Trade in Galactic Civ 3 !

I am pretty sure Trade is still in Gal Civ III. I liked how it worked in II but would like to see trade have more weight in Diplomacy and declarations of war. 

What I mean is, if I am trading with the Drengin or Yor and I am behind in tech but have some trade with them, (THEIR) desire to go to war as an AI needs to have Trade weighted in to that choice. 

Trade has often been a driving force in War and I want the act of war to have consequences. 

I like the idea of some techs that affet trade or at least some tech that affects your trade ships....

It would be great to have a complex trade system on the side, so you are not only building banks and stock exchanges everywhere... but I guess implementing complexity like that makes it harder for both AI's and casual players alike.

DLC maybe? Something similar to good ol' Colonization that is optional could maybe be fun. Especially if they made moons etc. have valuable resources, so you had to search for them. 

Like you, I also doubt StarDock would remove trade from the new game, but I imagine they will tweak it a bit.

However, tech trade has been in GC1 and GC2, in the diplomacy screens. I can't image that they would move that to trade ships.

Mined resources as trade-able commodities might be interesting.

Some of the consequences of War in GC1&2 is loss of all trade with the war counterpart, including weekly money and trade routes. I can't imagine them changing this.

Hopefully trading influence points doesn't make me want to slit my wrists this time. 

*Remembers trading a few hundred points per transaction*

*Shudders*

991 at a time. Technically 999 was the highest possible to trade, but 991 was fewer clicks/keystrokes.

Trading influence is one of only two things that have ever tempted me to get a keyboard macro generator. The other is prospecting ore in WoW - you could use the game macro generator to reduce the process to one key, but you have to sit there and push the key every 8 seconds, sometimes for an hour at a time.

Are you talking about the money and influence sliders in the diplomacy screen? Had you ever tried keying in an amount? And I have noticed that the latest GC2 gives you the max the other side will trade when you click on the money or influence buttons to get the sliders.

Just in case this is a consideration I think it would be a big mistake to remove trade out of the game. More or less you have options I don't use to remove some of the more important trade out of the game. I don't sell influence points. I would like to not be able to trade planets. Like anything there is always for improvement. 

On the other hand, some of us buy planets *with* influence points!

You don't just get planets. You can get all the planets with galactic achievements, super projects, and trade goods. You can trade for all the best class planets, or home planets of the major races. You can even trade for every planet of an empire. Yes you can trade your opponents out of existence.Only the minor races are smart enough not to do this. How do you not see the cheesiness in this. Just give me an option to shut this off, and ironically you can do this with influence points. This is on option I'm sure needs changing.

That wasn't an "option" to be turned off, it was a flaw in the AI that got ruthlessly exploited. The minor races didn't fall for it because they were hard-coded to not trade planets.

I never used the Swindle technique, but regular planet trading was pretty exploitive too. The AI based a planet's value mostly on its population, with a bit of adjustment for how the influence environment was around it (i.e a planet was worth more to the AI if it was in their influence, and less if it was in yours). A couple choice abuses resulted:

1) Putting enough transports in orbit to hold the whole population, then selling the planet. The transports would load as they were launched, so the AI paid for a 15 billion person planet and got a 0 person planet. Either buy the newly-worthless planet back shortly afterward, or wait for it to flip and repeat process.

2) Support the Korath as much as possible with tech and money; allying with them was best. Pay said spore-happy civilization to attack other empires, then buy the newly-unpopulated planets from the Korath for a few bc.

The important thing to note is that you should not be asking for a toggle to turn this off; the AI playing the other empires would never do anything like this. All you had to do to eliminate planet trading from your game was refrain from doing it personally, The AI didn't trade IP around between the other empires, either.

It took me awhile to stop trading for planets earlier on. It's still irritating. If they are going to leave it in the game the Ai should never trade their home worlds. The Ai's should never trade for a world bigger than a nine in their own territory. They should never trade planets with wonders on them. Their should be a bare minimum of planets before they will trade. This is a good rough draft on a reasonable trade if you are not going to have an option.

The reason I'm not sure that they are trading amongst each other is because I have customized races before with a generic Ai. If their are good opponents the Thalans grow slower even wien the Thalans aren't overpowering because of equally expansive opponents. Or at least more expansive than the Torians. The Thalans would still grow out of control later even without all the extreme planets colonization. Effectively the game weren't letting the Thalans be less powerful. If the Thalans weren't trading to get a unusually higher number of planets after the colony rush how else did they pull this off. I made sure their were a customized lineup of races so this would not happen. There were no underpowered races.

Hello I'm glad that is so well discussed on trade

Have there's a suggestion:

Crazy idea of mine :

How about who to trading and collecting points ?
Let's say we start with the Earth , build our first business building this building gives us at the beginning yes a small credit relapsing , but for 5 points which you can trade Regenerates through research and further expansion of trade and economic buildings increase . So now we have trade points and what we do with it? I would suggest you set trading points a route for transportation and status for diplomacy , a race has 10 trading points and we only have 6 so we can organize routes with this race 6 Transport .

Small Cargo Ship needs 1 trade point
Medium Cargo Ship need 2 trade points
Big Cargo Ship needs 3 trade points

I would make in research is still a part where you can improve the kan

First, you have better economies with money and trade points for transport routes.

What do you think of the proposal ?

I loved how simple and easy trade was in Galciv2, and I hope they keep the same system in the new game.  However I would change a couple of things if I could...

1)  Remove the 12 route limit (or increase it depending on the size of your empire or something like that)

2)  Make trade revenue scale somehow, so that later on in the game, it's still worthwhile to set up trade routes.  In Galciv2, we could tweak the XML to make trade worth more, but once you get up to your maximum trade routes, that's it.  As your empire grows, the slice of your income generated by trade gets smaller and smaller.

I would love love love to see more depth in trade. One thing that has me kind of hopeful about GC3's trading is that they are adding all kinds of trade resources. I'm thinking they could do a thing where you aren't just building general trade ships, but specialized trade ships that come with extra bonuses. Like if you find empathy crystals on one of your planets, you could add a crystal trader into your freight design that raises the amount of money that route makes, but also raises the moral of the planet your trading with. Another trader type made from a different resource spice might be down right destructive causing the planet your trading with to experience a negative population growth. (The planet could fight off this effect by sacrificing a building slot to build a customs office.) Having these different extras means you want to put more thought into what your trading and with who. You might want to trade your empathy crystals with your best allies well you basically smuggle the harmful spice into your enemies planets. You could even have more crazy trade goods like teddy bears with cameras in them that give you planet vision on the planets your trading with, or weapons shipments that give a + to the weapons of any ship built on that planet. So much you could do. We can also bring diplomacy into this by having treaties to establish and brake specified routs.

Wow some interesting ideas... I like the OP's idea of tech affecting the trading vessels at least that's what I understood from it... I like the idea of adding in a "special resource module"...perhaps a "Smuggling Module" or "Sumggling ship type" I'd like to see a separate "Civilian" system where between planets within our empire or within empires that we have agreements (trade, alliances, research) seeing civilian ships adding value to my "Starbase Trade tech" research; basically, the pie chart saying trade is a significant portion of my empire's wealth per turn. Thus, giving me more incentive to increase "trade focused star bases, and research." typically it's during the late game when I bother researching this...

I do like the idea that trade should affect the other empires/civilizations decision to "threaten, or go to war with another civilization" Also, trade should increase naturally the amount of tech both civilizations get...after all while trading it's hard not to see new gadgets or sell more advanced tech to other races...thus allowing them to have a chance at learning the principles of the new tech and boosting their research in the areas of tech being traded or ships being scanned in my space.

I agree that trading needs some love, and these are good suggestions. Variations of tradeship size (and thus value) make a lot of sense. In the real world, cargo ships have gotten steadily bigger. Quariitch has hit the nail on the head. Perhaps, in GalCiv3, this could be tied to increased hull types or/and improved logistics. Or maybe there could be a dedicated Trade tree.

A dedicated trade tree could be fairly complex. As in GalCiv2, it could have increased numbers of routes (still three techs? Fixed or Relative increases?). It could have increased cargo ship size. It could increase the income or diplomatic bonuses associated with trade. Depending on how much of their limited time they want to dump into it, the Devs could even have the player research technologies to allow trading with specific cultures. These could be cheap, or they could be expensive, it doesn't matter. It presents the player with a choice that will shape his civilization.

Well at this point trade is a minor issue in the game. Maybe it could become more involved. This is something I wouldn't mind being handled by a private sector. I would like to see more routes, so this could become more of a priority. You don't make enough money from trade to be a concern.

I would like to see more trade goods. I would actually like to see trade goods worth trading. Some of the trade goods like micro recorders or diplomatic are to important to trade.

One of the ideas I have modified and have endorsed is tech research sharing. I don't think you should get more research points through trading, but there should be a sharing of specialized techs you wouldn't have through interacting.

I would like to see more treaties. I like how the computer is aggressive on trading these. It used to be to easy to trade these.

I would like to see more options on the dialogue in these screens. Maybe the option to write my own.

The problem with trade in GalCiv2 is that it only provides a static bonus - once you have the maximum amount of trade routes, there's nothing you can do to further boost your trade income - so it eventually is dwarfed by your planetary tax income.  As a result, it can be useful in the early-mid game, but then fades into irrelevance.

One thing I'd like to see is having trade tied to strategic positioning.  One option might be to have trade routes be lines between trade-equipped economic starbases, with the income from each starbase be multiplied by the tax income of planets in range of the starbase (if there are several starbases in range of a planet, it has a reduced effect on the revenue of all of them), by the distance of the furthest node on the trade route, and by the modules installed on the starbase.  Make it so that all trade-equipped starbases within say 20 hexes get a trade connection (provided the owners allow trade with each other), and you've got an interesting strategic scenario, that rewards intelligent economic planning, and gives dedicated traders a significant goal - getting and keeping trade access to a faraway point on a trade route.

Of course, this is just one of many ways to make trade interesting - I'm just hoping for something more than building some trade ships, sticking them on a route, then just leaving them be.

Is this with or without building economy starbases along the trade route and putting economy modules on the starbases?

so i have 2 thoughts on trade

1) importance on who you are trading with

lets say that i am currently trading with the drengin and the yor and they are trading with each other.

from my perspective this is two trade routes and each one is earning a normal amount of cash for a trade route. now lets say the drengin and the yor go to war and i stay neutral and trade with both races. since they are no longer trading directly i can trade the drengin goods to the yor (at a large profit) and vice versa on top of trading my own good.

this does not neccisarrily require two races to be at war just a lack of trade between two races that another race has access to.

2) trade missions (galactic event)

race -x- is in dire need of this resource that race -Y- is in a uniqe situation to supply

race y can orginize a mission to transport and escort the resource to race x greatly improving their diplomacy/ economy or chose to ignore the needs of race x

however all the other races have the chance to assist or attack that mission. if the mission fails race x is almost certainly doomed and race y will suffer an econimic hit that may take decades to recover from

I would like to see research agreements rather than direct tech trading in galciv3.  It's a great concept in civ5 and requires a friendship agreement as well as a tech advance to do it.  I think it enhances the diplomacy aspect of the game.

Interesting idea, but I think in order to pull this off we need trade resources, or we will need to add or tweak the trade goods a little,

I don't know why we can't have both instead of only one.We could either run this through a alliance or research treaty. Which one would be a decision of the Devs.

Just some meat into the soup.

Change in political system could affect additional income generated by "private" traders as Admiral suggested. The more "free" is political system, the greater income is. Maybe no flat relation, but still.

Trade route "logistic" and lack thereof. Close to current highways we have, only here we would have starbases. Simply put, should owner of starbases allow to use bonuses to other races, they could start to use path through starbases, even if it is longer (but faster, or gives better reach). This should be profitable for all races, participating in trade, including starbases owners'. Moreover, I'd suggested to use existing path of starbases to be used by our ships, should they got better bonuses from speed improvements - again, picking longer, yet faster trail, if one is available. The more intertwined trade is, the better ties are between the races.

Possible link between income, and not just distance of travel (what about ships' running costs?:)), but also destination - well-developed world with massive population could be quite more profitable than empty one. Yet trade route to poor world could also bring great profits, simply because people there are in need of many things. Picking such planet could greatly improve standing, additionally.

Also I'd took internal trade into consideration - trade within our system, between our planets, and logistics overall.

Yes, I think internal trade routes would be cool in galciv3 too.  It could all be integrated into the starbase system somehow as well.  Perhaps different types of resources could be mined from different asteroid fields to trade with some not being available until later tech advancement.  Just don't make the most useful trade resources too difficult to acquire.

Internal trading could be additional boost of our economy and industry, and could help with migration, say from very well developed planet with population cap, to borderline, less populated worlds. Yes, I do think there should be additional mechanism of pop. growth.