With the TA expansion, do different civilizations pay different costs for the same technology? There seems to be a good deal of weirdness about what techs the various AI races have and do not have.
Take Planetary Invasion. As the Terran Alliance with several developing bases in the later part of the early game, it can take me over 20 weeks to develop this technology if I switch my production to two-thirds labs. Meanwhile, the Altarian Resistance and this and the next four techs in the tree. On the other side of the galaxy, the Korx have Warp III engines. What the hey? Have these civilizations made somewhat strange choices about what to research, or do they have reduced tech costs for common technologies?
Tangentially related: when tech trading the AI seems to be aware of how costly the technology being traded is to you, rather than how much it cost them. Is this an accurate assessment of how tech trading works? Trying to squeeze the secrets of Barren World Colonization from the Yor rapidly drains my credits.
Also, what’s the difference between tech trading and tech brokering?
Finally, an unrelated espionage question. Once I have the highest level of infiltration for a civ, do I need to continue to have agents assigned to the civ to siphon off technology?
Thanks,
BvBPL
I have noticed that after very few turns in the early game, the AI civs will suddenly have a bunch of techs that would impossible to research normally.
There are a few techs that have slightly varied costs depending on the civilization, but I'm not aware of any differences of the magnitude that your experience suggests (aside from NLCs for Torians). It may have more to do with TA's tech-count inflation...at certain points, inflation rises from 1x/2x for non-weapon/weapon to 1.4x/2x, then to 2.1x/4.5x, and finally to 2.8x/6.1x. So if a civ goes for weapons immediately (or planetary invasion), it'll cost them much less than it would if they wait until the 30th or even 50th tech.
Warp III isn't that hard to get if you make it a priority. If I didn't have more important things to get, I'm fairly positive I could get it by turn 10 in almost any tree.
The AI bases the value of the extreme techs on how many (uncolonized? can't remember) of those type still exist-but I never bothered to see if there was a modifier for Barren for Yor (Isolationist) or whichever two Adapter has or Toxic for Korath (Spore). Note that this applies both to selling it to them and buying it from them.
Sidenote: PI and successive techs count as weapons tech, but defense techs do not, for this purpose.
I don't know what motivation the Altarians might have had-perhaps the Drengin were raining troops down on them?
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Tech trading is the ability to trade techs that you own to another civ.
Tech brokering is the ability to trade all techs that you own; turning it off means you can only trade techs that you have researched. So if I have tech brokering off, and I trade for PI from the Korx, I can't go trade PI to anyone else-but the Korx can. It works kind of like trade goods, except it doesn't prevent other civs from researching the tech (and thereby being able to go trade it).
2.0's spy system changed how you can raise your espionage level, but you still need agents on a planet to siphon technology (which, by the way, agents on a planet no longer increase your intel level, either).
What difficulty are you guys playing?
Players used to complain about the AI group-researching, but disabling tech brokering mitigates this issue to a large degree; not to mention that the AI shouldn't be that intelligent below at least Tough.
I play 'tough' right now, and I always have tech brokering off.
Which techs might these be?
I play on Tough, mostly with Tech Brokering disabled, and I remain a believer in the Secret AI Tech Trading Cartel. It does seem slightly mitigated by disabling brokering, but I sometimes suspect that the AIs are doing what amounts to 'all mine for all yours' trades, which is annoying in the early game but can end up screwing them in the longer term if I'm good at tech trades where I just spend cash or give only one of my techs away and score a stack of theirs.
If I was a real numbers guy like Sole Soul, I'd have something intelligent to say about the value formulae for a multi-tech deal.
I've always found that turning tech trading/brokering off will more stiffle the player than the AI. Esp. in TA where you can have all AI techs for an apple and an egg....
It sure feels like the AI does a lot of tech trades with each other. In the current game, reference above, nearly every civ had planetary invasion, but the cost of trading for it, even with civs I was close with, was so high I chose to research it myself.
Now that I know a little more about tech inflation, specifically how it affects red techs more, I might try to obtain planetary invasion before I explore weapon techs next time. Which seems kind of silly, given without lasers I’d be unable to shoot down a space miner so my guys can invade.
Playing on tough, by the way.
Not silly at all. You will find that the stupid AI leaves planets undefended from time to time and if you have allies they will take care of defenders leaving planets open for your transports. The invasion technolgies also boost your soldiering bonuses i.e. your planetary defense and IMO one should build up a good defense first before worrying about offense (ships and weapons). Having large populations of well trained (and tax paying) soldiers on your planets is also a far more economic defense than having a ton of expensive defenders that take time to build, cost maintainance and constantly get shot down and have to be replaced. If the enemy transports become overwhelming or you just want to minimize your losses you can use fast small ships with a single weapon to take out any undefended transports approaching. You'll also find that the AI players are keen on researching and trading the different weapon and hull techs so with a bit of diplomacy and perhaps some espionage it should be easy to obtain those techs from them, enough for you to focus on building up a strong infrastructure and outclassing everyone else in terms of research, economy and production.
Good thinking
Things that they shouldn't have in the very early game, like advanced weapons techs, or planetary invasion techs...in the same time that it takes me to research four or five very basic techs, the AI in the diplomacy screen will sometimes have a list of techs a mile long. there's just no way they could research them all the same way that the human players have to.
The Torians can research Colonizing Waterworlds ALOT faster, it costs them 200 research points to do, while the rest it takes 1000 research points.
So, in the TA expansion, each race has their own techtree xml file, which you can either edit with notepad (if you know what you are doing) or use the game tech editor in the tools folder.
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