[DavidG]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
I don't have a problem with a little wheeling and dealing. But when it gets to the point where you have two or three empires and one is researching ships, one is researching weapons and one is researching shields and all trading what each of them gets, I have a problem.

First of all it's incredibly tedious and boring to me to do this.

Ditto. I find this tedious too because do to this requires way more time put into a game planning the tech each will do than I want to do. (if a turn takes me more than 15 or 30 mintues I'll just end it and hell with what I forgot)
The reason I like to ban it is to prevent 2 or 3 players from allying and trading tech like crazy and forgetting that it is a "Last man standing game" I suspect if players accepted that is was actually a Last man standing game then tech trading would not really be a problem.

It actually never really occured to me that players would think a game wasn't Last man standing if those were the victory conditions. I mean ganging up on one player is OK to a point. But ganging up on him and ending the game when he's done, well that's gamey (nudge nudge wink wink )