Why does trade not scale appropriately with the rest of your empire? At the start, getting trade routes up and running can be crucial, those few extra BC's trickling in can make all the difference between running at a deficit even with tax maxed and the production slider pulled WAY back to the left, and having a positive income and production settings where you choose. But after not too long, the BC's you pull in are insignificant compared to tax and tourism revenue, even if the routes are way across to the other side of the map, to one of the strongest civs, and to their homeworld or economic capital. I can understand routes being worth <20bc when you are starting out, but when your empire is many, many times more massive than when the route was established (and in most cases, the empire you a trading with is too) the routes value is not much more than when it was started, and in real terms, is really only worth maintaining for diplomatic purposes. I've set up all routes to one planet, and started putting economic starbases along it, but the game time factor in doing this, let alone the production & opportunity costs in game just don't seem worth it compared to the actual bonus revenue

What I'm trying to say is that if there was a graph for trade, it would just bump along the bottom of the screen all game, compared to all the other elements of your empire like population and economy, which increase dramatically as the game goes on.

Also, in TA the potential route values seem to jump all over the place. When established, the max values are say 169bc, later I look and it will be 111, then up to 140 before dropping again.WTF? Same route, same planet, and nothing significant changing on the planet that I can see when I use a spy to "peek" but not place.