Tech-Trading in BNW

[blackcatatonic]

Ever since I saw this quote from Dennis Shirk I have been waiting for someone to talk about it:

Also the way that it ties into the New World Congress to the way that you’re going to have horse-trading in terms of the buying and selling of tech with other civilisations

It surprised me not to see this being talked about much given how the reintroduction of tech trading was something that people were requesting for a long time after release. Research Agreements have since been improved, but 'the buying and selling of tech' doesn't sound like Research Agreements to me.

Since G&K, there does seem to have been a gradual suggestion of technology trading being reintroduced. After RAs were changed to provide 'lump sums' of technology instead of actual free techs, the ability to instantly get a tech from another Civ was introduced through Espionage. Now the Assyrians will be able to do this without the use of spies, right from the start of the game. I don't think it would be too far-fetched to postulate that tech-trading could be making a comeback.

One thing that we can probably deduce from the quote: 'horse-trading' does imply that the World Congress will have some feature to restrict technology trade (whether that is in the form of RAs or actual 'buying' and 'selling' tech).

Admittedly it's still very early and we have next to nothing to go on, but this does raise a couple of questions...

1) Will technology trading be reintroduced in the expansion, and if so, how would it work?
2) Should it be reintroduced, or is the RA system fine as it is?

Thoughts?

 

[Gucumatz]

1. It sounds like it will only be used after the World Congress is initiated, sort of like all states would vote on giving a tech to each other?
2. Absolutely not, it should not come back and I hope that its severely limited or has an option to be turned off.

 

[Louis XXIV]

1) Will technology trading be reintroduced in the expansion, and if so, how would it work?

I don't think it will because I think that's a bigger feature to announce than to just let it slip. If it does, I suspect you need a certain tech to trade it but it would otherwise work like it has in past games.

2) Should it be reintroduced, or is the RA system fine as it is?

I would prefer that it not be reintroduced. I thought that was a good change. Too much of past games were about "playing" the tech tree and researching techs the AI wouldn't (and then swapping or selling to as many as possible). Research for research's sake was extremely rare and the game progressed way too quickly (they would have to slow down research, at a minimum, if they bring it back).

 

[apocalypse105]

Yeah civ 5 really needs to speed up the tech.



Hear my sarcasme
Its allready to fast now

 

[blackcatatonic]

Some good points being raised here, especially about the speed of research in the game.

I feel that if it were to be brought back, it should be sufficiently limited as to not necessitate the removal of the RA system (which, in my opinion, was vastly improved by the move to cash for beakers from cash for a free tech of your choice) - so it would be something suitably late-game and possibly restricted to certain 'key' techs.

I guess the other question is: if tech trading isn't coming back, what is meant by 'the buying and selling of tech'?

 

[Nick Hynds]

NO TECH TRADING. Please no tech is already fast enough and if they introduce tech trading in the expansion I will NOT buy it.

 

[Glassmage]

i hate tech and map trading in civ4 so hope this time around there is penalty or make it hard to vote on giving tech away.

 

[SamBC]

That phrase about trading of tech does strike me as very weird in context.

 

[Buccaneer]

Please NO tech trading. It was yet another broken and exploitive element from Civ4 that was best turned off. Civ5 has settled into a nice pace of research, now that GS and RA has been nerfed a little (and I could argue that tect costs in modern+ should increase more, esp. after hubble and research labs).

 

[Avatan]

The only way I can really see it happening in the World Congress, is multilateral rather than bilateral tech trade. That is, you pass a resolution forcing everyone to share one of their techs with everyone else in the world. Would provide quite a good 'elastic-band' mechanism actually.

I can see that too, forcing a civ to share its tech with all the other civs. It would be interesting and help catch up to runaways.

With tech stealing, tech trickling down trade routes, this, inflation of number of sopol unlock (?) and aggressive ideology, it seems like they want to buff non-full-science approach, which is honestly needed!

 

[kingchris20]

I can see that too, forcing a civ to share its tech with all the other civs. It would be interesting and help catch up to runaways.

With tech stealing, tech trickling down trade routes, this, inflation of number of sopol unlock (?) and aggressive ideology, it seems like they want to buff non-full-science approach, which is honestly needed!

I like the idea of the WC passing a resolution to force a highly advanced civ to share one of its techs with every other civ in the game.

 

[awesome]

I'm probably in the minority, but I'd really like to see tech trading return, since it's always been one of my favorite features in the game. I'd be fine with it only being available in the modern era, though, since as much as people seem o be complaint about research being too fast, that's just a fact of life in the modern world.

 

[kingchris20]

I'm probably in the minority, but I'd really like to see tech trading return, since it's always been one of my favorite features in the game. I'd be fine with it only being available in the modern era, though, since as much as people seem o be complaint about research being too fast, that's just a fact of life in the modern world.

Good point

 

[blackcatatonic]

I like the idea of the WC passing a resolution to force a highly advanced civ to share one of its techs with every other civ in the game.

Seconded - I think this could work.

Otherwise, you could interpret Dennis' quote as meaning that the WC will be able to vote to impose embargoes on signing RAs with a Civ, though I'm not sure where 'horse-trading' comes into it. The phrase implies a level of complexity which, let's face it, hasn't really been a feature of CiV diplomacy thus far, to the point that it's hard to imagine...

 

[SamBC]

Seconded - I think this could work.

Otherwise, you could interpret Dennis' quote as meaning that the WC will be able to vote to impose embargoes on signing RAs with a Civ, though I'm not sure where 'horse-trading' comes into it. The phrase implies a level of complexity which, let's face it, hasn't really been a feature of CiV diplomacy thus far, to the point that it's hard to imagine...

The most common use of horse-trading I'm aware of, other than the literal, is to do with wrangling votes in politics.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Indeed, which, as I say, is hard to imagine in CiV...

 

[EgyptRaider]

I'm rather hoping for map trading myself... i hate the fact that even in the Industrial Era I still don't know much of the world.. scouting the entire world is just tedious...

 

[MantaRevan]

I'd like to see it come back personally, just with implementation that makes it less central to the gamre than it was in Civ IV. Maybe there could be restrictions on how the techs are traded. The costs of techs would have to also go up so that the tech game doesn't go insanely fast. And this could have issues with the AI. The city states gain tech faster than the best player. If they are allowed to partake in trading, that could be an problem. At the end of the day however, tech trading seems like such a selling point for Firaxis that it would have been mentioned outside of one interview at this point.

 

[Avatan]

I'm rather hoping for map trading myself... i hate the fact that even in the Industrial Era I still don't know much of the world.. scouting the entire world is just tedious...

I agree (even though a couple caravels on auto-explore do the trick nicely), but it seems that they want to put a strong emphasis on exploration. This aspect of the game gets a whole SoPol Tree, new use with archeology, a new incentive with the world congress, maybe a new exploration unit (archeologist, exporer??), so it seems unprobable that they would add a way to explore the whole map without any effort really.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I agree (even though a couple caravels on auto-explore do the trick nicely), but it seems that they want to put a strong emphasis on exploration. This aspect of the game gets a whole SoPol Tree, new use with archeology, a new incentive with the world congress, maybe a new exploration unit (archeologist, exporer??), so it seems unprobable that they would add a way to explore the whole map without any effort really.

Agreed; also, reintroducing map trading would break the City-State 'find me X, Y or Z' quests and the Natural Wonder happiness boost (a bit like how if you discover Satellites without having explored the world properly, you get bombarded with Natural Wonder notifications and your happiness goes up by 3 or 4). A minor issue, perhaps, but something that does suggest it won't be making a comeback.