but i'm still exceedingly curious, as i think other players are, will you be able to trade unique techs, or will the only way to aquire unique planetary improvements be by aquiring other players' planets (and unique ship components, by aquiring their ships)?
You will be able to trade unique techs (you have to since nearly all the techs are unique).
I think people have been so beaten down by games and expansion packs only tossing out a few unique units or whatever per civ.
Let me be clear: Most of the techs each race has will be uinque to that civilization. Most won't be that exciting (i.e. will be analogous) but they will be unique to that race.
That said, some technologies will be marked as untradeable. Also, the AI is FINALLY getting a new parameter that it can use -- willingness to trade (long time players probably can figure out how this will affect gameplay).
But let me give you an exmaple:
The Arceans won't have propulsion technologies (Impulse, Warp Drive, etc.). Other AI players will not be likely to trade those technologies either as they will be using the new "willingness to trade" paramter.
So how do the Arceans make ships faster? They have planetary improvements that allow ships from that planet to move faster.
Now, as for AI handling -- I am directly implementing the combo -- the unique technology trees, the planetary improvements, and the AI updates. Since I wrote the AI for all the GalCivs, I know how to do these so that the work will be less and how to get the AI to make full use of these.
