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).

Really like this idea, you could also alter how much it impacts relations based on how cutting edge the tech is. ie.. original civs current weapon tech would have a much bigger impact than earlier redundant weapon systems a few techs levels down the
tech tree. Hiding the trade should still have some risk associated to it (based on original civ's espionage ability?). Portion of the trade option could only go ahead if original civ is happy with trade (ie. not to civ with hostile relations) for a good sized portion of the trade (say 50%).

This may be a difficult system to implement though...

The comparisons to "Real world tech trade" are all very good but the problem in the game is that there is often not enough economic reason behind keeping the tech to yourself - except military tech -since you often can't use a tech to make a product only you can sell instead.
So If I could export "Xeno Farms" to other civilizations at a premium I would hesitate more before selling the basic technology - or if the Xeno farm had a unique output product I could sell that would have a similar effect.

The easiest way I can think of to add this could be by making it possible to sell the use of a tech on a per turn and/or per unit basis - without selling the actual tech.
This would mean that in a lot of cases I will have to weigh the advantages of renting a tech at a reduced price versus buying it at a much higher onetime cost versus researching it myself.
The other way around as a seller I would be able to get a lot of money from selling the use of a highend tech, so my incentive to sell the full tech would be less - until I can see that the other civilisation is close to researching it.
Several civ's having a tech would then lower the offered use-price.

You could add onto this by making it easier to research a tech you use already (as well as techs below this in the tech tree).
You could also make it more expensive to research upwards in the tech tree from a bought tech if you don't have the prerequisite techs - and of course cheaper to research the prerequisite techs once you have the higher tech.

I like a lot of the ideas here. I think Breniir's general idea that trading techs can have diplomatic consequences is the most satisfying. No need to have a formalized option screen, though, just let it impact relations behind the scenes, with some indication of the results. Tech freighters is interesting, but a bit inconsistent with the rest of trading in general. Banning tech trading would seem like a shame, a simplification of something that could be very deep.

How about this as an option: tech can only be traded for other tech. This would be used in conjunction with valuing tech less if many have it.

there should be some kind of cost for the diplomacy, any action should cost a little bit of money for the person that initate the deal.

They do this in Hearts of Iron 2. Every trade and diplomatic action costs a certain amount of money, whether it was successful or not. Your allowed one trade with each nation a month, and then cannot trade with that nation again for a month. Also, after you click 'done' in the trade menu, something around 36 money is deducted from your money supply, whether the other nation accepted your trade offer or not.

Ofcourse, there trade mechanic works a little different. You never know for sure if the other nation is going to accept your trade offer or not, you are only given a percentage number. The percentage number can be increased by offering more to the other nation in the trade, and decreased by offering less to the other nation in the trade. Then after you click 'accept', you get a message that says either 'trade accepted' or 'trade declined', and then the 36 or so money units are deducted from you regardless. I'm not suggesting that GalCiv 2 change their trade mechanic to be like this, just pointing out they are different.

Money is also more scarce and harder to make in HOI2 as well. So maybe a trade transaction in GalCiv 2 should cost around 150 to 300-400 bc each? This money would go back to the 'bank' and out of play, ofcourse. Not to the other race.

I'm surprised the developers didn't go with an "Intergalactic Intellecutual Copyright" feature with this patch update. Cmon what's the big issue nowadays and software piracy?? It's stealing intellectual copyright isn't it? The total solution, you can buy a tech but you can only sell techs your race actually researches, period. So, then if you want big cash from trading, it makes your own research a bigger priority than just buying up the other races techs and reselling them back to the others.

This totally no trading at all isn't going to make the game fun. It will be removing a feature of the game. That's no way to fix an issue just removing it, it should be "improved" and in a fair and reasonable manner like my suggestion.

So maybe a trade transaction in GalCiv 2 should cost around 150 to 300-400 bc each? This money would go back to the 'bank' and out of play, ofcourse. Not to the other race.

In addition to this, you could have it so that you after you trade with a certain alien race, you have to wait somewhere between 4 to 8 turns before you can trade with that alien race again.

IF you do decide to trade techs theres a big disparagement, yours are worth garbage and theirs are worth tons. ... Make trading worthwhile for those who aren't going to use the no trading option.

I agree. We should be able to sell our tech to a race for roughly the same amount as the race would sell the tech to us for.

I also miss the 'x bc for y months' feature that GC1 had.

Well, this is a long thread (now), and I haven't read it all, so forgive me if this is redundant with some of the above. That said, I simply have to chime in to emphatically agree with the poster. Moreover, not only is this a problem w/ 4X games generally, it's worse than usual in GC2. In particular, at least on gigantic maps, the problem is excacerbated by minors that always seem to have tons of cash on hand, and who will never do anything in the least bit threatening with whatever techs you sell them (and add to that trade goods, as well).

Trading techs can only be done with a trade tech treaty, which would require very good relations.

That is one good idea. I think also it would help a lot if AIs were less willing to spend cash on tech. And it seems ludicrous to me that the minors have all this ready cash on hand, and nothing to do with it but deliver it unto a player's open arms.

As other posters have said, simply having an option to turn it off would certainly improve the game. But I would much prefer to find a solution such that tech trading exists, but that it is not the absurdly huge cash cow that it currently is today.

I'm surprised the developers didn't go with an "Intergalactic Intellecutual Copyright" feature with this patch update. Cmon what's the big issue nowadays and software piracy?? It's stealing intellectual copyright isn't it? The total solution, you can buy a tech but you can only sell techs your race actually researches, period. So, then if you want big cash from trading, it makes your own research a bigger priority than just buying up the other races techs and reselling them back to the others. This totally no trading at all isn't going to make the game fun. It will be removing a feature of the game. That's no way to fix an issue just removing it, it should be "improved" and in a fair and reasonable manner like my suggestion.

I agree, although there's no harm at all in making it possible to turn off tech trading by option. Also, I think you're suggestion is a good one, and takes things in the right direction. That said, my guess is that it will not be sufficient, since at least by my playing style, I have plenty of my own techs to sell off. Also, the trade goods are a significant source of cash abuse, as well.

I would also note that reducing the tech trading abuse will be somewhat difficult, since game balance adjustments have been made all the way back to GC1, based on having tech trading as a possible cash source. Also complicating matters is the dramatic difference between map sizes. I suspect that this is a much more serious problem on gigantic maps than it is on small.

Finally, I want to re-emphasize that simply having minors with very little cash available to spend should help out quite a lot, all by itself.

Just had another thought on decreasing the value of tech trading: one of the reasons why its powerful in TBS 4X games is that under turn base, you essentially have a "time stop" under which to execute all your orders (or trades, in this case). If every trade that you executed allowed that AI player to execute a trade of its own (possibly selling that unique tech you just sold the AI), this could accelerate the devaluing of that tech (assuming additional rule changes noted below).

On its own this won't suffice, but combined w/ other rule changes already suggested above, I think this might help out a lot. Namely, I think it would need to be combined w/ rules devaluing a tech based on how many other civs already have the tech (ala Civ 4). It would need to be devalued both in terms of buying other techs, and in terms of selling for cash, and of course the rate at which it is devalued should be parameterized (and ideally exposed in an XML file, somewhere). My guess is that if the parameters are such that a tech is drastically reduced in value (perhaps after as few as just 2 or 3 civs owning the tech), then I think this will truly help the situation.

By allowing the AI to execute some trades of its own, before you can possibly complete a full round of trades, this will spread out the profit to be had from a new tech emerging on the "tech market". This "spread" of value is something that will happen both in terms of the cash value derived from new techs, and the tech for tech value of the emerging tech.

Now, from a game design point of view, the ugly aspect of this is that it breaks down the turn based paradigm of the game. But since GC2 is a single player game from the ground up I would think that this is a reasonable thing to do (at least it doesn't make me queasy, and I'm a huge TBS fan).

I remember reading that the devs are paying most of their attention the The Glitch Report and Easy Tweaks threads. If any of the ideas in here would be easy to implement, the Easy Tweaks thread would be the best place to get your voice heard.

The ideas I like best are to have the option to do these or not:

1a) The player and AI races have to be both friendly with the other race and have a tech trade treaty for x amount of turns with that race, before the player or AI race can trade any tech with that race

or

1b) The player or AI race has to be allied with the other race before any tech trades are allowed.

2) You can only trade techs that you have researched.

3) When tech is traded, it is only a blueprint for that tech and not the tech itself, and therefore the trade only knocks off 1/2 the research time of the tech, instead of outright giving you the tech.

If the player selects option 1a or 1b with either or both option 2 and/or 3, it would make it harder for both the player and the AI to tech whore and to profit from round-robin tech selling.

Again, these should just be options that the player can select at the start-up screen.

The ideas I like the best are for players to have the option to select these restrictions if he wishes to:

1a) The player and AI races have to be both friendly with the other race and have a tech trade treaty for x amount of turns with that race, before the player or AI race can trade any tech with that race

or

1b) The player or AI race has to be allied with the other race before any tech trades are allowed.

2) You can only trade techs that you have researched.

3) When tech is traded, it is only a blueprint for that tech and not the tech itself, and therefore the trade only knocks off 1/2 the research time of the tech, instead of outright giving you the tech.

If the player selects option 1a or 1b with either or both option 2 and/or 3, it would make it harder for both the player and the AI to tech whore and to profit from round-robin tech selling.

Again, these should just be options that the player can select at the start-up screen.

The responsiveness of Stardock to customers has been truly outstanding about the implementation of no tech trading, but i agree with other people that in a future patch a new option for tech trading is really needed.
No tech trading option will solve for a lot of us the greater problem of tech trading but will also introduce new problems and unbalancements:
- Diplomacy nearly useless
- Diplomacy racial bonus nearly useless
-Diplomatic translators useless
-Some races will be a lot weakened (Humans for example).
Summarizing Diplomacy will be totally useless, but i think that with this option enabled the game will be a lot more enjoyable than with tech trading enabled. The game will remain anyway a bit handicapped in some features.
In other words i hope that devs will add some new option for tech trading because a lot of people asked for no tech option only to have an easy "fix" for tech trading to implement soon instead an harder "fix" that would have requested more time. I'm sure that this option is a compromise but not the problem solving solution

I too think the only trades permitted should be ones you have researched. But I would add a second condition to prevent overdoing it, namely, you can only trade with opponents who are friendly or warm. This would add an interesting strategic element to the game in terms of who you ally with and which ethics you choose.

I too think the only trades permitted should be ones you have researched. But I would add a second condition to prevent overdoing it, namely, you can only trade with opponents who are friendly or warm. This would add an interesting strategic element to the game in terms of who you ally with and which ethics you choose.

I like the blue print idea the most as it will slow the pace of the tech trading down and allow the race who discovered the tech the chance to cash in on it first. Also how much of a head start will be determined by your relationship with the race: ie 25% for neutral or less, 50% for friends, 75% for allies, as your allies are more likely to send teachers along to help you than a neutral is. This will add a bit more stratagy to the game and force the races to trade more with their allies than the neutrals, which is more realistic anyway.

I also don't think that races should be able to trade for tech above their research ability: ie missle 4 when they only have missle 1. this will keep the races from being to alike.

- Diplomacy nearly useless - Diplomacy racial bonus nearly useless -Diplomatic translators useless

The primary benefit of diplomacy is that it makes the AI a lot LOT less likely to go to war with you.

The trading benefits of diplomacy, IMO, are rather trivial in comparison.

I have proposed a simple, and I think you will agree, effective solution here.

I would still like to see some of these ideas as new options.