I'm proposing this for the Express server only but it could be considered for all servers.

The way that research alliances work is drastically different than any other type of alliance. It's the only alliance that creates additional resources. It is also possible for a country to only receive benefit but not give back to his allies. This opens things up to exploitation by "convincing" or dishonest individuals.

I've had multiple experiences in which I've entered into a research alliance with another player under the premise that they're teching only to never receive any tech points from them. They said that they were teching and they had tech points when they offered the alliance so besides using valuable turns to spy on them, how was I to know differently? They then get free tech for 24 hours (thank Slag it's no longer 72 hours!) and I get an enemy to fight for the next few rounds.

If used in a non-leeching manner, this type of alliance only benefits one strategy or countries at a certain stage in the game. No other strategies have an alliance type just for them. Farmers are not provided with Ag coops, cashers do not get investment groups, nor do indies get an alliance to boost production.

With the recent increase to the tech production coefficient, tech has become undervalued in Express due to market flooding and tech is barely a viable netting strategy anymore especially considering its difficulty in contrast to farmer, indy, or casher. The last thing techers need is people getting free tech!

My proposal is to restructure how research alliances work: instead of receiving a percentage of the points your allies research, I propose that a percentage of your allies' tech points are counted in with your own when calculating tech percentages. This change would allow research alliances to benefit all strategies without giving anyone free tech points. It would also help to encourage tech utilization by all countries as either producing or buying tech would be required to benefit from research alliances and it would encourage a more diverse use/acquisition of tech since it would be easier to reach max tech levels if one maintained full allies with sufficient tech which would allow countries to obtain tech in a greater number of categories.

The balance gods would have to decide what percent contribution per ally and total contribution would be allowed. Off the top of my head, 50% of tech in each category max total contribution / 25% max contribution per ally might be a good starting point.

any server where you can't FA to the person that you are leeching off of. aah, man i probably have to read the entire post... hang on...

bah, the expense that you incur is minimal, it's what basically the same cost as a defense alliance or an intel alliance? you don't have to stay allied to them if you don't want to, kick them to the curb if you think they have ungainly grossed off of you.

As a techer, the expense incurred by a deceptive tech ally IS significant. While it's not significant in terms of per turn cost, it's very significant in terms of income lost by not having a productive tech ally! Another way to fix this issue would be to show the other player's buildings when they send you a tech alliance offer. However, the concern about dishonest leechers is a small thing supporting my suggestion. I think there's a bigger balance issue with the way that research alliances currently work.

The current system encourages players to collude outside of the game and even cheat by creating countries to leech tech from. It gives an advantage to people who play the game in a way that pushes the boundaries of what should be allowed on an "individual" server.

Of course, these are just my opinions and the devs may state that everything is working exactly as intended and they encourage players to leech tech via research alliances :P

very good suggestions. for a second i thought u were gonna say get rid of tech allies... Was thinking 'how is this a revamp'.

Interesting change to make them work like a normal alliance wheras you dont receive anything physical from the ally but still benefit from their efforts.

Would make a retal very hard to calc... Uses enough turns to to spy country and 2 allies as it is. this would require op'n three other allies or just assuming max weapons tech.

how do you know that a defense ally isn't going to pull the plug right before he attacks you? do they get free spy ops against you because they are your ally?

i don't think it's a balance issue, because you do not have to stay allied with a leecher. you can dictate or negotiate terms as to what it'll take for them to be an ally.

basically, you're stating that all alliances should be removed for an "individual" server to be legitimate.

Good point. Tech percentages instead/in addition to number of points could be shown on the regular spy ops...or it could remain an unknown. Since it would be percentage based, someone with 0 weapons tech would not get any boost from allies. Someone with 120% would get a max boost to what, 130%?

Not at all. This is the only type of alliance that basically gives other players free money without requiring anything in return. For defensive/offensive/spy alliances to be beneficial, both players need to contribute military units. Having good allies and sharing intel with your allies certainly helps a player be more successful than someone without allies or who does not communicate. However, I think the current system can be manipulated to reward those "with connections" with direct financial gain which creates an even larger barrier to entry for new players.

Dantzig,

I love the concept of a "tech-use alliance". I am concerned that the alliance cost will be more than the cost of just buying or producing tech yourself.

Could your "tech use alliance" supplement rather than totally replace the tech production alliance that has been in the game forever?

If Country A wants to attack Country B, and B has two defenseive allies, weapons tech and three of your tech use allies, it will tech five spy ops to determine his defensive strength. Given the reduction in spy ops to nearly zero, that would be a cost prohibitive attack.

i don't agree, i don't think new players come in expecting to pwn everything simply because they showed up. think they come in to help out a friend that suckered them into playing. it's kinda nice that new players can read the wiki and get a clue before they get suckered in though.

Technically he wasn't lying when he said he was teching :-P

actually its one on each def and tech ally = 5 plus the one on the original target and an ally op = 7

What about the amount of tech you receive should depend on either:

1) The amount you can research per turn

or

2) How much tech pts you have researched in a certain timeframe, say 12 hours perhaps

That would eliminate leeching & any incentive for deception.

absolutely correct
in every other alliance in this game what you receive is based upon your own abilities

a D ally can only double your D
the success of spy ops is based on your own size in the area
an O ally can only double your O

tech allies are the only allies who allow leeching
this must be changed
well done dantzig and rob

keep research alliances as they are today, but in the calc of how much you tech points you get from your ally, multiply with your ratio of labs/land.

so, a fully built techer gets the same as today, a leecher gets nothing, a techer in the middle of converting gets half.

I don't see much reason to change it. Be more selective with who you ally with, and the problem resolves itself.

and for the record, tech alliances do not just benefit 1 type of strat.

The current design of research alliances might be intentional and make sense for clan/team play on the non-individual servers where FA is allowed. A clan can significantly help their casher/farmer netgainers by allowing them to leech tech from their techers. THIS OKAY AND NOT A PROBLEM.

I'm less concerned with people getting screwed over by leechers than I am with leechers benefiting, perhaps intentionally benefiting from illegal collusion on individual servers. This issue has inspired at least one player to cheat at Express.

The current design of research alliances benefits 1) techers, 2) leechers, 3) any strat involving a tech phase. Straight indies, farmers, oilers (lol), and cashers do contribute to research alliances and can only leech.

Basing the amount of tech obtained via research alliances off of TPT or labs/land ratio would fix the issue of countries getting FA via leeching tech and would benefit techers. However, it would not drastically decrease the number of tech points in the game as would eliminating the production of new tech points via alliances. A decrease in supply would help techers in Express immensely as it's currently difficult to get tech points to sell, much less sell at a decent price. Supply would go down, prices would go up. Techers would get a more consistent income balanced by having fewer points to sell. Everyone else would pay more for tech but get a boost in tech effectiveness from their research allies. Sharing a portion of tech among allies would allow all strategies to take advantage of research alliances in a way that always benefits both parties.

The one thing that I didn't fully consider is that this would be a small nerf to Commies since everyone else would get a boost in tech effectiveness.

Below is basically a re-post of a comment of mine from another thread, which is relevant to this discussion.
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Tech leeching is in effect foreign aid. Why is it that foreign aid was removed tech leeching is allowed to go unchecked?

Tech leecing does not give a small advantage, but a huge advantage. Think about this situation:

A casher who gets 3 tech allies with 1000tpt early game. I buy some bus and res tech off the market. (just enough to get the 10% each turn from tech allies). For 50 turns spent researching at 1000tpt, I get 15k worth of tech free (3 allies) - which would have cost me 50mil.

Keeping in mind that 1000tpt only requires 4k+ acres, that 50mil savings at that point in the game is a huge advantage, taking into account the compounding effect.

And this is just talking about 50 turns of leecing from each ally at 1000tpt. Taking into account increasing tpt as the game progresses and over many hundred turns spent teching, the advantage is enormous.

I think that this is an interesting idea, but it's not clear if it will have the balance effects that you want. Generally, if we decrease production of one strategy, that means that public market prices for that resource will be higher in the long term. Therefore, all other strategies are weakened in an absolute sense. Depending on how supply and demand work out, the strategy that we changed may or may not benefit.

Changing tech alliances in this way will decrease the supply of tech on the market. If we use the same model as def allies (allies send 25%, maximum effect is double), then it's fairly safe to assume that cashers, indies, and farmers will have on average an additional 75% tech efficiency. Not only is that a huge income boost, but according to my estimations, demand for tech would drop by around 30%.

So we can summarize the situation like this:

-Supply of tech falls (in a perfect world, by 0.3 / 1.3 = 23%)
-Demand for tech falls (in a perfect world, by 30%)
-Casher, farmer, and indy receive a large boost

I can't conclude anything with certainty, but techers are probably losing out.

The current limiting mechanic for tech alliances really isn't that great and could certainly be improved.

The percentages would definitely need to be tweaked for balance. Maybe as low as 12.5% of each ally's tech up to a total of 25% per category? Most end-game countries carry 200+k in their main categories so that would be an extra 50+k points for pennies on the dollar. That would also open things up for a casher to ally with 2 other cashers with high bus/res and then anyone else who has high tech in a category they want to boost (military, warfare, weapons, spy, mil strat...)

However, just changing the tech benefit to a percentage of TPT instead of percentage of tech inventory would make me mostly happy. The current limiting factor isn't really a limiting factor for any halfway intelligent player.

why not just keep it allies send 10% and max effect is double?

some decline in production will be experienced but not some precipitous collapse. the only production loss will be to the leechers.

if you made it 25% the tech point increase would swamp the server which already has too much production and not enough demand