Tech Whore?

[Hydro]

I’ve discovered the joys of being a Tech Whore. Using financially inclined Darius I am maintaining a tech lead, and often a very substantial tech lead against the smaller civs. Periodically I call them up and offer them all the same tech and accept what they give me. In the early game this generally cleans them out of all cash so they are perpetually starved, and gives me quite a lot of $$ when you add it all up. I use the cash to deficit spend to keep my research rate up and be able to found new colonies.

So, is this an exploit? Or does this only really work at the lower levels? I don’t want to develop too many bad habits before I graduate to play with the Big Boys.

Hydro

[JeebusGreen]

I can only speak from experience as high as playing on Prince, and though it doesn't always happen, I still often end up with a tech lead at some point.

Not as grotesquely huge as it used to be when I played on the lower levels but it still crops up fairly often. Remember that as you go up the difficulty scale, tech gets cheaper for the AI, so unless your play strategies increase at the same rate, sooner or later you're going to lose out

Just bear in mind that as you go up tech leads tend to become less frequent and smaller in magnitude. The switch for me was that I tend to play fairly military games - so suddenly I was having to learn how to play the war game without next generation units stomping my neighbours back-dated defenders.

It might even be a sign that you need to move up to the next difficulty

[Velociryx]

It's a good play, and possible even to an extent as you move up the ladder.

My favorite way to play is with tech brokering on, so that you (and everybody else) are limited to trading only the techs you research yourself (this comes with the advantage that you can trade a key tech to an important ally, and not worry that he/she will whore it out later).

Also, you can do the same thing with resources. The game is usually rife with smaller, marginalized powers (the more civs you start with, the more of these there are), and these civs are always hungry for whatever resources you have, so....once you have no further need of stone, marble, copper, etc, you can sell these off, usually at a handsome profit, to the marginalized civs (or even not so marginalized ones).

A perfectly viable tech strategy, btw, is to head down a tech path that none of the AI's are pursuing. This enables you to research a tech, say for 5000 beakers. Immediately turn around and trade it for a fistful of techs (cumulative cost in excess of 20k beakers or more), plus scads of gold. There is no faster way to speed up your "native research" capabilities than this....

-=Vel=-

[snoopy369]

Are you playing Vanilla civ (no expansions)? Beyond the Sword kills this strategy, because the AI will not give up so much gold that it has to turn down its tech.

[Hydro]

I'm playing BtS, but at Warlord. I suspect I get lots of grace from the AI as it takes it easy on me. The only time they've turned me down is if they have no gold.

Maybe I should move up a notch. I still have little idea what to do with specialists and other critical but fine points. A tougher game may hone my play a bit.

Hydro

[JeebusGreen]

Congrats, I'd say you're ready for Noble

I found it hard to tune my strategies when I began to dominate with such a wide margin. Never really felt pressured to get it together when I had a massive tech lead

And don't worry, I was ignoring specialists at that stage too... Noble is a good time to learn. Good luck!

[snoopy369]

Yeah, play higher until you hit a level you are not winning at, but you are not being totally destroyed at - just you aren't the top civ at the end (but you usually make it that far). That's the best level to play at

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Yeah, play higher until you hit a level you are not winning at, but you are not being totally destroyed at - just you aren't the top civ at the end (but you usually make it that far). That's the best level to play at

Agreed.

A well earned, hard fought victory is often the sweetest. While its fun in its own way to decimate the opposition, it does get boring in the end game to mop up or wait for the spaceship.

Whereas a recent game where I was in a tight neck and neck spaceship race with Hannibal and Chuck (and was simultaneously dealing with a border war or two with Augustus and Gilgamesh during it) it was sweet to pull out the win. No boring turns in the endgame for that one!