And I'm a mapaholic

[roadcage]

Yes, I relish in the extrmeme micromanagement needed to extract large quantities of gold from the AI's by hundreds, no thousands of map sales. Many will say that I am obsessed with maps. In a literal sense this is true. However it goes deeper than this. I actually look forward to the end of turn cycle of stopping the rediculous wonder and military unit builds the AI governor starts. I know that a new round of map trading abuse of the AI treasuries is soon at hand.

All of the techniques described herein are equally applicable to Original CivIII, PTW, and C3C. The only difference is in the enabling technologies. C3C requires Navigation while previous versions require Mapmaking.

Your World map (wm) is marketable if:
You or your trading partner has mastered the enabling technology
Your world map has exposed atleast one tile not known to the trading partner

Your Territory map (tm) is a subset of your wm and is marketable if:
You or your trading partner has mastered the enabling technology
Atleast one qualifying improvement has been made to your territory since
the last tm or wm trade to the trading partner which is under fog.


Qualifying improvements
road
rail
irrigate
mine
clear polution
clear jungle
clear swamp (new terrain in C3C)

Non Qualifying improvements
chop Forest
plant Forest

Uncertain improvements
build colony
build fortification
build fortress
build outpost
build radar tower
build airfield

The uncertain improvemens are ones for which I have no data. Yes I do place colonies, but have not done so post navigation.

Please note that wm and tm marketability can be achieved multiple times per turn with each AI. This results in the the amount of gold extractable to be limited to total AI current gold or number of map enhancements you can make.

Pre railroad......
It will be rare to have improvements occur within your turn trading window. You will be able to market your tm due to end of turn completed improvements, and frequently, your wm will become marketable during end of turn for no apparent reason. The majority of map marketing oportunities at this time will be ship movement. Imagine you have a galley which can be moved so that it will expose atleast one tile on each of it's movement points. That is 3,4 or 5 potential map enhancements depending on whether you are a sefaring civ and control a naval movement wonder. Naturally, boats can become very profitable. A galley costs 30 shields and 0,1,2,3 gold per turn maintenance depending on government tye etc. Now that same galley can easily allow selling your wm 3 or 4 or 5 times to each AI with gold at one gold per map sale. So pre railroad you are usually limited by the number of map exposing boat moves you have.

Post railroad.....
Workers should be stacked and moved to complete most tile improvements within your turn window. So many improvements that you will usually be limited by the total gold the AI's have on hand. You do have lots of workers, don't you?

Overall strategy

Step 1
At turn beginning, identify a poor civ (little or no gold), see if they will trade their wm for something of limited value. Don't do it yet, just identify your first map buy.

Step 2
Sell your tm to all except the Step 1 poor civ

Step 3
Sell your wm to all except the Step 1 poor civ

Step 4
Execute the Step 1 wm trade or buy. This is very important. The first wm buy you make will be at a distinct premium to true value. We want to buy this map so that the total gold the AI has is less than the number of map exposing movements you have in hand. This ensures that you get back what ever you pay for the first map later in the turn.

Step 5
Sell your wm including any tiles obtained in step 4.

Step 6
Check each AI to see if their wm has value. Now that you have bought one map, if the AI's wm has exposed tiles, it will ask for something, usually a tech for it's wm, but will almost always settle for 1 or 2 gold.

Step 7
Sell your enhanced wm to all takers. Sell for cash to all but the last. The last sale should be for a wm with value, thus enabling another round of wm sales for cash

Repeat steps 6 and 7 until there are no AI wm's with value

Step 8
Do your worker movements. Whenever a qualifying improvement completes within the turn window, sell your enhanced tm. Important, your tm tends to hold less value over end of turn cycle than your wm, hence it is advantageous to get the gold from improvements vs boats

Step 9
Do your boat movements one movement at a time, stopping to sell your enhanced wm whenever and wherever you can

Yes, this approach is the penultimate of micromanagement, but the gold you receive will be substantial.

My name's bill
And I'm a mapaholioc

[vmxa1]

Man that is a lot of work. I would only be careful to not do any trading before I had a border on all sites for cities.

I do not want them to come looking for a new home.

[sabrewolf]

interesting way of making money...

... but it's one of the extremest exploits possible!!!

i can imagine using it when i'm missing 4g for upgrading/buildrushing something... but consequently selling tm and wm several times per turn to each AI is pure exploitation...

[watorrey]

I usually just start at the top of the diplomacy list. That is the civ that moved last and will have the most recent map.

Now, moving down the list, if any civ has a WM available, it didn't trade it last turn to the civs higher on the list. Get this map and start at the top of the list again.

Repeat as necessary until you get to the bottom of the diplomacy list.

Once the map trading bug kicks in, it is difficult to tell the difference between a real map or the bug at work. It is up to you to decide whether to exploit it or not.

[Vince278]

Can't say I've ever seen the AI take advantage of map trades/sales. Its been a freebie as far as I can tell.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Wow did we ever need you in the Civ3 DG when we were mapwhoring (that's the term! ) as much as we could! Didn't think of this though, as I thought that only changes in the the tiles or improvements were worth cash, not unit movements.

About how much could you make from all this in a typical turn?

[roadcage]

Hi MrWIA. Movement in and of itself does not enhance the maps. It's the tile(s) exposed with movement that does it.

The amount of gold is quite variant. Depends on how many civs there are, and the size of civs. The AI's will almost always research to their limit, but can only make 10% slider moves just like you. So you can estimate their "science power" from change in gold over the turn times 10.

Be on the lookout each turn for a Civ that has usually been broke or near broke suddenly showing significant gpt trade potential. This frequently means that they are on the last turn of a tech and are slider optimizing for that tech.

Try to make a tech trade for huge gpt to lock them into low sci for 20 turns! Also consider throwing in a lux or something else to bind them. If you miss this opportunity, they will be back at high sci and low gpt next turn. Frequently the tech deal will be my "first wm" deal as described in the original post.

So how much gold can I get per turn? Once we are up and running with map deals, on my last ptw game 24 AI's Huge pangea Emperor.

map making breakout- initially around 500 in the hole but by end of turn, crosstrading etc I had recouped the investment plus two techs and around 400 gold.

Typical early turn mapping say 2 or 3 boats and many civs with coins... usually in excess of 50 often over a hundred per turn with near 100 per turn average.

Typical late pre-rr turn, multiple boats most civs nearly broke....whatever every civ had but the biggie maybe 50 per turn. Need to be careful with boat moves. Try not to fully expose the map too quickly. Edge that black abyss instead of plowing in. Remember you will get the same for your wm with one tile as with 9 tiles (max for single boat move)

Typical post rr turn, wm all exposed so no more boat moves but hundreds of workers.....whatever their combined gold amount was. At this point, the amount of gold is not really important. You should have huge surplus each turn from tech and lux trades. The objective is to keep them poor.

Ssgt roadcage (retired)