A better solution to tech trading

From another thread, but this deserves a post of its own.

from GalCiv2 Forums
Instead of banning tech trading all together, why not make this an option?

The player(human or AI) can only sell techs that they have researched themselves.
Or in other words, you can't sell a tech that you have either bought or stolen from another race.

All that would need to happen would be to give technologies an extra binary variable.

A tech is set to 0 when it either:
- has not been researched
- has been bought from another race
- has been stolen through espionage/planet invasion

It is only set to 1 when it has been properly researched.

And only those techs set to 1 can appear in the diplomacy window to trade with.

The effect of this, is that you can no longer make a profit by buying a tech from another race and then selling it off to the rest of them. Also, in a sense tech trading will become more like research trading, which is what it should be.

This is probably the easiest way to negate triangular arbitrage, while still allowing some trading to occur!
diplomacy
8,761 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I do not like this idea. Why should this be? When you have a technology, you have it. Period. If you want something like this, make it so that you can only trade techs the AI and you can currently research. (You cannot ask for Impulse Drive if you do not have Ion Drive)
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like this second idea here. It seems odd to me that I can trade for laser 5 if I have yet to research laser 1. Civilization 3 was like this, you could not trade another civ for Iron Working if you didn't already have Bronze Working (the prerequisite tech). It seems silly to me that I can understand and manipulate a technology if I don't understand the basics leading up to that.

Real life example is calculus. I don't know how anyone could understand calculus without having a basic understanding of functions and geometry
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, I agree with TOV/skibum. There needs to be some sort of prerequisite system. In reality, ahem, you really couldn't be researching, let's say, the bow and arrow and then have someone gift you the atomic bomb... there would be serious consequences. Sure, the bow and arrow crowd might be smart enough to wield this weapon, but I seriously doubt that they could build another one, or even comprehend the technology. Given time maybe, but not right away, as in a tech trade situation. Besides that, if they couldn't figure out how to properly wield the weapon, that is where serious consequences could arise for the people utilizing the technology, such as destroying their own city or army in the process of using the bomb. A cut and dry prerequisite system would suit this part of the game nicely.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was playing a game where I was way behind in Tech. Some AI declared war on me and the second planet of his that I took gave me Black Hole Eruptors    I hadn't even researched Missile Theory yet    I jumped 22 levels of missile development straight to the top line weapon in one turn. It made easy work of the rest of the game and was actually a bit dissapointing.

At the very least there should be a limit on how many levels of tech you can jump in a single turn. I think jumping 3-4 levels is reasonable, but jumping 22 is not.

This has been discussed before in other threads with no real result, but I think the concept deserves some consideration. Simply the ability to turn off tech stealing as we can turn off tech trading would be fine.


Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I do not like the turning off tech trading approach. In real life, countries and different scientific communities trade technology all the time. We gave Israel our older jet fighter craft, and you better believe they reverse engineered at least 1 or 2 to figure out how they worked to build more, just as the Soviets gave MiG's to China, Iran and others.

To trade techs in the game is a natural extension of what science and diplomacy are about. Granted there are other aspects to diplomacy, but science doesn't advance without certain trading and sharing of information.

From a game play standpoint it makes sense because otherwise games would go on forever while you research lots of techs. Granted you don't have to do this, but having lots of techs at your disposal increases your strategic options for the game.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I do not like the turning off tech trading approach.

It's an option. You don't have to turn tech trading off. You wouldn't have to turn tech stealing off if implemented this way. It's your choice, whichever you prefer.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've always disliked tech trading/stealing in 4X games for all the reasons mentioned above, and I turn it off whenever possible. However, I would prefer a "point" based approach.

- If you conquer an enemy planet, instead of acquiring a given tech, you acquire points in a particular branch which simply advance your current understanding in that branch. The same goes for tech stealing.

- Tech trading isn't so much trading of actual techs, but just a means of generating research points on an ongoing basis. If Race A and Race B establish a research treaty, a bunch of free research points are generated for each, which are applied to their current research projects. It's been done in other games, and I think there's something like this planned in Dark Avatar.