Here's how it is suppose to work:

Whenever you research a tech, you get 10% of its value in knowledge (in the same tree as the tech you researched). When you trade the tree knowledge away, you lose those points. You basically have an effective research rate of 110%, but you can only get that last 10% by trading (or you can trade it for something else). When you trade FOR knowledge, you gain those points in a random tech in that tree. Sometimes, if you're late in a game, a couple of points barely makes an impact.

Note that, there is some odd discrepancy on how the AI is generating its knowledge. Several people have reported that the AI is generating way more than it should. I honestly haven't noticed it myself, because I tend to mind my own business in most games... but I'm sure there's a bug in the system somewhere.

Well, I only have 2 games under my belt. But in each game I was fairly active in the diplomatic screen, and the AI never had thousands of knowledge to trade in any category. The most I saw was low hundreds (like 182, for example).

If the AI has tens of thousands of points in your game, I'd say something wonky is going on. Silly question, but are you on the current patch/no mods? Going by the "Knowledge is generated by 10% of a techs research" rule outlined above, it doesn't seem possible for the AI to have tens of thousands of points. There just isn't enough tech in the game!

Unless your totals are coming from the super-late game? I don't know how much research the endless optimization techs require. If you are seeing such totals before turn 100, I'd definitely say something isn't working as intended.

As far as I am concerned, the AI research trade points are buggy.

I know for a fact that even with three AIs in the game, the trade points exceed 10% of the research, sometimes by about 5-6 times.

I have also noticed that the more numerous the AIs, the more the trade points exceed expectations.

Given that everyone who has reported trade points in the hundreds has been playing with 10+ races, if I had to guess, I'd say that AIs do not lose their trade points when they trade them away, and can re-trade them.  Get over 10 AIs, and you get a positive feedback loop.  Let me explain.

Assume 21 AIs.   Each has research 10, which generates 1 trade point.

Then each trades that trade point to every other AI, thus obtaining 20 research points, which generate 2 trade points.

The next turn, the AIs have not increased their research capacity, but have 3 trade points each.  Those generate 60 trade points back, etc...

Now, I am not a Stardock programmer, and I have not bothered really experimenting (I have never played with more than 10 AIs, one for each race)  But I really trust my gut feeling when it comes to debugging/expanding other people's code.

If my guess is correct, 11 AIs trading amongst themselves will quickly result in exponential research advances.  This matches what you are seeing.  Fortunately, they lack the materials to transform the research into a strong military, and the production to transform it into infrastructure.

This exponential (but unrealized) research would also explain why AIs shoot up in power so quickly, and why they have such an inflated sense of their ability to stomp the player. 

I am REALLY curious to see how close my guess is to the truth.  If it's anywhere accurate, we have found a bug that has far reaching consequences, and fixing it will smooth quite a few bumps.

There are many ways to fix this situation. Yours works logically, but I think that trade points are only generated when a topic is completed.  For them to use that fix, they'd have to change a lot of the mechanics.

The only person who can find the most effective approach is one who can look at the actual code.  I'm not quite so full of myself as to try to second guess the man on the keyboard.

I just wish I was sure that a developer is aware of this thread, and believe us when we say that this is a serious problem even with less than 10 AIs, let alone when the number of AIs makes it go exponential. 

By the way, anyone testing this would be better off knowing that the exponential effects will not become blindingly obvious until 1. All AIs meet 2. The trade bump is enough to go through single topics in two-three turns. Of course, once it's enough to burn through repeatable topics, the effects are ludicrous - that's when you'll see research in the thousands.

Is that really true?

Well, the AI tech thing might be working as designed, but IMHO that design is for crap!

This bug really only rears it's ugly head when you have lots of enemies.  On a standard "Large" map with 5 opponents, it's just going to appear as though the AI has an almost reasonable research advantage.  On a modded "Huge" map with a dozen opponents, it becomes clear that something is broken.

I find it unlikely.  Research bonuses are present, and can be set per difficulty setting.  

What we have here is an exponential positive feedback loop.  No one designs such things in, except for nuke manufacturers.

This is just a bug, or at best, unintended consequences.  I can imagine that the designers said, at different points in time.

1. 'Research points can be traded with every partner.'

2. 'Players get too much of an advantage by abusing this, lets allow them only one trade'

3. 'Hey, we optimized our engine, we can have a dozen of AIs and more'

And no one noticed what these three innocent decisions add up to.  In my job, I see similar things all the time.  Once it resulted into a very (un)lucky guy getting scratched on the forehead by a flying 90kg chunk of metal that proceeded to go through a wall.  Another time, in a piece of medical equipment spontaneously generating life-threatening shocks. And a third time, although I did not actually work on this, just read the notes of the guy who dug it out, in another medical device killing dozens of people.

Every time, small, seemingly unrelated decisions which added to positive feedback...

Is there any simple modification I can make the prevent research trading entirely?  I play with lots of AIs and having them with 20k+ knowledge is not fun.

Thank you very much.  That will work for now.  I am hoping they fix the tech trading between AI issue.  I am not sure what causes it because it only happens sometimes, and I think more frequently on large maps.

If letting the AI get 20,000 research points and whatever tech lead goes along with that was a design decision, it is a terrible one.  I hope it is a bug.

I also noticed how the AI does not pickup treasure chests, and if that is supposed to be fun, it is not.  It is dumb.  Especially when my level 1 scouts can kill the enemy AI sovereign without coming even close to dying.  They need to play like a human, or as much as possible, that would be fun.