Trade routes, all to one planet or spread them out?

Hi!
The more planets you have, the less is trade revenue important as an income. On a gigantic galaxy with several hundred habitable planets is monetary value of trade routes negligible. But the diplomatic bunus is still the same, so IMO it's better to use trade routes for diplomatic purposes. In my games that means every mayor race in range gets one, even those, that I plan to exterminate (but not the first victim). Additional routes I open only with the race I think will survive for a long time and will not be hostile towards my race. There I try to find the farthest planet with lots of population.

BR, Iztok

Once my survey ships are done with exploring the anomalies I switch them to traders (because they are already far away from my homesystem and at those early stages of the game it often takes ages until you could send another ship there)

As for whom gets the treaty is solely a strategic/diplomatic matter - even though early on the extra income is also not THAT bad considering your low income.
I usually send the ships to the race that looks like its going to be the strongest and/or which isn't hostile to me naturally.

Re the money side of things: Can one of the hardcore numbers folks (e.g. Mumblefratz) please chime in here? I have a vague impression that stacking routes to the same civilization, much less the same world, decreases the value of the additional routes.

Also, I think Iztok might be somewhat underestimating the long-term value of really long routes on a gigantic map. I haven't played enough post-beta DA games yet to be sure, but I seem to get pretty substantial (+/- 1,000 BC) weekly income from trade in my late games on gigantic maps.

Re the diplo stuff, IMO it is definitely worth the relations help to have a trade route with most of your neighbors. In fact, diplo status is the only reason I ever double up a trade route. I'm into diplo wins right now and sometimes the AI that I want to be my new best friend just needs that extra + on the Reports tab.

If you are not a focused trader, like the Korx or Terran for example, or even a neutral race with Neutral Shipping tech, then trade does indeed play a smaller and smaller role on gigantic maps. As you colonize 100+ worlds 1000 BC a turn can turn out to be very little. Its like a millionaire having a paper route for some extra cash.

On the flip side, I have played the Korx on a gigantic map and maxxed out trade and trade routes with my bonus points, declared neutral for the extra trade and routes, and with econ starbases got my revenue over 2600 BC from trade. Not too shabby.

What I would be interested in, is finding out if the AMOUNT of trade or the length of time you have the trade route increases your diplomatic relations. I would hope it does. I know that the route increases in value the longer it is in operation, but does that increase your relations with the other race?

As an addendum to the example above, I was playing that gigantic map PRAYING that the super event would trigger where trade revenue increases by a value of 10X. That was the whole point of playing that game, I wanted to see 20000+ BC a turn from trade, but it didnt happen, boo...

What event is this? I have not encoutered it before. Anywho when I set up my trade network I usally have most of my trade routes leaveing my homeworld. I like having trade routes go to every other race's homeworld and often their second inhabited planet in their homesystem.

Hi!

AFAIK the value of the route is nerfed with the size of the galaxy, so a 400-turns route on gigantic can bring only about a double amount of 100-turn route in medium galaxy. Never checked the exact numbers, but revenues from my games speek for themself: 1000-2000 BC on average on ANY map, never exceeded 3000 (save the trade event).

Trade is also quite unsecure:
- you got assasination event, pooof goes trade,
- "war has expanded" event, pooof goes trade,
- pirates came, pooof goes trade,
- peacekeepers came, pooof goes trade,
- you're evil and UP decides you have too many routes, pooof goes trade.
- you attack a civ, pooof goes trade,
- freighter returns to its home planet, pooof goes trade revenue,
- your treasury increases above 10,000 BC, trade revenue halves.

All that for what? For 1000-2000 BC of income and a "+" in relations!?! Gimme back GalCiv 1 where a half of my income was from trade routes!

BR, Iztok

Thanks for all your comments, it seems that moneywise trade routes are not a big
deal in most gigantic games, but can be valuable from a diplomatic point of view.

I forgot to mention that even though I play gigantic maps, I actually set the planet and stars parameters low so that my galaxies contain less than a hundred stars, making trade income relatively more important.

I also felt the reality of the 'pooof goes trade' events many times, which can be really irritating.

Iztok: You didn't even mention the 'Your enemy talked me into going to war with you, thereby cancelling all our trade, pooof goes trade' event.

Iztok, I confess that I often don't pay that much attention to the numbers in my games. I was hoping to rope in *another* numbers watcher for the thread.

The OP here seems like a question that can really dig into how this game varies by both play style and basic map settings. And your point about trade being inherently risky in a world where random things happen, well, that can get a feller thinkin' too...

for a power-gamer, the real value in trade is the diplomacy boost. i've tried maxing out trade the way Piznit describes, and you can turn trade into a moderate source of income - but reliability aside, the investment to get to that point is so massive that you're better off investing your money and production elsewhere -- assuming you want to power-game for a win. if you want to roleplay, then i say go to town!

I usually have all routes go to one large, economically valuable world and then surround that world with econ star bases loaded out with trade modules. I certainly always SEEM to make a good bit of money off of trading (I tend to play on large or huge maps), sometimes it's as much as 1/3 of my economy.

Yea with trading starbases, trade revenue will often be close to half my income on large maps.

In DL I like to give one of my planets to a minor race and then just trade with it alone. Giving them a planet means i can engineer the most efficient and defendable trade route possible through my empire. Getting the trade route to pass nearby as many of my planets as possible allows my econ starbases to have factory modules added later when i can afford the production. This is a totally kick ass strategy!

I have had FANTASTIC success using the Korx and establishing all available trade routes from a single planet in my empire to a single planet in another empire. The trade route becomes very easy to defend and VERY easy to max out with economic starbases... using cheap (if slow) constructors, a rally point, and placing starbases at regular intervals in order to make every parsec of the trade route boosted is the key to making this really effective.

In my current game, I'm playing on a spacious galaxy (large, I believe) where the planet and star placement is pretty sparse. I've set this up with my nearby neighbours, the Arceans. They had two planets, and I had four, where most other races scored the jackpot either in the colony rush or in military conquest (the Yor have a massive chunk of the galaxy). Despite this, both the Arceans and I rake in 4000 bc a turn and consequentially are both nearly matching the Yor economically and militarily. Thanks to a precursor library on my homeworld, I've got technology that keeps pace or even dwarfs my competitors.

I should mention that I'm doing this without levying any taxes from my populace. 0% taxes, and I don't even care... the tax revenue from the 4-6 planets I have aren't all that precious by comparison to my trade income!

It should be noted that this strategy does have a few vulnerabilities. For one, freighters are vulnerable where taxpayers are a dime a dozen. You need to have powerful or plentiful warships near your trade route at all times, preferrably with high speed, especially if pirates are around or you're actively at war. You can't take any risks with the starbases and freighters along that big line of money... that infrastructure is absolutely precious! Also, you generally won't have the luxury of having your freighters equally spaced along the route. They'll tend to clump together, meaning you'll get crazy high income as they get to the end of their route and then your economy crashes for a bit when they return home. It's temporary, but noteworthy. Additionally, you become very, VERY attached to a single ally. If they surrender, or worse, DECLARE WAR on you, you lose all your income. You need to keep relations with them high, and pursue an alliance aggressively.

That said, I really like the tactic... a nice, DIFFERENT way to make a ton of cash, and remain competitive with a small empire. Plus, you'll always have an ally... they're just as dependant on the trade as you!

Hi!

... or you build the Galactic Privateer, forget the starbases, free a big amount of your forces from patrol duty, and use those ships on your enemy.

Significally less investment in trade starbase and protective ships, that can't do much if MegaPirates or Peacekeepers happen.


Yeah, the game conditions were right. But you'll still need to increase your taxes when you start taking planets of other races. At some point trade revenues will not be enough to fuell your growing empire. Speaking from first-hand experience: my latest game was with Korx in huge all-ocassional galaxy with 9 suicidal AIs. I got 200BC from 3 planets and 1000 BC from trade, making almost all-labs strategy really simple. Why almost? I had a precursor mine on my homeworld, so at 1/9/90 spending it just built a tiny hull constructor each turn, making me 7 econ starbases during the 2nd year of the game.

BR, Iztok

It's a shame, I think, that with many planets, the value of trade routes decreases relatively. I can understand that it disturbs the balance of the game to scale profits with number of planets, but maybe there is another possibility.
There is currently a cap on trade routes. There are many caps in this game created I guess to maintain balance and prevent cheese. But maybe you could remove the cap on trading routes and prevent the spawning of millions of trade routes in another way. First we have the techs required to form trade routes, this is one limit. Secondly, there could be limits on for instance how many trade routes you could have with one planet. This sounds reasonable, the market could be saturated ('we don't want more of your stuff' or 'we can't deliver more of our goods').
With this method you can build more trade routes with more planets, making trade a profitable undertaking even in gigantic galaxies with many planets. Hundreds of planets, hundreds of trade routes, sounds interesting?

... or just scale the trade route limit according to galaxy size / planet count.

@ Iztok:

First off, I don't use the galactic privateer as a matter of preference. It feels a little cheesy to me... and the AIs don't deal with it well at all. I'd personally prefer it if it merely added a certain amount of offense/defense to any ship with a trade module... I'd feel better using it then. Until then, my personal preference is not to use that achievement.

And the trade starbases are central to this strategy... given a single layer of them along the trade route (ie, no overlapping influence) you're still getting a %60 increase in your trade income! Double that up, and you've got %120. It is a HUGE advantage to be using the starbases if these trade routes are your money makers... which requires protecting that investment. Incidentally, this is another reason for me not to bother with the galactic privateer... I need to protect every inch of the route ANYWAYS to keep my starbases together, so why not defend the freighters while I'm at it? You are right, though, in that I am completely screwed should the pirates or peacekeepers events show up.

As for eventually needing to tax conquered planets, well... maybe. However, I remain skeptical. Even with the sparseness of planets, the size of the galaxy allows for a substantial number of colonies, and the Yor hold half of them! I have about 6, the Arceans even less. Despite that, each of our economies is boosted by the trade conduit to the point where we match the Yor. I rake in thousands of bc in SURPLUS per turn, which allows rampant quick buying that makes up for my low production output. In other words, the two smallest empires in the galaxy can individually stand toe to toe with the galactic leader thanks to the trade conduit!

By the time that I need to worry about taxation and moralle again, I think I'll have already won the game, so it'll be a bit of a moot point.

i've managed to overlap 7 at once over an entire trade route (well, all 12 freighters on the same route). the key is to have the route mostly diagonal and through 7 or 8 prscs per sector (so that the diagonal line is offset halfway from the long diagonal of a sector). the only reason i didn't do 8 overlapping was so that i could have them evenly dispersed, 1 in every other parsec of the trade line.

Hi!
Starstriker, just one question: what difficulty level?

BR, Iztok

@ Dystopic:

Aye, it's not tough to layer them. In my game, I've got each starbase sitting at the very edge of the influence of the next in line, effectively ensuring that every freighter is getting a %120 bonus or more at all times. It can get pretty absurd!

@ Iztok:

Painful, with tech trading off (which I'm regretting since it makes it really tough to ally the Arceans). Since the AI difficulty isn't randomized at all, every civ is at Gifted.

When you have managed to super-boost your trade routes, are you still competing with the other factions or have you effectively won the game already and just play on to accomplish some personal goals (like building the ultimate trade route)?

yes it can. i'd build them by laying down one layer the way you described - every 8th parsec (7 parsecs between each SB). then i start on layer two, and SB between each of those (so that there are 3 parsecs between each SB), and then the third layer, another SB between each of those (1 parsec between each SB).



twice it was the latter, just trying to see how high i could get my trade. once it was something i set out to start early. i played korx and decided i wanted to make best friends with the korath and get them to do my dirty work. i got my freighters out as early as i could, started buildin SBs soon too. it was working well at first, except after i'd built about 30 SBs it became too expensive to keep building new ones because their initial cost grows exponentially.

however, i set the game up for just such a strategy: uncommon planets and habitables, common stars, on a huge map with 5 nonrandom painful AIs, very slow tech w/ no tech trading, only conquest as an option to win. with so few planets available, by the time i stopped building more SBs, my trade had become at least a third of my income IIRC. true, the pirates event would have boned me (not the peacekeepers though, since almost all of my trade route by then was in my own area of influence). after that i focused on buying planets from races the korath were killing off. i'd max out influence on those planets, and when the korath spored nearby planets they flipped almost immediately. at the same time, i focused on bringing my military tech up to snuff, and when the altarians were about the bite the dust i launched my attack on the korath. my economy plunged into negative income, but i'd saved up >20k and that lasted through the war.

as far as the personal goal, however, it was really cool to see a line of my influence grow pixel by pixel on the minimap right through the middle of the galaxy and about 3 intervening empires' influence.

Trade is still useless on larger maps. Period.

I think the the change that needs to happen is to have a general economic bonus as a side effect of trade. Right now trade is just too weak. It's yet another reason to stick with evil...

(also this is again more evidence that the devs don't care about play testing larger maps. Don't get me started about AI ship speed...)

Hi!

Yeah, that explains why you had time to build those trade SBs and why your research can compete with the Yor having half the galaxy.

My experience comes from significanly harder conditions, where AIs get 200% to 400% bonus to their production and econ. In those games a player just doesn't get neither time nor resources to do all you had done.

BR, Iztok

So, did trade routes ever decrease in value when you added more than one to a destination world or is that just another thing I imagined rather than actually saw?