OCC(NN): Breaking News!

Hey, I just found out something!

Maybe it's old news to some of you, but I've never noticed it before.

In OCC games in particular, it's a pain when the game sometimes plays tricks on you in terms of "discovery every X turns". As noted in other threads, the game will sometimes alter your # of beakers in mid research for no apparent reason. It's always been quite a mystery to me what caused this.

Last night when I played an OCC game, I had three trade routes, one with an Indian city and two with Greek cities.

When my science suddenly dropped dramatically, I noticed that the two Greek trade routes no longer yielded 18 trade arrows or so but only 10. At the same time, my foreign advisor told me the Greeks had changed government from republic to communism.

Of course. The number of arrows from trade routes depends in part on how much trade is generated by the two cities involved, and so a government change in the destination city's civ to a low trade gov. like communism can be really significant. Especially when the trading city is your super science city with all the science wonders and improvements to further amplify the trade route loss. And moreover if it's mid-/late game when the trade arrows base from trade routes is high.

I actually went from every 4 turns to every 6 because of this last night, so I must have lost nearly 200 beakers.

Obviously, there isn't a whole lot you can do about the AI changing governments, but at least it can be incorporated in the OCC play style to check for AI gov. changes each turn, thus maintaining your science rate at an optimum level.

In my future OCC games, I might also be more inclined to setting up trade routes with rational, perfectionist civs like the Egyptians, the Americans and the Babylonians. They seem more likely to stay in republic/democracy than e.g. the Greeks and the Japanese.

[Steve Clark]

Good eye, Winston. I noticed that for the first time last night as well. The Celts didn't change govt but they did apparently adjust their workers from trade to shields. Had my science city at 372 then dropped to 366. Not much but it knocked me up from 3 turns to 4.

[War4ever]

Nie going! that would explain drops in trade and i agree that perfectionist/rationale civs are best to reade with but i go where the supply and demand take me as well.. plus city size. Last night i went fundy early and oh my god.... if you don't spend and gold rushing improvements before you know it you have like 25000 coins andtechs every three turns as apposed to Democracy and techs every turn hehe.... gosh i love this game


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War is the answer when you need to strike first.

War is the answer when you think you should strike first

war is the answer when you think others may strike first.

[Paul]

I don't think the change in trade route income completly explains the difference in turns per tech. I am currently playing an OCC game where I got science every three turns at 100% and the next science I got in two turns at 80% science. That seems too big a difference to be caused only by the trade routes. There were also no other changes in my city that could have caused this (population didn't grow; no new buildings or wonders).

Yes Paul, sometimes this government change couldn't account for the entire, sudden change in discovery turns, but something along the same line might.

Consider that one of the cities you're trading with dropped in population, went into disorder, sold off a trade enhancing improvement, changed it worked squares etc.

Any of these changes or a combination of them would also influence the number of trade arrows you'd generate each turn, I think.

It's just that I never thought of external, AI factors affecting my trade before. I only analyzed possible changes in my own parameters, but now I'm sure that's only half the picture.

[Matthew]

Isn't your lead over the hapless AI's taken into account? if you gave them a bunch of techs........