The population of the trading planets already affected the trade income in GalCiv 2. The higher the population, the more money you get.

This is something where I think Civ V did it better than GalCiv2.

Heh, I've been replaying GC1 recently.

That was something they worked into Civ 5. You could establish a trade route within your own cites for population or production bonuses. (It also spread religion.) It worked out really well too. It was a nice way to kick start new cities. I imagine it would also work well in GC3.

Another thing that Civ v dose is require you to re assign your trade routes every 10 turns about. It's kind of like busy work, but it also makes sure you don't forget about your routes.

The *plan* is for trade to be a bit more sophisticated than GalCiv II.  One of the reasons is that we finally hired a full-time professional writer PLUS we have Adam  Biessener (formerly of GameInformer) to provide us with a lot more, unique per race, dialog which will allow for conversation trees (i.e. different races will potentially be able to give you different, unique things depending on the circumstances and your dialog choices).

Cool the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. Hey how about that thing where they want to be able to tell you to get out. They just cant do anything unless they have the force.

I do hope they don't preclude you  from using influence points, though sometimes I just liked using cold hard BC.  Add enough digits and enough time and influence, and you can even get an enemy to sell if you are patient enough.

In a vein for possible additional trade technologies/advances, what about civilizations that are neutral in a conflict being able to become a retirement home for smugglers from other species.  This would allow you to exploit their expertise, including possibly increasing trade routes payouts by using things like smugglers holds for trade goods that are legal in one civilization, say heavy weapons to Drengin planets, but you have to cross a civilizations space such as the Arceans (as an example) that bans their sale.  Rather than having to run two ships, you would use the trace vessel as suggested earlier using starbases to distribute the goods you trade with the Arceans, and then run the spices on through another species area (to avert the suspicion) and offload the weapons.  It would be on the same idea as nuclear weapons and Japan, where they have strict prohibitions on the weapons being anywhere in any of their ports, but the U.S. caused a stir a while back by noting they had docked ships in those harbors and 'forgot' or simply didn't mention the nuclear weapons on board while they were in route to patrol along the old Soviet Union back in the day.  Admittedly, not a perfect analogy, but it's close enough.

I would think they would also be able to add benefits to speed and defenses, maybe even combat tactics depending on what species were involved.  In case you're wondering why they would trade that information, if they find a place they can retire, as smugglers they've probably got other civilizations that would like to make an example with them.  You get an increase in your tech as well as some boost in your trade value by learning some of their tricks in modifying your ships for more cargo, better defenses, not to mention espionage (if they've lived to retire, they clearly have intel assets in the areas they've run cargo in) and perhaps how to better protect your own area from the same

I did some prototype mods for GC2, but I haven't gotten them completely tested out because I didn't know if all the things I tried to set into motion were actually doing anything, or if the game precluded it.  If they were built in GC3, or left with an opening that would let a mod develop those effects in the future, that could get very interesting.  Finally the smugglers could contribute something to the 'honest' trade community in the game.

I am skeptical about whether Influence points will be used in the same way they were in GC2.  I think they're more likely to allow more options to show up.

Well I would like to see a black market that was actually a black market in the game. This would be different depending on the faction.

As far as influence, mine is more of the Galactic council. I would like to see an enhanced version of this like the faction with the most influence would decide wgat to vote on. This would require there to be a list of options to vote on. Different factions would have different agendas. If there were two factions that had the same amount of influence points then everyone would vote on who would decide what to vote on between the two.

I would like to see more dialogue in the diplomacy.

Let's actually have a pirates.

As long as we would be able to counter them with armed escort and/or united planets joint operations.

I'd like to see much more realistic trade, having more private sector activity and based on both form of government and ethical alignment or similar; also instead of just "continue trading" or 'embargo' there should be an intermediate TARIFF option!!

i.e;

 - "private sector trade routes" can be 'created' as a byproduct of colonization (so if all of your colony ships come from the same homeworld, that planet actually has a 'reason' for being your capital planet other than just being *first*; this could also make colony-swapping, influence and invasions "more interesting" because you might end up owning a planet economically dependent on your enemy etc)

 - an "economic alliances" mechanic in addition to the current influence system (touching or overlapping bounds of influence) can determine private sector inter-civilization trade

 - private sector trade can be a 'spectrum' between "black market" and "open market" determined by influence, diplomatic relations, similar forms of governments, similar ethical alignments and "trade status" (an embargo wouldn't immediately eliminate all trade but instead simultaneously decrease the amount of trade, force most of it into the black market and make its value lopsided)

 - evil civilizations would have a harder time getting trade routes established with ANY race (even other evil civilizations) but make MUCH more profit/taxes with each new trade partner; galactic black market trade could also be distributed amongst evil races, based on contact with other races (i.e. drengin couldn't receive income from terran black market if their influence area doesn't touch or hadn't met yet etc)

 - trade between good civilizations would be 100% open market and immune to black market effects (might be scaled by requiring highest form of government and some sort of research)

 - neutral civilizations could create "neutral tradepost starbases" that become valid destinations for any foreign freighter and also automatically establish private routes with sources projecting influence over them (this trade wouldn't be affected directly by war, diplomatic status and black market trade tax revenue could still be collected to a lesser degree)

 - trade route limits can become "per trading partner" instead of static maximums thus making trade more profitable and wars more costly especially in larger galaxies (where alliances become interesting and private sector activity could be metered by this)

 - trade route limits could also be tied to form of government so empires only allow 1 per partner, republics 2 per partner, democracies 4 and federations 8 (these could be just base values modified via technology so a technology-advanced empire might have as many routes as an ecotechnomically-primitive federation)

 - killing public trade routes wouldn't kill private routes (it'd just cause you to "lose control" of the volume of the route; so by repeatedly establishing and killing your limited routes you could theoretically interconnect all planets with private, small-scale, medium-volume, low-value routes and potentially generate MUCH more revenue over time BUT any economic recession on a given colony can kill all routes to and from that world and cause a domino effect across all routes - this would have substantially less effect on black markets or public routes than open markets)

i'd like to see trade setup a little different. rather than building a freight and sending it to a world, just setup trade routes and have freights magically appear and start trading. if they are destroyed, then pay to rebuild. but it seems a little too in depth to go through the process of setting up trade. but i do like having to research it first! like the image below, simply select the world that you want to trade with. but only have a certain number of trade routes until you research more. i'll eventually stop referencing BOTF.... haha

Sorry, I could not resist.  No, I won't trade in GalCiv3 for anything else! 

Yeah it'd be great to see an expansion on trade.

What will this mean for custom races though?

Was it one of the master of orion games where you could supplement other colonies if they didnt have enough food? I always liked that idea.  Over the years in GC2 i stopped building farms (except on 11+ grade planets even then maybe one). GC2 made a nonsense of it, the further away the planet is the more income you receive. 

I think there should be planets rich in elements for the empire and you having to ferry the goods to ensure growth. Once their is a demand in your empire their might be more valuable reasons to trade. The only reason i did it in GC2 was to stop getting rushed early in the game. It would be great to have a planet producing a trade good rather than be a bank or production or general world.

But as Brad says why did we have the dark yor farming when they are robots? By the same token why would they trade for food/happiness. If they are only trading for military or tech then would they have an unfair advantage?

Tricky stuff. Would like to see a more rewarding trade system for sure.