Total Newbie here - Run for your lives!

[Arrian]

Barinthus,

A piece of advice:

In general, it is a bad idea to do trades with the AI on THEIR turn. If you trade a tech to an AI during its turn, it will then sell it around to the others before you go again.

If you instead tell them no, and then call them up again once it's YOUR turn, you can sell them stuff and ALSO try and sell it to all the other civs you know. You will get much better deals that way.

Oh, and if you can buy a worker from the AI early on, DO IT. Even if you have to jack up your tax rate and pay them gold per turn. It can cripple them. The benifit to you is *mostly* about the harm done to them. The slave will help you, yes, and it will pay for itself over time, but mostly this is about hampering the AI's already feeble attempts at terrain improvement.

-Arrian

[Modo44]

Arrian -> The "say no on their turn" can sometimes backfire in the early game. It can happen that an AI wants to make a trade and if you don't do it, it will meet another AI (when the other one moves) and get the tech anyway. A very annoying thing, often to see on huge pangeas.

[Arrian]

Yes, it can happen. But it doesn't happen much, and typically it's best to wait for your turn. In my experience, of course.

-Arrian

[Solomwi]

The only thing I make sure to check before sending an AI away on its turn is what luxuries it has available. I'm sure we've all had stretches where somebody is going to be squeezed out of that 8th luxury, and because Germany was trading it to Russia, England and France when you discovered their continent, that somebody is you. Once you're able to trade with them, you keep checking and waiting for a deal to run it, but it never does. You try breaking one up by fomenting war, unsuccessfully, and ultimately wind up attacking whichever is the weakest/most convenient simply to either remove a customer or take the source yourself.

Anyway, a lot of the time all this effort and frustration can be avoided simply by checking on the AI's turn whenever you get a chance. This is also the one situation in which I'll trade a tech on the AI turn, if necessary.

[vmxa1]

When can one trade for the 8th lux? Maybe if the civ is very very backward and that does not happen much.

Somewhere around the 5th one, the civs tend to want more than you can afford.

[Modo44]

You can get it from a peace treaty if you made somebody's life the living hell. The thing is, how would you not get the luxury in such a war?

You can buy it for huge gpt if your reputation is good, you are friends with somebody, and preferably have a great culture.

Of course this might not apply if you play at Sid level . On Emperor and below this is doable and not too hard.

[Solomwi]

8th was just an arbitrary number for the purpose of the illustration, but remember that I'm a Monarch slumlord.

I can usually trade a tech for a luxury or two and some gpt to boot, even at the 7th and 8th luxuries.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Modo44
You can get it from a peace treaty if you made somebody's life the living hell. The thing is, how would you not get the luxury in such a war?

You can buy it for huge gpt if your reputation is good, you are friends with somebody, and preferably have a great culture.

Of course this might not apply if you play at Sid level . On Emperor and below this is doable and not too hard.

You can't do any of that if they don't have it available, which was the point of my example. I have no trouble getting the luxury IF it comes available. My point was that it's easy to miss that small window before the deal is renewed if you don't check when they come to you on their turn.

[Barinthus]

Arrian, thanks for the advice . That goes for everybody else too. I've been reading up on topped threads in Stragety and General too. Still a long way to go since I want to play too!

[Solomwi]

Pfft, I'm just enjoying seeing an OT regular get sucked in over here, instead of vice-versa.

[Barinthus]

Well you folks are doing a good job of doing that. All caught up on FAQ topped thread in General now,