ROUCK

Join Date 05/2009

few questions about trade, money and such

Hello, I've played some games and i think i've started to understand the game mechanics but still there's a few things i'm not sure of

1) about trade, in last game i decided to start with the KORX and to try to get the max out of trade (all techs and abilities to max trade / trade routes numbers) with a big map and trade starbases etc... Still for info i never got more than 1000 trade income on screen... And my question was about starbases. It says it increases MONTHLY TRADE INCOME (+85% here). I could never see how much i got from those bases. Does it work for only ally or also foreign routes ? How does it work ? when i click on freighter and he s in the area of effect of the base, it doesnt seem to bring more money than when it s out of the area. In some places i stacked up 4 starbases or more ... do they stack at all for freight ?

2) Same goes for min / max income , i noticed the same route wont bring same money if you do it twice. Same distance, and one will appear as f.e min 20 max 76, the other min 12 max 130 or something . For info i replaced old basic freighter by upgraded speed freighters ... does the difference come from increased trade skill / techs at the time the route is created, or from freighter speed ?

And so i replaced all routes by supposedly more rewarding routes that way and managed to fall from around 1000 BC/week to like 600 BC/week at the end, with a lot more starbases on the way of the route .... kinda puzzling .

3) What do turns mean for freight routes ? is it the number of turn to complete the trip from planet A to planet B ? So does it have any influence on actual income, like trade routes get more rewarding overtime ? That would explain why i lost money by replacing routes..

Other question related to income,

4) i m still not sure of this : when i play on a big map, i never can resist going for a colony rush. But money is a big problem untill you reach a softcap. Ofc when you rush colony ships your population on planets doesnt grow. Is it worth building entertainement buildings to get more population increase ( f.e festival of capitalism is quite cheap and fast to build). Is the bonus worth it or too niegligieable to notice ? In other words , should entertainement buildings be kept to maintain a decent level of happiness in really overcrowded colonies, or is it a viable option to help on start ? (not talking about torian here ofc).

Thanks for answering , and btw i wanted to add it's really nice to see a game where uping difficulty level doesnt ONLY means the AI will cross ALL THE MAP to attack you without any reason or hope ( hello medieval total war , and so many others)

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I have some questions too, just moving from DA to TA.

In DA, I make money with anomalies, building to stock exchanges, building entertainment stuff and other things to keep the population growing, moving to federation, etc.

Any big differences with TA?

You start with less money too.

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Re econ starbases, the trade modules boost trade income for a given route whenever one of *your* freighters is in the area of effect. You get no benefit from freighters you do not own and none when they are outside the range of the base. The bounuses *do* stack when areas of effect overlap. I don't know how to find the exact numbers in the UI, but enough folks I trust around here have said so to make me believe it.

Re varied incomes for 'the same' route, you're guess in 3 is correct. I forget when it happened, but some update or expansion tweaked trade income so that routes become slowly more valuable over time. You were seeing that income drop because you replaced a 'mature' route with a newbie.

There is no reason to 'update' a route with a higher-speed freighter design--freighter speed only helps you start the route more quickly; after the route is there, it the minifreighter is Speed 1 no matter what you had on the freighter design that established the route. The best-earning routes are very long-range and old. I don't think many people bother with lots of trade starbases, except perhaps along the homeward leg of the route where its income is lowest (you get more per turn when the minifreighter is far away).

Your colony rush questions are a whole 'nother kettle of beans. That's a strategy thing more than a functional thing, so there are many, many plausible answers. I suggest running a search from a site like Google and adding site:forums.galciv2.com to your search terms (the local-Google search seems to miss older posts, but it can give you a start also).

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My 2 cents on the matter (but I'm no expert in this game )

For increased growth I like building Recruiting Centers, as they are available early on (probably not in all tech-trees).

Imho morale buildings are a must especially on more crowded worlds mid-game as they allow you to raise the taxes without getting too low approval rates. Later on you probably also get some techs and galactic achievements that allow for some empire-wide bonus to morals. As far as I know, however, you only get a bonus to population-growth if the empire-wide approval is in the green range (and a malus if its red).

In the early stages of the game I also like picking up as many anomalies as possible, as they often yield a nice bonus and occasionally some money, wich can help you get over the initial phase of negative income. Contrary to the Civ-series there aren't really any bad effects from anomalies so there is no reason not to pcik them up.

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As far as I know, however, you only get a bonus to population-growth if the empire-wide approval is in the green range (and a malus if its red)

This is wrong. Population growth and loss is based on approval on each planet. It is entirely possible to have one planet getting 2x pop growth due to 100% approval and another losing pop due to having >20% approval at the same time.

The color of your civ-wide approval is instead an indication of how likely you are to win a senate vote. Green is a definite win, red is a definite loss, yellow is the maybe zone.

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There have been some discussions about morale buildings vs. econ buildings and from what I remember in most cases it's more profitable to build econ buildings and lower the taxes to increase morale.

Exception is of course if you have morale tiles on a planet and your capital which does need some morale buildings to get a decent approval rating.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Regarding this, the most helpful piece of advice I ever read (it came from Mumblefratz I believe) was to build NOTHING on all new colonies until the population has increased, and therefore tax revenue has increased. This has been very effective in my experience to keep the expenses down during that financially tight period during the colony rush.

Also, many players set taxes to 0% for the first several weeks in order to get the population on those new colonies up faster.

Other ways of generating income include anomaly hunting with your survey ship and trading techs.

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Quoting KrazyDocK,

reply 6

...Regarding this, the most helpful piece of advice I ever read (it came from Mumblefratz I believe) was to build NOTHING on all new colonies until the population has increased, and therefore tax revenue has increased. This has been very effective in my experience to keep the expenses down during that financially tight period during the colony rush. ...

I had a weird attitude problem getting myself to try that idea out (the 'idleness' just felt wrong), but it is business-as-usual for me now. Although I will sometimes build Recruiting Centers on a new colony if I'm fairly flush with cash--I think they start paying for themselves more quickly than other buildings on account of the combo pop growth and econ bonuses.

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When I am in a rare mood to dick with trade at all, I will send all of my freighters clear across the galaxy to a single destination, usually a minor race that cannot culture-flip, and build several econ base arrays along the trade route. It takes time to set up, but eventually yields decent money. I don't usually fool with trade, since it pales in comparison with tax revenues.

I have also found that giving a significant amount of trade to the AIs can result in a massive assault of espionage agents. The same holds true for Econ Treaties, so I never give one of those to an AI either. In some situations, I have actually found it to be beneficial to leave the UP and give up all trade. For instance, if you get screwed by one of those "all races must use the Imperial system of government" UP votes, it is well worth giving up the trade income to be able to avail yourself of the Star Federation. Same is true for starbase module restrictions. I have not tried this, but if you have enough influence I suppose it is possible to stick all of the AIs with a four-module limit, then bail from the UP so that you can have unlimited modules. I'll have to try that one next time the opportunity arises.

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Quoting Snarkotamus,

reply 8

...I have also found that giving a significant amount of trade to the AIs can result in a massive assault of espionage agents. The same holds true for Econ Treaties, so I never give one of those to an AI either. ...

I'm pretty sure you're seeing the power of randomness to look not so random sometimes. I think your ranking in the game vs. AI capacity for spy production is probably the biggest factor in whether you get spy-bombed. That, and whether they've been busy enough with wars amongst themselves to burn most of their spies on other AIs.

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I got that from Mumblefratz too. Some games I've done 120 - 150 or so turn colony rushes. Key to that is build nothing on any colonies (except maybe a starport) and set them to research. On your home planet you want to build as many market / econ buildings as you can while still producing a colony ship as fast as possible. The default colony ship costs 141 production, so you want your homeplanet to have about 71 military production for every-other turn, 47 for every 3rd-turn, or 36 for every 4th-turn.

When you start running out of cash, set your tax slider to 100%, and production slider to 0% (if have creativity, set to 100% tax, 1% production, 0/0/100 military /social /research so you have a chance to get a tech). This will give bring in as much cash as possible, but don't run it like that for more than a few turns. You should be able to get another 15-30 turns of cash that way.

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... build nothing on any colonies (except maybe a starport) ...

That's another good exception to note.

Sometimes you've got enough cash to rush-buy a crucial ship or three and those ships really, really need to be out their on the far frontier. For me, that's mostly been late-stage/extreme environment colony rush ships, but sometimes you might also really want a constructor sent somewhere fast or need a light fighter to chase off unescorted troop ships.

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