Research Pact

[Raven]

I play a game at impossible. In the beginning very slow
gaining new advances. At last I found out out that supplying my American, Persian and French
opponents with a little gold, I could establish peace and trade technology.
I managed to climb up in the front rows as far technology was concerned.
for maximum velocity I decided to initiate a research pact
with the French with whom I was trading continuosly.

However the moment we sign the pact and the ink is still wet,
the French refuse to exchange any advance.
10 turns later they seem to get a new advance every turn.
And I fall behind in new technologies again.
So far the research pact didn't exactly meet it's expections.

Somehow I can't find out how to cancel this pact.
I think I will send some spies, steal some technology.
Maybe initiate a little war and then start all over again.
Any other ideas are most welcome.

And how can the research pact work in my favor?

[Dinner]

I tend to avoid the research pact because the AI never seems to hold up it's side of the bargin. Instead I try to expand my number of cities as rapidly as possible and use the empire manger to squeeze every last drop out of my people. If you build your cities by the coast and on a river then they will grow quickly and you'll do much better in science.
Another way to get science advances is to quickly build an army, take a neighbors city, put the army next to another city, and then demand an advance for a peace treaty. Often they will go for it. I hope this helps.

[kaan]

The reasearch pact is bugged so dont ever use it.
the bug is that the AI part of the deal get 1 advance per turn and the human part of the deal gets nothing at all.
Another thing worth noting is that if you trade an advance to the AI in exchange for money the AI will accept but you dont get a single goldpeice.
to avoid these nasty bugs please download the apolyton pack since it makes the game so much more bugfree and pleasant

klaus

[Dinner]

Well put Kaan! I might add that the bug doesn't seem to effect people playing a Multiplayer game.

[Raven]

A bug then, hmmm, I'll download the apolyton pack.

My strategy seems to be very much like everyone else's. Only that I frequently use spies to steal technology. By the time my opponents start to get very upset about them I send them a little gold, and they are happy again. So much cheaper than paying for it. It does cost a lot of spies though.

Research does take a long time compared to CTP1 or Civ2. Where advances eventually can come in less than 4 turns. Even if I build all science improvements, research time never seems to go below the 6-8 turns.

[Peter Triggs]

Dale didn't include research pact proposals in DIPLOMOD, I think because initially people complained that they didn't work. But they do, it's just not obvious that they're working because they don't involve exchanging advances on a turn by turn basis. IIRC, Martin G and player1 talked about this in the "IMPROVED version of DIPLOMOD" thread in the creation forum.