Make Trade More Valuable

What I'd like to see with Trade routes:

1. The Diplomacy Modifier to increase over time based on number of trade route with a given empire.
2. More Trade Route specializations. To remove the specialization from ideology and apply them to specific abilities.
3. Increased Income from Trade Routes based on your relations, type of Trade Route for reciever/giver and number of trade routes with a given empire.

Could we have a one-time bonus for initially establishing a trade route to reflect initial excitement to obtain previously unavailable goods. I would also like to see an adjustment on the number of routes initially available based upon the number of opponents in the game.

How about trade route bonuses based on the specialization of the planet with which you're trading (science, wealth, food) or based on the developed resources or planetary bonuses?

I'll admit there is nothing currently attractive about trading, and I have not pursued it much. However, I did see an income summary recently, on this forum I believe, that showed a huge amount of income from trade in the late game. I have been planning to give it a better shot.

From income perspective, first, there is treasure hunting, then there is trade and then there is commerce buildings.

My thinking is that it should be exactly the contrary.

Who the heck would waste the precious planetary space for commerce buildings when we have options like we have? Doh...

Here is a screenshot of my current game:

Although I must admit that is with 400% from the event that increases trade income by 100% (as of 2.2.1)

 Edit: I don't seem to be able to insert a screenshot in this post

So here my trade income in tabular form:

Trade should:

1. Produce more results for vessels with more cargo space.

2. Allow multiple trade vessels assigned to a route.

3. Have some risk, and require remediation; e.g., pirates or enemy civs can actually pirate your routes.

4. The remediation would be convoys with military vessels.

In Crusade, when you move citizens between planets, they move around in these miniaturized icons. I'd do convoys that way. They would be attackable, but the owning player would not be expected to control/reroute the convoy, unless they removed it from the route.

I can think of other things to do here, but they would likely turn Civ III into a trading sim.

Also to add about trade routes. Races should be able to trade within their own empire. If players play on smaller galaxy sizes and few races they miss out on the extra potential income from trading. Move a freighter into one of your planets, special button "Create trade route" select destination planet.

I don't see the point of this at all. You're just moving money from Planet A to Planet B - you know overall how much money your race has, so there's no increase to the overall treasury.

Trade certainly needs to be made a more attractive option than it is right now.

You should get credits based on your relationships with other races/what those other races want. ie you sell to the Torians, they are Nuetral so your stuff's worth 10bc per freighter, the Alterians who you're verging on Close to will pay 15bc per freighter. Now, you might go with selling more to the Alterians but you know the Torians have more "things" to offer diplomacy-wise so it's not just a case of who's offering more cash right now but who can help you in the longer term? Trade and Diplomacy working together.

The Treasure Hunt - Pirates should be able to hijack these so you may have just spent that 250bc (or whatever the cost of it is) and, yep, treasure was found but those big men with guns were very persuasive and sorry, we gave it to them...

Agree with Triple Crown about the order of the three ways you can get money being wrong, except I'd go Trade/Building/Treasure Hunt.

How about a larger turn around? Is the resource money/credits still important or could the game be improved by removing it instead?

I would argue that the concept of what Money ($) is, is already built into the game as part of social construction (SC), military construction (MC) and influence (I). By removing $ from the game and making it possible make deals using SC/MC/I, the trade deals would be more interesting. Are you going to go for a deal that improves your tradepartners MC and in return enhancing your empires I? Or the deal for Elerium that you need for building lasers, well the only one selling demands MC for them which will mean you can build lasers but it will take longer. Et cetera.

Trade routes could function in such a way as when they arrive to the designated planet you get to choose what they are going to trade for, MC/SC or I. 

I actually like Trade the way it is.  It start off small, but grows over time to a hefty income.  Just don't trade with civs that you want to invade in a few turns.