I love doing that in Civ4. I would race up a narrow path in the tech tree and then trade that advance tech to other civs for the tech I missed. That way I always stayed ahead of the pack in tech. This was mostly a problem of poor AI rather then actually a balance type issue.

This topic though does raise an interesting question on how tech levels are going to be handled with tech trading? Each time your research something your tech level goes up and it takes longer to research something. So what happens if you research up to tech level 15 in civics then trade for 4 new civics techs. Does that increase your civics tech to level 19 or does it simply remain the same without a penalty to your own R&D?

Also what about the "unlimited" tech tree? If you can research some things such as Improved Housing multiple times then how do you determine if you can share it? And if it's simply based on if their "level" of Improved Housing is higher then when you trade to you trade up to their level or only gain 1 level? For those that don't know each time your R&D Improved housing it increases you house's capacity by 10%. So say they research it 9 times for a 90% bonus but you only researched it twice for a 20% bonus. If you trade does that increase yours to 30% or 90%?

nice! I always use this option [civ4] because either I can screw with AI, or some random group of AI players run away from the rest. Neither is fun... I agree though, that brokering is usually more an AI algorithm problem rather than problem of brokering mechanic itself.

I hope that Stardock will do that right. Because I have never seen that done properly. It is always so easy - figure out what AI has as a priority, research other stuff, trade with all AI. Almost feels like a cheat. And it turns into annoying routine - every 5-10 turns trade with rest of the world

It should be something that's optional.And you should only be able to trade a tech once every oh so many turns *1 per turn or less ex. 1 per 3 turns or something* That way its still fair and also more realistic in that no one can trade an immense amount of tech in one year or one week or whatever as it is theoretically impossible to give too much to someone too quickly.

True. For example in Civ4 that low level tech you skipped is always going to be really cheap for you to develop should you decided to go back and research it. For example in one game of Civ4 I had musketeers yet I hadn't even research mysticism which is one of the first techs as I recall. Well getting that would take very little time giving my high R&D output by that point. And trading it would of been cheap given it was such a low tech.

While here in Elemental since you only get 1 tech from the field each time your research a "level" that means you can reach a really high level and still have starting tech you have not researched which will cost you a lot to research. For example I don't research Harbors since naval stuff is not in the game yet and many times I've been over level 20 in civics. This really changes the dynamic as R&D really forces you to specialize in this game more so then a lot of other games since each choice increases the amount needed to get an additional choice.

Because of this unique mechanic in Elemental I see the limiting of tech trading turning more into a specialized vs general gameplay. As players wont be able to simply get all the techs they didn't research with tech trading is turned off. Thus games with no tech trading will see players have more specialized setups.

TB is different from trading tech. What disabling brokering does is prevent you from trading technologies you received in trade. So if I give you tech X you can't trade it to someone else. It still allows trading, it just limits it so everyone isn't trading every tech to every one.

tech trade and tech brokering are still different mechanics.

I hope the SP game is balanced for the presence of Tech Brokering, not the absence of it. (but yes, turning it off will be an option that could potentially be imbalanced)