Revolutionary Strategy Implications of C3C

[Cort Haus]

Rhothaerill, the Americans rock anyway as a builder civ (instant granaries = megarex). They're so strong I had to stop playing them and switch to the English for a challenge.

If sea-farers benefit from these changes, the English could benefit, but ironically they lose the expansionist trait. Seafaring looks more powerful than expansionist in the medium term though, if it allows more contacts and overseas rexing (built-in lighthouse). ROPs and galleys can solve the scout problem for non-expansionists.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by alexman
You can still have ROP and embassies. It's only communications trading that they moved from Writing to Printing Press, AFAIK.

Ah!

So, actually, tech trading won't be utterly drastically alterted then. There'll be a few less middlemen, perhaps; both player and AIs will either end up lucky enough to learn many techs, or may get a short end of the stick.

Very interesting.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth


Ah!

So, actually, tech trading won't be utterly drastically alterted then. There'll be a few less middlemen, perhaps; both player and AIs will either end up lucky enough to learn many techs, or may get a short end of the stick.

Very interesting.

No - tech trading, on certain maps, will be drastically altered. Even with an embassy and an ROP, you still actually have to go and contact a civ directly, rather than trade for contact, until Printing Press. If there are any landbridge blocking opportunities (one or two tile isthamus, for example), contact with a civ on the other side of the block will come only via sea and galleys (think: you're not commercial and have to research on your own through mapmaking without benefit of contact with 3 civs on the other side of your neighbor's isthamus city ) . And until you have contact with that civ, the very opportunity to trade techs with that civ is gone. Also don't forget that the trade cost of techs depends on how many civs that you have contact with know the tech in question.

As it is today, communications trading comes with Writing -- it has not been at all uncommon for me to buy / trade for communications before actually contacting a civ, even on Pangaea maps. Won't happen anymore.

Putting aside the comm trading and taking up map trading -- if I determine to go to war relatively early (not so early as an archer rush), both the then-present strength of a potential foe and the natural potential strength of a potential foe are considered. Trading maps in the ancient age allows me to determine which of the 4 neighbors has much fertile land within reach -- i.e. which neighbor needs to be hit early and hard. Think of having a bunch of neigbors on what appears to be a pangaea -- how long will it take to adequately explore all potnetial targets?

The change will at minimum force more player attention on individual exploration. But again, the land-bridge blocking (even coastal blocking) might be easily exploitable by the human.

Catt

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
So, actually, tech trading won't be utterly drastically alterted then.

I'd have thought so, as it's the contact that lowers the research cost and allows trading. So less ancient contact = slower tech race.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

It'll all depend on the map, I suppose. At the very least, it'll put meaningful inter-civilization trading off until the late ancient age (that's my prediction, at least)

[sabrewolf]

quite a long time ago i started a thread, how to slow down the tech race. i always found it irritating, that you needed a tech (writing) to exchange contacts, but complicated stuff like technologies went without any starting tech.

unfortunatly it's hardcoded that tech trading is always possible.

i guess they (firaxis) didn't want to disable this because it would make those civs which get to that tech earlier (e.g. if tech trading required writing, commercial civs would have that ability after 40 turns) even more powerful (as having writing first means you can trade it for half of the ancient age techs.

on topic,
i never really had problem getting contacts because i send out loads of scouts or warriors in all direction asap. and by the time you've got magnetism to travel the oceans to meet the civs on the other continent, there's no big difference, because someone surely has printing press (which btw makes democracy less waste of researching).
all in all, for peaceniks like me this change will give a bigger advantage.

and now hopefully the AI civs won't always go directly for map making (after writing), but challenge the human to literature ergo great library... a human exploit

[alexman]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
and now hopefully the AI civs won't always go directly for map making (after writing)

Actually, map trading is not the reason why the AI loves Map Making. The ability to build galleys is exactly 17 times more valuable to the AI than the ability to trade maps. Add to that the Lighthouse, harbors, and the basic tech value, and the AI value for Map Making is virtually unchanged when you remove map trading.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Spot on, Alexman is right. The ability to build galleys and the Lighthouse are invalueable, and to get Harbours up and running to is also a boon to your growth as a Human player.

The Map Trading is not all that Important compared to these other things.

Furthermore the Great Library is only really useful if your lucky enough to build or take it from an AI on the higher levels. Libraries are the best reason to aqquire Literature.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus
Spot on, Alexman is right. The ability to build galleys and the Lighthouse are invalueable, and to get Harbours up and running to is also a boon to your growth as a Human player.

The Map Trading is not all that Important compared to these other things.

Furthermore the Great Library is only really useful if your lucky enough to build or take it from an AI on the higher levels. Libraries are the best reason to aqquire Literature.

yes, i was talking about higher levels. at monarch and below it's not even for me too difficult to keep up with the AI.

harbors and ship building are nice, but not much worth if you havn't got seas nearby. also, harbor's building cost is 100 shields which takes basicly 100 turns in one of those remote corrupted colonies out at the shore next to a jungle... 100 turns is quite a long time and you also may want to build temples.

[sabrewolf]

a question:
what do you think will change in unit values for non-expansionistic civs? up to standard sized maps it doesn't really matter, but above (i hardly ever play larger sizes)

1MP-units are too slow to cover big area.
chariots can't pass jungles and mountains, so they can be quite limited, especially on young geological worlds.
imho horsemen are even more important now. what do you think?

[Verto]

Originally posted by David Murray
I gasped with shock when I read the first post - then I realized that this is exactly what the game needs. How many times have I thought to myself: "What, Leonardo's workshop is being built in 250BC?! Cavalry by 400AD?!!" Imagine the tech race progressing much more slowly (like it did in the real world until the spread of mass communication), allowing the player to fully appreciate all the different kinds of units and not be overwhelmed with improvements to build. This could well be the coolest thing ever

I'm tired of eras/ages ending so soon, and units becoming obsolete. A lot of times I don't bother building knights because Cavalry is just a few turns away, and am usually at peace.

[Cort Haus]

This mod would also nerf the Great Lib for civs without contacts.

[Rhothaerill]

I hope Firaxis tweaks the AI to compensate for these changes. If the AI "expects" to have contacts, etc. for tech trading to get ahead, then the human will get an advantage. One of the things that gets harder as the difficulty level ramps up is keeping up with the AI tech trading. If they can't do that it makes it easier for us.

[Arrian]

Wow, this is a big change. Centrally located civs will have an advantage - especially a human civ. If you can block off your neighbors from contacting each other, you can broker tech, reaping the best of the deals. The AI will not be able to demand contact from you until PP (they'll probably just demand the tech, though).

While PP strikes me as a tad late for contact trading, it makes sense to slow down the pace in the early game, and I'm all for it.

Ancient/Early medieval warfare is going to be a bit more interesting too. I'm accostumed to launching my main assault with aforeknowledge of the enemy's map. Now I'll only have what I scout myself ahead of time.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

I think what we'd all like is to have to play on Regent level because the AI played such a good game without cheats and bonuses. We all know that's not possible though. The human mind has had millions of years of development head start on the Civ 3 AI.

There has been a steady improvement in the AI since the first 3.0, and hopefully it will be stronger still, so that it's not necessary to rely on substantially cheaper research costs and broader trading windows to give the human a game.