Timing techs correctly could be rather important, and I do agree that trading for Metal Casting is still a good deal to be sure to neutralize India (without this, some stray team could dare to break the ETTT alliance and ally with India anyway, in the short term before things go too far.)
The turn we are due to tech Math, could be a good time for us and one other team to login and trade techs - so that then it would be near impossible to determine if we had teched Alphabet and traded for Math + something versus what we are actually doing, teching Math most likely and trading for Alpha with Sirius or AMAZON. For instance, after AMAZONs meet Mavericks, we could propose something like "AMAZONs and the Q want to trade with the Mavericks (we insert something about distrusting our other neighbors, CDZ)" to convince the Mavericks to go along, but really we'll just get what we can and leave them behind. But let's not get too far ahead.
First and foremost though, I want to accept the agreement - with Sirius and AMAZONs already I fully support the alliance, and it will likely bring us even a bit more success.