To be clear, on tech trading you can only trade techs you have researched yourself, so that means you cannot get or acquire other techs since you didn't research them, correct?

With Tech brokering I can be the lowly tech disadvantaged Iridium and "BUY" for a bazzilion credits, Planetary Invasion, Death Beams and ULTRA large ships which are things 2 ages ahead of me, is this correct?

Brokering should be, like Gilmoy said, you don't have the tech but know someone who does and know someone who wants it, you set up the deal and take a cut in some form.  I didn't pay close attention to the stream to say this is the way it will work.

I would love to be able to do that in large maps get to the middle and trade techs with everyone.

I wouldn't be surprised it works like trading techs you have vs techs you researched.

Let say you are playing the Terrans and you want to trade with the Iridium. The Iridium have developed "Xeno Irrigation", and acquired "Advanced Construction" from the Alteran - it does not matter whether it was traded/stolen/etc.

Tech trading: You can obtain the "Xeno Irrigation" because the Iridium have developed it themselves. Likewise you can not obtain "Advanced Construction" from them because they did not research it.

Tech brokering: You can obtain both the tech from the Iridium because the have it. It does not matter whether they research it themselves or obtained it through other means.

Think of it like this: Tech trading you need to talk to someone who actually researched it, Tech Brokering: you need to talk to someone who simply has the tech.

With both options you can buy advanced techs from others, the only difference is from who you can obtain a certain tech.

Of course, it not only works in acquiring tech but also in which techs you can trade away.

Edit: Further complicating the issue is how Wictionary seems to show "broker" as a specific subset of "trade", in that brokering always involves a middle man, while trade includes all of the definitions of broker ... and much more.

Also, it is hard to see where trade would require you to be an original owner of a tech (such as having researched a tech). As long as you possessed the knowledge, regardless of , why couldn't you trade it?

It just a game mechanic to control how technology spreads.

No Tech Trading: 0-order spread of technology. You want a tech, research it yourself.

Tech Trading: 1-order spread of technology. You want a tech, research it yourself or obtain it from someone who has researched it.

Tech Brokering: n-order spread of technology. You want a tech, research it or obtain it from anyone who has it.

Let say you are Terran and you have developed "Advance Construction".

With neither Tech Trading or Brokering: You can not trade it away to anyone.

With Tech Trading: You can trade it to anyone, but after that they can not trade it to someone else.

With Tech Brokering: You can trade it to anyone, but after that they can trade it away to everyone.

Ok that is much more clear. Again in the example. If the Drengin have Planetary Invasion (Age of War) and they are the ones who got it and did not trade for it, they could give it to me, even if I was in a lower Age or not near it in unlocks...

What you are saying is that if I didn't research "automobiles" or some component there of, I could not sell the car I bought from a new car dealer (a trade of money for the car) to someone else.

In short, I am saying that your definition of "trade" just doesn't make sense in the real world, and that makes it impossible for me to buy into a mechanic like yours in a game.

Certainly there are better ways to control how technology spreads, if that is the real intent of putting in such a mechanic; such as, even if you get tech "L" in a trade when you don't have tech "F", then tech "L" does you no good because you still can't build anything using tech "L", or you just can't trade for tech "L" because you don't have tech "F" yet.

So you are also saying that if you sell me a warship I can't reverse engineer it to get the techs used to build that ship.

GC isn't the only game that has had trouble with "tech spread", but I don't think disabling Tech Brokering is a valid way to suppress it. I don't think it should be suppressed at all. It sounds too unreal. Which is probably why they made it a toggled option in the first place.

The scenario that disallowing tech brokering avoids is this: I am the Terrans and I trade the Drengin tech A for tech B. I then go to each of the other 6 races and trade them tech B for another tech, meaning that for tech A I just received 7 techs. This is further comlicated by the fact that I can then go and trade tech A to the Iridian Corperation for Tech C, trade that tech around and get another 7 techs, rinse and repeat. Now, that literal situation is unlikely, but it shows how easy it is to exploit tech brokering. By spreading a few techs around, giving no one a distinct advantage, you can claim a bunch of extra techs for yourself. This is still an issue with tech trading, but brokering multiplies the problem exponentially.