v1.17 and A.I vs A.I tech "trading"

[ShuShu]

In an effort to deflate the whiner barage...

I am a tech trader in the game. I found the biggest reason to be expansionist is for that first contact. I play emperor because deity does limit your options, but emperor provides a challenge for all the strategies I like to toy with.

1) How does the AI get 6 techs in one turn with no income?
I assume it is the same way I do it.
- Be first to a tech (goody hut most likely in Saurus example)
- Trade to richest known for second best tech and contacts.
- repeat process till all contacts milked for all techs.

2) Diplomacy every turn is tedious.
I'll say it is, that's why I only conduct it when I
- Discover a new tech
- cross a 20 turn barrier (I usually blow this off and wait for the tech)
- Acquire a new tradable commodity

3) The AI is too smart
That is what Chieftain is for.
- It'll still be smart, but you get to be the dumb AI with massive production/research bonuses.
- I am surpised how many people get a bruised ego if not playing Deity.

[Kensan]

AI Tech Trading - Something is wrong

Soren,

I also think there is a something weird with AI tech trading. And if it is just the "discounting" factor it seems way off base. I played the Apolyton #6 tournament game using the new patch. I was able to make contact with 9 out of 12 civs fairly early in the game.

Once the Great Library gave me Education, I was in a world of hurt. I couldn't make any deals with any AI for the only thing I had of value. I had gone down the Engineering line knowing that the GL would keep me in the loop for the other techs. No one had any money to give me for Engineering. Most had only single digit gold in their treasuries. Yet somehow by some miracle in just a few turns every single civ was 3 techs ahead of me.

I became the 3rd civ to Education through the GL and the first to Engineering, but they somehow traded with the tech leader and everyone but me all of a sudden had Music Theory and Astronomy and started on both wonders. If I ask for a trade, they want my entire treasury (somewhere around 4-500), plus gpt, plus my map. And this is after I know that at least 7 other civs have this tech!!

There definitely needs to be a minimum price for techs, based on eras. No tech should ever be purchased for 1 gold. Sometimes saving that one single turn pays huge dividends.

This game has become increasingly annoying as it has become an AI vs. me game. I can't make up any tech room on these civs now. The Persians will get a free modern age advance to further not only their lead but everyone else's the way trading seems to work. If I hadn't received a Great Leader to build the ToE so I could get Replacable Parts, this game for me was all but over. The infantry kept me alive, but I'm still hopelessly behind unless I can somehow persuade a total world war against the Persians.

Also, not sure if this was intentional but when my cities grew from 6 to 7 my food box was completely empty. So I was paying a ton of money for maintenance of granaries and had no benefit from them. This seems to be a horrible fix to the pop-rushing strategy. I expected to see a half-full box. To make matters worse, the Persians would drop off troops on a grassland square and literally starve my city back to size 6 in one turn. No more defensive bonus since I didn't build walls. This may be a problem of the game being created in 1.16, and I'm using 1.17. Not sure as I haven't played a game created originally with the new patch.

[nbarclay]

In regard to how a civ might gain several techs at once when it appears to have no gold, consider the following hypothetical scenario:

You have your science rate set at 60%, which uses up virtually all of your income. The Germans request an audience and trade you contact with the Egyptians for all your ready gold and all the gold per turn that is left over after your science expenditures. As far as the Germans are concerned, they've squeezed you completely dry. And you couldn't free up more gold during the negotiations if you wanted to, since you can't change your science rate when it's not your turn.

Then your turn comes around and you discover that the Egyptians have five techs that you don't. You cut your science rate from 60% to 10%, freeing up 50 gold per turn. Now you can offer Egypt an average of 10 gold per turn for those five techs, even though you just appeared broke to the Germans.

But in our hypothetical scenario here, buying those techs does require every last coin of the gold you freed up. So if the Germans try to negotiate with you again in their next turn, all of a sudden you have a lot more tech but still no gold.

Now turn the picture around and picture yourself as the Germans and one of the AI's as you, and you'll see a legitimate way the AI could (at least theoretically) make some significant purchases when it just looked, and still looks, broke. Someone from Firaxis would have to say whether or not such behavior is actually within the scope of the AI's programming (comments, Soren?), but the possibility certainly seems within the rules of the game.

By the way, I might note that human players do have one huge advantage over the AI in trading. When I offer a deal to an AI, I can use my advisor (with a lot of trial and error) to find out the maximum the AI is willing to pay. But the AI cannot possibly know my thinking about the best deal it could squeeze out of me, especially when I haven't bothered to figure it out myself. So the AI needs some kind of "cheating" of its own to compensate for that advantage if victory is to be purely a matter of skill.

One last thing: I'd like to wholeheartedly endorse the idea of having a simple way to know when the trading status of any of the AI civs changes significantly (i.e. they gain a new tech or have a significant change in their cashflow). I tend toward big maps with lots of civs, and checking with each of a dozen or so civs even every four turns or so, much less every turn, tends to be very tedious. My ideal would be a "trading status change" screen that provides a quick look specifically at significant changes in what the AI civs can trade rather than having to look through every detail and pick out the changes yourself.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

In regard to how a civ might gain several techs at once when it appears to have no gold, consider the following hypothetical scenario:

You have your science rate set at 60%, which uses up virtually all of your income. The Germans request an audience and trade you contact with the Egyptians for all your ready gold and all the gold per turn that is left over after your science expenditures. As far as the Germans are concerned, they've squeezed you completely dry. And you couldn't free up more gold during the negotiations if you wanted to, since you can't change your science rate when it's not your turn.

Then your turn comes around and you discover that the Egyptians have five techs that you don't. You cut your science rate from 60% to 10%, freeing up 50 gold per turn. Now you can offer Egypt an average of 10 gold per turn for those five techs, even though you just appeared broke to the Germans.

But in our hypothetical scenario here, buying those techs does require every last coin of the gold you freed up. So if the Germans try to negotiate with you again in their next turn, all of a sudden you have a lot more tech but still no gold.

Now turn the picture around and picture yourself as the Germans and one of the AI's as you, and you'll see a legitimate way the AI could (at least theoretically) make some significant purchases when it just looked, and still looks, broke. Someone from Firaxis would have to say whether or not such behavior is actually within the scope of the AI's programming (comments, Soren?), but the possibility certainly seems within the rules of the game.

By the way, I might note that human players do have one huge advantage over the AI in trading. When I offer a deal to an AI, I can use my advisor (with a lot of trial and error) to find out the maximum the AI is willing to pay. But the AI cannot possibly know my thinking about the best deal it could squeeze out of me, especially when I haven't bothered to figure it out myself. So the AI needs some kind of "cheating" of its own to compensate for that advantage if victory is to be purely a matter of skill.

One last thing: I'd like to wholeheartedly endorse the idea of having a simple way to know when the trading status of any of the AI civs changes significantly (i.e. they gain a new tech or have a significant change in their cashflow). I tend toward big maps with lots of civs, and checking with each of a dozen or so civs even every four turns or so, much less every turn, tends to be very tedious. My ideal would be a "trading status change" screen that provides a quick look specifically at significant changes in what the AI civs can trade rather than having to look through every detail and pick out the changes yourself.

Nathan

[Kensan]

Nathan - still not completely conviced

Nathan,

I understand your comments, but I still think there is something amiss. In my example I only asked to trade for one tech (either Music Theory or Astronomy). The best deal that I could negotiate would have cost me approximately 600 total gold. And this is after I have checked with 6 other civs who all had this tech. Even if they adjusted their own science bars, I just did not see how they could have purchased at least 4 techs with the total output their civs could generate.

Their landmass, city sizes and land improvements were nothing special. Even if this was the case, then in theory these civs should have had almost no capability to do their own research for some time. But all of these civs left me in the dust. Banking and Economics were known by all extremely fast as well, and it only got worse from there. Someone had to pay the 2nd researcher rate and so on, and I just didn't see how they had "fair market value" to give if my cost was told 600 gold for a widely-known advance.

Maybe there is something I'm not factoring in, but I've never been left in the dust like this before in my games. Especially at this point in the game. Usually the final push to Industrialization puts me either in the lead or extremely close once the railroad network is in place.

[Gallagher]

Andyman posted: soren said the AI trades within the rules, well, the nazi's siezed power in germany, technically, within the rules, and made it legal to kill jews. it didnt make it fair or right.


It hardly seems necessary to mention, but what could be a surer way of insuring that no Firaxis people continued to contribute to this thread than comparing game behavior with the Holocaust?

[nbarclay]

Re: Nathan - still not completely conviced

Originally posted by Kensan
Nathan,

I understand your comments, but I still think there is something amiss. In my example I only asked to trade for one tech (either Music Theory or Astronomy). The best deal that I could negotiate would have cost me approximately 600 total gold. And this is after I have checked with 6 other civs who all had this tech. Even if they adjusted their own science bars, I just did not see how they could have purchased at least 4 techs with the total output their civs could generate.

Their landmass, city sizes and land improvements were nothing special. Even if this was the case, then in theory these civs should have had almost no capability to do their own research for some time. But all of these civs left me in the dust. Banking and Economics were known by all extremely fast as well, and it only got worse from there. Someone had to pay the 2nd researcher rate and so on, and I just didn't see how they had "fair market value" to give if my cost was told 600 gold for a widely-known advance.

Maybe there is something I'm not factoring in, but I've never been left in the dust like this before in my games. Especially at this point in the game. Usually the final push to Industrialization puts me either in the lead or extremely close once the railroad network is in place.

I'm not trying to say there isn't a serious imbalance involved. I haven't installed the new patch yet, since I wanted my Tournament 6 game to be official and only finished it a couple days ago, so I don't have first-hand experience with it yet. And from everything I'm reading, I'm a lot less thrilled at the idea of installing the new patch than I was a couple days ago.

My real point was that the situation may (and I'll emphasize may) not be as bad as at least one or two of the posts on this thread make it sound. The AI-to-AI prices, while cheap, may not be the total giveaways they appear on the surface. Or to put it another way, the situation may just be highly unfair to the human player instead of absolutely, totally, and completely unfair.

Nathan

[Ironikinit]

The AI does put greater value on techs that yield a wonder, like music theory and astronomy. They charge the player more anyway, I don't know how they deal with each other.

[ikol]

Okay, I hate the new AI tech trading system.

I really wonder why bother researching anything with the new patch, even on warlord the AI will keep up with you. The tremendous drop in research cost when some civs already know the tech makes the whole pursuit of a technological lead hopeless.
The only way to hamper their research rate is to have them fight each others.

One example : middle age, I go the opposite route researching engineering, invention...metallurgy. These are rather expensive techs.
I get as much as monotheism, chivalry and education from the Great Library (this is a hint the AI seems to go the other way). So as soon as I get metal, I switch to astronomy. In less than ten turn, the AI comes to me to trade metallurgy to astronomy
They swallowed a big tech gap in less than 10 turns. I am infuriated.

back to 1.16 now!

loki

[The Andy-Man]

maybe the i did use a bit of a harsh example there......

erm, Mugabe made it the law that there was no opposition party, that dosnt make it right/fair. maybe that woulda bin better.

[Heinrich IV]

First of all: thanx to Firaxis for a great game, and even more thanx to Soren for showing up here and takiung the player's problems seriously!!!!

I'm new here, so I hope this hasn`t been brought up in other threads as well..


Regarding: the AI may change science rate and thus free money

I just played an entire game using the see-map-cheat. Thus i could control the AIs settings and could count beakers and tax and so on.

Result: with 35 beakers / turn (30%) and two turns of 40% the English kept up with my research of 60% (44 beakers). This on Regent, so I guess that`s OK - just barely.

But at the same time they acquired 5 new techs from trading that were offered to me only at 2+lu+all gold+gpt:1, without them showing significantly less money.


HOW????

I don`t know!

I couldn`t catch up until they engeged in a major war.

Also, whtaever tech i researched - they went straight for the same while the Iroqus always took the other tree branch - then they traded - and I had nothing to trade for the other tree. They even did this despite the fact that they kept going to war every few turns.....

Another thing: forget Chivalry! The AI never researched it in that game, and didn`t even offer 1 Gold for it (it had cost me 15 turns). Obviously my experience that Knights are useless is not just my imagination. By the time a human can assemble a usefull strike force - the AI has Musketmen everywhere......


I actually switched to 1.16 when I lost 15 out of 17 fights in a row with Pikemen (6) and Musketmen (9), all vet, in city, against attacking Longbowmen and the next turn lost >20 Knights against 3 Musketmen, unfortified on open plains. Researching Chivalry sets the human back between 2 and 4 techs depending on how the Ai nations split their research goals while it gives NO extra military capability.

Soren:
Check it out for yourself, play an "open" game, and you`ll see that Regent no longer is anything like "equal". I just love Emperor and Deity under 1.16, but 1.17 is just unplayable to me......

[ShuShu]

Gallagher

you must be new to the forum.

Otherwise you would know that there are some 'automatically ignore' names. Trust me, Firaxis hasn't been insulted by Andy-Man for months...

In any population study, there are always aberrations. Measures that don't belong. This is called 'noise'. Statisticians can't make noise go away, so they come up with methods to identify and discard noise as irrelevant.
-----------------------------------------------

There are many conclusions that can be drawn from a person who feels the need to draw parallels between a game and human tragedies.

The person needs to get a life.
The person is out of touch.
The person should be kept away from sharp objects.
...

the list goes on, but the relevant observations for this post would be:

The person is noise. A statistical aberration that should be discarded.

hope this helps.

[Arrian]

Like Analyst Redux said, gaining and holding a tech lead is now futile. I started a new game last night and encountered the same thing. Everything was going great, until the late middle ages. Then the AI blew me away, coming from 2 techs back to 4 techs up in what seemed like a blink of an eye, despite the fact that I was #1 on all key elements of the demographics screen (pop, land, productivity, income, etc.) and way ahead on the histograph. Now, at the dawn of the industrial age, I'm barely hanging on (I got sneak attacked and another civ joined in. Both civs suddenly had riflemen when I still had muskets and knights).

All the time I spent building libraries, marketplaces, universities and banks seems wasted when the AI, which places much less emphasis on such things, can so easily catch and pass me in the tech race. I made a strategic choice to neglect my military and build up my empire's infrastructure (improvements, wonders).

Because the AI is now more "aggressive" in trading technology, the human player is effectively researching against the rest of the world. In my case, 1 vs. 6 (Zulu's having been removed). The massive devaluation of a tech that is known by another civ (let alone 2 or 3 others) makes catching up easier (for both human & AI). But holding the lead requires that you msut destroy some of the stronger AI empires.

When peaceful research and trade is made less fruitful (1.17f), there is the alternative: war. And so I will become a warmonger. I will forsake those marketplaces for more horsemen, and beeline for chivalry... and the world will be a painful place. So be it.

-Arrian

[Heinrich IV]

Originally posted by Arrian


When peaceful research and trade is made less fruitful (1.17f), there is the alternative: war. And so I will become a warmonger. I will forsake those marketplaces for more horsemen, and beeline for chivalry... and the world will be a painful place. So be it.

-Arrian

Good luck! I tried - but tech is so fast that your militray is outdated when it reaches the enemy while you`ll quickly find your Spearmen attacked by Longbowmen.

I`d like to simply cut research beakers by half thus doubling the number of turns for each research......

[Pius Popprasch]

Originally posted by Heinrich IV Another thing: forget Chivalry! The AI never researched it in that game, and didn`t even offer 1 Gold for it (it had cost me 15 turns). Obviously my experience that Knights are useless is not just my imagination. By the time a human can assemble a usefull strike force - the AI has Musketmen everywhere......

A.I. players research Chivalry and so do I. It seems that the Middle Ages are a weak time of the A.I. forces to me and my Knights hardly encounter Musketmen(def:4). Saltpeter needs to be connected and available and more often than not my neighbor doesn't have it. Cavalry is confronted with Riflemen(def:5) and even Infantry(def:8). Riflemen don't need resources.

Regarding the topic of this thread: I also would like to have more one-for-one trades.