Tech Trading with the AI seems in a bad state now

I've turned off tech trading in my game. Some people Are easy to trade with( they like me) others are very hard to trade with. I found that generally the tech confuses the AI and they make trades that involve many techs and it's is something I rarely want to do.

Maybe I value tech too much and haven't been desperate for cash/resources ships. I usually reject all tech related trades so that's why I turned mine off. Glad that's a feature they enabled.

Trading is a bit involved. Do they like you? Have any ships zipping through their turf sans an Open Borders Treaty? Is your alignment out of sync with theirs?

luceo non uro

Agreed, trading is broken.  The AI will often not make trades that are in there interest because they do not like you enough.  Trades that would leap them ahead of rivals or save them from your invasion.  2 examples,

1  I encountered a race that was mid level 9 of 16, boxed in by slightly larger rivals and had colonizable  planets behind them just out of their range.  For a Harpoons I offered to expand their range, give them better industry, speed, and a few financial and terraforming techs.  By value my offer was 4 times what Harpoons cost, and they said no, they wanted Massive Scale, Sing Driver, and  other techs for one mid level military tech, so within 30 turns they were picked off

2  my neighbor declared war on me, I won, took out all starbases, shipyards, and almost every ship, but did not want to have to take and defend their worlds yet.  I even parked transports outside their undefended last few planets, and they would not give up a tech to survive saying they did not like me enough.  I check each turn a I took a planet or two and they never liked me enough to survive, so they were gone.

I would welcome seeing trading fixed in the next update, at least when it is in the AI's best interest.

I usually have both tech available for trade and high diplomacy tech, so even when my military is pretty small I can usually get tech trading to work on the various "normal" difficulties (normal through gifted). Genius might make them more unreasonable, so I could be wrong about your particular case, but I have noticed certain trends:

1.) Certain techs are considered high-priority by the AI above and beyond their inherent research cost, particularly military techs. This actually isn't any different from GC2 (which I've played recently), although that game often picked very random techs to consider 'high priority' (such as the basic "space weapons" tech, basic logistics, etc).

2.) If the AI likes you, they'll ask for a stiffer bargain but are entirely-willing to trade what they consider "key" techs if you offer them enough. The problem comes from multipliers when they don't like you that make the trades prohibitively-expensive, and if they're planning on attacking you then it definitely makes sense not to trade harpoon tech for something with more long-term benefits like economic or terraforming tech.

3.) If an AI doesn't like you, it should still be willing to trade low-priority techs at an uneven exchange rate. It probably won't sell anything really good like weapons or invasion tech, but cheaper techs or intermediary techs tend to be things they'll trade regardless.