Trade vs. generators

[VulcanTourist]

Is an Urban trade planet a more effective source of energy than the same planet devoted to generator districts?

[Ryika]

Depends on your build. If you're heavily focused on Trade, then yes, otherwise no.

Being focused on trade means using Merchants though, Clerks are pretty weak even with a trade-focused build.

[ScreamCon]

It depends whether you have gate tech or not. The reason I say this is that in order to get the same amount of energy from trade you have to transport lots of trade to capital. This amount of trade can easily cause pirates that scales with the more trade transporting.

For this reason I see trade builds as weak, however your capital starbase could be loaded with trade hub to collect from all the nearby worlds. These worlds you can convert to eccumonopolis trade to pay for your empires district costs.

I tested you cannot use trade hub to skip trade route piracy. It collects from range but the energy balance doesn't increase if you don't connect the starbase in trade menu. And since the trade collection range is not star trade protection the stars in between will experience piracy.

However you will still want an energy planet or two for ships costs and market buys.

Once you get gates trade becomes easily collectable.

BUT, you can use planets to create limited trade, place a starbase over planet, and load the starbase with modules that increase trade protection range and potency. This works if you keep the planets trade protection limited to values like, 10, 20, 30, 40 etc based on how many protection modules.

The hard part here is the starbase range and strength near the beginning of game. This means your capital sector of your empire is the best spot for trade in like the first 100 years.

I do want to note what also makes trade weak is it didn't scale to research like energy districts. If you don't want to use energy district there is a building you unlock like 20 years into game (or less) that allows you to use a building slot for generator job or two. This unscaling nature makes trade jobs inefficient from a competitive standpoint per pop.

The best way to use trade is convert it only into energy and only collect trade from pop living standards, systems. Gospel of masses is an interesting one but also uses a civic slot for an unscaling trade...
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So to answer your thread generator is by far much better than trade looking at all the angles. But trade does have the early game rush potential since you can scale trade faster in the early game. Energy district is also better than having to sell resource for energy.

Rather trade is best used to produce more goods or unity than a world could normally produce. Going the merchantisation line unlocks this.

[MP]

Generators become useless when you build a Dyson Sphere. Trade might be useful still with that policy giving consumer goods and stuff.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by MP:

Generators become useless when you build a Dyson Sphere...

... if you can even build one.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

Originally posted by MP:

Generators become useless when you build a Dyson Sphere...

... if you can even build one.

Some people think everyone plays the way they do, and if they don't, they're wrong. I suspect their next reply, should it come, will be something along the lines of "But why wouldn't you?" EDIT: Color me surprised.

[MP]

Build? Why would you build? Just take it from others.

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by MP:

Build? Why would you build? Just take it from others.

I forgot about vassals... agreed I once got 1 vassal and got 200 energy per cycle from them. So juicy... but sometimes you might not have access to vassal, also building districts makes you resistant if you lose vassals for whatever reason.

[VulcanTourist]

I can neither build nor steal a Dyson sphere because I lack the DLC that introduced them. So Mr. Invictus' observation is accurate. As a new player with only the original game, I'm not playing the game the same way as people who have been playing it for years with DLC and mods.

[MP]

Right, no Utopia, no Dyson Sphere lazy-goodness. In that case I'd say go with generators, but look for a suitable planet to specialize in energy production.

Look for these planet modifiers:
- Tidal Locked (it has a planetary decision that gives 30% energy from jobs)
- Hazardous Weather (20% energy from jobs)
- Strong Magnetic Field (5% energy from jobs)

If you got a planet that has at least one of those modifiers, great! See how many generator districts it can support. Pick the one with a healthy mix of modifiers and districts. The modifiers are better, though, since they scale better than districts.

Then you just specialize it to energy, build generators, don't forget that building that gives bonus to energy production and you've got one sparkly planet supporting your empire.

I don't know about you, but developing such a planet feels oh so satisfying! It's like bonsai, I guess.

[Unimportant]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

... if you can even build one.

Some people think everyone plays the way they do, and if they don't, they're wrong.

Nobody in this thread said that tho

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by MP:

Right, no Utopia, no Dyson Sphere lazy-goodness. In that case I'd say go with generators, but look for a suitable planet to specialize in energy production.

Look for these planet modifiers:
- Tidal Locked (it has a planetary decision that gives 30% energy from jobs)
- Hazardous Weather (20% energy from jobs)
- Strong Magnetic Field (5% energy from jobs)

If you got a planet that has at least one of those modifiers, great! See how many generator districts it can support. Pick the one with a healthy mix of modifiers and districts. The modifiers are better, though, since they scale better than districts.

Then you just specialize it to energy, build generators, don't forget that building that gives bonus to energy production and you've got one sparkly planet supporting your empire.

I don't know about you, but developing such a planet feels oh so satisfying! It's like bonsai, I guess.

I've been aware of the planet modifiers, but I'm still struggling to remember to check them. I was disappointed to discover that the Prospecting decision apparently isn't repeatable (at least not without a console cheat), so being able to add extra generator districts to a planet deprived of them but having good modifiers is a blindfolded one-shot.

I can see the attraction in devising something specialized to a purpose. It's why I mod things I buy if it's not exactly what I want. This is what gets engineers out of bed.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Unimportant:

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Some people think everyone plays the way they do, and if they don't, they're wrong.

Nobody in this thread said that tho

The first part is implied by assuming OP has access to megastructures and wants to get the associated ascension perks in every game. The latter is, admittedly, just what I've observed repeatedly, and was not implied by anyone in this thread (that I saw).

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Depends on your build. If you're heavily focused on Trade, then yes, otherwise no.

Being focused on trade means using Merchants though, Clerks are pretty weak even with a trade-focused build.

The difference isnt very large anymore since they nerfed Rulers by giving them 2 consumer good job upkeep, even if that difference does scale with Trade Value bonus.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

The difference isnt very large anymore since they nerfed Rulers by giving them 2 consumer good job upkeep, even if that difference does scale with Trade Value bonus.

The difference between the two is still large. It starts small, but the moment you start stacking trade bonuses, clerks become less and less competitive.

+100% means you have one job that goes from 12 Trade Value to 24, and one that goes from 5 to 10 while the upkeep stays the same.

[Tiasmoon]

I did note that it still scales. However at the start the difference is miniscule.

4 trade value, 0.25 consumer good upkeep vs 12 trade value, 3 consumer good upkeep
Difference is 8 trade value, which would be equivalent to 4 energy, 2 consumer goods if using CG policy. +4Energy, -0.75CG. So the net profit is very tiny once you factor in upkeep.

As bonus stack this will increase further, but its a far cry from when it used to be 12 trade value, 1 consumer good upkeep. Now, having CG policy (or trade league) active is required to maintain upkeep for merchants, which lowers the overhead of profit by a large amount.

I did a couple of trade value builds and they were very weak early on because of this.
I made my conclusion based on starting with something like 35-40% trade value iirc, dont remember exact amount. Its still technically better, but once you also factor in extra mineral cost, ruler requirement etc, its questionable.

Assuming +100% trade value and thrifty for base x1.25 it would be:

+30 Energy, -3CG vs 12.5 Energy, -0.25CG
With consumer goods policy:
+15 Energy, +4.5CG vs 6.25 Energy, +2.875CG
So a difference of +9~ Energy, +1.625CG

At that point its still a large difference, but only after stacking all those bonus.

No bonus: +4 Energy, -0.75CG
+150% bonus: +9 Energy, + 1.62CG

And I dont know why I try to use numbers when my health doesnt allow me to easily do calculations, sigh. Too easy to make errors..