No Tech Trading

Is the lack of Tech Trading a Bad thing?


  • Total voters
    330
  • Poll closed .
I really like the change because it saves you the hassel for when a low-tech civ tries to nag you to sell a tech, and you loose your relationship with the other country if you refuse (now I can be on Settler and not have to share my tech!)
 
Tech trading is being replaced by cooperative teching. This will work as an effective replacement for tech trading if diplomacy works well in Civ 5. However, in my opinion diplomacy hasn't worked well in any of the previous Civs and I don't know if I trust Civ 5 to succeed where the past 4 Civs have failed.

Granted, tech trading is ultimately a diplomatic mechanism. However, it's a mechanism with a very obvious payoff model making it easy for the AI to figure out if the trade is worthwhile. It also doesn't require the two civilizations to be on good terms. Cooperative teching, however, has a slightly more ambiguous payoff and will only work if civilizations are on good terms. I fear that, due to a lousy and random diplomacy in Civ 5 (like past Civs), my ability to get ahead in technology will be based more on the capricious nature of my neighboring civs than any planning I do.

Also, tech trading had a really nice and consistent effect of keeping the technologies of all the civiliations in play close to each other. A few civilizations would get ahead because they were powerhouses while one or two others would lag behind because they were isolated and living on rock piles. 80% of the other civs could just trade with each other and the tech leaders to be able to keep up in technology even if they weren't necessarily power houses. In this way, civilizations including my civilization wouldn't be left in the dust simply because one or two civilizations got an early advantage, spent time teching, and used that technology to ****** other civs and exponentially grow their own teching potential.

If civs can't cooperatively tech easily even if they aren't on the best of terms, then I fear Civ 5 will be unbalanced. The comparetive tech of civs at the mid to later stages of the game will be completely out of wack where a few civs will have nuclear weapons where most other civs will be in the dark ages. Also, the civs that win will be those who have a slight early game advantage and are able to exponentially grow their technology.
 
Yes, cooperative teching, but we could also see some kind of passive tech diffusion leakage, where later-researchers of a tech can get it cheaper.

We just don't know.

But I woudln't assume that you have to have good diplomatic relations in order to not have to research everything yourself at full price.
 
I am not sure about getting rid of tech trades.CIV has never been tried to be realistic historical game ala EuropaUniversalis, so realism should not be the reason for cutting it out.We will see.
 
In my multiplayer games we always turn that off, so, the AIs don't use it to cheat against us.
There usually more of them then us.
It is alittle sad to see it go.
If one wanted the 2 player vs 2 player games, it could be used, but, overall not needed.
 
I loved trading in Civ 4, perhaps without realizing how broken it is. My immediate knee-jerk reaction to disabling tech trading is Civ 5 was a negative one, but now I'm not so sure.

Holding verdict on this question until I have actually played a few games.

EDIT: Didn't realize that this thread hadn't had any replies in several months until I had already replied. Whoops!
 
I am glad tech trading is gone so I don't have to worry if there is an option to turn it off. I have never played a game with it turned on. It is the gamiest concept Civ has going. I rush to one tech and get 3 or 4 by manipulating the stupid AI? It makes the game way too easy.

And to those who say it is vital for high difficulty success. I only play on immortal and Deity and win about half of the time.

I just hope there is an option to turn off cooperative tech developement in civ 5. It just seems like any civ that doesn't have a tech partner is going to get left way behind and get destroyed. This cannot then be considered a game strategy but a game necessity!
 
I really like the idea of getting a research bonus on a tech for each civ you've contacted that has already got it.

If the espionage system were still in place you could put espionage points into protecting your tech, for example in the 60s? 70s? it was possible for any egghead to build a nuclear weapon using public information; after a high-school kid (who later went to MIT on the government's dollar) DID design and build part of a nuclear bomb, the FBI removed a lot of info from the public sphere. The fact that everyone puts so many resources into protecting their nuclear secrets is what is making it so hard for other people to build their own nukes.
 
Terrible decision.

This change, combined with the mandatory simultaneous turns, the removal of espionage, the removal of religions, and the destruction of vassal states, have made Civilization 5 little more than a semi-turnbased Age of Empires.

If anything, they should have made diplomatic relations count for more, not less, as Civilization IV was barely more than a glorified war game. They should have made it so that even human players have motivation to favor members of the same religion, etc., rather than just remove any and all diplomatic concepts from the game.
 
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