research pacts!!

[MarkG]

a wonderfull way to get back into the game. i'm playing the australians on the world map on impossible, and as you can imagine i was behind everyone else pretty quick. in the last 50-60 turns though i managed to get research pacts with three civs. research pacts give a boost to your science(and to your "partner" of course). this means that an advance that would take 14 turns to complete, was finished in 3 turns! along with some trading of advances(it's fun to exchange the same advance with 3 civs, in the end geting 3 advances for one ) i'm now at the same technology level with everyone else...

[Dom Pedro II]

I got into a few research pacts. I haven't gotten much of a boost. And those smug English refuse to trade technologies with me even though we're in a pact.

[MarkG]

when you ask to trade technologies and they refuse try this: request for an advance, and offer gold. almost always they will counter propose to give you the tech you requested initially

[colorme]

Mark,

that seems pretty silly though, doesn't it? And somewhere in one of the diplomacy AI files, it seemed to say that by default, AIs reject any proposal. Why doesn't it consider each proposal carefully?

[JamesJKirk]

I've also noticed that when you make your request before you make your offer when putting together the proposal it gets accepted more often than not. I guess the AI is the "bad news first" type.

[Dragon]

I've not had a problem with research pacts (except for getting them established). I request a tech, and the AI counters by asking for one of mine. If I don't have one to trade, the AI initially asks for a lot of gold, sometimes more than I have. But later on the AI asks for nothing.

Interestingly, the AI, with fewer cities, can match me in tech development rate. This means that a research pact with the best-developed AI civ can double your rate of scientific progress, leaving everyone else in the dust.

From the game's data files it appears that the AI cheats when you get a big tech lead. But if you have a research pact, then you're just tied -- you have no lead.

[Dominusi]

Best to start a Tech pact with a nation, then camp your spies outside their cities, always research a dif advance then they do, and just steal the ones they discover. Works great.

[LandBuilder]

My spies are never successful. Is there some magic to stealing tech.??