Hello, sirs. I'm brand new to GC2 (discovered it only yesterday, unfortunately), but as soon as I played the demo I knew I had been missing out on something that is quite possible the most well suited game for my tastes (love grand epic space strategy but _hate_ RTS).

I've done a couple of tiny sample games just to get the feel of the interface etc and now am starting a campaign game (I purchased the ultimate edition, but I assume I'm starting at the beginning of the original game campaign since I didn't choose otherwise that I'm aware of). In this first mission, I was intending to go with diplomacy and trade as my goals to victory, but now that I've made my way into the tech tree a little bit, I'm seeing that there's no Trade technology at all. Is this technology not available in the campaign missions? Are there per-mission exceptions for technology that will be available, etc? If so, how do I figure that out before having already committed myself to a strategy that won't be possible?

Or am I just missing something else entirely? Fully willing to believe that.

Thanks for your time.