AI Tech Trading

I have the same opinion.

The only way I can keep up is to abuse the AI like a stupid computer... which is kinda lame i feel.

A no tech trading option would be nice...

Or how about making it so you can ONLY trade techs that YOU research? I think that would make things interesting.

You need to get a better diplomacy rating. Also trade with the minor races in the early game.

Another option is to research up a branch that no other race has pursued. Then with each new tech peddle it to all the races for as much useful tech/money as possible.

Or here's another idea:

How about when a tech is traded, the reciving party doesn't get the whole 100% of research, but gets maybe 50%?

That would still be good to have, but you or the AI would still have to spend a few turns to finish the research, slowing the tech spam in the early game.

A no tech trading option would be nice...

I agree, sometimes it happens at a really bad time in the game when I'm trying to fend off the Dread Lords or a race wants to trade with me as it's getting pounded real bad by the Dread Lords, yet they have time to shop and trade with me? ..... then a turn later are wiped out?
(reminds me of back in the day playing a multi player diablo/dungeon siege type game and people want to trade crap, while your trying to kill the mission boss and finish the main quest/mission)
unrealistic.

While I agree with the main point that tech trading needs to be looked into, I really dont agree with you Reckert

sometimes it happens at a really bad time in the game when I'm trying to fend off the Dread Lords or a race wants to trade with me as it's getting pounded real bad by the Dread Lords, yet they have time to shop and trade with me? ..... then a turn later are wiped out? (reminds me of back in the day playing a multi player diablo/dungeon siege type game and people want to trade crap, while your trying to kill the mission boss and finish the main quest/mission) unrealistic.

Each turn is 1 week. I can't see why they can't trade with you, do their shopping, mow the lawn, polish the dog, walk their cats, create a final testimony, then get their butts kicked by the Dread Lords.... all in one turn! That's not unrealistic given that we're talking about an entire species over the course of a week!

I don't know, I've been playing on Normal and I'm usually first in technology by midgame. Of course part of that is because I trade everything I research to as many others as will take it, but then if I'm doing that it only seems proper that the AI do so as well.

I would agree that the whole mechanic tends to result in a bunch of civilizations that constantly have almost all the same techs, but I think that if you want to fix that you have to generally stop it being advantageous to trade so much before you stop the AI from doing it; otherwise, you're just giving them a disadvantage the human players will abuse.

play harder then normal. They seem to respect thier advanced weaponry much more.

At normal, the AI trades less. It's at Bright where it becomes a problem. There needs to be an intelligence level between Normal and Bright.

I still would like to see the Devs try my solution to it.

Have the AI value THEIR techs that are unique a LOT more then techs that are owned by more species. Perhaps put a multiplier on "tech value" based on # of civs that don't have it. The AI would still be able to trade said techs, but would ask for a LOT for it. Techs that everyone else owns are cheap. This way if the AI trades to everyone but the human player- the human player would be able to get the cheap at a reasonable cost.

The reason I said THEIR techs, was to prevent an exploit where the human researches a unique tech, and sells the farm to AI civs. The exception would be weapon techs if they were at war, and needed a modern tech to counter the enemy fleet. (like armor vs their enemy's Mass Drivers, or Missile tech vs their enemy's Shields)
I'm unsure if this is too complicated for the game's AI.

Also, fix the random "good AI deal" into something more reasonable. I like the idea, but they should be trying to get fair value for their techs.

How about when a tech is traded, the reciving party doesn't get the whole 100% of research, but gets maybe 50%?

Great idea! You get the fundamentals of the technology, but still have to fogure out how to make it work with your races circuitry and interface it with your other existing technologies, etc.

Net effect is tech trading is slowed down but still useful, and taking some time to research is still necessary.

Or how about making it so you can ONLY trade techs that YOU research?

How about this... its actually a good suggestion...

I'll throw in my suggestion on how to fix this.

I really hope Stardock does something about this
because IMO its a game breaker.

Here's an idea on a simple fix:

Put in a slider with which the player can specify what percentage of total research points may
be acquired by trade. For example, assume that the total research points of all the techs an
AI has is 10,000 points. If the player selected 50%, then at most 5000 of those points could
have been acquired by trade. The other 5000 would have to have been researched by the
AI. The same restriction applies to the player, of course. In this example, for every 1000 research
points worth of techs a cilivization acquired on its own, it could go out and trade for another
1000 research points worth of tech.

Further, AI's will not trade a tech if it is uniquely owned by that civilization. Hence, if a race has the
most advanced beam weapon in the galaxy - it will hold on to it. It represents a major advantage
to that civilzation.

This will give the player an easy way to control how much tech trading there is in any game he
plays. He can set the slider to "100% of tech must be researched" to play a game in which no
tech trading is allowed, or to anything in between.

This should promote the races (and player) specializing in only a few areas, and trading (or buying)
for lower level techs in the other areas.

Another idea is that the % of tech points that must be researched v.s. can be traded for could be
(slightly) modified by a races basic (pre-tech advances) diplomacy level. A highly diplomatic
race could acquire more tech via trade then a race with a lower diplomacy level.

How about dumping the whole notion of tech trading. I don't believe it's happened much in real world history.

I suggest replacing tech trading with:

1. reducing tech cost each time that tech is discovered.

2. give a chance to discover the relevant tech each time a battle is won against that higher tech.

3. espionage.

4. joint research among allies.

To devs: Please add a toggle to disable tech trading. It's fast, it's easy, and it's simple.

Or here's another idea: How about when a tech is traded, the reciving party doesn't get the whole 100% of research, but gets maybe 50%? That would still be good to have, but you or the AI would still have to spend a few turns to finish the research, slowing the tech spam in the early game.

Or how about making it so you can ONLY trade techs that YOU research? I think that would make things interesting.

Personally, I think that either of these two ideas would be good. I'd hate to see tech trading go away altogether, but it does get a little crazy in some games. On the other hand, this does create some big problems for people trying to play a diplomatic game since techs are a major trade item.

One other idea I've seen, which is currently my favorite, is to have a cooldown time between when you get a tech from someone and when you can actually use it. I think that this is ideal because it still allows trade between the civilizations, but it also helps prevents them from becoming total carbon copies of each other. If you speciallize in one area, you will probably always be at least one tech level ahead, but at the same time you are able to profit from your discoveries.

I've said it before and I'll say it again

Tech trading is one of the best strategies in these type of games. Anyone whose ever played a civ game on divinity knows that you need to trade techs like crazy . The fact that the AI does this just shows that its using a very advanced strategy. Me? Im ALWAYS the most technologically advanced race and the reason why is that I trade my techs to everyone. Not only does it give me a lot more technology than I would otherwise, tis a great way to raise cash. Not allowing tech trading is not only immensely unrealistic, it would nerf an AI that isnt all I was hoping for (I only play on tough).

I think one of the best ideas was only allowing to trade techs that YOU researched. This way AI cant trade between each other like giving away free candy.
Also someone said it's always giving when you want to trade with AI. Even if your diplomatic skills are far better and your relations are good still you need to give much more than you get. I strongly agree with that. It makes trade with AI totally useless. Thus killing one of the best features of the game. I think this should be fixed asap too.

I like the only allowing trade of techs that were researched by the race idea as well. Unsure about the realism of it. Perhaps a lag on when you can trade it based on the number of turns it would take you to research it from scratch.

The "only trading techs researched by the race that discovered it" is interesting, but, assuming the
AIs continue to spam trade, it will still be the case that many of the races will end up with most of the
techs. For example, if 6 races each researched a different tech line, then they could trade amongst
each other, and each of the 6 would end up with every tech from the other 5. So, I'd have to vote against
this idea.

The idea where a race only received 50% of the required research points when trading would work,
as well as the slider option I mentioned in post #11.

Whatever fix is implemented, I hope its more then a "turn off all tech trades" option (although that would
be nice too), since trading is a big part of the game.

Or how about making it so you can ONLY trade techs that YOU research?

Great idea. The simplist to impliment. I hope the Devs pick up on this one. It would make it much more realistic...

I'll try to guess out what the effects would be in each case

1) Only the techs AI's researched themselves can be traded...

-The AI's would trade their unique techs for each other, meaning the best strat would be to research unique techs.

The downside of both of these problems, is that it would be more difficult for the human to catch up.

I think the key issue is to reduce the rate of tech trading.

Ideas along these lines:

You trade tech, you gain 0 research for that turn. Would help underteched races catch up.

I still think my idea would give the best solution:
AI takes uniqueness of tech heavily into account into how much it values its tech. The more races (including minors) that do not have a tech, the more the AI would want for it. This way, if all the AIs do trade tech with each other- the human can scarf it up very cheaply. The AIs would be less likely to make a bad deal with each other- as the Arceans might ask 10000bc for medium scale building if they're the only ones who have it. This also has a realism feature, as obsolete techs tend to in reality flow into cultures a lot faster then more advanced tech.

The downside to this is that the AI would not trade its unique techs when it is profitable to do so. Then again, it is rarely a good idea to trade unique tech evenly, unless the other guys have a unique tech. The other downside is the humans could develop a unique tech and screw up one AI each time they do it. That's my concern with this system right now- how to keep the human player from exploiting the AI, and the AIs from forcing the humans to trade every turn.

In regards to that, I have some other ideas:
a) A race can gain only 1 tech/turn through trading- unsure how well that would work though.

techs traded for have a monetary cost of implementation.

c) The AI asks for more when trading techs they consider to be unique. The AI will not value unique techs that are unique any higher then they do now. AIs that are ahead technologically will value the techs of other races less.

i like the monatary cost of implementation idea, i think it would put a break on the super fast spread of techs across the world. it just always seems odd to me that civs that hate me, and are supposed ot hate each other, all end up sleeping in the same technology bed together.

my thoughts on the matter are along those lines. I think tech trading is a needed component of the game, i mean who hasn't tried to turtle up and then had to sell everything in order to get weapons no?

(1) problem is that when you try to focus on one area and spend considerable time developing it, you get scrwed in that others have developed a wide range of techs, which is fine...

(2) but every game where i have tried to make sure i get a good number of base techs to keep up with the jones, all of a sudden i find that the AI has not only got all the base techs i have but has also managed to somehow specliaze in an area as well.

the solution to (1) is kinda easy, i think at least. perhaps the cost of implementation shoudl come with a tech research penalty, for example if you are researching lasers and you trade for a mass driver, you take a hit on your research for the lasers. concept being that your labs are tuned for research in a specific area and that the new tech requires some analysis, thus resulting in a penalty for the research. you could also make this penalty stack, so the longer you focus in an area, the more ht you take when you have to go try to implement other techs that you've traded for. that would seem to slow down the advance of (1), at least somewhat.

(2) poses a bigger problem since you already get penalized for being a generalist in terms of research cost, so a double penalty wouldn't seem fair, esp if you are being general so as to incorporate many different techs in your labs. perhaps a tech lvl limit to the transfers would solve the problem? so that way you can go out and buy a lvl 5 phasor when you don't even have beam weapon theory? that would force you into remaining general however.

just some thoughts