Can't say have had huge problems yet but was wondering if anyone had tips before I seriously tackled this achievement. The couple half hearted tries at this I ran into what seems to be the wall that I'm asking for tips on.



Need: Achievement calls for giving away 30 techs and receiving 30 techs in same game



Core issue: Balancing being ahead enough to give away tech, but not so much ahead the AI constantly declares war because they are afraid of your higher score.



The couple times I half tried this, I just reverted to a normal war conquering game because the AI who I had traded tech with and tried to be friendly. keeps declaring war because they are jealous of my growing score. But if I slow down so they are not afraid of my score, then I don't have any tech more advanced than them to trade.



I tried not expanding much, just grab some core worlds and then completely turtle defense up, go to war with no one and just trade. But tech seems to count a lot for your score because I kept getting ahead enough where the AI refuses to trade and declares war. (or the one time I tried to deliberately really slow down science, I had nothing to trade as the AI was ahead of me)



Any specific galaxy, # of AI, factions to play against tips?

Well, not quite sure if I'd call this strategy or just blind luck but I got the achievement. Played game as Sophons intending just to get more experience with them before trying for this achievement again, so I wasn't trying to be Mr. Nice Guy to everyone like in my first OP above.



Just normal war and conquer Sophon. I was playing large map, Serious difficulty mode - which is kinda now my new normal for "easy" since I can regularly win on Endless if I use a good custom faction.



Anyway, around the turn 100 mark, entering into mid game, I suddenly noticed that I'd ended up with 2 semi-firm BFF allies while the other 5 factions were at war with me.



Long story short, it turns out my BFFs were a heck of a lot more willing to trade tech with me than when I was trying the formula of be nice to everybody, which failed.



So I played the game out and just regularly traded tech with my two allies and before I knew it, got the achievement.



I guess other than the blind luck, my tips from this would be:

a) don't try to neutral or nice to everyone, that just seems to kinda fail - better to have a couple good allies to trade with even if everyone else hates you, than have everyone kinda be neutral



b) once I realized my allies would trade tech, sometimes like 3 lower techs for one of my really good ones, I started following a tech path where I deliberately didn't pick up the easy 1-3 turn techs, I just kept going on the edges of each tree - avoiding a path that took easier techs - and just kept researching the harder ones. Every time I got one of the long research/harder techs (the 7-10 turn ones), I traded it to one of my allies for like at worst 1:1 trade, usually 2:1 and sometimes 3:1 trade.



I'd say those are the two biggest takeaways - make a couple allies even if everyone else hates you, and sounds odd but don't research the critical stuff in middle of each tree and just follow the edges of each of the 4 tech paths, with priority to keep advancing towards the bigger techs. This was probably the hardest part for me because after you play awhile you get used to following a certain tech combo, but this game I had to skip a bunch of tech that would normally have been critical to have in a normal game (terraforming, strategic resource techs, etc).