25-06-2004 14:29									#1
	Do you really understand how the AI sets a price for a Luxury in a Trade? Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Do you really understand how the AI fixes the Price of a Luxury in a Trade Deal ?

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The reason being why the AI charges you more money the more luxuries you already posses is precisely for the number of happy faces it produces. The AI knows this and prices it in the luxury it is selling you.
With the economies of scale produced by the improvement in a city "marketplace" which boosts the amount of citizens that are happy in the 7th and 8th luxury (I recall it's 4 workers each that are happy for the 7th and 8th, just check out any game in the city screen). The more luxs you have with a marketplace the happiness increases not geometrically but exponentially. See the instructions manual of C3C.
The more happy citizens within your empire the shield output is increased, your revenue is now greater because there are now more people willing to join the job market (working new tiles), so now you even get more cash from taxes, you can allocate more cash to research, the cities now grow at a faster pace because more tiles are being worked on, your score is now higher (look at the histograph and you will see it factors in the amount of happy and content citizens in your Empire). Plus such happiness triggers WLKD which in turn reduces that disgusting corruption in your cities thus increasing your income AND SO ON...The AI knows all this and that is precisely why it charges you all the more the more luxuries you have. The 7th and 8th luxury you acquire for your Empire are going to be the dearest financially.
Just play around with the luxuries and research slabs before and after trade dealings and you will see IT DOES make a difference, no matter how small it might be.
If you adjust the lux slab putting it higher up BEFORE the trade (buying a luxury) with AI, the AI will value it at less money BECAUSE the new luxury it is selling you does not produce you so much happy faces as the AI expected, thus pricing the luxury it is selling you at a lower price.
Once the deal is over you readjust the lux slab lowering it, because now with the new lux avilable in your marketplaces there is no need to spend as much money as before in lux.
Basically what you do is a "happiness engineering" in your slabs BEFORE the trading deal of the new luxury you are purchasing so the AI puts a lower value to it, you then readjust the slabs to the new situation, saving yourself euros. Enjoy !

Criticism and comments are most welcome. (Aqualung71 I expect a post from you )

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail"

Last edited by Drakan on 25-06-2004 at 14:50

	25-06-2004 16:26									#2
	Increase the size of your Attachments

I value luxes based on how many Knights, MI's etc I will need to TAKE them from the AI.

Ok, Ok back to the thrust of the thread. I have tried this recently, and have not noticed any difference.

orig: 1 research,8 tax,1 lux Mongols wanted wines + 6gpt for spice

slider adjust: 0 research,1 tax,9 lux Mongols wanted wines + 6gpt for spice.

The game was at a stage where I had not yet gone warmonger, so that's not the problem. It is early, (would be my third lux and nobody has currency yet so no markets). My guess is some delta happy face threshold above which lux re-pricing occurs.

Typically later in the game, the AI's have locked up all available Luxes via sweetheart trades amongst themselves.

Which explains my pricing mechanism.

	26-06-2004 01:44									#3
	Got spare money?

Roadcage, I sugest being more precise on luxary trades which is probably neccesary even to tell the difference in pricing in this case.

You can save up to 19 MC per trade deal by checking exactly what they want
(Wine + 5 GPT + [anywhere between 1 & 18 1/2 Gold]) and paying accordingly.

Another trick of the trade for luxary deals is:

1. If currently they value their luxary as more expensive than yours, then your best off making a single trade that includes all the luxary deals.

2. But if they value your luxary as more expensive than yours, then your better off signing indivudal deals, driving up the differentials. If you both have 3 or 4 unique luxaries, this may net more than 1 GPT for the last deal dealing it this way (plus about 20 to 30 more one time cash)

	28-06-2004 13:25									#4
	Suffering from ads?

I believe the difference in gold is NOT very big for the large amount of effort put into it. I at least appreciate all the help I can get at Emperor. This weekend I have flunked for the second time in my life a game at Emperor (I had no ******* resources available)
More than a strat, I would not regard it as such, I meant the article as an insight to explain how the AI fixes the price of a lux. It is no major exploit and I do not believe it is worth the time pursuing it. I just like finding out how the game works to discover flaws and exploit them. Xnks 4 the posts guys

	24-07-2004 15:25									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Luxury trades BTW are a great money machine if you manage to create vassal civs who are large enough to produce decent gpt per turn, but small enough to not have access to that many luxuries.