Best way to rack up trade income?

(a) Value of trade continues to increase the longer the route has existed

(b) Most players continue to expand the number of routes they have - obviously, 10 trade routes generate more cash than 5. Note that 10 is a hardcoded limit, even if you research tech for more, you can only have 10 trade routes.

(c) Trade bonuses (from tech gains) are vital to boosting trade value.

(d) Don't make the 'other game' fallacy: just because in other games each trade route needs a unique destination (or origin-dest pair) don't assume that here: in GC, you can have multiple trade routes between the same planets.

(e) Think of the little trade ship thingie as a graphics thing to give the baddies something to shoot at - where it is doesn't mean anything to your income AFAIK (ie. income is flat per turn, not huge when the thing reaches you and nothing the rest of the time).

(f) Coupled with (e), SB trade enhancers are great. I generally send all my tradeships from one system - which includes my eco capital - and build all the enhancements in at least 1 SB in that system... My games don't generally go long enough to bother with much more than that (and I do tech vict on gigantic!)

(g) I haven't seen a formula, but I suspect that like other things in GC, the bonuses affect your 'base' income for the route, not your net. So if the route is worth 40 and you have trade +50%, your income is 60. Now if you build a module for "10%" gain, you get an extra 4, not an extra 6. This may explain why things don't seem to stack quite as obviously as you may expect. I **think** that the increasing value of the route is a base increase, which means all bonus apply to it, which amplifies the effects of (a)

(h) I think there is a time lag before things take effect - I often notice a turn or three having to go past before a bonus kicks in. I don't think I am imagining it.

Oh - if a world you are trading with declares war on you (or v.v.) the trade route will disappear. If the world is conquered, the trade route remains on the display with a value of N/A, and AFAIK never comes back. (There may be more to this latter one...)

Oh again. I believe that SB module do enhance the value your trading partner gets from your trade route, but DO NOT affect any routes other races have established with you, and DO NOT affect routes other races have with each other that pass through the sector of the SB.

Oh a third time (I am putting all my trade info in one spot, including answers to different questions posted elsewhere on the forum, hence the addon bits) - Although some manuals suggested you could trade embargo a race, or choose to terminate someone else's trade route to you, AFAIK there isn't actually any way to do this as yet.

There are some problems with the current trade system that may need to be examined soon:

- Given that the outcome of most games are determined before turn 200, the full value of long and lucrative trade routes usually don't materialize.

- With the way starbase trade modules apply their bonuses, simple math dictates that they will be a lost investment in most scenarios. On short routes, they aren't worth your cost, and on long routes, you won't see a return until a couple hundred turns later.

- The path finding AI prefers diagonal movement over horizontal or vertical movement. This means many trade ships will never traverse the same sectors on their return trip as they did when outbound (i.e. parallelogram route), thereby reducing the impact of starbase trade modules.

- The "no bonus unless trade ship is in same sector as starbase" system has several negative impacts on trade income:

1): It's a huge hassle to rush build your starbases ahead of a trade ship. I think it would be much better if the bonus from starbase trade modules are applied towards the overall value of the route in a proportional manner (e.g. a +50% trade starbase that affects 10 squares of a 100 length trade route will add 5% to trade income).

2): The effects of trade bonuses are significantly reduced if a trade ship travels diagonally and slices through the square shaped sectors, only spending a few turns in each.

- Trade income, no matter how much you boost it with starbases, will always remain insignificant compared to what you can earn from tribute. It takes 450 production points to upgrade an existing starbase and obtain the +50% trade bonus. You must convince a trade ship of at least 75 BC value to traverse the full 12 squares of a sector to earn back that investment in one trip. For the same price of 450 production points, you can build yourself some ships and sell them for 600 to 800 BC over 20 turns and earn profit immediately while burdening the AIs economy. If you choose to invest that cash into research, you can then proceed to trade that for 2,000 to 3,000 BC over 20 turns as well. It just isn't possible for trade routes to bring in that kind of profit.

Trade profit rarely exceeds 10% of my total income in any game, and the only reason I bother to establish them is for the diplomatic effect of improving relationships. Looking at how the current trade system is implemented, I would venture to say that any player who earns a significant proportion of his income from trade is not managing his empire at top efficiency. Simple cost benefit analysis will clearly demonstrate that focusing on trade just doesn't pay.

On the other hand, that constructor is a one time investment, while you'll have to continuously build ships and sell them to the AI to make money that way.

Additionally, selling a ship the the AI gives the AI a ship, while trading only gives them cash, which is less dangerous.

Simiarly with trading tech - you're giving them something they can easily use against you (especially if it's military tech or can be used to get military tech).

I think the optimal strategy is probably using trade to boost the AI economy and THEN selling it stuff, so you effectively double your income from trade routes. WHy settle for your slice of the trade pie when you can extort the AI's slice out of it too?

Huh. Interesting how different people's milage varies. What size/difficulty do you usually play at Za? (I'm Crippling/Gigantic at the moment.) I don't spend much effort on trading (ie. my constructors are busy), but even so, it is crucial to me:
(a) I need the AI to have money to spend buying tech from me...
(b) In the later game, when I really don't want to sell tech any more, trade takes over as my main income supplement. Not unusual for me to have 2000 from tax and 2000 from trade, at which point I have the choice to not sell the more advanced techs.

~SDC~

Thanks for the input guys. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who was thinking it takes a long time to get back your investment with trade starbases....although others apparently do find it viable.

OneInTen:

Constructors are indeed one time investments, but it's hard to recover your investments in starbase trade modules before the game ends, let alone make a net profit from it.

Quite frankly, the only downside of selling ships to the AI is the reduced game performance resulting from too many ships on the map. Let's not forget that trade benefits both sides of the table too, whereas arms dealing is basically all in your favor since...

1): You will make a return and profit on your investment much quicker

2): If you have sufficienct production bonuses, you aren't paying the full value of ships with cash. A Frigate that cost 200 production points may take less than 100 BC to produce, yet you can reliably sell it for 240-400 BC.

3): When the bulk of your fleet consists of Dreadnoughts, a couple thousand Frigates in the hands of the AI won't affect you much. A small stack of Anti-Matter Missiles in orbit will be enough deterance to stop all attacks anyway.

4): Every penny of arms dealing revenue comes out of the pocket of the AI, and that means less cash for it to spend on social improvements and research. Lasting costs of maintenance will slowly overwhelm any economy too.

5): Introducing a large number of warships into the galactic market creates an arms race that further elevates their value. Bolstered by their apparent military strength, it's much easier to play the AIs against each other as well.

As far as tech trading goes, I only do it in the early game when I'm sure it benefits me more than the AI. By the time my economy hits 3k BC I have probably switched to arms dealing exclusively.

Ralegh:

I normally play on masochist gigantic settings. In my current game for example, I am spending 7k BC in social/military/research per turn without counting maintenance costs, thanks largely to the 2k/turn tribute from arms dealing that is still growing. At the rate I'm churning out Frigates, I estimate that tribute will level off in the 5k/turn range unless I get lazy and stop trading. In comparison, my income from tax and trade is only 5.5k and 1.2k respectively. The next largest economy in game is the Yor Collective, at 2.6k social/military/research spending, but only because I have decided to conquer them outright. It might be better to look at the Torians and Altarians who I have traded with extensively instead. Their economy has been reduced to 1.5k from the 3k they were at a couple years ago.

The current game time is December, 2188, 132 turns into the game, and I am quite certain it's just mop up from now on. The only reason my neighbors are still alive is because their obcene economic bonuses (100-300 BC revenue per planet!) are utilized to support my economy instead.

I forgot to add in post #9 that the AIs willingness to pay cash also depends heavily on their current treasury balance. I have made militarily weak empires with large coffers pay up to 600 BC over 20 turns for one single Frigate, so the profit is quite respectable given the right circumstances (which you can help create).

Seems to me that AI ship purchases need to be changed. Do the frigates actually benefit them that late in the game?

The Frigates benefit the AI as long as they don't use them again me. I'm the only one running around with a +300% military bonus after all

Well my goal is to as mcuh as possible never have to be at war, so creating an arms race isn't in the best interests of my play style. I'm not really concerned with playing optimally, just playing the way I enjoy.

If you don't want war, you're better off having the AIs have weak military.

With the latest changes implemented in v1.03, starbases now incur a 5 BC/turn maintenance cost, and constructors take 200 production points to create. This is a double blow to the usefullness of starbase trade modules. Not only does this increase the minimum trade route value of a one pass investment return up to 110 BC, there is also +10 BC per distance in sectors cost to compensate for maintenance.

On the diplomatic front, tech trades for money is virtually impossible now, and you'll have a hard time selling ships as well. For good or bad, it looks like we're moving the player economy towards a more self sufficient state now.

One nasty trick I learned to boost trade is while you are at peace with someone, bribe everyone to declare war on him. Since you're the only person he can trade with, when all his trade routes go away, he'll reestablish them all with you. Helps if you just happen to have a few freighters in your home system to give him. In fact, I once got everyone to declare war against everyone else, and included as most of the payment, 10 freighters parked near Sol . Hopefully, the wars wont last too long, otherwise your trade routes will get picked off.

Earlier in this thread, Za H and others advicate building an income through aggressivly building and selling warships to the baddies.

Prior to 1.03, I tried this as a delberate strategy (rather than only as a convenience) and I agree this is better at generating serious money than the trade system, although there is a little labour involved. Now to see what happens in 1.03 to ship sales...



~SDC~

One thing I've noticed when trading with the AI is that you can always find a trade they'll accept. Seems to me they need to have some logic added to the trade routines to decide wether or not they actually need what is offered, especially for ships and to some extent starbases. Not to mention their ability to pay for it. It's not a good idea to buy lot's of ships that will cost you monthly payments for a long time and upkeep while they're still alive (which most likely won't be long if at war) if it means going into deficit spending or even just cutting your spending power in half, thus doubling the time to build ships on your own. Same goes for buying tech and trade goods, but to a lesser extent since they don't have upkeep.

It would be great if when in the trade screen all the stuff you have are colorcoded to it's desiriabity for the civ you're currently trading with. Like Green for stuff they want/need badly, yellow for stuff they think are nice but could do without and red for things they just aint interested in buying but might consider accpeting as a gift. This would be based on theur current needs and plans (as I understand it galciv's AI's actually do have plans) and their ability to pay for it. So let's say you have four green items and the AI thinks it can afford to buy two of them, then the remaining two and everything else would turn red once two green items have been offered up for trade at an acceptable price. Ie, the AI think it can afford to pay a maximum of 20bc/month for 20 months and once that amount is reached it won't accept any more trades for money. And if an AI has already maxed it's "allowable tribute in trade" when you offer it an trade, it won't pay for it in money, but will still trade for tech, ships, trade goods and so on. I don't know if it does it now, but when buying tech it should take into account the price asked versus the price (and time) to develop the tech on it's own. And if it's a tech the AI is lacking certain prerequisite tech's for it would be willing to pay more if it's tech it considers important. If it's a tech it has already spent alot of time and money on that is almost finish it would not want to buy it, or at least not be willing to pay very much for it. Same if it's a cheap fast tech to research. Of course, if the player is offering a load of tech that would take the AI ages to research on it's own it would be more willing to buy them, but balancing all this is up to Stardock, not me, for which I'm grateful.

Anyway, this is getting long and I'm getting tired, so I'll stop now. I just hope any of the above makes any sense.

~SDC~

Funny, I usually find the AI tells me it has no interest in what I am offering to trade\sell it. That is a bummer to hear that starbases are going to start incurring such high costs. My last game I was receiving almost as much income from my trade routes as from taxes, which let me keep taxes fairly low. Unless the number of trade routes is being bumped up, it seems like trade is becoming a minor point. Too bad.

Jeff

~SDC~

It is practically impossible to obtain any income from tribute on higher difficulty levels now. Some of the minor civs refuse to even pay 1 BC for Dreadnought Technology in fact, and they're still running around with Battle Axes too. In contrast, you can still milk a couple hundred BC/turn from trade, even though it is not cost effective to construct starbases for trade modules. The game is a lot harder on higher difficulty levels with most planets barely affording 30 BC/turn of output.

Hm. Say i have several trade routes for a total of 500 bc. If can setup starbases that they will give it's bonus half of the time, then 1 starbase gives +25%, or 125 bc/turn-5bc/turn maintenance and costs 800 production. It returns it's cost in 6,666 turns (not counting free production and time to reach destination). Not too bad IMHO.

P.S. After that, i'll use this StarBases for ship catapult

~SDC~