The trade dillema

from GalCiv2 Forums
Anyone notice a big problem with the game involving trade. When you conquer a planet you were trading with, you're trade income disappears! This is a big problem when you get into games where trade is substantial part of your income*. Conquering the other civilization will actually put you at a disdvantage, because you just lost all you're trade income with them.

Well what changed? Whatever was being produced ont hat planet should still be available for trade, right? (assume that you don't damage any improvments or planet quality). Just the owner changed.

Basically I don't like the trade abstraction - that arbitrary "trade routes" just give you x amount of money per turn. I don't see any way to fix this with the current system unless you are allowed to trade with yourself. But if people were allowed to trade with themselves thats all the would do, because you never know who you are going to go to war with next. If you say "Well you can trade with yourself, but get a bonus for trading with other civilizatiosn" that still doesn't fix the fundamental problem that the "trade income" is created out of thin air - but this time instead of disappearing it stimply gets lowered when you conquer another planet you were trading with.

I think they need to revamp the trading system. Instead of money, you could trade for finished products like weapons systems, or raw materials that could speed up military or social productioin, or maybe even food. This is how trade agreements are mostly done at the international level anyway - tangible goods are swapped for other tangible goods, or services, not currency.

Alternatively, they could get a little deeper and have raw resources located on planets that are necessary for producing certain things. Suppose various rare metal ores are necessary for producing weapon types or something along those lines.

* And I don't see how it can't be - the only alternative is extremely large worlds combined with banks and entertainment centers, but if you have those it hits your manufacturing and research capacity. Trade has no such disadvantages - and its income can be boosted really high using econ starbases with upgrades). Its basically a free lunch
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A couple of points I would like to make:

Whatever was being produced ont hat planet should still be available for trade, right? (assume that you don't damage any improvments or planet quality). Just the owner changed.


Not neccesarily. I'll give an example, where I'm from (Arizona), there are a number of really good Mexican food places. They hire Mexicans to do the work, and the food is amazing. Right now however I'm out of state going to college. Here they have Americans cooking the Mexican food. The result? It's ok, but not nearly as good.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you have two groups, one who has grown up in the culture of the good being produced and one who hasn't, even if they follow the same format the results can vary widely.

Perhaps people don't want the trade good becuase the people who you conquered the planet from just did it better.

Conquering the other civilization will actually put you at a disdvantage, because you just lost all you're trade income with them.


That's the point, it is to make an economic empire viable. Plus, it's fairly realistic since not very many countires will trade with each other during times of war.

I havn't tried the DA Beta yet (waiting for a release fate before I pre-order), but I have heard that they adjusted the way trade was handled. Does it suit your liking more, or are you basing your post ont eh new system?
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Not neccesarily. I'll give an example, where I'm from (Arizona), there are a number of really good Mexican food places. They hire Mexicans to do the work, and the food is amazing. Right now however I'm out of state going to college. Here they have Americans cooking the Mexican food. The result? It's ok, but not nearly as good.


OK, true the native population might be better at doing certain things, or do things you're population can't. But it shouldn't be an all or nothing thing; and in fact I'd think a significant portion of the economy should be due to the fact that there are raw resources there that aren't elswhere are you don't have in significant quantities, or that can simply be produced more cheaply there than on our homeworld.

When you look at things historically, and even in the modern era, its almost entirely about the raw resources. Where the iron is, or the coal, or the gold, or the diamonds, or the petroleum. It doesn't have much to do with expertise.

I think an idea might be to do ditch trading for money, but to trade things like manufacturing capacity, research, morale, etc. To some extent this is done with trade goods


That's the point, it is to make an economic empire viable. Plus, it's fairly realistic since not very many countires will trade with each other during times of war.


I don't have the problem with the trade routes disapperaing during war (though I do think you should be able to reassign the freighters). What have I have a problem with is the money being created ex nihilo and not being able to be recovered when the planet is conquered (well you could just trade with someoen else, but its a long haul because you have to rebuild every single freighter, and your econ starbases might not be positioned ideally). Like I said before, lets say you were trading somethign for oil. Well the oil fields should still be there. They might have been damaged, or the native civilzation might have been better at extracting it, but you should be able to recover something.

This problem extends from the situation I'm in right now. There are 5 civilizations total, me (terrans), arceans, torians, thalans and the altarians. As you can imagine the thalans have a substantial lead. The Torians are Arceans just went to war. I was thinking about joining a side, and trying to get an edge over the Thalans who I can't quite take on yet, at least alone and no one else seems to want to join me. The problem is I trade extensively with both the Arcenas and Torians, and trade represents almost half my total income. Although I have good reserves, I might put myself into a hole I won't be able to dig out due to the big hit I am going to take tradewise.

I guess I'll have to play it out to see how things go but it kind of looks like a stalemate. Well probalby not a stalemate, as the Thalans have a pretty big research lead and probably would win a research victory eventually.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Basically trading in this game is a device. Of course it doesn't work exactly like it does in the real world, but last time I checked, I didn't see many Drengin bagging my groceries either. Historically you are right that trade has been about raw materials, but remember that trade was only a portion of merchantilism. The entire purpose of trade was to increase strength of ones economy. In this game, trade serves the same function: strengthen economies. Since many people find the economy sliders in this game half magically already, I can see why it was decided to just have trade routes bring in money instead of production or research points.

Additionally, this is a strategy game. You are supposed to have to plan out routes, where star bases go and anticipate how the game will develop. Be taking away those penalties for changing a trade route you are basically undoing a vital part of the game. Its like asking for a do over if you lost a fleet battle or to un-declare war on some one if the war is going poorly.

The real point of having trade routes in this game is to serve as a counter-balance to going to war. It makes you think about who you will attack and how it will affect your empire. You've mentioned yourself that thats what it has been forcing you to do, so I would say it is doing a pretty decent job!
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't really know where your coming from, because i've never been in a situation where trade was such a huge part of my income. Infact, I usually use trade as a supplement and a diplomacy tool. I rarely devote the resources required to build the starbases that would make Trade a substantial part of my income.

But I do get what your saying. In the immediate case, I would suggest one of three things: 1. Figure out which one you get the most from and attack the other one; 2. Flip a coin if its too close; 3. Just don't get involved(this may leave one too powerfull for you to be comfortable with however)

I really don't see any problems with the current trade system (pre-DA).
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Right. That's why you either move trade-routes before you declare war on another civilization, or you don't declare war on them. Trade is a reason to have peaceful relations.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't really know where your coming from, because i've never been in a situation where trade was such a huge part of my income.


Perhaps with Dark Avatar, trade will be changed since with the introduction of asteroids, we will be able to harvest resources by researching the right technologies for better income. In my opinion, we should be aloud to 3 trade routes maximum in the game for every civilization. Also, we should be aloud to be more flexibile with the freighters by alowing them to change course and trade without losing the freighter. Because in order to direct a trade route to a specific planet, we need to build the freighter on that planet which is ridiculus. Another improvement they could do is to be able to upgrade the freighters that will be able to carry more goods, thus more income. Maybe the latter is already thought of by installing more trade modules if I'm not mistaken...?? Why is it that having the trade route longer brings in more income (which I haven't really noticed by the way), shoudn't it be vice versa? Cause the closer it is the faster you will recieve income from that planet?

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't really know where your coming from, because i've never been in a situation where trade was such a huge part of my income. Infact, I usually use trade as a supplement and a diplomacy tool. I rarely devote the resources required to build the starbases that would make Trade a substantial part of my income.


Well I suppose you could do that and not be "dependent" on trade, but it seems like you are missing out on a huge chunk of income that way, and theres really no other way to replace it. When you build multiple econ starbases around the trade routes, and install trade modules, you can get mad income (it was around 600 bc/month in the last situation for me).

The thing is, I really don't seen an alternative way to replace that income. Taxes are dependent on population, and the population growth is slow, fixed and theres really no way of increasing it given a particular civ(except for for that galactic achievement?) You can increase the cap by building farms and researching farming techs, but that doesn't help growth. You also have to build entertainment to make sure the population morale doesn't plummet. Also by building farms and morale boosters, you lose out on production/research.

I am trying to build a strategy game right now, putting you in control of a major nation during WWII. I'm thinking of throwing out the concept of "money" altogether, because on a national scale it makes little sense. People don't want money, but the things money can buy. You can have all the "money" in the world and won't mean a thing if you don't have access to the raw materials that are in demand. (e.g. Germany had tons of gold after their major conquests - fat lot of good in did them because they coudln't do anything with it) And in most trade agreements nations (at least in that era) didn't trade goods for money, but goods for goods. Because you have no idea of what the dollar or the reichsmark is going to be six months from now.

I'm not criticizing the system on "realism" which makes little sense for a space based strategy game , but I think a good system might be to have planets have particular resources and then you trade based on those resources. Resources would be necessary for producing certain thigns. You could also trade for manufactured goods. And have no limit on trade routes - the limit would be the amount of resource you produce. It wouldn't necessarily have to be that complex - you could just have say a half dozen raw resources. This would also open up interesting strategic options where you curtail a certain civs military production by cutting off their access to critical raw materials. You could also be able to trade with yourself - say have some planet specialize on farming and then have another be a "hive" world that is totally dependent on outside food sources.

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my current game I earn 2500bc per turn in trade. And I'm not even maxing revenues out because I'm currently busy waging war. So about half my economy is trade. It is *very* important to me.

The problem in GalCiv is that population doesn't influence trade revenues. I can set up 12 traderoutes from all over my empire to some class 3 rock and get a few thousand bc a turn from it. It's a nice strategy to take a smaller race, invade it's planet with mass drivers, immediately give the planet back, invade it again with mass drivers and repeat until it's class 3 or something. That race is basically out of the game, but you can still use it to farm money.
There are no "demand-price"-mechanics in place. Why does all my empire pay huge prices for the products of that class 3 rock? Sure, those trendy xeno-rocks are nice, but please, there has to be difference between a class 3 rock trading with a class 3 rock and two level 21 planets trading.
In GalCiv it's better to set up a tradelane between Sealand and the Seychelles than between the US and Canada.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Because in order to direct a trade route to a specific planet, we need to build the freighter on that planet which is ridiculus.



Can you build a freighter on another world, then land it on the planet you want to start the route from, then re-launch it from there to start the route(like you can do with troop transports)? If not, then that is silly...it would totally undermine the idea of having specialized planets (the Federation had Utopia Planetia, or whatever their shipyards were called). Not even earthbound cities are forced to build their own tractor trailers ,freight ships and trains in the city of origin in order to initiate a trade route with anouther city....youd think the "future" worlds would be at least as competent.


The reason I dont know the answer to that though, is because for many of the reasons that have been listed in the thread Ive found *initiating* trade in the game to be a waste of time and resources and I dont even bother with it...considering all the other civs will do it for me. I *seem* to benefit just as much, or well enough, from all the routes they start up with me ...and they trade more prolifically than I ever would, without me having to build any ships. If I research trade earlier than the rest of the galaxy as a stepping stone to another tech, Ill even sell the technology to everyone just to get them starting trade routes(as well as something else to build other than military ships).

Hopefully in DA trade will be improved so I can start worrying about it again. I wouldnt mind seeing some sort of simple commodoties system in a future expansion that could make active trading its own metagame.

Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Can you build a freighter on another world, then land it on the planet you want to start the route from, then re-launch it from there to start the route(like you can do with troop transports)?


No, I'm pretty sure you can't in DL. I tried it many a moon ago. Not sure about DA, but I'd assume it's also a No.