I'm sure your all aware that if you're very good at research, you can give yourself a ton of diplomacy techs, among other things, and sell low techs for a huge profit. I notice that t gets harder and costlier to build facilities as their sophistication goes up, so how about this, trade improvements like banking, farming, morale, just not manufacturing or research to a civ that is about 2-3 levels behind. I.E. sell them banking, then stock exchanges when they're building Adv. markets with Plain Factories. From what Ive been able to see from my espionage, they'll have to switch to the new building if they want anything at all, and since their infrastructure is so low it will take them forever. not to mention the fact that they spent all their dough on your inventions, meaning they have no way to bootstrap themselves up. I dunno just seemed to me to be a good way to keep the AI chasing it's own tail for a while in case you wanted to invade or something. Plus the planets would be set up in better shape once you start cutting into the core worlds that have the time and infrastructure to maybe build one or two of the buildings. I'm still mystified by how the AI can dominate economically and infrastructurally, so does anyone see any problems with this?
