interesting?....

I agree, we should NOT see any of the other races hardware till after a set time or event such as a trade line or such. Granted YOU the player can sell YOUR ships but I think it would make the game far more fun to not know any of the material any race has. In fact if at war NO trades should be allowed except for grovelings of peace or offerings of tribute. No tech no hardware and the entire area of each enemy should be re fogged unless there is a physical ship to view said space. 

This would give a more dynamic feel and force the player to make hard choices on where to commit resources and diplomacy tactics. 

This makes me think of something that I considered mentioning but left out of my original post--the possibility of an Arms Trade Agreement as a diplomatic option. Not a Military Alliance per se, but an agreement to disclose your military assets and put some of them up on the market to some people. This would give some flexibility to people who did or did not wish to make their fleet rosters known, and maybe add a bit more weight to Espionage for those who didn't. And, as a big GC2 fan, I'm guessing that Espionage could use some attention this time around.

But, now that we're talking about it... Yeah, let's put that on the table too.

Here's a possibility:  the AI decides which of its various techs, ships, and planets it is willing to trade with a given race right now - and only those assets are shown in the diplomacy window.  So, if you're at war, it's probably only willing to consider credits and a peace treaty - if it's losing, some techs and planets might be shown, as possible peace treaty offerings.  For a neutral race, a lot more will be visible, though some high-value planets, ships, and techs may not be listed.

This would solve both the problem of buying warships from a race you're fighting, and reduce the impact of "Diplomacy scouting".  However, this would add an extra management aspect to multiplayer - since a player would have to manage which things they're willing to trade with each other player.

What is needed is distinction between the races, for modders this should be a race type setting.

 
Wartime trading: No to most races, yes to the warlike races. War to them is more like peace to us, or it should be.

However yes they wouldn't want you getting your hands on their ships or weapons techs, but I don't think they'd care less about their environmental techs. Some races shouldn't want to trade you this fullstop even in peacetime, or be more wary of it. Some traders should LOVE to do deals and pester you for them more often, not to the point of annoyance but the Iridium Corporation should for example be coming to me every dozen or so turns maybe.

You could also weight it by ideology instead if you liked, but i'd prefer race types to be introduced for AI and diplomacy. (I just googled the Iridium corporation for spelling, and they are a cellphone company ) 

Quoting Saareth,

reply 9

What is needed is distinction between the races, for modders this should be a race type setting.

 
Wartime trading: No to most races, yes to the warlike races. War to them is more like peace to us, or it should be.


However yes they wouldn't want you getting your hands on their ships or weapons techs, but I don't think they'd care less about their environmental techs. Some races shouldn't want to trade you this fullstop even in peacetime, or be more wary of it. Some traders should LOVE to do deals and pester you for them more often, not to the point of annoyance but the Iridium Corporation should for example be coming to me every dozen or so turns maybe.


You could also weight it by ideology instead if you liked, but i'd prefer race types to be introduced for AI and diplomacy. (I just googled the Iridium corporation for spelling, and they are a cellphone company ) 

 

 

Going off of what you and Tohron and Mrblondini all talked about as far as what should be available... I think that environmental techs MIGHT be important and not up for trade, but only depending on the civilization/ideology/strategy in question. Really, what I'm getting at is, I think that another aspect of the civs' unique personalities should be how they prioritize different technologies in accordance with their playing strategies.

For example, an Iridium player might have some incredibly advanced trade techs, which would make sense from their angle since they could probably get huge returns off of it. But I'm NOT certain that they'd be any more willing to part with "Intergalactic Trade Bonanza" than the Drengin would be to let go of their "Super-Duper Meatgrinder" technology. If anything, in a play style that relies so heavily on $$$ and good relations and probably involves only limited military production, the Iridium guys would probably be glad to part with their low-level military techs in order to get their hands on something that could increase economic output.

In this case, giving up their massive trade edge, even in exchange for 30 new weapon techs, would be no edge at all... They would be taking something that gave them a big relative advantage and some great hope of winning the game, and they'd barter it away for something that would be of little use to them. And, the further along they are in a particular tree, the more relative advantage they might perceive because of the required investment to catch up in that tree, not just to purchase the lone tech. If you've got something that's 100 turns ahead of anyone else in that field, well, that's probably doing a lot of work for you.

So, yes, I think the "builder" types of civilizations would have good reason to hold onto their top economic techs, just as surely as a warlike faction would want to hold onto its best weapons, just as surely as a "trader" group would want to keep its commercial/diplomatic edge. I'd like to see the AI calculate the relative advantages and disadvantages of certain techs based on their approach to the game, and then weigh those options accordingly, rather than merely assigning a monetary value based on the amount of research required to purchase the tech.