Perhaps they could tie the trading system to espionage so that when you reached a certain espionage level on a civilization you would get a GNN pop-up telling you whenever they made a trade agreement with someone. Then the AI would have an excuse if it found you were trading away all its techs to say "Sorry, but you seem to have given Laser III to the Drengin and we are at war with them. You're not getting any more technology from us!"

Has anyone figured out if it is possible to tweak the tech XML file to make the AI not trade techs? Just wondering.

you can only change how much the AI values a given tech (AIValue) in the XML - AFAIK this will affect how likely they are to research it (although different AIs will have different researching priorities as well - Drengins prefer weapons etc) as well as how much they value it in trades.

you'll notice that most techs in certain branches are really low valued - like the diplomatic and morale boosting branches - which is why the AI never seems to research them. some of the values are really baffling - Xeno Ethics for instance has one of the lowest AIValues on the list, but it's one of the best techs in the game.

Cheers

h

For 102, I tried to increase the value for AI by a factor 5 but did not help. We need an option for this from Stardock..

Interesting thread, I can't believe I read all the posts. Here are the ideas I liked and what I would add or modify:

1) You can only trade with those empires you are allied with.

2) You can only trade for next step up from where you are now. So if you have Laser 1 you need to get Laser 2 before you can get Laser 3. How on earth would we humans know how to use the tech of a much more advanced race and culture? We learn and improve things incrementally.

3) Trade involves blueprints that accelerate your research process instead of just giving you half or all the research points. It will double any research points you put towards unlocking the blueprints and making something practical out of them. Change the creative trait to be more expensive, and to have the ability to unlock blueprints faster (3 times the acceleration rate). Or perhaps it could give you a 25% chance to finish a tech you are researching a little bit ahead of schedule.

4) Remove the having to have researched the tech yourself. Why? Because under a system like that above everyone will essentially understand each tech they own and tech trading will be limited enough.

I think I see what's going on here, the AI is designed to counter a player that half-heartedly techwhores rather than a player who trades tech every 1-3 turns. If that's the way you play it's going to be too easy. But if you're a player who almost never trades techs (like me), the game is going to be too hard even on a difficulty level that is otherwise perfect for you. Then again some players who do just the right amount of techwhoring will wonder what the big deal is.

An elegant solution takes time, what I really want to see right now is an option in the skirmish setup that lets you disable tech-trading between all empires. It just seems the quickest solution for those of us who are bothered by this issue.

A more nuanced solution would be an option to make is so that the player and NPCs will not be allowed to trade with anyone who isn't in a Alliance with them. Alliances are pretty rare, and they're also a valid excuse to trade a lot of techs with someone.

1) You can only trade with those empires you are allied with.

That's.. weird. I would think that a neutral faction would trade if there's profit to be gained and by profit it would be long-run benefit (though that's hard). Either way, I think it will be too limiting if you can only trade with empires you are allied with.

2) You can only trade for next step up from where you are now. So if you have Laser 1 you need to get Laser 2 before you can get Laser 3. How on earth would we humans know how to use the tech of a much more advanced race and culture? We learn and improve things incrementally.

Actually I think it's okay to utilize a tech that's more advanced than what you have. You might be able to trade for laser 3 while having only laser 1, but you can't move onto laser 4 until you have research laser 2.

Limiting the ability to trade technology based on relations is another nerf evil really don't need.

Limiting to Allies is an idea but after all the comments here I dont think its the best solution as it will limit trading to much.

I still think blueprint trading is the best option. Blue Print trading allows for same unrestricted trading, but you cant resell the tech. The traders also have to invest to get the tech. I dont see this being to hard to implement. Put a flag on every tech that is blueprint TRUE/FALSE this will affect the cost with a percentage (Need a nice icon on the tech that shows we got the blueprint) Everything else remain the same.

The AI should be able to handle it as its basically the same as trading for the tech but they cant re-sell it. The researching algorithm should take care of the actual reseach of the tech. One thing that needs to be done is to increase the AI value for a tech with blueprint as its takes less effort to research and should be more attractive.

I am starting to think this is the best option and should not be to complex to implement.

Spying would also give blueprint
(This would make even sense, we have all seen the small cameras that take pictures of blueprints in spy movies)

After this is implemented we could continue to tweak how AIs should trade.

An elegant solution takes time, what I really want to see right now is an option in the skirmish setup that lets you disable tech-trading between all empires. It just seems the quickest solution for those of us who are bothered by this issue. A more nuanced solution would be an option to make is so that the player and NPCs will not be allowed to trade with anyone who isn't in a Alliance with them. Alliances are pretty rare, and they're also a valid excuse to trade a lot of techs with someone.

2 OPTIONS that could help a lot gameplay.There is people which like tech trading but there is also people as me which think that tech trading is the biggest problem for their games. Enabling these 2 OPTIONS would't hurt people which like tech trading but would help people which don't like it and give them another level of gaming experience

That's.. weird. I would think that a neutral faction would trade if there's profit to be gained and by profit it would be long-run benefit (though that's hard). Either way, I think it will be too limiting if you can only trade with empires you are allied with.

It would be ok if the AI had more strategy and purpose in their tech trades. What they do now is trade "any" tech they have for the right amount of money or other compensation. They all do the same thing which forces you as the player to follow suit or be left behind in the tech race.

If they decided, right we're going to specialize in missiles and not trade it to anyone else, or miniaturization, or factories, then fine; but it's not thinking along these lines. Thus for the short term, at least until a more elegant solution comes along, and the AI is improved, limit the trades to allies, blueprints, or both.

I think blueprints should be added even if the AI is improved in the way I suggested, accelerated rather than pure points. Why? Because, this makes the Civ still have to do the research at their level of research capability rather than benefiting from the research abilities of a better research race by getting half the points off the bat or all the points as now. This would give more purpose and advantages to having a good research race.

I've given this some thought. I have an idea that can solve the tech trading cheese tactic and still hold on to some semblance of suspension of disbelief(ie. not using some artificial contrivance to force it to an end).

Let's say that you're in a galaxy with two other civs, Civ A and Civ B. You research a technology that you'd like to sell to both. You go to Civ A and get a fair offer, let's say 100 credits. As soon as you're done with Civ A, you go to Civ B to sell your technology for hopefully about the same amount. But Civ B know that both you and Civ A have the technology you're offering, so now Civ B has a choice. He can say "I want that technology, but I'm going to see what Civ A wants for it, so I'll get back to you."

So the next turn, Civ B goes to Civ A and tells them your offer. Civ A makes a counter offer. Civ B responds by going back to you and saying "Civ A is offering the tech at 90 credits, can you do better?" What you'll end up with is a price war that could last several turns.

I think this approach is fair and realistic. It addresses two concerns: the AI would be smart enough to get you to lower your price or lose to the competition, and it drags out the process of tech trading to more than one turn, possibly many turns, making tech trading a more involved and balanced proposition.

Hurray for the "no tech option" in 1.1. I will be coming back to play a lot of this game now.

Hurray for the "no tech option" in 1.1. I will be coming back to play a lot of this game now.

Same for me.
But they chosed the easy way. There were other very good ideas in this thread.

Just to drift back onto the real world examples, there was a case where Britian sold advanced jet technology to the Soviets, which they then turned around and sold to the Chinese. The engines developed became the core powerplants of the early MiG jets.

Because of this, in the US, there was talk of serious sanctions against Britain. It didn't come to that, but it was a near thing.

Today, the US and UK completely share tank technology; the M1 Abrams, and British Challanger tanks are, technologically, nearly identical, yet, were Britian to suddenly turn around and sell the tech to Iran, they'd likely be barred to US tech for life.

Shortly before WWII broke out, Seversky Aviation sold an entire squandrons worth of their P-35 aircraft to imperial Japan. While it was technically legal, and we were not yet at war with them, the public backlash nearly destroyed the company, and force a major restructuring. (Think Aurther Anderson, here.)

Nobody likes to tell an informant anything, because anything they tell is going to be up for sale. If a country sells tech to another country's enemy, that country is going to be exceptionally wary about selling tech to the first country.

Basically, set it up, so if you sell tech to someone's enemy, and they find out about it, they will be less likely to sell you more tech, and less friendly with you. Selling tech between friends remains fine, but playing both sides gets more risky. Its still profitable, but risky.

Harry Voyager

Indeed, tech trading is SO EASY it feels like an exploit. Yet the same exploit existing in GalCiv I, so I assume this is not an unintentional exploit but something the developers wanted us to do.

You can't simply decide to not use this exploit. If you don't trade, the other races WILL trade amongst themselves, it just takes them a few more turns to do it. They will have every tech and you will be in the dark ages of technology. You HAVE to play the tech trading game for self defense reasons.

The no tech trading option that will be in v1.1 will be better than what we have now, because I think that tech trading sort of ruins the game. But this would make Diplomacy pretty useless.

A better solution would be some of the more complicated suggestions people made. My idea is that after you receive a tech from another race, you would have to wait a certain period of time before you were allowed to trade it. Perhaps after you expended four times as much research points developing other tech as that tech would have cost to research. The computer players would also have to follow these rules.

Also, the value of a tech should drop when more than one race is eligible to sell it. Take the base value, divide by the number of races that can sell it, and that should be what it's worth. So if you wait a while, you will eventually be able to pick up techs on the cheap.

I agree with idea of trading only what you researched for 2 reasons

1) it limits tech trading but does not remove its usefullness

2) if you want a tech you need to hun down its orginator, and not somebody who bought it (chance are it was your enermy that invented that deadly weapon you after, tough luck eh lol

i agree with this, the computer knows when you give a enermy of his 'gifts' (in report it says "i know what your upto")


they could just treat tech trading in the same way, reguardless where you got tech from


ie tech trading is doing to full extent, but carries extra hidden risk of prevoking wars etc

After reading this post I came up with an idea or two. While I don't like the idea of completely removing tech trading in the games I play, having the option never hurts. I also like the idea of using relations to effect trades. You might get a good deal rom an ally, but the Drath who hate you are going to rake yo over the coals for a tech trade.

Here's what I was thinking with tech trades: We all know the tried and true moral question popup window, why not add that to certain diplomatic actions(not all to keep it more unique). These don't have to change your alignment, just modify relations with the other races. You're a good race allied with the Torian, who just ended a war with the Yor. You trade...logistics techs to the yor for economics, and before the deal is signed, a window gives you a few choices based on the trade happening. You can either pay money to hide the transaction (-213 BC), Give a portion of the trade to your ally (-50 BC, 1 tech of yor choice to them), or ignore thier protests (-3% trade w/ ally, -15% relations, +2% w/ the race you're trading to).

Just a thought.

Breniir has the right idea. Artificial, smacked on fixes are not going to make the game better. Make players you indescriminately trade techs away aquire a bad reputation (this applies to AIs too, of course)--with options on hiding the deal and so forth. This should be within some limits of course.

Some guidelines:
1. When anyone trades anyone else a tech, it comes with the assumption that it will not be traded to anyone else for 10 turns (or some other number, or until another person researches it indepedently, perhaps an option on the limit the player can select).

2. In all negotiations the tech is flagged with the symbol of the nation that gave it to you. You *can* decide to go against this and trade anyway, but the Civ might not go along with it (friends of the nation in question have less of a chance, enemies more of a chance).

3. If you do break this deal then your relations with the nation that gave you the take will worsen, and all AIs will trust you less on tech trading in the future. The closer your relationship with the Civ was, the more of a hit your relations should take, and the more other races should distrust you--someone that turns on a friend is extra untrustworthy.

4. When trading or requesting tech, you should have the option to request unlimited use rights on the tech, but it should be impossible to get the AI to go along with this unless most of the other civs have the tech already.

5. As has been mentioned several times, the more people that have a tech, the less it is worth. All Civs should by default know instantly what trades have happened.

Adding in realistic consequences for tech trading is the answer. I think the above would fix the problem nicely, and give the game an overall better feel. Now you can go give your nanorippers to a close ally, because that close friend won't give them to anyone else.

I disagree with the original post and other subsequent posts favoring it.

So you're getting an option for no tech trading that's great. I'm sure you're going to like it and use it.
In the meantime tech-trading already took a nerf hit. IF you do decide to trade techs theres a big disparagement, yours are worth garbage and theirs are worth tons. You even have to kick in booty on what should be a 1:1 trade (something relatively similar on the tree) . This was in an update between release and now. I totally hate this change and wish it would go away or back to the release. Make trading worthwhile for those who aren't going to use the no trading option.

That's why I don't like the OP.

In the meanwhile.... after altering the tech XML file, universal translator requires blackhole eruptor, yes blackhole eruptor

I have no idea what "nerf" Supreme Shogun in msg 122 is talking about. I just won a game at the Suicidal level of difficulty, and it was easy with the computer controlled races giving away their techs to me and then me selling them to the other races.

The system as it stands is flawed, but disabling tech trading is heavy-handed. Having limitations like "only trade with allies" is silly because that's a very artificial limitation. If you only trade with allies it should because you benefit from doing so. In the end 4X is about looking out for yourself.

Now, the question is, do you benefit more from a new tech or from the income you gain from it? The AI *and* the player should have good reasons to keep techs to themselves and NOT to trade them, but right now the player is forced to trade ASAP because everyone else is doing it. Effectively the AI forces the player to go this route, and then the player wins because they're better at it. There seems to be no regard for whether giving another race a leg up in the tech race is a good thing or not.

This is, IMO, an AI problem since it is the AI which forces you to play this way... but then, as I asked earlier, is it worth holding onto tech or is it always better to take the money? If it's the later than the AI is playing properly and it's now a game problem...