There is a big 2.0 patch planned for all GalCiv 2's after TA is released, I believe. Since Tech Trading is an issue that spans all three of 'em, that would probably be the best place to address it, IMHO.

Even if it doesn't get addressed, there's still always mods. They're giving us all the tools they used to make ToA with the expansion, right? So someone may well just be able to mod all this stuff in, if I'm remembering correctly.

Exactly, that's what gets me about most of these flame threads where someone declares that they only like playing games with 'insert tech, mega event, etc' set to something.

Well for Metaverse the game has to have a basic common catch all standard, if you want to play another way then Gal Civ is probably the easiest game I can think of to mod to how you want.

When he's rational, he does make good points. But that's not the point. If he was telling you that you were retarded, and needed to learn to play, you would get rather upset with him too, I think. Phae makes some good points also, it's not like either of them are ignorant of how the game works.

Personally I don't like dealing with people who get flambouyantly angry...it interferes with the exchange of ideas.

Nah, I wouldn't. I'd probably get condescending and ramp up the jackassery a good bit, but openly upset? Please, that looks terrible when you're trying to be snide. Snide is my style ::P

And mind you that although I spoke of the possibility of simply modding all this stuff in, I still think Stardock should try to take the time to fix it themselves. It'd be nice for people to not have to give up the metaverse in order to play a thoroughly balanced game.

Limiting which racial techs are traded looks to be easy, if a bit tedious. Each race has a tech tree .xml file, and some of the unique techs are already flagged off. For example, Precursor Studies for the Iconians (leads to Precursor Library) has a section that includes the following (note the "0" in the middle, it's hard to see with the code text colors):



So it looks like you just add that to any tech you don't want traded or stolen. Someone with time on their hands will undoubtedly make available a set of .xml files with all or most of the unique racial techs flagged off like this. Not much point in doing it now, because the trees aren't finalized yet.

I also don't feel that my responses were incredibly angry in response, or at least not clouding up the discussion.

I admit I'm not interested in further discussion with him, unless he continues to ask that the devs break the game so the way he wants to play is the only one available.

I mean, I want to see how the tech trees play out further before asking that all trading of race-specific techs be cut off by default. They're not fully balanced (and in some cases, not yet completed). I know that, for example, the Altarians are playable with the morale techs they can research, but I also know that in the event of war, that their military capability is limited by morale, taxation, and population, just as everyone else's is. Upgrading to the higher levels of morale buildings in the Healing Pool patch (Tidal Pools, etc) allows building farms (or more farms) which allows a higher tax income, and to a certain degree a higher tax rate, which increases the resources you can bring to bear to defend your empire should the Drengin or whomever come looking for easy pickings.

Does that mean I'm asking for all the Torian morale techs in the Altarian tree? Not really, but I'm disappointed that a few players want to cut that option entirely as the only way to play the game. I much prefer other ideas, such as adding additional options to game setup that allow you to restrict tech trading to various levels, so more people get what they want.

And this isn't because I want to play in easy mode, I don't even want to play below Challenging. It's not because I want to point whore on the metaverse, because I don't give a damn about the metaverse. It's not because I can't play the races with restrictive tech trees - most of my games have been with those races, and I've done fairly well with them (except the Thalan, who are way too limited as they currently stand). However, in some games I've found that for them to maintain pace with the other civs, they need to trade for techs.

Since we've had some time now with the Thalans, I've gotten a few games under my belt with them. I found I do have to load more econ buildings on than normal just to take care of the economy. the 25% morale building keeps them good for quite a while too. After my first game w/ tech trading on with them, I've been playing with it off and I've had research set to Very Slow.

My only beef with the current Thalans is when the AI uses them. The influence blob created by plowing out embassy's just seems weird. They only seemed to do well in my last game due to flipping many cultures to them.