[spoon]

Originally posted by Puke:
- lowered cost for political savvy
- higher maximum setting for political savvy
- characteristic optimization for neutrals

Maybe also greatly increase the cost of mining, farming, and refining aptitudes so they are out of the question for the player to raise them.

For political savvy, maybe reduce the cost up until the threshold, but then at the threshold, make the cost still somewhat reasonable (like 25 or 50pts). What this will do is (almost) guarantee that people will buy up to the threshold (making trade more attractive, like you stated), and then it will be a interesting decision to make if people want to go still higher.