Map Exchange Strategy

[Shadowstrike]

Want to colonize with Brandenburg, but too lazy/hard to take Paris, London, Madrid or Lisbon? Never fear, for if you play your diplomacy correctly, you can gain a copy of the world maps for little effort.

Your first step is making sure that you have good relationships with most nations (+10 and up is good). Try to do this sometime around 1530, not too late and not too early. Once you get past 1550, France and England will get tons of colonists an you'll have little chance anyhow.

Now, trade maps with nations on the fringes of your known territory. Sweden, Eire, Astrakhan, Oman and Ethopia are good in this role. Generaly, even if they show you only a few new provinces, this is good. Next, keep offering to trade your maps with England, Protugal, France and Spain. You can get lucky once or twice and get really good maps of the New World and or the far east. That or trade with one of the Indian nations for the maps of India. Now, offer to trade maps with nations on the future colonial lands. Vinland, Iroquis, Indian nations, Dai Viet all make good nations for this task. And volia! A really good set of world maps for use until you can gain the strength to sack a colonial power's capital.

 

[hjarg]

Might i add that Mameluks and Persia are good trading partners as well. And even Turkey has some maps (especially after some successful naval battles with Spain)

 

[BiB]

Which makes the game too easy, is quite unrealistic, not to mention the fact trading maps doesn't require diplomats

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Course, you'll have to knock over a province with a port, otherwise you get squat for colonists

 

[Shadowstrike]

Sure lot less cheating then say using the columbus cheat, or cheating to get an explorer. And on a same note, you consider the loan stratey to be cheating too, don't you? I tend to think of it as knowledge that would have sonner or later become yours through the seepage of knowledge.

 

[Agelastus]

Map swaps right at the beginning of the game'll show you India and most of the route there-and doing it in the right order will let you pull off later swaps with Spain etc. The problem is that the AI doesn't prize its' charts sufficiently compared to history-for many countries they were state secrets!

As an example of swapping, for England.

Morocco, Denmark, Portugal, Mameluke, Oman, Persia will get you a view of the Moghuls and the highly strategic, empty Socotra. A few gifts, and waiting a few years'll let you pull off another swap with Portugal, perhaps one with Spain, and then the Mughal/Hyderabad swap sequence will show you most of India! It's too easy!

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Agelastus
Map swaps right at the beginning of the game'll show you India and most of the route there-and doing it in the right order will let you pull off later swaps with Spain etc. The problem is that the AI doesn't prize its' charts sufficiently compared to history-for many countries they were state secrets!

You're playing a different game to the one I have. My AI values maps highly, and won't give them away unless it's getting a copy of yours in exchange, and even then only if you have plenty of new stuff to show it.

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by Heyesey
You're playing a different game to the one I have. My AI values maps highly, and won't give them away unless it's getting a copy of yours in exchange, and even then only if you have plenty of new stuff to show it.

The same one you are-but AI nations are still too eager to accept your swaps. If you know two provinces more than them they're going to accept, eventually, at anything from zero relations upwards. At high levels of relations I've had them offering me, say fourteen provinces to learn two from me.

Haven't you ever map swapped your way to India on 1 January 1492? I do it nearly every game-someone in the right area always likes you enough!

 

[Shadowstrike]

The main rules is to offer more then you stand to gain. That's why I bother to trade maps with Eir and Sweden in the early game, as it gives you a map of territories that the priciple nations don't know about. Optionally, you want to trade maps with Spain when you have about 10 more known provinces then they do.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Agelastus


The same one you are-but AI nations are still too eager to accept your swaps. If you know two provinces more than them they're going to accept, eventually, at anything from zero relations upwards. At high levels of relations I've had them offering me, say fourteen provinces to learn two from me.

Haven't you ever map swapped your way to India on 1 January 1492? I do it nearly every game-someone in the right area always likes you enough!

Yes, but not by offering an AI nation less provinces than I'm getting from them. It's close to impossible to get them to accept that deal; they value their maps too highly.

 

[BiB]

No way, it's far too easy to get access to India for example when ur Bavaria or whatever. I never use that feature anymore

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by Heyesey
Yes, but not by offering an AI nation less provinces than I'm getting from them. It's close to impossible to get them to accept that deal; they value their maps too highly.

They'll take a couple of provinces less, sometimes, if they really like you, but that doesn't invalidate your point. But your point in no way invalidates mine-in an era of charts being state secrets, the AI is remarkably free with them.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Originally posted by Agelastus


They'll take a couple of provinces less, sometimes, if they really like you, but that doesn't invalidate your point. But your point in no way invalidates mine-in an era of charts being state secrets, the AI is remarkably free with them.

Equal trade is no robbery ... of course, IRL you wouldn't know in advance if country X's maps actually do show anything you don't already know about. If you (or the AI) weren't told how much/little you were going to get, nobody would trade. But friends trading maps to the mutual benefit of both is not a bad thing.

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by Heyesey
But friends trading maps to the mutual benefit of both is not a bad thing.

But
(a) We're not really friends (no-one was when speaking colonially in the period.)
and
(b) Human players are double-crossers from the start of the game, so the AI is being foolish.

Hence it is a deeply unrealistic model, and AIs give away maps far to easily in the game.

 

[BiB]

And when it comes to map trading I think they have a fair idea what they would get back then If that actually went down then.