Open Borders

[Aro]

Originally posted by Ennet

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..

That's why I would like to play as a SPI civ, trying an early religion.

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. Of course 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.

Religion is better than spies in certain circunstances. If you remove a spy from a city, you will loose all that info. But if you convert some citizens, you have a permanent spy until Free Religion!
Is that easy? I don’t really know. Religion is easy against AI, but how does it works against humans?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by 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.

It's a bit more complicated than that. If, for example, Vox would benefit a bit more from Open Borders than we would, but Open Borders with Vox would still give us an advantage relative to the other civs in the game, than Open Borders with Vox could still make a lot of sense even though they benefit more than we do. Of course if we and Vox are bitter enemies, or if we and Vox are in a neck-and-neck struggle for the tech lead in the game, improving our position relative to Vox might be more important than the impact on how we compare with everyone else.

Ultimately, I expect a huge amount of the Open Borders issue to be tied to other aspects of diplomacy rather than calculated purely in cold economic terms. That's not to say that we shouldn't be aware of the economic impact, but the economic aspect will almost certainly end up being just one part of what we consider.

In regard to the mapping issue, has there been any discussion about the extent to which agreements between teams are allowed to go outside the bounds of the game's mechanics? If not, such a discussion would be useful to make sure all the teams are on the same page.

[Dominae]

If two teams want to sign Open Borders but also agree between themselves not to map out each other's lands, there's nothing in the rules to prevent that.

Although it would be more like SP, I doubt many teams would go along with the idea that we must obey the spirit of the Open Borders treaty.

But there's no harm in putting it to a vote in the public forum.

Interestingly, breaking a "no-mapping" agreement when an OB is active may produce some unique diplomatic situations. Surely it would be a break of trust, but would it constitute war? And how would another team know if we just slipped in a Missionary when they were not looking? From their perspective they would think the Religion spread automatically...

[Arrian]

They would only know if we stuck in into a city that already had a religion present...

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Agreed, Nathan. It will be more complex than that. It will be interesting to delve into some of these mechanics when the time comes, don't you think?

As to outside rules: I'm not sure on how far they go. For the moment, I think we can't trade minimaps, and we can't contact those we haven't met yet, but I'm not sure on these even.

Maybe we need more info here...

DeepO

[Blake]

I don't entirely agree with the value of harbors.

Harbors are useful primarly in your largest cities, when there are even larger cities out there to trade with, in this situation they can take a city from +2 to +5 (so +6 income with 2 trade routes). Which is nice (really nice), but it does rely on the presence of those large trade partners. Now circumstances might make it obvious that a harbor-centric approach would pay big dividends (especially if the trade bonus comes with a usable health bonus).

Well, OB's are a gesture of trust and goodwill especially when opened with multiple others - saying "We have nothing to hide".

Covert mapping can NOT be stopped, take a sentry chariot, ram it in as far as it goes, disband. It MIGHT be possible to declare that even being near the borders is a breach of trust but I don't think that would fly when borders start touching.

It might even be possible to train the chariot in a border city, promote it, send it in, and disband it all in the same turn, so we're never alerted to the presence of a fastmover. Ditto for missionaries.
(Note: this is a useful tatic for sending in spies, disband the boat and they never have any clue)

So with OB's I think we need to consider that no-scouting breaches are undetectable and enforcing would open a whole can of worms.

I think Open Borders should be exactly that - open, and loaded with goodwill, something for allies. Or just keep them closed and run Merchantalism if we're Philo.

[nbarclay]

It's impossible to prevent covert mapping of border areas, but it's possible to prevent covert mapping of areas far enough beyond the border that it would be necessary to travel multiple turns to see them. So even in the face of cheating, or with a treaty designed to allow the kinds of limited border exploration that there's no way to stop or detect, it would be possible to maintain some secrets. And in any case, by the time a sane civ would be willing to throw away units just to map a few extra tiles, the civs would almost certainly have expanded toward each other to a point where the tiles near the borders are tiles both have already explored.

I'm not saying I favor the idea of open border treaties with side agreements not to map each other's territory. I'm just saying that they aren't so worthless that it's not even worth considering the possibility - especially in the early game when movement is slow enough that cheating options would be relatively limited.

[Blake]

I wouldn't mind throwing away a scout or chariot to do some valuable recon.

On the value of Harbors: Latest game I took notes on the trade route value changes when the first harbor got built, in Hastings:
London (size 10): 4,3 -> 2,2
York (size 10): 3,2 -> 3,2
Hastings (size 10) 2,2 -> 5,5

Now clearly, Hastings stole Londons trade routes, and boosted them by ~ 50%. I was on 100% science. London has library + acadamy, hastings has library.
London: 12.25 beakers -> 7 beakers. (-5.25)
Hastings: 5 beakers -> 12.5 beakers (+7.5)

So while at first glance, I gained 6 commerce, in reality I gained all of 2.25 beakers. Which isn't quite a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but I'm doing it for the health!

I think in practise, the benefit you see from harbors is half stolen and half real. There are exceptions, when your cities are very small in comparison with others.

My summary of harbors is this: Harbors are only good in your largest cities, which are also the cities needing the health. They produce zero benefit in the smaller cities, unless you have an obscene number of large cities you can trade with.

[nbarclay]

Blake, do you have any idea whether it's possible for a harbor to steal a trade route from a rival civ instead of from one of your own cities? It's hard to be sure what the pattern is from just one data point.

[Dominae]

Generally speaking, empires are smaller in CIV that in Civ3: on a Standard map, there are fewer tiles, and you have fewer cities at each stage of the game.

A single Chariot with Sentry could probably map out up to 50% of our territory, give or take depending on Hills. A couple of Explorers could do much the same.

I think the main question is: are the economic benefits of an Open Borders treaty worth the free intel for our allies (and potential future enemies)?

Also: Does the situation change if we are on different continents? Would we be willing to do the Chariot/Explorer spying trick on them?

[Blake]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Blake, do you have any idea whether it's possible for a harbor to steal a trade route from a rival civ instead of from one of your own cities? It's hard to be sure what the pattern is from just one data point.

I used to think so, but now I don't believe so, no.

The algorithm is really quite simple and comes down to making a big list of every city your civ can trade with.
Then it starts with your best trade city, and allocates the N best cities. (where N is the number of trade routes per city)
And to your second best city, and allocates the N next best cities.
And so on until it runs out of cities and moves on to domestic trade which is entirely different.

Nowhere do I see any scope for stealing trade from other civs. I think this theory was born before it was realised how asymmetric the trade algorithm is.

Now, note that before currency, you only need 1 equal sized trade partner to give every city a foreign trade route. Post-currency you need 2 partners. When it reaches 4 trade/routes per city.. you need 4 partners. To continue to maximize trade, more open borders must be signed! The economic benefit of being a trade-hub in a world of paranoid semi-isolationists would truly be phenomenal, kind of like giving every city a couple extra fully developed cottages to work. To a certain degree, risk would be increased by letting others peak into our territory, then again, it probably wouldn't be a hard case to make that "we're the honest good guys!!".
*shrug*

[DeepO]

Interesting... that certainly deminishes the appeal of harbors.

I think that in order to see what we do with OB, we should also see at what others will do with it. I think more teams will go for multiple OBs just for the trade, which means we can't stay behind. Mapping of our territory is not something we're going to be able to prevent anyway, so that is less of a concern to me, even if we should of course try to out-explore whoever is near us.

DeepO

[Aginor]

In a diplomacy situation like this, anything we can do to deter other civs from picking US as the civ to attack is, IMO, a good thing. Open Borders provides such a disincentive.

As for the mapping issue - I say the best response is just to outmap them. Both sides gain information regarding one another...the only situation where I can see Open Borders as a problem is when we control a chokepoint and we don't want to expose ourselves to joint invasion by the player cut off at the chokepoint and our other rivals (whom that player has no contact with).

[edit: Open Borders unit teleporting discussion removed...duly noted that this is widely considered an exploit...even if it IS a really good trick]

[DeepO]

chokepoints will of course lead to a different situation... in case we end up with 2-3 teams on a continent there will be plenty of chokepoint opportunity. But as last time, whenever 2 neighbours want to be friendly they will sign a settling agreement for sure... everyone wants to have a continous piece of land instead of unconnectd dots in your neighbour's land.

Part of the discussion here is on whether we want to have OBs in later game stages (say after harbors). At first, there is no trade, so only the mapping / settling part of OBs remains... I say a default 'no OB' until we've got a good reason to sign an OB is the best way to approach the early years.

DeepO