Open Borders

[Dominae]

This new CIV treaty brings up a slew of interesting questions for PBEMs and demogames. Let me condense it into one question: under what circumstances, if any, should we ever sign an OB treaty with another team?

In the PTWDG, I recall that we were very reticent to trade our maps. I'm not sure if it served us well (there were so negative diplomatic ramifications) but it sure made us feel a lot safer for a long period of time. Signing an OB treaty would give another team carte blanche to map out our lands. I will continue to assume that this is a bad thing.

It's not so critical as it was in Civ3, however. Resources appear under the fog of war if you have already scouted out an area, so it's much harder to hide such assets. Still, I imagine we would still want to keep our city locations and our troop movements secret.

Open Borders, do, however, boost trade. What we could do is sign an agreement with another team to the effect that our OB treaty is for trade purposes only - units must not cross national boundaries. This would be difficult to enforce though: within one turn a Sentry Horseman can scout out quite a bit of land and still return home unnoticed.

Then there's Religion and Missionaries. Do we want other teams spreading their Religion to us? The Religion owner gets all the big benefits (most importantly, line of sight to converted cities), but if we fail to found our own Religion living without State Religion benefits would be tough on our economy (no Religion Civics is rough). This line of reasoning makes me think that perhaps we should prioritize Religion a bit more than in SP or online MP.

Thankfully, it's not possible to ROP-rape anymore. Still, should we let teams use our lands as staging grounds for military campaigns? Should we use their lands in the same way? By simply declaring war, another team can teleport all our units out of their territory without us being able to react. Such a backstab could utterly ruin us.

[notyoueither]

A very good topic.

OB for trade is a good thing. The rest is going to have to be very situationally determined.

At least this time they can't expect our map for nothing, and be slighted by the answer being no, before late in the tree.

[Cort Haus]

Lego kept their map hidden until the last turn of their game, and I don't think it did them any harm.

In the PTWDG2 all teams agreed on a world-wide mapshare as soon as the tech was available. It was UnO's idea, based on the principle that it was in the best interests of the game as a whole. It certainly gave the four teams on the continent with Iron something to laugh about.

As far as this game goes, we've got until Writing to decide on this, and I'd say it might depend on who our neighbours are and how relations are going. We might prefer to mutually map each others land if we have good relations. We can't stop each other mapping early as we can't block chokepoints, so a team that sacrifices other early goodies for scouting might not need OB to see where most resources are.

[Arrian]

Tough call. I think the key is how much we think we will benifit from the trade system. If we stand to pick up juicy trade routes, it's worth considering. If not, I see no point.

Obviously this changes should we be involved in alliance - being able to put our units into our ally's cities (or vice-versa) to help them out would be a huge boon.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

It all depends on our trade position. Before currency, and with no or very small coastal cities, OB is of little use. The moment our harbors come on line, and coastal cities grow we should aim for as many OBs as possible. CIV is a money game.

It's a game of trade denial too: we should definately take into account trade routes: breaking OB can cause deals to get cancelled, damaging 2 nations instead of just one.

DeepO

[DeepO]

BTW, If we can we should set up simulations: with a separate worldbuilder map, we can see who of the two nations is gaining most from OB: we or our enemies. The moment the others get more, we should consider canceling the OB.

DeepO

[Krill]

We should be creating a simulation to test out different patterns of MM in any case, so it should not be difficult to tweak it for use as an OB sim...

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Krill
We should be creating a simulation to test out different patterns of MM in any case, so it should not be difficult to tweak it for use as an OB sim...

Yeah, exactly. MMing is going to be very important early on. The better our simulation can get, the better we can play. It would also give everyone something to play with, and get a feel of our situation while not distributing the save to everyone...

But back OT here: OB. I Like them, but I generally rely on trade routes more than on cottages for my commerce.

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DeepO
But back OT here: OB. I Like them, but I generally rely on trade routes more than on cottages for my commerce.

That's funny, I do the opposite!

This is an MP game, which means we cannot rely on other teams to do anything. Building a bunch of coastal cities and Harbors only to find other teams decide to embargo us would really hurt.

On the other hand, Cottages are our business alone and are only affected by military interference (not to mention they're better late-game because of all the Civic and tech bonuses).

I have no doubt that we can profit economically from an Open Border with another civ, perhaps more than our trade partner. Even if we lose out on a Commerce by Commerce basis (for instance, the other team is Expansive and therefore get their Harbors online earlier), it's probably a good idea because it gets us ahead of our enemies.

What I'm rather worried about is letting another team's units into our lands. To what extent are the economic benefits counterbalanced by the negatives I outlined in my original post?

[Arrian]

Hmm, I have a tendency to play more like DeepO - lots of my trade is sea-based (working coastal tiles and getting good trade routes), although I also build a fair number of cottages.

I agree with Dom, however, that cottages are probably even more important in this game than trade routes.

Don't forget the power of working coastal tiles, though, especially if we're a FIN civ.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dominae
This is an MP game, which means we cannot rely on other teams to do anything. Building a bunch of coastal cities and Harbors only to find other teams decide to embargo us would really hurt.

On the other hand, Cottages are our business alone and are only affected by military interference (not to mention they're better late-game because of all the Civic and tech bonuses).

This is exactly the problem, of course. I think we'll need more OBs than in a similar situation in SP, but we certainly can't rely on them alone for our gold situation.

What we do have to realize, is that harbors will do us good even if we don't have any OBs. They will lower the income others are getting from their harbor-less cities. So, we need to focus on harbors anyway... which makes OB more an afterthought as we'd better use the infrastructure we build to the max.

I might be a bit biased, but harbors are one of the bext available buildings, and one of the least understood. If we want to get an edge somewhere, this might be one area if other teams do not fully grasp the advantage you can gain. Everyone will focus on forges, everyone will focus on granaries. Harbors aren't that certain to be focused on by everyone.

We'll need to balance with cottages, though, to be self-sufficient. They are relatively more important than in high-level SP games as everyone will battle the same production disadvantages... there are no AIs here, with crazy bonusses.

And tech trade might be more of an unpredictability too (see Lego in PTWDG I, who had no trade in the industrial era... the direct cause for their demise). I foresee commerce being a lot more important than you might expect.

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DeepO
I foresee commerce being a lot more important than you might expect.

You mean trade? Yes, possibly.

There's also the chance that we simply do not have "time" for Harbors and foreign trade routes. Will this map be Continents, or Pangea? Imagine if the map is similar to the PTWDG, and we start in ND's position - that's a lot of stuff to worry about before foreign trade routes and Harbors!

I'm right with you on the misunderstood power of Harbors; many other teams will probably discount them. However, those other improvements that you mention, Forges and stuff, are pretty good.

I still think Harbors are something of a luxury, but through this discussion I'm closer to being convinced otherwise.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dominae


You mean trade? Yes, possibly.

No, I meant commerce... in general, shield disadvantages against AIs are what most will feel as most limiting, but these are no AI. Imagine a situation like Lego had: they don't need that much production but they surely needed the commerce if this would have been in CIV.

Trade is one part of it, of course, which is why diplomacy is going to be even more important than in Civ 3.

And harbors: don't get me wrong, I'm not saying forges aren't important. However, in not building forges first you lose little compared to not building harbors first. Later on, catching up by building a forge is still possible, but once you've got a good size your city won't gain that much when building a harbor.

Harbors are for small cities, but are vital to them. There is a possibility for an edge here, so I wouldn't want to give that away too easily. A production edge is too predictable.

DeepO

[Hot Mustard]

There's another type of trade possible here that hasn't been mentioned: religious trade. OB could be hitched with an agreement to allow both team's state religion freely - benefitting both teams. This could make for a very close ally, long term.

[Ennet]

In my opinion Open Borders could be signed as a trade deal only. Agreeing not to move any units into each others borders. I dont think that would be an exploit?

The spread of religions and great merchants will be a determinating factor when we get the possibilities to trade maps. A lot of our nation may allready be visible to our competitors at that time..

Originally posted by dejon
There's another type of trade possible here that hasn't been mentioned: religious trade. OB could be hitched with an agreement to allow both team's state religion freely - benefitting both teams. This could make for a very close ally, long term.

You have to weight that against intelligence, this would give another team near total insight in the shape and position of our military. A team we one time sooner or later will have to confront in one way or another. Ofcourse we would have insight in their nation aswel, but any information they have on us could be sold on to other teams too. Again it's all depending on automatic spread of religions.