It seems to me that not only is tech trading a crazily time consuming fiddly part of this game so far, it's an absolutely necessary one. I shouldn't be able to contact everyone around me and suddenly triple my research. I realize that I can disable tech trading, but it sure seems out of whack. It makes research speed almost proportional to the number of players in the game. Isn't this game going to support 100 players? You guys are going to ascend on turn 50 or so...
I'd almost like to see this system replaced wholesale. Like maybe have a science conference where everyone at peace with the host need to put an exclusive tech in the pot or lots of money. Host gets all the money, techs are distributed to all. Sometime to give a minor tech advantage to peaceful races, not something to triple the tech of peaceful races. That's just crazy.