(occ) Map Trading with other civs

[GodKing]

What is to be our policy on trading maps with other civs.

I personally am against it, from the very start.

It is very hard to plan on taking over a continent (or whatever we are on) if you have no reliable information.

This also applies to establishing embassies. We should establish them before the other team does to prevent them from getting a free look into our capitol.

The area around our capitol will become well known (as it appears on maps once an embassy is established, but the idea of keeping the other areas blacked out appeals to me.

This I think will be the policy of most of the other teams as well from discussions I have heard and seen.

If we do trade maps, best to do so early, and equally. Our map is more valuable for war purposes than most techs I would think, as it allows them to plan ahead.

Please post your thoughts, so we may come up with a coherent strategy.

GK

[pikesfan]

We would have to not trade maps under any circumstances then in order for our lands to be always black. But as we bump up against our neighbours, the only part of the land that will be black will be parts they hadn’t explored when it was empty.

What about our allies in Legoland? If we trade our maps, what’s to stop them from trading the maps in return? Yet it won’t seem very friendly to not trade our maps to our allies.

[Togas]

I know none of the other civs want to trade maps. But I know that eventually, once some of them start to give in, it will become a very valuable and profitable thing to trade. Who knows, it may turn out that our civ is the one doing all the mapwhoring.

We know that eventually everyone will know the map, but to what degree may become very important.

Intelligence was much easier in the regular game. In this human vs. human game, there going to be far less of it, and far more speculation and rumor.

Anyhow, as for trading maps with our allies, we probably will, and I have no problem doing that if they trade in kind with us.

--Togas

[Ninot]

ahem

once other teams start building embassies (or once we start)

maps may be irrelevant

they can espionage a map out of us

While im very much in favor of building embassies with everyone early...thusly, i am in favor of using our maps for sale.

Should be like concealing a knife, while naked. Let them think we are harmless by trading the map, but still get troups built up.

[Crousto]

I'd be against map trading, unless with Neu Demogyptica early in the game, because they are the only expansionnist civ, so their map may be very interesting... but once again, only early in the game.

[mrmitchell]

Well, with Crousto's points, that's an interesting point there...Neu Demogyptica would have an interesting map.

Of course, in a human vs human game it gets much more interesting on the situation about maps. The AI already knows the WM in the beginning, so it can plan ahead regardless, but now we can convince the humans we have an incredibly large empire... ...as part of a disinformation campaign.

[OliverFA]

It is difficult and probably nonsense to have an strict and definite policy about that like "we never trade maps", but I agree with GK that we should limit our trades as much as posible, just to very excepcional cases. Just remember that the map doesn't only give information about terrain, but also about what is going inside. It will be almost imposible to keep them from knowing how our empire land is, but as long as they don't know the exact siza of our cities or the state of our terrain improvements it will be enough.

On the other hand, if they really want to have our map and don't care about cheating, they will.

Try this, set up a new e-mail game with two human players. Play the first turn and load as the second player. Then retire. You can see the map in the replay...

It is imposible to prevent them to do that.

[DAVOUT]

I would hate winning a game if the team had cheated; most of people here are thinking the same way. We know it is possible, but we consider that this game could not be played at all if we dont take the risk.

As for the trading of maps, our size is approximately revealed by our ranking. The most important features we want to concealed in the beginning are the luxuries and the strategic resources, as well as the precise location of our towns (dont forget the archers rush).

Regarding Legoland, I assume that if we exchange maps, we would both commit ourselves not to trade them without prior agreement of the other. But there could be circumstances where it would be useless to exchange maps with them : if one of the two is on a small island for instance.

[OliverFA]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I would hate winning a game if the team had cheated; most of people here are thinking the same way. We know it is possible, but we consider that this game could not be played at all if we dont not take the risk.

I agree with you and I am sure that no one at this group will cheat. But I'm not as sure about the other teams, specially the ones that seem to be willing to do anything in order to win. I'm just saying that we shouldn't be too much innocent and think that they don't know things that they may now by cheating.

[ruby_maser]

well, I think if we are going to be the one's establishing embassies, writing should be an early concern of either ourselves our Legoland (as part of the research pact).

As I stated before hand, I think the only way maps should be traded is in Jpeg format outside the confines of the actual game in order that they may be graphically censored. But, alas, I don't think this is gonna fly.

This brings up an issue for Firaxis, though; I wish we could have the option to trade world maps minus our territory. Right now, either way we go, we give up vital intelligence about ourselves.

[E_T]

What IS to stop one of the other groups from some form of cheating? I haven't looked at the main DG Forum lately, to see how the group counsel is comeing about, but we need to have this addressed somehow.

As for maps, If PTW works the same as SP, once someone had your Territory Map, any changes in that territory are shown as soon to the others. The maps should be guarded somewhat, but hording it for too long at times might make the others susicious of us. Case in point, Uber Island in the SP game.

E_T

[History Guy]

Arabia is my responsibility. Once we have them encountered, I'll make sure that they are simply dying to see our astounding world map.