[Syd Thrift]

Since we don't seem to want to provide ideas on improving trade AI beyond "git gud", one thing I think would help with trades at least a little bit... don't constantly show what your prospective partner thinks of them. *Maybe* have that feedback from your own GM but you only hear from the other guy when you click on the "propose" button. If you lowball them enough then they might refuse to negotiate further and if you send then an offer which they accept but then you pull it back to offer something not as inviting, they also refuse to negotiate further (maybe for some time to come in fact). You could have individual relationships between GMs that go up when you conduct trades that help them and go down when you do stuff like this, or screw them over in deals, or (this might be a minor hit) when you pull a player off their waiver wire or draft someone they thought would fall to them. If a relationship falls below a certain threshold, that GM just plain won't deal with you, and if they're close, they'll only accept trades that they believe to be lopsided in your favor and so on.

On that note, one thing I've mentioned before that I'd love to see is the addition of the OOTP equivalent of "aggressive expansion" points from Europa Universalis. You do the stuff above enough, you take a hit to all of the GMs in your league, not just the person you're trying to screw over. If you're being a jerk, that kind of thing gets around. Another thing that might help with overall competitive balance but which has historical precedent is that you also get "AE" just for putting up good records. The classic example here are the Yankees in the 50s - there were offseasons where the only trade partners they could find were literal minor league teams, and even when they weren't actually being shut out of trades, they often only had the Philadelphia/Kansas City A's willing to deal with them.