No changes that I can see. Their super ability is still essentially useless.

There are changes to the .xml files, but they don't seem to work in-game yet. There is a Gaia Vortex in the planetary improvements that looks like it will be quite good when it gets "turned on".

The Gaia Vortex is online. You get it after you have selected good as your alignment

So, at this late date in the dev cycle, do folks think we should beg for a change to Super Hive, the Thalan tech tree, or our own expectations?

The Thalan tech tree (and/or starting stats). They put way too much work into making them possibly the most unique race to intend for them to be this gimped. I don't believe that is what they intend and will keep for the release.

I'm still hoping for some major changes to the Thalans, but it's getting pretty late for that.

I don't think they need the factories right out of the gate, but perhaps earlier than it is right now. Moving it up a few notches would make a big difference (and possibly the pink blob of doom will go away). Heck, moving the rank 1 factory/lab much earlier than having to work you way up to the rank 2/3 sets would make a difference. Yes, you'd be bleeding money like a madman, but at least you'd have buildings.

How about the starbase industrial modules? Have we gotten any help there yet?

I'm not very interested in going back to tech trading unless the computer players are being more reasonable (I'm one of the folks who thinks they consistently cut better deals amongst themselves than they will with me).

Well of course they do, anything else would be unfair, because unlike them you can freely sell what you just bought for something else.

What-what? I've never read (or seen in-game indications) that the computer players can't resell techs. How else do things spread so rapidly amongst them?

I think Xenocide is referring to the fact that when you trade with the AI, it always occurs on your turn, so that you can immediately turn around and resell the same technology before the AI can. Of course, I don't see why this is an advantage at all, given that the AI already had his chance (as he had the technology before you), and declined to do this (or already did).

The AI displays an extremely curious reluctance to sell ANY weapons technology, however. It baffles me as to how the AI races of the game can come to an almost uniform decision of what should be the dominating weapon paradigm in the galaxy given that they refuse to share any weapons technology, even horribly obsolete ones, for any price. I mean, unless you've been bootstrapped into committing to one type of weapon, there's no specific reason why you would choose the same weapon as anyone else. Indeed, if anything, I always choose an entirely different weapon if I am late to the weapons race (and I usually prefer to take a wait-and-see attitude), so as to have a weapon that no one else has a useful defense against, with the result that after the galaxy has already decided what the dominant weapon/defense paradigm is, I violate it like a schoolgirl in a Japanese cartoon.

To be honest, all you need to do is trade for some random low level factory which is pretty easy. The fast build allows you to get colonies up fast; just delete the factories after they've done their stuff.

Unwillingness to trade wep techs is a balance decision by the devs I think. However, unless you play it at the level above tough (cant rememebr the name), it will still trade you pretty much anything, tough trades weapons as well allbeit at a cost.

I think the game would be far to easy if you could Ninja Trade to the top level of weps.

There seems to have been a fair amount of talk lately on this subject, and the consensus I'm seeing is that there is some significant difference in how the computer players trade amongst themselves vs. with the player.

I would not object to stinginess w/ weapon techs, *if* I saw evidence that the policy was applied equally to all civs (or at least clearly pegged to civ-civ relations).

I just really dislike what seems to be a rules-driven trend to tech homogeneity, and from what I've read so far about the TA trading, the "unique" tech trees are being seriously watered down by this problem.

I am at a loss to understand why there is this specific hardcoded lock on ALL weapons technology, PERIOD, no matter how utterly valueless the technology is, to the point where the AI will not even sell you a completely worthless technology for an item that you already have a better one of. Even if you were absolutely convinced that weapons technology was THE end-all-be-all, surely you would not reject such a foolishly lopsided trade as giving someone NOTHING for SOMETHING. Instead, the AI will flat out refuse to consider even the most ridiculously lopsided trade, like "1 million BCs for your stupid level 1 laser".

Besides, it seems out of character that the Korx wouldn't sell you that, considering that they'd sell you their own mothers.

I believe that once the ratio of your military rating to a given race's military rating passes a certain point, they become unwilling to give up weapons tech in all but the most extreme circumstances. This includes very weak weapons tech. In a way, this makes sense. Why make the superpower stronger?