How to Get Good Trade Revenue

I think trade is only efficient to bother with on the larger maps (i.e. bigger than Medium sized). On gigantic I've read of someone reported 600+ BC per turn. Heh. Nice.

To make the most money, trade routes should:

-go a long way
-go to/from high pop/economy worlds
-go through the path of economy starbases with the appropriate modules. Since revenue increases at distance along the trade route path, the starbases should be as far out as you cna manage, while still covering enough routes.

Beyond that? Research trade techs and have the appropriate abilities I guess.

600BC/month? Pah, I've got well into 4 figures.

Pick a healthy route (or two of they're very close), and send all your freighters there. Lay down a dozen or two ecomony starbases along the far end of the route, and the figures just multiply up and up.

Of course, with the benefit comes an enormous risk. Anything bad happens, and your entire trade revenue plummets to zero. I mostly did it just to see how high I could get things. Wish I took note of the exact figures.

what i did is finish the minitization and trade techs got the huge ship and put on 6 of the best engines(sorry don't remember which one) then put i think about 3-4 trade modules. then i got 5 of them them did a route some long some short and put about 2-3 econimic starbases on the routs fully upgraded and each ship brought in almost 50 each turn and also i added about 5-10 more of the huge feighters.

Just make freighters and send them to resonably distant locations. In locations where there are alot of trade routes going through, put several econ bases upgraded with the trading posts. That will increase the amount you get from the trade route.

I haven't played that much of this game (I'm new to it) but I was able to get about 12 trade routes going with about 50bc/wk come in from them each just by doing this. Make lots of econ bases, particularly where multiple trade routes intersect within the bases "zone"....just don't get into any wars.....

Still trade is under powered in gc2 vs the older versions. It's almost not worth bothering. In GC1, if you didn't get trade started quickly, you really fell behind.

Money is easier to come by in 2, but yet the trade routes start at about the same bc/month (but you get more of em), but I don't think they increase as the route goes nearly as strong.

In GC1 major revenue streams (25-50% or your income) could be done via trade. I've tried playing a race setup for trade. (IE good trade bonuses), and it just didn't amount to much. Even with bazaar and all the trade tecs. (and maxing out the start/end points (ie both high pop centers))

The star bases help, but not nearly enough.

I don't think that multiple trade modules actually make a difference slai47.

totally agree
trade in gc1 was essential, more then one game i managed to get my economy run totally by trading (i was able to have 0% taxes without running into deficit spending, but i really went mad on econ starbases that game )
now in gc2, trading is a nice and valuable to keep good relations, but it really sucks as a source for income
please make it at is was in gc1 or make a switch like "power trading" or something like that (right next to that useless "no tech trading" switch ) which highly increases trade revenue
in my games now, i get about 10% of my income from trade
and using like 30 constructurs to boost every trade route is simply not worth it, spending all that military production on ships and troop transports i can easily conquer the galaxy and 3-4 new planets are worth a lot more then one boosted trade route ...

I was under the impressions that more than one trade module on a ship has no additional effect. Is this correct?

Agreed, I think the money/production could be better spent on more colonies, upgrading existing colonies, or getting ahead in research. Everyone could use more money of course, but on huge galaxies, even 1000 extra credits a week isnt all that much, not for the effort you need to put into it.

I didn't think you could put more than one trade module on a ship, it always disappears like constructor modules do for me.

As for not being worth it, I dunno about that. In the short run yeah you could spend the money elsewhere but if you get a couple trade routes going between economic capitals it can really add alot of money over time. My entire military has been funded by trade. As an experiment I put an embargo on everyone in the game and my income dropped from 5k (with 100% use) to somewhere in the negatives.

dont add more then one trade module because they dont help. and dont add any engines because once the trade route is established they all fall to the default 1 move each turn. the extra engines will only help it get to the first destination faster. and even if after the route was created it kept the speed, you wouldnt want that anyway because the longer the trip takes the more money you get. so fast routes aren't profitable.

I'm happy with trade routes just the way they are.

Yeah so far I like how trade works in GalCiv2. I have played many tiny maps and was still able to make alot of good money off of them.

You can debate if the revenue from trade is or isn't enough, but the relationship benefits are worth a lot.

Personally I see it as a freighter making up it's initial cost in a dozen turns or so, and everything after that is just free money.