Civ III

[Guest Fishboot]

You don't lose any existing trade deals, like 5 gold over 50 turns, or trading luxuries with others, etc, when you engage in warfare with the nations that you have these agreements with.

 

That's like the US providing oil for the Japanese war machine in the Pacific during WW2 because they had a pre-war deal, and that is silly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

If that's true currently, it must have been patched in. In the original game through the third or fourth patch generation war cancelled all deals - I remember that you could game the system by offering gigantic resource and gold-per-turn deals to your enemies in exchange for tech and then declaring war on them immediately afterwards, losing nothing (although I think breaking deals by any method had a political impact - it had a similar effect to the Right of Passage sneak attack strategy/exploit).

[metadigital]

They may have patched it, I just found it stupid when I played it. (I'm all for finding metagaming exploits: that's what I like to do. But if the exploits make a mockery of the game then I tend to lose interest pretty quickly ...)

[Reveilled]

They may have patched it, I just found it stupid when I played it. (I'm all for finding metagaming exploits: that's what I like to do. But if the exploits make a mockery of the game then I tend to lose interest pretty quickly ...)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Actually, from the sound of Fishboots post, the trading during wartime things sounds more like the fix to an exploit rather than an exploit itself.

[metadigital]

Um, yeah. But I didn't see the fix, only the exploit.

[alanschu]

Ah.

 

I don't know if that is or is not the case, but I'll take your word for it.

[Calax]

I remember an exploit where you would offer an simple tech that was 2 or 3 ages below you (for safety) and be commercial and ask for an outragous sum of money (somthing along the lines of 6 or 7 digits) and they would give it to you.

[alanschu]

6 or 7 digits???

 

I've never seen anyone (including myself) acquire more than 100,000 bucks in the game.

[Walsingham]

6 or 7 digits???

 

I've never seen anyone (including myself) acquire more than 100,000 bucks in the game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Ditto. As a matter of fact I've never seen the Ai part with more than 3 digits. Moreover, on teh arre occcasions that the Ai does get so smurphed as to be that far behind i don't see how they would have acquired the cash.

 

Shome mishtake, shurely?

[Reveilled]

It's no mistake. In the first few patches, there was a bug whereby the AI would always accept a deal which involved them giving you something like 999999999 gold per turn. For some reason, the game interpreted it as you asking for nothing.

[Deraldin]

6 or 7 digits???

 

I've never seen anyone (including myself) acquire more than 100,000 bucks in the game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I've had a couple games where I made 50 thousand or so, but that's as close as I've gotten. I had already managed to finish most of the research so I just dumped all my spending into the treasury for the last 50 years or so.

 

I think I was playing on the easiest setting for some reason.

[Enoch]

We mentioned the insane trading strategies of the AIs in the previous Civ thread.

 

King Walsingham - "I could squash you like an ant, babylon, but in a spirit of enlightenment I will offer to trade you silk for fur, one for one. A gentleman's trade between equals."

 

Chief Mbonkwemafutu: "No dice, you crazy hippy! I demand three luxuries for my one."

 

King Walsingham - "My army outnumbers you four to one and they are poised on your borders. Please I implore you to avert the bloodshed."

 

Chief Mbonkwemafutu: *insane cackling*

 

King Walsingham - "Oh, for f**ks sake..." *squishes stupid country and takes fur by force*

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This phenomenon takes place with regularity because the AI values luxuries by the number of happy faces they can produce in your nation (and assumes you do the same). Thus, if you have 20 cities, and they only have 10, you're getting twice as much benefit out of the deal that they are. In such a situation, they will demand a 2-1 trade. Marketplaces exacerbate this: If the luxury you want is your empires 6th, and all your cities have marketplaces, that creates a lot of happy faces, which means that those gems ain't gonna come cheap.

 

Conversely, if you keep your empire really small (try winning a 1 city cultural victory by never building a settler or conquering a city!), luxuries are really cheap.

 

It's counter-intuitive, yes, but it prevents you from fixing all your civil disorder problems too cheaply.

[Walsingham]

Thanks for clearing that up, Enoch!

 

However, I do thin it represents damn silly negotiation skills on the war-avoidance front. I honestly dont know how Steve manages to even try to be peaceful with such incompetent half-wits.

 

Incidentally, I have been researching alternative diplomacy techniques and found

 

www.dramatec.com

 

interesting site. I wonder if you could use their models in a game like Civ?

[Guest Fishboot]

Thanks for clearing that up, Enoch!

 

However, I do thin it represents damn silly negotiation skills on the war-avoidance front. I honestly dont know how Steve manages to even try to be peaceful with such incompetent half-wits.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Isn't there a way to levy a direct threat of war in a political context by threatening to revoke the implicit peace treaty between your nations? I think in that case the AI players do take better account of the relative power of the two nations, although I think you take a hit in international politics (since you're a nasty warlord).

[Enoch]

Thanks for clearing that up, Enoch!

 

However, I do thin it represents damn silly negotiation skills on the war-avoidance front. I honestly dont know how Steve manages to even try to be peaceful with such incompetent half-wits.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Isn't there a way to levy a direct threat of war in a political context by threatening to revoke the implicit peace treaty between your nations? I think in that case the AI players do take better account of the relative power of the two nations, although I think you take a hit in international politics (since you're a nasty warlord).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There is an "Accept or We Attack" option in diplomacy, but, IIRC, it disappears as soon as you place something on the table. Thus, you can demand that the AI give you Furs, but you can't demand that they let you buy them for a reduced price.

[Enoch]

By the way, the AI valuation is the same for strategic resources. It values the resource based on how many cities will benefit from the resource's availability. So don't expect to get Coal for Rubber straight up from a civilization that's half your size.