Get the most for your tech!

[David Weldon]

Here's a little tip to help you get the most out of trading your tech: Take advantage of the degradation of each tech's value over time. Advances are worth more when they are "cutting edge" than they are after some time passes, SOooooooo...

Sell your "cutting edge" techs for money, not other techs. Find spots on the tech tree that you can ignore for a long time, and buy them for cash only when you finally need those techs to advance or to accomplish an objective (for example, when you finally have the production built up in a fake palace, _then_ buy the necessary tech and build the wonder you wanted).

I have tested this, and if I trade two evenly valued techs when they are new, I can swap one-for-one. But if I sell my new tech for 400 gold, then 6 tech advances later I can go back and buy their tech for only 200 gold. Not to mention that I have a larger income at that point...

The key is to identify those techs that aren't immediately useful (it's not too hard to do depending on what you want to prioritize).

[randomturn]

This is right on. Mastery of the tech tree is critical. You've got to be aware several techs ahead of which wonders you want and which wonders you don't want. By the middle of the game, the AIs will give you up to 30 gold/turn each for key cutting edge techs.

[Jason]

Amen amen, on my feeble Regent games at least. Especially nice is when you get an era up on the AIs and they mop up the dead-end techs for you. By the time they are in your era, whatever techs you actually want you can buy. This is especially handy if you want a dead-end tech that has dead-end prereqs.