect this was because of my rather promiscuous tech trading which increased my score (getting me closer to Blake), but increased the scores of the AI civs even more (taking them further away from me). I also suspect that it says more about my tech trading skills than it does about who benefits from tech trading.

Another key difference is that Blake's tech research is much more closely aligned to his play strategy than mine. I was frequently trying to play a builder style evolved at noble level in circumstances that didn't suit it.

Another difference that may or may not be significant is that I failed to discover the iron that he is exploiting. I'm not sure whether this made much difference in practice.

It might be interesting to replay my start, but I find playing marathon on this map too slow to make me want to do it again.

RJM

[mdrago]

Your game is a very nice demonstration of the argument that tech trading favours humans on tougher maps/levels.

How can you say that when Blake dosen't even have Alpabet yet?

Based on Blake last comment, he has to research everything for himself and by Alphabet time the only thing left for him is the Mysticism line. All the 'trades' where made in exchange for peace...

I will say that this game is a nice early demostration that this kind of scenario can be conquered... but it's soon to know yet.

Don't forget the fact that, by 1AD, his at the end of the score table (well, except for Washington, but his nearly dead).

But, being playing this kind of map a thousand times, I can say that Blake save is impressive.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by mdrago


How can you say that when Blake dosen't even have Alpabet yet?

I haven't looked at the save - I'm basing my comment entirely on the passage I quoted from the write-up, which looks pretty unambiguous.