Get out whores! All of yas!!!! Selling your tech for money. What next? Sex for money??

I noticed some curiosities in my current game. It seems like every race has certain technologies on a trading verboten! list, but not necessarily the ones you'd expect (weapons, engines, "bad world colonization" techs.) And I don't think they're always the same ones for each race.

The really weird ones were the Terrans, who were adamant in their absolute and total refusal to trade me... Alliance.

Also (bug or feature?) it seemed to me that the Minor Races might still be operating under the "old" tech trading rules. Either that or being "minor" makes them inherently freer traders, to keep the Majors happy? But I was able to trade with the local minor race for quite advanced weapons technology - had to give up a lot, but it wasn't an unconditional refusal like you get from the Majors.

I think the AI trading needs to be normalized in a lot of ways. One nice thing would be if there was an algorithm for them to find techs I had they liked, and then have them come to me for them, offering more than a 1-1 trade. It's one way in which I feel so differentiated in the abilities of myself and the AI.

I completely agree with the original poster. I think the best way to improve the tech trading would be for the AI to trade as often as I did as a player. I can understand the reasoning and arguments people are using to asupport this (why would they trade colonization techs early, weapon techs are taboo etc etc), but IMO it makes the Super Diplomat skill useless. The rest of the super abilities make much more sense since tech trading is virtually pointless.

What game are all of you playing. You sound like babies. Before you complain about the AI cheating you have to consider your diplomacy level, alignment, relations, the current value of techs, and what kind of tech it is. I play at crippling at and tech trading is no challenge. By the way I'm playing dark avatar. While other civilizations are researching weapons and colonization. I'm researching what they are not researching. Granted I do research enough weapons to make my first set ships. But if you noticed all the AI has is powerful weapons, colonization, maybe logistics and miniturisation. No one researches senors, xeno farming, xeno entertainment, defense, and xeno economics. Simply trade them what they need. And as far as weapons trading goes, trade your weapons with people who live on the other side the galaxy. They won't even have a chance to use them on you. If you can be an ally with someone do it. Even if you don't need to. The AI is more than happy to give you better deals if your allies. Completely exploit your relations with someone. A good idea is to become allies with someone who is about to be defeated. Trade almost all you tech if you have to. If about to die then who cares. Then if someone declares war on your weak ally you drop like a ton of bricks. And for gods sake trade your weapons. Their the most valuable and lets face their gonna get their hands on them someday, why not right know while you can make a profit.
The one thing that you should never trade is diplomacy techs. Under no circumstances should you ever trade techs that give you a boost in diplomacy.

The whole AI cheating amongst itself really pisses me off, because unless you're playing Isolationist or Adapter, it's not terribly uncommon to suddenly see waves of colony ships from all over pour into your little corner of the galaxy trying to grab any sort of obscure 'bad' world. Given how relatively difficult those techs are to research (they're fairly expensive and to get more then one or two requires a significant moratorium on your research while you invest considerable time grabbing those), it's definitely unreasonable to see the AIs suddenly ALL get the techs at roughly the same time. I quit my last game in frustration because I was pursuing a more militant tech and decided I could wait on the colonization techs. Unfortunately I was no match for the literally HUNDREDS of colony ships that swarmed me. I didn't 'lose', but I ended up fighting a war inside my own borders.

Not only does the AI flat-out refuse to EVER trade these techs with the player for no less then roughly every tech you have and 20-30 fully-established high-quality planets, but they get them very easily, resulting in a weird sort of 'land rush' halfway through a game.

I generally end up going to war against everyone while I explode invading colony ships.

Wow, I absolutely agree. That is f*ck!ng absurd! They went a little TOO far with "tightening" the trade with AIs. Now the Terran SB is practically worthless. -.-

Do you know what "literally" means? It means "really." No matter the galaxy size or the difficulty setting, I'd wager a lot that you didn't literally see HUNDREDS of colony ships. Just don't exaggerate.

Yes, there will be waves of AI colony ships at the higher difficulty settings. But you can still win if you play well. That's why there are the higher difficulty settings, after all! Some of us want those higher settings.

Sweet, tech trading will be turned off. Its a pain to see the AIs outnumber you in techs from point 2.

I turn tech trading off. Not so much because I can't trade with the AI, but because it seems the AI has little qualms sharing with all the other AI's. It may have changed, I've been so busy I've updated to the latest beta but haven't had time to try it.

Before you could ignore researching weapons and pick the techs up through trading. Now things are much different. Though I haven't tried to play with tech trading off I still find it useful. Instead of trading for techs try selling your techs for cash. I sell the AI the defense to their own weapons. This allows me to rush buy more at the start of the game, before my economy kicks in.

Tech trading, like taxation, invasions, ship battles and most other aspects of this game have been manipulated to give the computer players many extra advantages to make up for the lack of a well designed AI system. Thats why the AI is so easy to beat and fool all the time. It's easier and cheaper to load the odds in the favor of the AI then it is to improve the system. Because, It would not be fun to do.

The tech trading I'll give you- the rest is not cheated to the AI. Seriously.

Tech trading was probably designed to be equal, but the two different systems aren't equal. One idea, tech trades among AI's occur at the rate the human uses them, with some variance, and with modifiers for diplomacy.

Just trade them ships

Ive gotten a ton of techs from the AI by just trading them ships i was going to discard (to make room for newer better ones)
It seems all techs have a "trade value" though, with weapon techs having an exceptionally high value and other techs really low. Hostile world colonization techs were cheap as crisps to get compared to weapon techs, despite taking more time to research