SephIock

Join Date 06/2005

Isolationism vs Information Brokering

Are both viable strategies?

In games like this, I have always been very fond of choosing races/attributes that grant me superior research capabilities;

However, I've noticed that being the best researcher matters a lot less than one might initially suspect, because the AI trades techs as if they were cheap Pokemon cards.

In other words, by the time I've researched a certain level of techs, I find that every other civilization has half a dozen or so techs that I don't have.

At that point, I either have to trade what I have for what I don't, or slowly fall behind the curve, as the other race's combined research capabilities outstrip my own, despite the stat enhancements.

This has lead me to start investing lots of points in diplomacy and perhaps a few in speed, so I can zip around making contact with races and serve as an information broker, trading techs for cash, influence (which I only accept as a last resort), and, of course, other techs.

While certainly advantageous, this style.... really doesn't suit me.

Is it at all viable to go for a technologically superior, isolationist state? I'm not talking about never trading, but rather of staying ahead of the pack without constantly giving away all my secrets.

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Not in the early game. The AIs do share technology quite often, so if you want to play isolationist, your research has to be at least 33% of that of the entire universe, and that if there are many races. If only 2 or 3 races, then you'll need 50%.

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The other option is to be militarily powerful very early. Lots of times when you conquer a world you steal a tech, so conquer a lot of worlds and you'll keep up technologically.

True isolationism just isn't a good strategy, though.

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James009D

Join Date 01/2005

+67

I've noticed that in the begining of my game I'm behind in technology and have to resort to trading but later in the game each civ goes their own way. For example, I began to lead in techology, only mached by the Alterian Republic (probably spelled wrong), and other civs were specializing in different techologies, Dregin Empire with lasers and Yor with missles.

In point, I believe that the raising in value of the later technologies slows down or stops the trading of technologies allowing research civs to start to pull ahead of the others.

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The AI is touchy about trading military techs, especially to a race with a significant military, that's why that's the one area you'll commonly see tech disparity among the AI.

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I'd really like it if trading tech carried some kind of cost, to make that less viable that it currently is. (you know, like each side pays BCs to cover the cost of integrating the new tech into its society or military/industrial complex) I don't like how you can spend a ton of time building labs, managing your spending sliders, and carefully picking techs to research, and then load up the diplomacy screen and be trading them left and right like... well... cheap pokemon cards.

I'm in favor of a really quick fix to this which is an option in game-start up to disable tech trading entirely. That's can't be that hard to implement!

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

The AIs seem to "share" (via trading) tech with no control or limitations and it's often easy as a player to minipulate minor and major races to "broker" or otherwise gain tech dominance. This is something I didn't like much GC1 that I was hoping would be a bit different in GC2 but so far it looks very similar. This is an element that saw vast improvement in the Civ series between III and IV. I very much like how Civ IV deals with the whole tech thing.

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And what exactly are these differences between Civ4 and Galciv2's methods of handling tech trading?

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Yep, same as GalCiv 1. When you looked at the endgame stats after a GC1 game you would see that most AI civs only researched maybe 1/5 of the techs they aquired.

In fact , if anything I think the GalCiv 2 AIs are even more shameless techwhores than GC1. I've noticed that even though there may be big differences in how much various AI civs are spending on research they all have the same tech level because as soon as one of them researches something it gets traded to all the rest within a few turns.

The human player has to do the same thing to some extent just to keep up. You also need a good diplomacy rating since the AIs trade much more freely with each other than with the human player.

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I'd disagree with this, the AI does trade often, but it's something you can do too. I like the idea that the Ai is smart enough to trade itself to keep up. And as for the instantly trading thing, I do it so I don't see why the AI shouldn't. As soon as I've got a tech I don't mind giving the AI (ie. Planetary Invasion, they'll get it soon enough anyway) I trade it with all of them so that I at least cash in a little.

I don't have a problem with the AI doing the same.

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I think that Civ4 had a good answer to tech trading between various civilizations. Each tech was assigned a number representing the amount of time that it would take to research the tech from scratch (that number was even viewable during a diplomatic session so that the human player could refer to the number to determine if the trade was equal or not). That number was used as a value to determine if the trade was equal and the AI was instructed to pursue an equal trade unless need forced it to consider an unequal trade. The effect was that early in the game, most techs were equal and trading was pretty prevelent, however by mid-game tech trading slowed down.

I'm not sure if Stardock immplimented this type of system or something similiar. I did read in one of Brad's posts that some of the Civ4 team at Firaxis were helping with the beta of GalCiv2 so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Stardock did indeed adopt something similar. However it's too early (IMO) to make any changes to the existing changes until more games have been played. However, the current system does make the AI more human competitive. Perhaps it's a system that not everyone likes, but perhaps doesn't seem to both the majority of the players.

I'm fine with the current system.

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I have noticed that the AI tech trading patterns essentially force you to heavily tech trade yourself lest you fall behind (and miss out on a significant source of revenue). While this is not a huge deal, it does mean a) AIs have more or less total tech parity until sometime mid-game.

if you want to trade a tech, you better trade it to EVERY other ai in the same turn (which is kinda tedious).

How about limiting the each player/AI to 1 or 2 tech trades per turn? Use some mumbo-jumbo about "the ability of the civilization to absorb new technology is exhausted for the moment".

cheers

h

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I would like to see some way of curbing the madness. The problem is some players like techwhoring and they will be sure to bitch if we cramp their style.

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No one's forcing you to give away your techs. You can just BUY their techs, and never sell yours or trade yours away.

Just research branches the AIs are not researching, and buy whatever they do research. You'll be a tech leader then.

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