I'm personally a fan of tech-trading, especially if one faction have techs another faction otherwise cannot have.

The problem in GalCiv2:TotA as I saw it was that the AI didn't value unique techs or put those unique techs to any real use. There should be a healthy mix of untradable unique techs based around the culture and race of a faction, and tradable unique techs that are highly valuable to anyone not of that faction to begin with.

Damn, Double post.

A bit off topic and surely mentioned somewhere else sometime but...

Shouldn't we have a system that actually allows us to research all the techs at the same time? We would get all the basic techs available since the very begining (plus faction ones) and they would get slowly researched every turn. We could choose a few to focus on, researching them faster. And when trading, you would have just two types of tech trade: unlock tech (you allow him to unlock one you have but he doesn't or offer him tech points in one you both have), and trade tech points in an unlocked tech. Then it'd be a matter of tweaking how to balance the cuantities of tech points traded.

Breakthroughs would still happen once reached certain milestones. Those new breakthroughs would be then added to the list of techs being researched.

And research branches could get a bonus for each neighboring countries (frontier with) you have. They would boost the techs that are common between them, so if Kingdom A has Kingdom B and Kingdom C near to it, and it shares Tech Alpha with Kingdom B and Kingdom C but only shares Tech Beta with Kingdom B, Tech Alpha would receive a boost from the presence of the other two kingdoms while Tech Beta would receive boost from the presence of one of them. You could not unlock new techs just by neighor presence (or it should take an slowly increasing % chance each turn to unlock, so faction techs don't spread too fast).

I agree, for the most part. I mean, how low is our tech to begin with? I'm sure we will already have basic things.

But here I'll use this example.

You start trading with your neighbor, you use small 2 wheeled carts hauled by a single horse as your engineers are to brain dead to think up a better alternative. Your neighbor gets twice as much goods moved in half the time with his multi horse 4 wheel carriage. Obviously It would not take long for you to adopt that tech.

I also believe that there should be a chance, however small, that warfare tech can be passed during battles. If you see the enemy fight and it is superior to your ways, assuming you survive that battle you are going to focus on mirroring or countering there way of fighting. This should give you a tech or atleast decrease the amount of time left on your tech.

There are SO many ways tech can be discovered, your researchers can be givin the spark of imagination seeing how the rest of the world does it.

In fact, they should make sure that you can set up a "Research treaty" which will allow scholars and engineers from your empire travel to your allies and observe how things are done there, sort of a cultural/technical exchange program.

In my opinion tech trading could be implemented on a multilateral level.

Trade Routes should not only increase money but also research (for example +1 RP on random tech available to the civ you are trading with) and culture.

With civs with whom you have particularly good relations you can exchange knowledge but it should just mean an increase on RP/Turn got from Trade Routes.

I agree also that battles or the conquest of enemy cities should have an effect on your tech level.

I also don't think that all the techs could be stolen from enemy civs.For example if we are speaking about Empires of Men and Fallen there should be some techs which are very useful to Fallen but not useful at all for Humans.

For example a spell or a ritual which is applied only on Fallen units would be unflavourful if Humans can take advantage of it.

The tech trading which was used for GC2 and CIV4 had too drastic effect on gameplay.First of all it eliminated any poossibility to play as an isolated civilization because it was too much a disadvantage, but also tech whoring was one of the most used ways to win and honestly i really hope those cheesy tactics are not included anymore.

Yeah I'm a big fan of this idea...I've posted this before but since its been a while...

I'd like tech trading to be tied directly to relations, the better your relations, then the more you can trade. To counter the idea that everyone loves you when you have fifty dragons in your army, there should also be a negative relations stream...as in instead of weak being "close" with strong...they become catamite, sycophant, agent, vassal, toady...etc Which would mean no tech trade, and some sort of extortionist rate on your treaty (preserving the strongs desire to keep the weak in the game)