Attrition

[Ming]

Your comments on tech trading are well noted. Actually, I was hoping the "difficulity" thread would be discussing that more. Instead, we seem to have fallen into chest beating on whether aggresive ai or non aggresive ai is harder.

Please feel free to post your comments on tech trading there

[rah]

Yeah I was hoping that DAVE V's comment about relying on tech trading strats at the highest levels was needed would spark more discussion. I have never won on Deity, (except in OCC, which doesn't really count)

[wodan11]

Wellll, we can talk about that if you want. I'd say it's a bit of six of one, half dozen of the other. You have to be a good player to abuse trading to its fullest, but you have to be a good player to win on diety in the first place. With trading on, the AI does get some benefit, quite a bit of it in some cases, even when the human is doing his best to leverage it first. With trading off some of the AIs get pigeonholed or bogged down, research wise, and sooner or later you can take them out simply by being more advanced. I suppose I would say that's the key to diety, regardless of trading. You have to take what the game gives you to some extent, particularly in regard to expansion opportunities, rather than determining who you want to take out. And unless you play a huge map with few AIs, you're going to need the expansion room by taking out at least one opponent.

[Blaupanzer]

Other than starting with additional techs (along with units, settlers, etc), how do the higher levels benefit the AIs in terms of tech development? Are techs cheaper, how much? Is there a surcharge amount added to the beakers? If tech trading and brokering is shut down the advantage would have to be really BIG to make up for the capabilities of the wily human.

[slnz]

Hmm I think I ranted on about tech trading between the chest beating somewhere... not sure if I'm repeating myself. Well anyway:

I couldn't dream about a Deity win with no tech trading - the AI starting bonuses are simply too massive and you (at least I) need that trading edge to catch up to parity (usually by teching low AI priority techs like Aes or bulbing things like Philo). On Immortal the starting deficit is much less pronounced so there it's not quite as critical, still more helpful more often than not.

No tech brokering is more debatable and game specific. If you can get into a brokering position between 2 (usually religion based) clicks, it can help you massively - but in other situations it can hinder you almost as bad.

And unless you play a huge map with few AIs, you're going to need the expansion room by taking out at least one opponent.

Now, a huge map with few AIs on Deity is a 100% loss. I don't see any way out of that, no matter how good you are. Maybe in a map that gives you a nice big continent and crams the AIs into a space of 3 cities each (even then the barbs would probably destroy you (=me) ). I find taking opponents out isn't needed in many maps, though. Depends much on some other stuff like map script and game speed.

[Ming]

Now, a huge map with few AIs on Deity is a 100% loss. I don't see any way out of that, no matter how good you are. Maybe in a map that gives you a nice big continent and crams the AIs into a space of 3 cities each

So true. At the higher levels, I hear some people cram extra AI's in the game to make it easier. It adds more conflict for them, limits EVERYBODIES number of cities, while thinking it's easier to compete.

As far as tech brokering goes, I kind of agree with you. It can be a good or bad thing depending on many different factors.

And yeah, at the highest levels, I think you have to be a master at tech trading to stand a chance.