It seems that the TEC research tree for demanding gifts of money/metal/crystal is broken and can't be used anytime the player is TEC. It seems to work just fine with Vasari and Advent, but will not work at all for the TEC. I don't know if it does or doesn't work for the AI players, but can confirm (at least for me) that it never works when I am TEC.
If anyone else is having this issue, feel free to post it here.
