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In 1.16f, as I understand it, the game had a rather serious flaw where AIs didn't know how to do gold per turn deals with each other. That meant that as long as the human player kept making gpt deals that kept the AIs from building up cash stockpiles, the human player had a monopoly on tech sales (althogh straight tech exchanges between the AIs were certainly possible).
That advantage went away with 1.17f, but in the process, Firaxis overbalanced things in the other direction. The erosion in value from the first sale to the second was absolutely ridiculous, so even if several AIs could afford to pay handsomely for a tech, it was hard to get much out of it.
I think tech trading in 1.21f is balanced pretty well. The AIs rarely have any significant spare gold per turn available (at least for the human player) until the mid-to-late middle ages, but once they do, it is possible to get reasonably respectable prices if you get a tech lead. My usual preference is to do tech-for-luxury trading with multiple AIs at once every 20 turns and pick up whatever cash I can in the process, but not to sell tech beyond that. But if one is going for the fastest space race finish possible and doesn't care if the AIs stay close in tech, trading more could be a good move on difficulty levels where you're able to out-research the AIs. (Note: the vast majority of my experience is on Monarch, so my thinking is mostly in terms of what a good player can expect on that level or lower. Tech leads on Emperor are more difficult, but not impossible.)
Nathan
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