Trade Strategy 1752 AD

[cavebear]

I think we should try the "Key Civ" idea. Because our power rating is "Supreme", our Key Civ is the Mongols (because they are Purple). The more techs they have relative to us, the cheaper our tech advances become. This could be of great benefit to us, as we have a lot of techs to discover if we are going to build a spaceship and not much time left to get there. The Mongols have only 24 techs to our 38, so we are paying a hefty penalty in higher beaker costs for techs.

The 2 potential problems with using the Key Civ idea are (1) that our power rating could change if we gift too many techs to the Mongols and (2) that if a civ is eliminated it might change who our Key Civ is. I think we can be safe from both.

We are not likely to lose our "Supreme" rating to the Mongols; they are too far behind us on the Demographics and the Powergraph. We can protect against the *possible* (unproven) effect of a civ being eliminated by establishing a city in a safe location and gifting it to the Vikings (if we learn that they *don't* have more cities elsewhere when we establish an embassy).

[atawa]

Lets do it

One way to make sure civ's dont get eliminated is to spread gunpowder across the world, since we're not planning on attacking anyone this doesnt couse us any problems.

It will however keep all civs alive at least untill mobile warfare.

[atawa]

Oh, and we cant gift a city in SP mode

[mrboo123]

Give them one, ever 10 turns.

[JCP]

Do try, as they are far late.
But let's be cautious : they have 13 cities and may become a powerfull civ !

[Ben Kenobi]

I'd feel safer with the Mongols ensconced in a Fundy government, crushing all opposition, (including our top republican competition.)

We would tech gift important military techs, such as mobile warfare, while ensuring their continued
co-operation and friendship.

Another option would be to keep a small "primitives'
habitat" of one city, and then tech gift without fear of competition.

I'm not convinced that this will lower our tech costs enough to be worth the risk.

Does someone have some kind of data on the amount that tech gifting reduces beaker counts? It would be greatly appreciated!

[cavebear]

Originally posted by obiwan18

I'm not convinced that this will lower our tech costs enough to be worth the risk.

Does someone have some kind of data on the amount that tech gifting reduces beaker counts? It would be greatly appreciated!

I've been trying out the Key Civ idea on some old games, but I don't usually play against 6 civs and don't have enough samples of real games to go by (unbacked-up hard drive crash last year ). It does seem to work, though. I can't find a formula for the benefits (I'm not good at that stuff), but we might reduce our tech rate to 4 turns from the current 6 turns if we gifted most of what we have or 5 turns if we gifted half of our techs. That reduction in research turns could add up over time. At the least, we could reduce our research rate and collect a lot more tax and luxury gold at the same tech rate.

I can't even count our current tech beaker cost because it is just a solid bar on my screen at this late date. I suspect this would have been far more valuable to us at an earlier time, but it still seems worth trying even now.

Mostly, I'm evaluating the possible benefits to us on the grounds that the AI civs will get everything they need to combat us anyway, regardless of what we do, so we might as well lower our tech research rate if we can. We are going to have a very hard time getting to the spaceship techs at our current rate.