Where are you going to get the money for Research Points if you dont make markets???
I always make 3-5 markets per planet, 3-4 manufacturing plants, 2 research centers, 1 farm and research stock markets as soon as possible, or research diplomatic tech and trade them for stock markets, and let the planets upgrade to stock market ASAP. That will give you a good moral, influence, and money per planet. I specify on planets later on after the first planets. that seems to work. Also trade money is pretty much usless, less than 1000 BC a month wich is not even enough for 10 dreadnought maintenance cost, its only good for raising relation with close neighbors so I always ignore it unless theres a cranky neighbor near by. If you play on tiny, small or medium maps it may be of use to keep spending at 100%, but on larger and gigantic maps, by mid game your getting a profit of 10k+, so it just doesnt add enough to justify the relying on trade, wich is very fragile during war.

Also dont specify too much on research, if your military is neglected, the enemy will atck, its inevitable, your mission on the game is to keep the peace as long as you can till you get a good economy running to make lots of ships. Personally I always try getting medium ships fast, cuz they are important for your defense, get them ASAP cuz you can put defenses on them, and because they have low HP, the AI will atack them first while your tiny and small fighters destroy them.

Check out the forum for strategies and I'm pretty sure you'll be playin on tough+ in no time.   

  
Monc34

but on larger and gigantic maps, by mid game your getting a profit of 10k+,

I keep seeing people post things like these and wonder how I consistently get 15 or even 20% of my income from trade

I guess the effect of trade is heavily linked on the galaxy size and the number of habitable planets per race.

Trade income is absolutely vital, especially early on. Trade is also an extremely useful tech to trade to other races, since if you do, they'll often set up trade routes with you (as well as paying you for the tech in the first place). Trade also has valuable diplomatic advantages, since it disinclines your trading partners to declare war on you

I simpatize with this, I also do it early on, I was trying to tell him that playin on bigger maps using trade is just usless after the first phase of the game, not completely useless since you can have spending at 100% if you have good trade routes, but if the trade route is short, and you got no friends on the corners of the galaxy, it doesnt give you much money really, and it takes time to create freighters that you can use for colony ships, its just personal opnion and the mood at wich 1 is playin at the time. Sometimes I go the Tech trading route, other times I just want to get as many planets as possible for conquest victory, the early phase is vital, every MP must be used correctly or you'll lose. Imagin you built 3 freighters right after colonization phase, and then maybe the pesky drengin or yor declare war, what then you just wasted time and probably will have to restart the game. I just like to have dfended planets at the begining, although I will always research diplomatic techs and trade them for other, Its an effective strategy. I also use trade for relations as I said be4, but cant dedicate my whole production just for trade just to lose it later on during war time, especially with my way of playin wich specializes on conquest, its the REAL victory path for me anyways.

280 planets! You must admit that is an extreme case

280 is extreme…I’m reluctant to try the same settings on a Gigantic map for some reason  

I was pointing more to the per planet number, just to show that trade has diminishing returns the larger you get. I tend to think to is only useful on smallish maps, early phase.

I believe that concentrating on research is a waste of time. Just trade techs whenever possible. I set my race to have bonuses in morale, economy and diplomacy. Morale allows for higher populations, economy is obvious, and diplomacy helps with getting better deals when trading. In fact, I rarely build research centers at all and still stay in front with every tech besides weapons (because the computer values those higher than life itself). Tech trading = easy game.

Gawd, that would take forever, and I have a hard time keeping my games under 10 years as it is.

God i'm a barbarian, by the 2nd or 3rd year, i've already cut a bloody swath through the galaxy, guess it's because all the peaceloving hippie civs are next door to my civ, just can't bear to let those people on those planets live.  

Maybe it's just me, but I love 'No Tech Trading'. Without it, the AI is definitely easier to deal with since the AI relies on tech trading for tech advancement. Higher up, it actually makes the game slightly more fair.

Sean Connery
The Untouchables

"If he has a knife, you bring a gun"
"If he puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue"
"That's the Chicago way"

Words to live by.

That's because you need a strong economy to be able to field a strong fighting force. If your economy is not up to par, you'll only be able to build a few ships before maintainence costs overwhelm your ability to do anything. This is why early game wars often fail miserably. The AI builds its economy while holding you back, then overwhelms you later. Since you put most of your money into a military early on, you missed out on developing your worlds quickly.

Regardless of the outcome of an early war, you'll lose in the long run due to having a smaller industrial/economic base than the other AIs whom you didn't fight. Far better to wait until you've got a reasonable amount of development on your worlds, then go to war, than to try to "rush" an AI.

This applies to larger maps. On small and tiny, you'll go to war faster since you'll have exhausted all growth potential on your worlds quickly.

After the land grab I'll start buying research centers as money allows to speed things along.

Buying things is usually bad news. They cost 10 times as much to buy as to build. It sounds to me like you need to build more factories - that's a more cost effective way to speed things along. There are exceptions when it comes to buying, most notably colony ships on small maps, but such exceptions are rare. On any map where you expect to end up with more than half a dozen planets, you're actually better off building a few factories on your home planet 'til you can put out a colony ship in 2 turns and then building all your colony ships.

All the while I'm researching a balance of useful techs (eg. trade) but always strongly favor research improvement techs by at least 2-to-1.

Trade can be good, but the economy techs are probably a better starting point. Also, it may seem odd (hell, it *is* odd) but the manufacturing and research improvements are *not* good things to research. Every single "improvement" costs more than the last to build on an output to cost basis *and* an output to maintenance basis. The advantage is that you can pack more research and production into less tiles, but that is not an issue unless you have filled almost all the tiles on all your planets. I don't bother researching beyond the first improvement until then.

In the meantime, spend those research points you're using on planetary improvements and trade on military tech instead so you're not outclassed when the AI turns aggressive.

This all assumes you have tech trading off. As others have said, if you have it on, concentrating on research is a bit of a waste of time for two reasons...first you're competing against *all* the AIs since they trade with each other regularly, so you won't get much if any tech lead. Second, you'll be getting maybe 10 points of research out of each tile you dedicate to research buildings, and that's probably an overestimate. With a strong economy, a stockmarket on that tile will pull in *at least* 25BC, which you can then spend buying tech in. The AI rarely charges 2.5 times the amount a tech costs to research, so this is a cheaper way of "researching", plus you don't have to wait! If you do the tech trading cheese tactic (buy a tech then sell it on to the other races), you can actually turn a profit from buying your tech in!

Then how can I respond?

I reckon I can back up every statement, but there's not much point unless you tell me what exactly you think's wrong with them. Please note the full comments though, not just the bits you snipped out. eg avoid most of the planetary improvement techs *unless* you have run out of tiles to build on.