One of the most annoying things to me about GalCiv and many 4X is tech trading.
I saw this old post about it https://forums.galciv3.com/449087/page/1/#3407634 but couldn't reply to it, but it sums it up nicely by stating it's one of the most exploitable mechanics in 4X, and that's so true.
You can watch people playing older versions of Civ on high difficulties and a large part of success is manipulating bad AI to do tech trades to keep up. That's not really strategy, that's cheese. 4X need less or no cheese, not built in cheese.
In GC3 the AIs basically do collective research, because between the AIs and the minors, they end up trading a ton and it's like you against everybody as far as researching goes (or you do some trading too, which is not my idea of fun). I play with rare minors, which still seems to yield a huge amount of minors, and they're basically conduits for the AIs to get all techs with ease.
Or, as a player, you leverage moronic AI and trade techs to gain an advantage yourself.
Either way, either the AIs exploit you, or you exploit them. It's not a good game mechanic even if exploit is one of the 4 X's.
In some games the no tech brokering thing can help but not really in GC3, because there are so many minors that you still end up with collective research.
If you turn of tech trading entirely it seems to cripple the AIs because they just don't seem to prioritize researching enough or to know that they need to due to lack of trading being available.
So IMO, get rid of tech trading entirely and either go the Civ 5 route and have something like research agreements, or something like that. We already have tech treaties in GC3. Something like this is good because it means you need to have good relations with factions to boost your tech - or need to be dominant and be able to demand tech streams via coercion.
Something, anything, would be better than having situations like the current GC or like Civ IV where the AIs do collective research.
It's not about taking something away from people it's about having a system that works that people find enjoyable to play and although you and others may like the status quo and like certain aspects of the existing system a lot of people don't.If you read my post I mentioned the entire bartering system not just tech trading, you can't turn off the entire thing. The opening post is about excessive exploitation of the AI and its causes (in this case tech-trading) as much as anything.There's always someone who seems to freak out like a child who perceives their favorite toy is being taken away in these threads, same happened with the wheel. Is anyone here seriously claiming GC3's barter/diplomacy system is the pinnacle of gaming and that it can't be improved?Is this topic so taboo you're not willing for it to even be discussed... that's the epitome of narrow-mindedness.
Yes this thread is about taking something away...just look at the title "Get rid of tech trading".
Everyone is for improving the current system, but not everyone is for removing tech trading. Some like it, some dont. I personally prefer to play with no tech brokering.
If you want to lobby for a button to remove all trading, not just tech trading, feel free to do that also. But you not liking it is no reason to take it away from everyone else, clearly many do like it, as you can see from this thread.
Parenthetically, Go is MUCH harder to program well than Gal Civ. Gal Civ AI plays a passable game despite only having the glancing attention of a few programmers for a very limited time. People have been working at Go for many years, with tournaments for programs to compete against each other, and the best humans still beat the best Go computers. See http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/
Can be hard to tell in writing if someone is saying something in jest or sarcastically unless you really know them or they make it obvious. Quotes "" and winks can help
I understand the text challenge, but I don't think my particular lunacy is all that cryptic, just verbose. Besides, I had a smiley in each of my posts. If I piled them up over and over every time I was typing with tongue in cheek, I would look even more insane. This is obviously unfair criticism! I think I am being trolled by a net hero of sorts! If my ego were capable of deflating, it would certainly do so! As it is, I can only laugh at myself and hope that others do so gently.
Enjoy.
You're just reading the title, OP is suggesting it be replaced with something else and used Civ 5 as an example. Strictly speaking if I took 5 dollars from you but gave you a thousand euros back I would be taking something away from you still but what you'd be getting in return is obviously better in nearly all circumstances. To use that analogy hopefully the new system would be those euros if you see what I mean, well worth the trade off.
I don't know much about AI or Go for that matter but programming the Gal Civ AI to beat the best Gal Civ human players with no bonuses, or any starting advantages over the player without cheating in anyway (a fair start basically like go players have) seems like a much tougher task to me as it's vastly more complex than a 19x19 tile board game.
Yes, but this analogy is flawed as it presumes that tech trading is of little value to people and that what would be recieved in return would be amazeballs.
Frankly, this isn't the case. For some people tech trading is an intregral part to how they enjoy/play the game at various stages. Sure, people might be having Bad Wrong Fun, but it's still their fun.
A better anaology might be: We're going to take away those unhealthy steaks you've been eating and replace it with this blend of sautéed vegetables just filled with wonderful spices. You might not like it at first, but trust me it'll be good for you in the long run.
Well, while it might be objectively "better" for me, I like those steaks and want to choose whether or not to eat them of have that steaming plate of veggies. Or even both as the mood suits me.
Should SD try to make it so the AI isn't left in the dust when there is tech trading going on while also making sure that it isn't if trading is inhibited or closed off altogether? Sure. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, to resort to a trite phrase. I tend to think SD can make it so the AI can compete when tech trading is shut off or limited, thus making both camps happy.
Apparently we are playing two different games. In the last GalCiv3 games I played there were huge differences in techs with the AI-factions. In mid to late game some AIs had only basic techs and some had nearly all. Also the minors in my games only had very few techs, at mid game they had nothing to offer me. I had the impression the AIs did not trade at all amongst themselves. (and yes, both tech trading and brokering were active)
Maybe this is a difficulty or map size thing? I played gigantic maps with higher difficulties and slow research.
As for your demand/suggestion: I'm all for improvement, however I do enjoy the act of shopping for techs. So, no, I do not like the idea of not being able to buy techs at all.
It does seem that way, I agree. I don't think we really have a vocabulary to describe why Go seems so difficult to program compared to other superficially similar games. Both checkers and chess had programs and computers that clobbered the best human players way back in the 90's, which is like the stone age in computer terms compared to today.
And its not for lack of trying, teams have been competing for programming Go for many years. Just imagine if we had teams programming to compete for the best Gal Civ AI!
The fact that many people value tech trading isn't in dispute the values of money I used were just to show how one system could overall be more worthwhile in having and that most would be happy to make the exchange for despite "losing something" they like. Could it have been a better analogy, sure.
According to the Go wiki page the number of possible Go games is vast (10 to the power of 761 compared to chess which is 10 to the power of 120) that's why the likes of Kasparov was beaten by AI in the 90's and top draw Go players only now I would think.
Well, but if you touch on something like that, you better really consider the community of all players and not just your personal taste and also offer a damn good vision of what that better system could be.
Right now, all I read in this thread is the expression of a personal dislike of the tech trading (which is of course ok, since it is a matter of taste) and a very sketchy idea of the alternative. Of course people who like tech trading will not be convinced by this. And no, you will never convince them that tech trading is not fun, because for them it is - even if you can't understand it.
So if you wan't support, you have to offer a clear vision of an alternative system which really offers more fun to everyone, not just to your taste.
Now hit and convince me!
A good guess, but not quite. The difference between Go and Chess (for example) is that Chess is a highly focused tactical game. Go works on a higher and more abstract level of strategy. It's specifically the "abstract" part that is difficult to program AI for. A human beginner can quickly survey a board and get a decent sense of being "strong here" or "weak there" and be able to express why. A computer cannot easily do any of this.
Yeah, both chess and go are basically out of reach as far as calculating the full set of possibilities for the game, and will be for many more years (some pessimists think neither game will ever be fully solvable).
There are still a few (and shrinking number of!) chess positions that will be comparable to Go in the sense that a human chess player can intuiit a particular position as won or drawn that a program has a difficult time with...these are positions where the player can just "see" something that is beyond the calculation horizon of a chess program. As a simple example (that obviously doesnt hold any more, but it did at the dawn of chess programming and I remember because I used to own one of these basic programs), if you have a pawn racing to the end of the board to queen, and a enemy King one step behind, the human player can tell at a glance that the king cannot catch the pawn. The program had to actually look ahead 6 moves or whatever to tell whether or not the pawn was able to queen, and if 6 moves is beyond its proscribed horizon...doh!
As far as I'm aware there's only one person when it comes to Gal Civ that someone so inclined might want to "convince"... and it's not you Empress_Fujiko. I originally posted to agree with the OP, I felt their post deserved a more positive response than it was getting and it also presented an opportunity to vent some frustrations I have with the existing "barter" system in general. I have no interest in trying to "convince" people I perceive as being fan boys/fanatics/resolute in their opinion of anything, it's utterly futile.
I suppose Fujiko said "convince me" to start a debate about what would be an alternative better and more fun system. This is the point of this discussion, not necessarily to convince anybody else
It is about taking things away from people the post is not how to fix how AI trades techs, it is to take tech trading away, eliminating it, poof gone. The OP is right the game is completely different when you turn off tech trading and have AI player set in the stone age and others about to venture into a new experience.
As far as tech trading, you can turn off all tech trading, that is why the little toggle exists disable tech trading or disable tech brokering... So if you feel this excessive exploitation of the AI than simply turn it off until you feel they have fixed it.
As far as freaking out like a child, the only people that I see here that are "freaking out as a child" as you put it are the people who state in this post that one must play the game with no tech trading. And with that must replace it with your better idea on how it should work. In Galactic Civilizations II or III it works the way the fans (for the most part) and Stardock want it to work. If they wanted to copy another game than they would, however, they have made their own game. Now could they improve yes, and some improvements are coming with 1.6. There are always things they can do to improve how the AI handles certain trading options.
This topic is not so taboo that I'm not willing to discuss it, it mainly just bares the one simple question. Why take away options from the player? You have the option there so turn if off if that's what you want to do.
Well there are several things that could be done to improve tech trading, which to me makes more sense that doing away with a core mechanic, somewhat down to a race's personality perhaps
1) The player should get strongly labelled for trading techs to a race's opponents, it should carry a significant diplomatic malus for a fair period of time, making you pick and choose who you trade with carefully, meaning the decision carries weight.
2) Having set random techs that a civ decides, at the start of the game, that they won't trade AND/OR 3
3) More useful techs that the race decides have a higher trade weight - Goes to personality/strategy, I mention this because of the below:
4) Techs it values less because everyone already has them. - Goes to balance.
5) Techs it values more because too many people have them, and so won't trade them. - Goes to exclusivity
6) Stronger alliances required by some races before tech trading. Some races, seems perfectly normal others would be open with their research.
7) Broader tech tree as the game expands, means there is more to research, and so a slower spread when coupled with:8) Max amount of techs many races will want to trade with you in a period of time or ages, again different personalities should have different limits.
These are some good ideas IMO.
Techs that boost capacity should be valuable because it can increase the power of your fleets. It shouldn't just go down in value just because almost everyone has it.
AI probably should learn to try ask for bit more when the tech in question will increase capacity of all ships. Because I know I would ask for more if AI wanted my Capacity techs.
I think the base value currently is number of weeks of research, which is a pretty good metric.
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