Is Trade good?

i find trade incredibly useless. i play small maps wit habundant planets, and usually trade routes only give me 5-6 bc a turn . It's not much when i get 1000+ from taxes. Am i just playing badly? I keep reading posts about how trade is amazing, but it just seems overrated to me. And the 5-6 bc per turn is for pretty big planets, 10+billion.

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Trade is awesome. It's usually the tech I beeline for after I grab the tech for a manufacturing capital.

5-6 BC a turn for free is awesome, it actually averages out to more than what the pop-up box says. At least that's what I think, check your tradw window after 20 or so turns after the trade route starts, you should be pulling in a decent amount of cash.

Second great part about trade is that it gives + diplomacy. You can get a ++Trade relations in your favor by trading a lot with one race and that will net you a friend pretty much for life.

I usually get somewhere around 15% of my total economy from trade. Trade is just free money after you build a cheap freighter and free money is never overrated.

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Bigger maps would make trade more important than on smaller maps, I would think. Of course, if you are totally warlike, then trade is weak as well, as trade is cancelled out by war. It's probably not easy to stay peaceful and pacifist on a small map, so trade may not help so much.

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plus, you can increase the trade revenue by placing economy starbases in areas where trade roughts pass through. Look into this also. But like it was said above, free money!

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Personally, I value the increase in relations that you get when you're trading with someone more than the money. If there's a galactic superpower and you're not it, trade with them a lot so they'll like you. From there you can either start funding their enemies with ships and tech to cut them down to size, or help them take over the galaxy and go for the diplomatic victory.

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TheRealWarpstorm

Join Date 03/2003

+13

Wow, I get a few hundred BCs a turn late game from trade. In addition, like others have said, your trading partners are more willing to intervene on your behalf.

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I had almost 2k in trade once but that was with every race pretty much trading with me and I had all of my trade routes to one planet super magnified with about 15 econ bases. I had all of the jessiuns trade routes as well as the iconians and at least 2 or 3 with everyone else except the drengin, who I didn't meet until they had already set up routes. Being in the middle of the board helped a lot! Oh the snathi also never traded with me but not sure they ever traded with anyone due to the minor races having broken ranges that have nothing to do with starbases or planets, they are seemingly arbitrary. This is also why they sometimes do nothing with gift ships, it is because they can't go near thier homeworld because it is out of range for them. Use cheat parameterrs and switch to a minor race to see what I am talking about.

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