Black arts of Trade

So you say your income is huge. Can you give some rough numbers? 1000? 5000? 10,000? I have never gotten trade higher then about 1000. Usually its about 500 when im not trying, but just want to use it for deplomacy.

well that is a pretty open ended question, depends on lotsa thing like war and who is around me, how many opponents, how big the map is ect, but i find it very easy to get over 1000 and generally run it 1500 to 3000 by mid game

in my present game im running trade at 1600,tax 350 and a surplus of 600, but ive been in the wars and the econ starbaces have been getting destroyed, but teh economy is healthy enough and ill have neurality centre soon enough

I've found similar results.

The income appears to be proportional to the cube root of the combined population.

Moving diagonally counts as roughly 1.4 "turns" distance per game turn (good old pythag) so it's better to establish diagonal trade routes.

There's a bonus when the freighter is close to your planet. Roughly 20% in the game I tried it on. I wasn't able to confirm or deny there's a bonus when you pass by other planets.

If the trade route is long enough, every so often the income jumps in value. This is a sudden leap from one turn to the next. I have no idea exactly what the rationale is behind these jumps. All I can say is I had some 130-150 turn routes and the value jumped roughly every 30 turns.

Contrary to what I've said in another thread (I failed to take into account the changing population) there is no steady increase in income along a trade route - you'll probably see one anyway because the population's are increasing but if the planets are full then the income will stay steady, other than the above mentioned jumps.

Also contrary to what I said before, the jumps only increase the value, never decrease it, on both the outward and inward leg of the journey. This means the optimum place for econ starbases probably varies slightly depending on the exact trade route, but it's not hugely important. Send the freighters out (diagonally if possible) from just one well defended planet and put the econ starbases around there would be my advice.

The economy starbase bonus is unfortunately not *quite* as straightforward as you suggest, but it's not far off.

Nice, but I usually play on the two largest maps, and require 70% tax and 4 or 5 dedicated econ worlds making 500 to 1000 a planetet. just to get an income (surplus ) of 3-6 k.

I've found similar results. The income appears to be proportional to the cube root of the combined population.

omg do you people actually compute this stuff?

So have you tried over doing your population ? IE more than you'd normally have at around 25 billion on a nice PQ 25 planet. I've never gone higher, but maybe with trade it could work ?

Perhaps that's why the AI loves to build farms that'll support > 30 billion...

there in no way trade should be able to keep up with taxes on your larger maps. if you guys have any idea what map size they reach even effictiveness(more or less) that would be handy to know

oh, the reason being is that # of trade routes does not scale, unlike number of planets. even if the distance increases it increases less than planet quantity. corner to corner trade distance doubling means planet quantity quadrupling and soforth

i play on gigantic maps mostly and find taxes are far to hard to get going properly, but trade (i find, mebey it complements my play style??) is much easier

@ random50 what do you mean about econ starbaces? what else is their?
as to the increase from passing planets by, i noticed that sometimes the income would increase for some reason and a couple of times i noticed this the freighter was near some other planet, but, it could be something else that i am not seeing

Good post!

My trade routes vary wildly. For instance, I establish a route that says it makes 26bc; from there it constantly seems to fluctuate as the turns go by. I see population having a big effect on revenue altogether. I had one trade route that I recently noticed running at 238bc between myself and the snathi, who are but two sectors away from my home system. It fluctuates from the upper 80's and 90's to nearly 300bc. I don't quite get it, but starbases with trade centers do wonders. I build four per sector around the system's primary star. Three and a military base per sector in freindly space not around the end systems. Allied civilizations get one of my eco starbases around their end of my trade routes when practical. I often get a resolution passed in the UP that allows starbases to assist allied nations. That makes it a really sweet deal, especially if your trading partner seems disinclined to build their own starbases around the trade route destination/origination.

 

it seems also that having econ starbases covering the destination planet prior to the trade route establishment seems to increase the starting trade revenue for that route. can anybody confirm this?

i wonder if this idea of mine is correct: if the player is one who loves to maximize his trade profits by covering his trade routes with lots of econ starbases, then from a practicality standpoint, it is better to have shorter routes than longer ones, because you can quickly cover the whole length of the trip with starbases... whereas for the longer routes, prolly by endgame you manage to put in only a few starbases dotted at various points along the route, thus the starbases' effects are underutilized as most of the freighter's trips are spent outside of their sphere of influence... what i am not sure is whether the higher payoff from longer distance offsets this disadvantage - if so, they should be more than 60% * #_overlapping_starbases of the shorter route's value (similarly, overlapping is easier done on shorter routes)...

I noticed recently there have been some questions on freighters and trading, I had some of my own that i could not find some answers to, so of to research i go and here i am with the fruits of my labour Trading is a black art, damn, the math is complex and ever changing, i think i have got a reasonable grasp but this is curtainly not complete The 2 most important factors are combined population (target and source planets) and distance, in my experiments to get a somewhat decent return the distance needed to be a round trip of over 100 turns (the figgure that comes up in the trade screen) and populations of each planet to be over 10B .... as i changed my population of my home planet (i had all trade routes from here) it seemed to change by "about" 1% per billion people, so when i took 5B away in troop transport it droped the income from all trade routes by 5% or so The next factor is the proximity of planets. As your freighter nears ANY planet, even if it isnt the target or source planet, your income will go up (mebey there is some other factor going on here?? but that is what i observed) with the target and source planets having the most effect Of corse there are the economic starbaces, these guys are pretty streight forward and add by whatever % you have them upgraded to onto the routes income, when the freighter is inside its sphere if influence, the bonuses are cummlitive from each other planets income and planet quality have no effect on trade income another bizare annomily (probally a bug) freighters move faster on the diagonal, dont know how or why, just is ^^^^this is my reasearch vvvvvthis is stuff i made up So here is a quick and dirty on how to make some serious cash from trade (i end up with being able to run with a zero % tax and make money hand over fist just by trade [playing on painful at teh mo].... most games anyway) use one planet to do all your trading from, get that population up to as high as you can/want (this also sets up a nice tax planet if you have the room but i find 1 or 2 decent trade routes blows tax out of the water anyways), send out your freighters to your freinds, and send them to his highest pop planets (dont worry about copied trade routes, this has no effect on income and infact can be used to create a stable economy by staggering your freighters evenly) then work on getting those econ starbaces, i like to keep my econ starbaces close to my planets for security, thats your choise on the matter, but if you can add 60% to a trade route, well that is quite signifigent anyways, like i said at teh start this is by no means complete so feel free to add in any comments and research that you have done/found ... and shoot down anything you feel is wrong also, i wont mind ... much

That's a lot of words to say this:

Only combined population and the distance between the two planets matters in trade income.
If the freighters pass through properly upgraded starbase spheres, the base value increases.

P.S. I've had over 3000 bc a week in trade alone with a neutral civ under the right conditions.

@Skyjack  
The two threads on trade have made me decide that trade is not as completely useless as I've assumed.

I'd like to think I'm fairly skilled at making money from planets using the economy side of the game, to the extent that my spending is always on 100%, my approval is on 100% and my tax rate is on 80% after the first year.

Now I think I've a chance to make money from trade too. (Usually I don't bother creating a single freighter.)

Thanks... 

Hey skyjack, how about you share some of your expertise with the rest of us so that we can also create uber efficent trade networks

i guess i started this thread to find out WHY the figgures are what they are rather than just because

@ random50 what do you mean about econ starbaces? what else is their?

I mean you don't get *exactly* a 60% bonus if you have 60% of trade modules installed. I got slightly less and the exact amount seems to vary depending on your trade ability (and probably other things). But it is in the right ballpark.

as to the increase from passing planets by, i noticed that sometimes the income would increase for some reason and a couple of times i noticed this the freighter was near some other planet, but, it could be something else that i am not seeing

As I said, trade income jumps at certain points along the route, triggered by distance. Could be this is what you were seeing and your freighters happened to be near planets when it occurred?

it seems also that having econ starbases covering the destination planet prior to the trade route establishment seems to increase the starting trade revenue for that route. can anybody confirm this?

I can confirm that it *doesn't*. It may modify the popup window so it tells you you're making more, but the numbers in the popup window are wrong anyway. If you look at the trade page under "domestic stats" you'll see it makes no difference (other than when the freighter is in the starbase zone of influence obviously)

i wonder if this idea of mine is correct: if the player is one who loves to maximize his trade profits by covering his trade routes with lots of econ starbases, then from a practicality standpoint, it is better to have shorter routes than longer ones, because you can quickly cover the whole length of the trip with starbases... whereas for the longer routes, prolly by endgame you manage to put in only a few starbases dotted at various points along the route, thus the starbases' effects are underutilized as most of the freighter's trips are spent outside of their sphere of influence... what i am not sure is whether the higher payoff from longer distance offsets this disadvantage - if so, they should be more than 60% * #_overlapping_starbases of the shorter route's value (similarly, overlapping is easier done on shorter routes)...

Possibly. There's basically a tradeoff. Short routes pull in less on average but every fully upgraded starbase adds more to the average income. As an example from my game, a 130 turn trade route was pulling in 60BC on average. Adding a starbase increases that average by about 9BC. Meanwhile a trade route short enough to lie within a single starbases sphere of influence was pulling in 20BC on average with each starbase adding 12BC. So the shorter one with 14(!) starbases is worth more than the longer with 14. You can play a similar trick with any two trade routes I think, but without knowing the exact formula for trade income, it's very difficult to judge. I'd say the gap between "intermediate" and long trade routes is less severe (8 or 9 starbases)

Basically though, the more econ starbases you build and equip with trade modules, the less you have to worry about sending your freighters long distances.

Oh, one other thing...trade income seems to depend quite a bit on map size. ie 5 BC is a typical starting value on tiny whilst on gigantic it's 20 BC. This won't change the argument above about the number of starbases needed much, but it will have a significant difference on how long it takes to make back the cost of the constructors.

On a gigantic map, a fully upgraded econ starbase sitting on 4 trade routes pays for itself in roughly 20 turns. On a tiny map it'll take 4 times as long. This is on top of the "position" cost you'll suffer by building constructors when you could have been building military units.

I noticed something, but I don't know if it's really the case. When a freigher enters the area of influence of an econ starbase with trade modules, the value of the trade route increases by the percentage on the starbases. The problem is when it leaves the area of influence, it goes back to it's value. That would mean it would be wiser to cover the whole trade route with econ starbases instead of massing them in one single sector. It would also be better to put the starbases on the route itself, so the area of influence of the starbase covers more of the trade route.
Another thing I noticed is that once the freigher reaches half of it's "turns", it means it's arrived at the destination planet. Then the value goes down to the base value and increases until it reaches the initial planet, where it goes back to base value, etc. Considering the value of the trade route increases every 30 turns, your best bet would be to have trade routes with at least 120 turns. Building your starbases near the home planet is as rewarding as building them near the destination planet, butyou can upgrade the SBs near the home planet to increase productivity.
Sorry for my bad english

it would only be better to spread the bases out if the starbase effect did not stack. the only benefit of spreading when they DO stack is to make your trade income more consistent. that can be achieved by staggering your freighters tho so no need to worry about that either. just try to make sure you use the full area of the starbases to maximize profit. a starbase right next to your trade planet will only use half the availabe bonus area.

#13 by Selous Hey skyjack, how about you share some of your expertise with the rest of us so that we can also create uber efficent trade networks i guess i started this thread to find out WHY the figgures are what they are rather than just because

See Post #11, READ it. Says it all, really it does.

As mentioned in one of the prior threads yesterday, I performed an experiment on the viability of using a single, massively starbased short trade route. By short I mean approaching the diameter of the starbase area of effect.
3 sets of 3 freighters were launched. Each group was staggard so that the freighters were somewhat evenly spread. The first set, which I'll call Corner to corner, was launched from the Dark Snathi homeworld PQ10 in one corner of a 4x4 map, to Earth PQ10 in the adjacent corner. The second, middle to neutral, was of the desired approx. 1 sector length leading to the planet Scottlingas PQ15. This group and the next were launched from a PQ11 in the center. The last group was from center to torian, ending one sector away at a PQ11 Torain world.

In short:
Route 1 Corner to Corner ( PQ 10 to PQ 10, 4 sectors )
Route 2 Center to Neutral ( PQ 11 to PQ 15, 1 sector )
Route 3 Center to Torain ( PQ 11 to PQ 11, 1 sector )

The base values for Routes 2+3 were 8bc/10bc/12bc as I researched up the tech tree.
Route 1, the long route, was worth 10/13/16/20. This varied heavily, and these figures are approximate averages.

To confirm what has been said here, and what I have incorrectly said before, the population, and not PQ, is a factor. Each central route performed the same given the same number of starbases. Only later, when Toria grew its world past Scottlingas' capabilities, did the figures differ.

For the sake of discussion, assume all tradebases I mention are fully upgraded.

I built one tradebase such that it enclosed both my homeworld and as much of the corner-to-corner route as possible.
As can be predicted, the post only margianally improved the route.

I then built one base each in the middle of each center route. As I upgraded their modules, they grew quickly.

With one base each, the long route was out-performing the short routes.

To make things fair, I built 3 more freighters using my racial bonus, and added them to the long route, as well as another tradebase along the route. I then added a single tradebase near the center planet such that it enclosed 60% of each central route. In effect, each central route was in two base areas. From this point on, all starbases were added to the central group such that it enclosed as much of both routes as possible. In effect, each central route was in two base areas.

At this point, with six freighters in each main group, central and corner, the figures varied wildly, but the central route was about 50% less profitable, but far more stable.

I kept adding tradebases to each set one-for-one, and observed. Each base had only a slight addition to the long route, and only to the frieghters nearby. Each base did, as expected have an excellent effect on th central routes.

The crossover occured at 6 bases each. For the long route, that meant it was in the area of one or two bases its entire journey. Each central freighter was within 4-6.

Before it all fell apart, I had more than a dozen bases on the central route (now just one route, to Scottlingas) and each freighter on it was earning 2x to 3x what the average freighter on the corner-to-corner route was.

Endgame, war had stopped most trade. I had, however, relocated all routes to between Center (PQ17) and Scottlingas (still PQ15?) and filled the area with tradebases. Even with Toria, Earth, and Drath forces trying to kill me, I had enough trade income to stay ahead. Center spent the rest of the game building interceptors, which incidently were sold to Scottlingas as they became obsolete.

--
I'm not one to suggest altering your strategy wildly, but you might want to consider this model:

Find a high PQ borderworld (or one you know you can keep 30+ bil citizens on) and run your 9-15 freighters from it to a nearby neighbor (any planet, even a PQ 4 will eventually have 5 billion). Plaster Eco/Tradebases on the route such that each also effects your planet. Sprinkle on some Miltbases, and glaze with interceptors. Insta-Micro-Economy.

It takes longer to build, but it is easier to defend. The only real downside is the potential diplomatic troubles.

The most common situation I would recommend this strategy is when you see two high PQ uncolonized worlds in the same system. Unusally we would colonize both to get a 'power cluster' as I call it. I'd suggest leaving one uncolonized. When another race takes it, become their best friend, and run 2-3 range routes with a horde of starbases. The weakness of this gambit is that eventually the other world will flop over to you, surrounded as it is by bases and your own big world. But then again.... a PQ18 with 12 billion people flopping over inside the area of 11 ecobases is hardly devastating.

nice research dark snathi (accurate trade research is so fkn time consuming)
my only question is how nessesary is it to have the entire trade route econ starbaced? theoryetically having all the starbaces clustered will give your the same income, just all profit pretty much in one hit rather a nice constant income (i like the security of clusters, but then that always depend on where and when i guess)

one small detail, "trade" bonuses (from government, race and teck)... these are just applied to the profit of all trade income?

and @ jamaY, (or anyone else) the increase in trade route profitability every 30 turns, is this confirmed? or about, looking at my figgures from my last game i can agree with that, someone wanna look for that in their next game?