AI holding on to its techs a bit too much?

Playing as the Drengin Empire, in DA, I was in bitter war against the Drath. Seeing that I had plenty of surplus credits in my tresury, I decided to spend it on some techs to help my war effort. I turned to my neighbour, a technoligical civilisation I made myself, that uses the Iconian AI (if I remember correctly...).
Imagine my surprise when the AI refused to give me lasers V in exchange for MY WHOLE EMPIRE, meaning all my techs and planets.
That civ was neutral to me, and only had slightly better diplomacy.

I feel that since DA, tech trading has been nerfed a bit too much. While before I used to check other civs for new technologies every few turns, I now rarely even use the diplomacy screen.
Is this a problem with the way I'm playing, or is anyone else feeling that tech trading has become pretty useless?

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It seems the AI puts a premium on certain techs. I had the same thing happen when trying to trade for Planetary Invasion with a 'friendly' civ. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise since no civ wants that tech used against them, but I was able to research it in about 5 turns anyway. I didn't really expect the other civ to make a reasonable trade, but it was interesting how much they wanted me to give up.

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Basically, some techs are going to be "no-trade" as far as the AI is concerned. That same laser V later on in the game might sell for peanuts when everyone's higher in the tech-tree, but when its the best (or near the best) they have they tend to not want to part with it.

You'll see this too with the extreme colonization tree. I've found the only way you'll get those from other civs is to take it by force in invasions.

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