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

[Steve Clark]

That's interesting, thanks. Does that mean the strategy of racing ahead on a military line and backfilling the early techs with trades is not a good one? I understand now that it would lead to WFYABTA, which how I have been hitting the tech wall after Rifle. It sounds like it would be better to go back and research those yourselves when they get 1-3 turns or buy them.

What good would Alphabet do (when you are the only one with it) if it you don't recommend trading Writing for Meditation and Sailing? It seems that by the time you get Currency, they would be getting to getting Alphabet anyways.

I think I need to go back and re-read your test game write up here to really understand the trading strategy.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Blake
Something very important about tech trading is "We fear you are becoming too advanced" WFYABTA is caused by the NUMBER OF TECHS YOU RECEIVE IN TRADE, it is not based on the cost of the techs, or how many you trade to the AI, it's simply the number of techs you receive from AI's. So NEVER receive a tech like Meditation in trade, not even as a freebie, ideally don't ever receive anything cheaper than Currency. Instead trade techs for gold as much as possible, since selling tech for gold doesn't hit WFYABTA.
At higher difficulty levels know you'll hit WFYABTA regardless, there are two ways to override it - one is that Mansa Musa has a VERY high WFYABTA limit, he'll nearly always trade techs. The other way is that friendly relationships entirely overrides WFYABTA, so having friendly tech trade partners is a good thing.

This is interesting. Does this mean "Total techs received" or "Total given by the civ in question". The WFYABTA seems to be specific to a civ so there seems little problem with gathering up Masonry, Fishing, Hunting, Mysticism from one civ, if other techs can be acquired elsewhere.

I rarely see this message but often acquire lots of lower level techs at a certain point in the game.

[Blake]

It's total techs received, regardless of who you received them from (note: Gifts and Extortion doesn't count). Some Civs just have higher thresholds (infamously, Mansa Musa has the highest). And friendly relations overrides it, so if you habitually get friendly relations you wont be hurt by it much.

[couerdelion]

So I can only presume that the limit is quite high because I rarely see it these days and will often trade a large number of ancient era techs.

[DrSpike]

It also scales with difficulty if I recall the detailed study at CFC correctly.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Blake
The main advantage of Alphabet is that it lets you bully techs out of your victim. Currency has many advantages, just one of them is bullying gold out of your victims and/or selling tech for gold, another is marketplaces which are an excellent investment if your science% is less than 50%ish and/or if you need the happy, the final is +1 trade route which really does help.

I don't disagree with this, but think it is worth adding for newer players the trading is actually the key advantage not the bullying per se.

WFYABTA doesn't always play a huge role.

[Blake]

Well this thread had moved more to trading at higher difficulties. At lower difficulties it matters a whole lot less what you do because the game is far more forgiving.

[DrSpike]

Well he did volunteer that he was starting a new prince game, so the most helpful thing is to tailor advice to that I'd say.

[Steve Clark]

I think the key question I have now is how to get the backfills while I am keep ahead on the military techs. I understand not researching techs you wouldn't use (for their units or buildings) but at some point, you have to have them in order to get the pre-quals for the mid-game techs. In looking at the analysis from my logs, I keep seeing the tech wall at Rifles and I think it was due to WFYABTS - from trading 1 good tech for 4 early ones. I can minimize that but it remains to be seen how it will affect the pace of getting to Guilds and Rifle.

[rjmatsleepers]

Maximising your benefit from that last tech trad

If you are one tech away from hitting the WFYABTA limit, how do you get the maximum benefit from your last trade? I assume you can only trade if what you offer is valued more highly by the AI than what you want. Is this a fixed difference or a percentage? Presumably, you can increase the beaker value of the tech you receive by waiting, although perhaps there is some sort of time value. You get more value from a tech received early than one you receive late because you can exploit it for longer. (I'm assuming you have no qualms about trading techs to your tech partner. I'm also assuming that your fairy godmother will make any trade available at exactly the point you want it. )

It seems to me to come down to the importance of the tech within your strategy and the value of the units or buildings it enables. For example, education is of great value in some strategies because it opens up universities and Oxford. It seems to be worth waiting to trade for education rather than trading for a prerequisite tech such as paper.

Perhaps the question is too artificial and trading is situational - take a good trade if it is available now rather than wait for a better one in the future.

RJM

[Steve Clark]

In my Prince game at Normal, I hit the tech wall again after Rifle but when I climbed over that, I found a much bigger wall. Here's what happened and what I have analyzed:

I took the advice given here of not trading for the early techs in order to backfill. This worked very well for two reasons: first, it allowed me trade more later when I would need the mid-game techs; and second, if I needed to backfill, it ended being a simple matter of queuing those up since they could be researched in only 1-2 turns. That was a small price to pay in order to be able to trade more later.

As an aside, I found that getting Alphabet first didn't help since I didn't want to trade for the backfill techs, which was all that were available. I found that getting Currency first really didn't help because for a while after that, most of the civs only had between 0-40 gold to trade.

I am playing on Continents (12 civs) and as usual, I take the aggressive strategy of taking two civs out early and then at least two more mid-game. With that, I beelined to:

Iron
Calendar (I desperately needed the happiness)
Music (I wanted the Great Artist during the stage where the AI is rapidly expanding)
(then I backfilled a little)
Guilds
Rifle

From looking at what's available from the other civs, I was keeping ahead going to Rifle (my primary mid-game strategy) but then I discovered something. There were two civs on the other continent that took two diverging paths: one on the Paper-Educ-Nation-Econ-Constit-Corp line and the other on the Construct-Eng-Chem-steel-Sci line. With the AI trading like crazy among themselves, all of sudden I found myself with nearly everyone else with Educ and Philo, then Nationalism, Econ, Eng, Chemistry, etc. before I had the chance to think much beyond Rifle. That's the tech wall I was referring to. It's almost as if the AI's rates go up while mine goes down.

What was a little different this time was that I was able to trade for many of those whereas in previous games, I was not able to since I had reached the "too strong" threshold by then. In not trading for the early techs, that allowed me to stay 3 techs behind instead of the typical 6 tech behind after Rifle.

The other strategy that I adopted was to really use tech selling and conquests to pay for the high tech rate (plus a few cities in wealth). I managed to keep the rate at 80-100% despite constantly losing 13-28 per turn, which was better than I had done previously.

So what changes would you make to my tech researching/trading strategy? There were good reasons to beeline to Guilds and Rifle, allowing me to destroy two decent-sized Civs but I still wonder why it gets crazy after Rifle? Any way around that since I don't want to stay significantly behind the rest of the game?

[Blake]

The problem is likely to be in your economic management / use of land moreso than tech trading strategy, since by that stage of the game you should be blowing away the AI in research power and production, even without tech trading.

You could post a save for analysis.

edit: To give some ideas on what is needed:

Are you pursuing economic techs?
Are you getting Banks, Universities, Observatories before rifling? (at least 2 out of those 3, you definitely need the banks for a large empire and the other two for a small empire!)
Do you make it a priority to get Merchantalism and later State Property for a large empire, or Free Market for a small empire?
Are you improving all your land properly? By that stage of the game you either want to have a lot of towns, being boosted by Free Speech, you can also get by with Representation and specialists, in that case are you prioritizing Biology and ensuring you have enough cities to make use of all the land? (any farms going fallow means less specialists).
Are you getting either Railroad or Assembly Line promptly? Improving production is very important in the industrial era. Railroad brings with it Machine Gunners.

If you beeline Rifling to the exclusion of economic techs your economy will not keep up. You might also want to pick up Scientific Method + Biology and/or Communism first. If you don't want to research SM that early you might want to head to Railroad first, along the way you can get an Ironworks city.
When a rifling beeline makes most sense is when you have a lot of windmills and/or forests for Replaceable Parts to enhance, you should also immediately follow up by researching Assembly Line (you can actually do so before rifling :P) and spamming factories and coal plants everywhere. If you're playing Warlords you can then use Build Research/Wealth to quite good effect.

There's an awful lot of economic goodies in that part of the tech tree and properly capitalizing on them leaves the AI in the dust. Rifling by itself does very little unless you are England, Riflemen are not THAT good, they are a well-rounded unit but Cavalry, Grenadiers, Cannons, Machine Gunners can all be got before Rifling, if you choose to tech that way. The Grenadier/Cannon/Machine Gun army will definitely beat fast rifles and you get more economy (industry) tech along the way.

[Steve Clark]

Blake, I think you nailed it, as usual. The reason for the beeline to Guilds and Rifles is that Vet Knights and Vet Rifles can beat well fortified Longbows, Pikes and Musks. Military superiority through Vassalage, along with Hereditary Rule for tolerable war weariness, can be an AI civ destroyer, which is my goal and style of play. Now I understand why I keep hitting the tech wall after Rifles. I am going to have think about the balance of being an economic power and an aggressive military power.

[Calvin Vu]

Good thread and great info. I didn't know why I hit the WFYABTA before. It's really counter intuitive since the more backward I am, the more I need to trade and the sooner I hit the WFYABTA wall which claims that I'm too advanced ! I only run into this problem at Emperor level though and never at Monarch since I don't really need to do any tech trades after getting Education. If the AIs want to trade some deadend techs which I bypass then fine, otherwise, no big deal.

Originally posted by Blake
The problem is likely to be in your economic management / use of land moreso than tech trading strategy, since by that stage of the game you should be blowing away the AI in research power and production, even without tech trading.

Agreed. At least for me at Monarch level. But now that I know why I hit the annoying WFYABTA, I will try Emperor level again .

Originally posted by Blake
properly capitalizing on them leaves the AI in the dust. Rifling by itself does very little unless you are England, Riflemen are not THAT good, they are a well-rounded unit but Cavalry, Grenadiers, Cannons, Machine Gunners can all be got before Rifling, if you choose to tech that way. The Grenadier/Cannon/Machine Gun army will definitely beat fast rifles and you get more economy (industry) tech along the way.

Riflemen are not good units themselves but I usually go for it early also (not at the expense of other useful techs though) since I usually have a dozen macemen with at least City Raider II. A Quechua with 10 exp and Citi Raider III when promoted to Riflemen early can take most cities without needing siege units.