Turn 183: 690 AD

[Arrian]

It would appear Lego is *NOT* maintaining a sea wall, but rather is using a fairly large navy as pickets. They have that luxury on their west coast (not so much on the east). Frankly, that is something we will need to switch to for our east coast later in the game, as we build more ships, the east coast knights can be disbanded (possibly to assist in the construction of more ships). That's a fair bit into the future, though.

-Arrian

[vulture]

Regarding trading workers with RP - That's going to cause some logistical problems isn't it? If we trade our workers to RP, they go to RP's capital. They have no road route back to our territory (which is where we need them to be, since we have far more workers and don't want them all in RPs territory). Which means shipping them - which wastes turns (or are we doing this when there is no pressing need for them any more?)

[vulture]

Regarding trading workers with RP - That's going to cause some logistical problems isn't it? If we trade our workers to RP, they go to RP's capital. They have no road route back to our territory (which is where we need them to be, since we have far more workers and don't want them all in RPs territory). We can't ship RP workers ourselves, so they'll have to do it for us - which means creating a gap in the sea wall to let them in - and having them control the worker movements in our territory.

Unless we can persuade RP to build a huge horde of workers to give to us - which is going to slow down their economic production.

[DeepO]

vulture, I think the idea was to let RP use our workers in their territory, while we use theirs in our. Otherwise, you would be very right!

Something else: I've noticed before that workers can change nationalities when trading them. In SP games, when I (Egypt) receive a worker from the Vikings, and give it to the Romans, the Romans don't show a captured Viking worker, but an Egyptian. It's not always like that, and I don't know what is going on, but we might be able to use this to trade our workers to RP, and receive them back next turn, getting them for free.

It would almost certainly be an exploit, though

DeepO

[Dominae]

Workers would be traded after our rail network is up (and perhaps RP's), so there's no real logistical problem assuming we have a ROP with them (you know, infinite movement and all that).

The reason we're trading them after rails is that we want our Workers to be as fast as can be during this project.

It's just a way of saving 20-30gpt. It also opens up the possibility of keeping a much larger team of Workers ready (say, up to 50 or 60) without detriment.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Again, I definitely think that we should discuss it openly in the public forum before doing it, to avoid problems down the road.

I myself am unsure about the legitamacy of it. On the one hand, it's difficult to argue that worker trading should be banned outright, since it's in the game, and because it's certainly conceivable to have a situation where one team pays another in workers for a tech or something like that. On the other hand, it's also difficult to argue that two teams swapping workers en masse to avoid upkeep costs is within the spirit of the game.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

I agree.

[asleepathewheel]

a few workers traded for actual work is perfectly fine. using it to avaoid costs is not, imho.

[vulture]

One possible rule to limit worker-trading exploits:

You can trade workers from civ A to civ B. Once civ B has some of civ A's workers, B cannot give any native workers to A; slaves originally from A must be sent back first.

So for example, if we had RP slaves, we would have to give those slaves back to RP before we could give them any GS workers. This arguably limits things very slightly where there have been genuine slaves taken during war, but in that case, I imagine you'd want your own captured workers back first anyway, before trading for someone else's workers as slaves.

[vulture]

Personally, I'd be inclined to apply the same rule to captured artillery (which has no upkeep costs), but I don't know how plausible it is to keep track of where arty units came from. Didn't ND / GoW discuss this during the war and decide not to do it?

[Tall Stranger]

I also feel like this is a bit "exploitish" and should be raised openly first. I would also raise a more strategic issue here: Wouldn't allowing this move give more benefit to our adversaries than to us?

Think about it:
1. We have less land than most (all?) of our competitors. Thus, we would generally need fewer workers than our enemies.

2. At the same time, we are economically more powerful than any of the other civs. As a result, our workers' support costs are a smaller percentage of our economy than our enemies' workers would be to theirs.

Unless we're certain that we'd benefit more from this rule than our adversaries, we shouldn't even raise this for discussion.

[vmxa1]

I may have misunderstood, but I thought we were talking about after RR is done. Then we do not need as many workers and would be better off using slaves if we have enough for pollution and such.

I agree it may not be allowed and we should ask Trip, not a public forum. I don't see why we have to tip off everyone to all the ideas we come up with. This stuff should be determined before the game starts or by a referee. I dislike alerting people to gambits that they may have forgotten.

Same as in card games, I do not care for other helping people figure out what they have, if they don't know too bad.

My personal view is it should not be allowed.

BTW I don't see any issue with selling workers at the std price 120 gold. This is what the AI will do, so it is kosher. Not sure if it is worth while or not.

[Arrian]

You can trade workers from civ A to civ B. Once civ B has some of civ A's workers, B cannot give any native workers to A; slaves originally from A must be sent back first.

So for example, if we had RP slaves, we would have to give those slaves back to RP before we could give them any GS workers. This arguably limits things very slightly where there have been genuine slaves taken during war, but in that case, I imagine you'd want your own captured workers back first anyway, before trading for someone else's workers as slaves.

That sounds pretty good.

-Arrian

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I agree it may not be allowed and we should ask Trip, not a public forum. I don't see why we have to tip off everyone to all the ideas we come up with. This stuff should be determined before the game starts or by a referee. I dislike alerting people to gambits that they may have forgotten.

Mass Worker trading to prevent upkeep costs is indeed a no-no (and if other teams have/will consider(ed) it, I have/will inform(ed) them the same, privately).

[vmxa1]

Seems fair to me.