trading col techs/pop

gravey101 · #1 November 2nd, 2001, 12:02 AM

successful trading of colonization techs/population can clearly be a huge advantage in the game. Converesly if you are in a situation where you cannot do this (neighboring races are unforiendly/inhabit same world type/breath same atmosphere/already have made trade with another race, you can find yourself left behind. Clearly this is not all there is to the game, but I wonder if any hosts ever consider these trades to be unbalancing and ban them form their games ?

Gorgo · #2 November 2nd, 2001, 12:17 AM

Hey, I've never thought about banning this. Otherwise, I have no idea how a host could control it other than turning all trade off in the game setup. How could I determine if someone has traded or researched a colony tech, apart from early stages of the game?

This could be prevented if all players had to choose the same atmosphere and planet type, yet would still be uncontrollable in later stages of the game.

So it depends on the players honour, but my trust in it has dropped somewhat since Kull the Conqueror's fraud was detected.

The banning of population exchange would be a possibility, if a game master wants that, I guess. Personally, I'm always hesitant towards cutting off any of the richness of the game, and I like the idea of a certain inequality of conditions.

Gorgo

gravey101 · #3 November 2nd, 2001, 12:24 AM

right, really the only wat to do it would be to rely on people's honour. As you say, we have seen where that has gotton us....

capnq · #4 November 2nd, 2001, 12:35 AM

In one of my PBW games, we agreed early in the game to only offer the AIs "fair" trades; colony tech for colony tech, etc.

Early in another PBW game, I swapped colony techs with another human player, and we agreed to only colonize our respective halves of the map.

Baron Munchausen · #5 November 2nd, 2001, 01:46 AM

You can always play with "Players can only colonize home planet type" enabled.

That makes it impossible. Personally, I think that colonization tech is specific to the race and should NOT be either capturable or tradable. You should have to develop the environment controls for your own race. But then I also think that you should have to develop a bio-weapon specific to a given race. 'Generic' bio-weapons don't make any sense...

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 01 November 2001).]

Aub · #6 November 2nd, 2001, 10:10 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
You can always play with "Players can only colonize home planet type" enabled. That makes it impossible.

Unfortunately you cannot switch off population trading that easily. And people who trade population will have much more worlds breathable which is a huge advantage. The price is micromanaging population types for each particular planet.