From diplomat to millionair

[Warspite3]

I love the way diplomacy works in this game. It seems fast, easy, to the point and most of all effective and tons of fun! For example, I had a hard time getting colonies up in my current game. Things were going very slow all through the beginning and continued for a long while after. Systems near me had a poor selection of planets which were not potential colonies. So at this point I started gifting my neighbors and selling techs. Money started going, up, up and up. A once managed to sell a single tech for over a half million! Then my money started to become powerful. My gifting increased, I was able to gift large amounts several times to my neighbors. Then I found other empires, selling more and more techs. Some of them would not buy simply because they never had enought money. So when they would not buy, I would buy a tech from them with all my huge amounts of money. Then they would have money and I would attempt to sell the same tech, bingo they would buy it. I continued doing this all over the galaxy, buy and selling techs, gifting and forming defensive protection pacts. I then started to disband (retire) many of my ships other then some escorts for all my freighters running around and a few frigates to attack pirate ships and bases. At this point in the game, I could be the wealthiest empire in the galaxy. I do need to confirm this but I most certainly think I am. I will have to check and I will update this after I confirm it. Its like sure, my military is small but mess with me and you will face the wrath of my powerful friends. It feels good to be a multi-millionair [:D] Nice to see even if you have a bad start, you can do a strategy like this and climb up and into the game strongly. Anyone else here try to be a diplomacy king like this?

[lordxorn]

Cool discovery to become the diplomat king, what race were you playing and all the other details. I have used diplomacy to great effect as well, such as buying colonies in disputed systems to avoid a future war. I too like the diplomacy, and think it may only need a little adjustment to how it values colonies and techs.

[Kamonrius]

Well see how happy you are when your friends start turning on each other

[Cindar]

Tech trading is overpowered atm. Buy a tech for 50k, sell it to 10 different civilizations for 50k each. Use that money to buy another tech for 100k, repeat. You get all the techs, your opponents are driven to bankruptcy and get far less techs, and you end up uber rich.

[Fishman]

Tech trading like this has existed in every 4X type game from Civ on upwards. The only real problem is that the AI isn't doing it, it seems.

[Wicky]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

Tech trading like this has existed in every 4X type game from Civ on upwards. The only real problem is that the AI isn't doing it, it seems.

Yup, I just wanted to say this too. It was a problem in Moo2, in Civilization, basically every game that allows trading virtual goods (techs) to real goods (money etc.)

So, what did Sid Meyer do? He made a formula that calculates the value of a technology by dividing it. The more races who have it, the less it is worth.
If you have a titan beam worth 200k cash, and 4 races in the universe have researched it, it is worth only 200/4= 50k. If you are the only one who has it, it is worth the full 200k.

But this is somewhat unfair. If race A buys it for 200k from the researcher, why should race B pay only 100k for the same tech? It depends on whom it is sold first.

1) Maybe you'll find it better if techs could only be traded for other techs?

2) Or maybe if you can't trade techs at all, just buy the desired "titan beam" directly from another empire, for example you order 50 titan beams, that's it you don't get the tech but you get the items? This reminds me of the native american indians, who were traded firearms.

3) Or maybe even better, you can't trade techs but instead hire teachers from another empire? Let's say they have titan beam, and you give them 100k cash in order to send teachers to your empire who triple your research speed in beam weapons until titan beam is researched, then they will return home again. It will take a while until your scientists have understood it.

In reality, you can't sell nuclear tech to some african tribe who lives in the jungle. They don't even have factories producing the screws to hold parts together. It would take 100 years to create the supplementary infrastructure to have a native tribe build a nuclear power plant.

[feygan]

Actually it seems simple enough to just include a method about brokering techs. Many 4x game mods include options that allow you to turn off tech brokering, if you research the tech yourself then trade away happily, but you can't trade on techs you traded for in the first place.

I know this takes away an element of realism, but until someone comes up with a full capacity AI with human levels, then realism is never going to be achieved. In which case all you can do is set certain limits to try and balance the game out.

[Gertjan]

I think Galciv2 also solved this and there you can also disable it if you want to.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Wicky

In reality, you can't sell nuclear tech to some african tribe who lives in the jungle. They don't even have factories producing the screws to hold parts together. It would take 100 years to create the supplementary infrastructure to have a native tribe build a nuclear power plant.

Implementing something like this would involve a radical restructuring of how the very notion of a "tech tree" works and is probably outside the scope of a patch. This is a tech tree model similar to some of the older Total War games, where there was no "tech tree", only infrastructure that produced more advanced items. If something managed to utterly destroy the infrastructure in a province, that place could then only produce low-tech crap again, as if bombed back into the stone age. The result was that many regions of the map remained war-torn third-world hellholes as AI nations traded provinces back and forth and everything was repeatedly burned down, while regions you controlled stably tended to be highly developed, wealthy, and advanced.

[Sarissofoi]

Actuallt there is two ways.
1) 'NO trade tech' option - simply trade cant be traded I see something like that in civ and it worked well
1a) 'No tech brokering' option - that mean that you must to resarch tech by youreslf to trade it, you cant trade techs whose you buy and AI cant do it too.
2)Make AI more selfish like in Master of Orion I. In this game AI dont sell tech easly. You must offer much more advanced tech for some of their tech and thus this benefit AI more than you. Also AI never offer sell you tech(and you cant buy it for money) and situation when AI try to buy some tech from you(for some of their tech) was rare and was classified as favor to the AI.

[Erik Rutins]

A couple of quick comments:

1. Wait for the next update where diplomacy and trading is being rebalanced.

2. Tech is already "discounted" if many different empires already know it.

[Wicky]

ORIGINAL: feygan
Many 4x game mods include options that allow you to turn off tech brokering, if you research the tech yourself then trade away happily, but you can't trade on techs you traded for in the first place.

Hm this is the most insightful response I read in a long time. Maybe it will take some more attempts at creating 4x games until it will be realized, but I like it!

If you think about it long enough, you'll realize that this idea would allow trading virtual goods for real goods. For example a technology for money/colonies, without all the problems.
It looks simple, you can only trade techs you researched, but not those which you bought. But of course billions of humans will cry "OUTRAGE", if you bought it then it is as good as if you had researched it yourself Hehe

[RViener]

Erik, You whet my appetite with the diplomacy tidbit.
Bob Viener

[Warspite3]

True but not near as effective. I have never even been as close as successful doing this in the other games as I have done in DW. It just don't work as it does here. I am buku rich! Well I was but spent most of it now.

ORIGINAL: Fishman

Tech trading like this has existed in every 4X type game from Civ on upwards. The only real problem is that the AI isn't doing it, it seems.

[JonathanStrange]

It does seem exploitative - unless of course an AI Diplomacy King can do the same thing.

[Gertjan]

I dont mind exploits in singleplayer as long you and the ai dont use them, they dont spoil the game. It is like using cheats, imho.

[Wade1000]

ORIGINAL: Wicky
So, what did Sid Meyer do? He made a formula that calculates the value of a technology by dividing it. The more races who have it, the less it is worth.
If you have a titan beam worth 200k cash, and 4 races in the universe have researched it, it is worth only 200/4= 50k. If you are the only one who has it, it is worth the full 200k.

That would be desirable.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

A couple of quick comments:

1. Wait for the next update where diplomacy and trading is being rebalanced.

2. Tech is already "discounted" if many different empires already know it.

Cool.

ORIGINAL: Wicky
3) Or maybe even better, you can't trade techs but instead hire teachers from another empire? Let's say they have titan beam, and you give them 100k cash in order to send teachers to your empire who triple your research speed in beam weapons until titan beam is researched, then they will return home again. It will take a while until your scientists have understood it.

In reality, you can't sell nuclear tech to some african tribe who lives in the jungle. They don't even have factories producing the screws to hold parts together. It would take 100 years to create the supplementary infrastructure to have a native tribe build a nuclear power plant.

This might be desirable too. It is some thing to consider. Maybe it can be a sort of diplomacy deal along with technology trading.

Although, I think that if we sent all sorts of professionals to that tribe and that tribe got access to the proper material and labor resources then they could have a minimal up and running nuclear power plant much sooner than 100 years. If the various professionals stay there and assist them then it could be as soon as the time it takes for a younger group to grow up while training in the very minimal requirements to undersatnd everything; maybe 10 years? For example, some groups of tribal members could begin the training at age 10 while the other tribal adults begin training also. For Humans, age 10 might be a good age to begin specialized training or learning since it seems to be an age many begin to notice, understand, and take interest in grand subjects and issues or their larger surroundings. So, 10 years later the younger and older groups will have been training with the professionals and the tribe could be ready to build.

[Wade1000]

ORIGINAL: Warspite3

Some of them would not buy simply because they never had enought money. So when they would not buy, I would buy a tech from them with all my huge amounts of money. Then they would have money and I would attempt to sell the same tech, bingo they would buy it.

Are you saying that the your AI opponents bought technologies from you that they already had (a bug) or are you reffering to the original technology that you offered them that they did not have?

[Warspite3]

No not a bug, it was the original technology I offered. Once they had the money, they would buy it.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Sarissofoi

ou buy and AI cant do it too.
2)Make AI more selfish like in Master of Orion I. In this game AI dont sell tech easly. You must offer much more advanced tech for some of their tech and thus this benefit AI more than you. Also AI never offer sell you tech(and you cant buy it for money) and situation when AI try to buy some tech from you(for some of their tech) was rare and was classified as favor to the AI.

Making the AI less reasonable in diplomacy will actually exacerbate the problem. If the AI is disinclined to trade, the human is more able to exploit this because the AI will not, and therefore will gain a larger economic advantage, whereas if the AI trades more, his tech disadvantage will decrease.