The slider doesn't increment by 1 each time so you actually might pay a few more bc than you have to if you do it that way. To really get the cheapest price possibl you have to type the number in manually. We get a lot of people who say this is too time comsuming and there should just be a button you can press to get the optimal deal. I've got to say, I thought this post was a refreshing change. Personally, I like it fine the way it is.

uhm... you've a slider but you've also the arrows that increments by one the offer.. and i've tried: if the price is 820, when i get 819 the words are red.. increment by one with the arrows and become green, subtract and become red, reincrement and return green. In the same turn.
Pheraphs i'm wrong, i'll check another time but i've done on this way a lot of time.

Another thing: mission 5 of the campaign. Is the alternative mission: i've to get an alliance with a race (excuse, i'm a newbie so i don't remember the name).
I was at 62% of the victory, the other race has colonized a lot of planet, i only 4.
Victory was far.
So i've tried this: i've make a gift to other race: all my ships, all my techs, all my planets excepts my homeworld.
Other race become friendly and accept the alliance.

Ok, it sounds logical but.. is an unusual way to win a play

Pharris73 is right ... put the mouse pointer over the bottom slider and use the mouse wheel to get 1 bc increments. Also, put the pointer on the arrow above to move in increments of 10 bc. I really like it the way it is. Before I discovered the mouse wheel technique, I found it pretty tedious to type in numbers or click repeatedly on the slider arrows.

I think that a solution could be this:

- the colours of the words don't' change until you press the "send" button.
- if you have made a good offer, (not only bc, but also in excanging tech, or plantets etc..), your opponent accepts the transation, the words become green and your reputation grow a little with him.
- if you have made a bad offer, your opponent decline, the words become red, and your reputation decrease. Decreasing process is limited by a lower bound: it has no sense that a race starts a war with you because you're not a good trader, but pheraps has more sense that the race is disappointed.

This should make not convenient to try and try until you find the best offer, because any bad offer costs to you in reputation (and the less reputation you've, the more the price growns).
Pheraphs it could be funny to introduce on tech tree a new ability, for example "telepaty": if you get it, you regain the actual behaviour. (but if the race has telepaty, you obtains wrong information...)

lol.
I'm not a game developer, so it's not my business, so my solution is just an idea.
The fact are that, actually, trading for a tech or a ship, is only another variant of "guess the number game. Tell me a number, if is greather than mine i'll tell you 'too big', otherwise i'll tell you 'too small'".
The dicotomic search alghoritm. there is no ability to guess.

Anyway it's only my point of view.

ok, leave it is an option.
In this case should be more direct a button with "the price is xxx bc" instead of the slider that actually is useless.