Technology Selling Victory (close to abuse?)

from Stardock Forums
This may have been discovered before...and i may just be wasting my time...but

I have discovered that the amount of money you receive from a trade is dependent from the amount of money that the IA has...in other words...the more money the AI has on hand...the more stuff (price does not change) he is willing to buy from you.

So what i did today is:

1) technologist government
2) try to grab research starbases (good, but not terribly vital)
3) 40% military, 20% social, 40% research, do only moral, planet improvement, economy, research, and ship improvement upgrades, expand your empire
4) tech propulsion techs, then tech diplomatic techs, buy the trade good translators (buy/lease it, don't wait for it to be built). do NOT sell this trade good.
5)Now you have a large diplomatic advanatage, start trading. The key to trading is not to sell techs in one big chunk of money, but sell it in 10-20 month increments. E.g. for tech A, instead of selling for for 1000 and burning up all the AI's cash on hand on one go (the less cash the AI has on hand, the more reluctant he is to buy from you, the lower price it will buy at), i sell it for 100*10 turns. I do this with EVERY tech, with EVERYBODY (except the most current ship/weapons techs, and diplomacy techs, which i try to keep for myself.). Now i have my income usage set to 100%, and can get a NET rate of a rediculous 6000-8000 bc a turn, with a rediculous $500,000 + cash on hand which means i can frequently afford purchases or trade goods/wonders/ships in strategic start systems, etc, etc, and of course, this has the added effect of severely lagging down their economy each turn.

Of course, i may just be a n00b, ranting on about something everyone knows.
711 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think you'll find this working as well at the higher difficulties with the latest version. What level are you playing at?

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
at some point the minor races go bankrupt this way so your income disappears. It works nice at the start but later in the game it just dries up (for me at least).

~SDC~
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I just won a game on Beginner where I did something like this. At any given time 50% of my income was coming from tribute generated by selling tech to the AI. Biggy is right that the minor races have a tendency to go broke, but as for the major races, you can squeeze some good money out of them. Personally, I only dealt with the Altarians, the Torians, and the Alcaens, and by repeatedly dealing with them was able to Ally with all of them.

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I like to extend my associations with the minor civs a bit more.

At the moment, trade routes seem to yield the best payoffs when the source and destination planets have a good tax income. The length of the trade route is a definite second. So what I do is place my economic capital on the best planet in a system with the minor civ, give them the tech to build their own EC, and max out my trade routes running just between those two systems. Starbases optional.

From that point on, I make sure they re-invest their profits from the trade routes in my technological expertise and luxury items.

Of course, it's a good idea to make sure they have a decent secondhand military, and plenty of back channel support when they get into trouble. Be careful with the cultural influence however. It's a bad thing when your golden cash cow starts to worship YOU.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Patch the game to the latest version and you won't have that problem. Sure you can still trade techs but not for ludricous amounts anymore.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Wrong all. It works with 1.02.xx too. I can pull it off without thinking much at all. The diplomacy interaction in this game is ripe for exploits still. I've also been able to seel "attack the wimp" for ridiculous prices, then that same turn sell: "Peace with y'all" to the wimps for whatever they gots in they pantses, and repeat ad nauseum.

all at Intelligent level now too.

~SDC~