Why is Trade so bad even earlygame?

[Тривиум]

Considering that Trade doesn't scale into lategame I cannot fathom why it sucks so bad earlygame even on a trade focused empire? Just buying 35 consumer goods earlygame makes the price spike from 2.5 to around 3.5 Energy Credits or even more which pretty much means it's unsustainable even earlygame let alone midgame! Same goes for buying allow at 10-13 units per month. Price goes to around 6. Only minerals and food seems to stay at the same price with montly trades of 60 units.
Lategame when x10 times more units are needed for monthly trades the prices would skyrocket. Getting all possible bonuses to trade barely affect those unsustainable price increases which makes me wonder why would anyone pick Trade over anything else?
It seems like reducing the market fee and increasing trade bonuses doesn't decrease the huge price fluctuations BEFORE the galactic market is established. Establishing the galactic market ONLY makes the prices fluctuate more.
I've tested with 2-3 commercial pacts and Consumer Benefits and it's not much of a difference. I haven't tested spamming merchants and removing all clerks, because it just looks stupid/silly to be full of buildings that provide only a single job...

[VoiD]

Well, yeah, the trade system seems to be more of an emergency fix for a dying economy, or a way to dump unecessary goods later on if your economy gets too unbalanced, though do know you can trade with other factions, and you can create some far better deals, like importing 500 consumer goods for a bunch of Zro or something.

As for the trader jobs, haven't tried an actual trading megacorp recently, but I think things are still the same? IE: Merchants are pretty good, specially if you get the tradition and trading bonuses for them, but clerks are still considered dead jobs and you should never have even one of them in your worlds if you can help it, they are better off doing anything else, migrating anywhere else in your empire instead. Don't know if any recent updates changed this or not.

[Orion Invictus]

I usually sit with thousands of income from trade with my trade-focused empire, even when that's being split using the trade federation's trade policy, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

[Sero]

I think you misunderstand what kind of trade trade focused empires do.

[Ryika]

Trade isn't terrible, you're just not using it well. Like, buying consumer goods? Get a Trade League Federation or use the Consumer Benefits Trade Policy and you'll be swimming in them.

If you convert 1:1 into energy and use it to buy over cap on the market, then of course prices are going to be terrible.

[CrUsHeR]

Not sure if trolling... anyways

A "trade build" has nothing to do with the internal or galactic market. Literally nothing.

This only refers to the Trade Value generated by pop jobs, living standards and some other things like space deposits. Which is then further multiplied by pop traits, empire effects, planetary designations, a trade league federation and GC resolutions.

Historically you could feed all your energy and consumer goods needs exclusively through trade value, making a trade build very powerful for an empire dominating through a high rate of specialists and rulers in its demography. Meaning most pops can be researchers, merchants, metallurgists and administrators.

Though both the merchants and the trade policies have been nerfed just enough to require a handful of artisans, and/or stack some upkeep reductions, it still is highly efficient.

The lack of endgame scaling isn't really an issue, because TV is the one thing you can already boost like crazy at game start through your empire build. Haven't run the numbers recently, but IIRC you can get something around 80-100% bonus in your first trade colony. And it automatically scales with the number of pops in your empire, based on their living standard (up to 0.5 per pop, gaining all bonuses except Thrifty).

Additionally, you always gain 10% of all federation members' trade value, due to the automatic and free commercial pact. So if you manage to vassalize the whole galaxy into your trade league federation, that's a whole lot of free trade value on top of the subsidiary tax.




Even though there is a Ruler Agenda giving -5% market fee for Megacorps, the Mercantile traditions giving another -10%, and an Ecumenopolis capital (megacorp DLC) as well as high trade value give a heavy bonus to the Galactic Market nomination - buying and selling from the market is always a tactical decision.

Example you could (as a side effect) make a lot of surplus consumer goods and food early on, which you sell in large batches for extra energy. Then you simply buy a stack of 1250 or 2500 alloys whenever you need, to build habitats or catch up with fleet numbers. Even though it takes around 10 years for the buying price to cool down, before the galactic market is founded.

But there is no type of build where you could just buy and sell at will. Even with the galactic market and all bonuses, the prices fluctuate so much with just a few traded stacks, that it remains mandatory to balance out your production somewhat. And invest into storage capacity.

[Kapika96]

You mean the market? It has nothing to do with trade collection, trade bonuses or clerks. They're completely separate things.

The market doesn't work in your favour because everybody typically wants to buy the same things. If you were buying 30 alloys per month and somebody else was selling 30 alloys per month then the price shouldn't change at all. But it's much more likely that nobody is selling them and multiple empires other than your own are buying, hence large price spikes when you buy a lot.

[CrUsHeR]

Monthly trades are generally always bad, because they cause a permanent price increase. Opposed to buying/selling once, and waiting for the price to regenerate. Especially selling regenerates pretty quickly even before the galactic market.


There are only few instances where i'd see them mandatory:

1) Machine Empire - building Hydroponic Bays into otherwise empty starbase slots for 1E upkeep. Monthly trades until a certain threshold give the same food <> energy conversion as the bio-reactors do (these cost a build slot and upkeep)

2) Megacorp in Shattered Ring - for some odd reason, the trade districts on the broken segments have 1 artisan job instead of a merchant. So eventually you run dry on energy with +100 consumer goods.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Monthly trades are generally always bad, because they cause a permanent price increase. Opposed to buying/selling once, and waiting for the price to regenerate. Especially selling regenerates pretty quickly even before the galactic market.

Uhh... quite the opposite. Monthly Trades below a certain threshold do not move the price at all, because it will have moved back to base price before the month ticks over. You can buy 12 Alloys a month at base price, 52 minerals etc., as long as the monthly trade is all you buy.

If you bulk-purchase, you're paying extra because the price is dynamic based on the amount you buy. (Unless you abuse the system with Micro-Purchases every day) Planning ahead, setting up monthly trades within that threshold and never bulk-purchasing anything until those thresholds are no longer enough to fulfil your needs is going to give you the best outcome.

Because of job efficiency, it's generally better to buy Minerals and Alloys up to those thresholds while focusing on producing Energy early on, especially if you go the Executive Vigor route and get the Edict to boost Technicians.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Monthly trades are generally always bad, because they cause a permanent price increase. Opposed to buying/selling once, and waiting for the price to regenerate. Especially selling regenerates pretty quickly even before the galactic market.

Uhh... quite the opposite. Monthly Trades below a certain threshold do not move the price at all, because it will have moved back to base price before the month ticks over. You can buy 12 Alloys a month at base price, 52 minerals etc., as long as the monthly trade is all you buy.

If you bulk-purchase, you're paying extra because the price is dynamic based on the amount you buy. (Unless you abuse the system with Micro-Purchases every day) Planning ahead, setting up monthly trades within that threshold and never bulk-purchasing anything until those thresholds are no longer enough to fulfil your needs is going to give you the best outcome.

Because of job efficiency, it's generally better to buy Minerals and Alloys up to those thresholds while focusing on producing Energy early on, especially if you go the Executive Vigor route and get the Edict to boost Technicians.

Would you know, or know if there's a list of these limits?

I sort of remember a few numbers but they were much lower than 52 so they are probably wrong.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Would you know, or know if there's a list of these limits?

I sort of remember a few numbers but they were much lower than 52 so they are probably wrong.

Don't know whether there's a list, but minerals and food are 52, for the rest you can just do a ballpark estimate: You take 50, divide by the base price of the item before market tax, then round down and you end up with the amount you can buy.

So 52 for minerals and food, 25 for Consumer Goods, 12 for Alloys, 5 for Advanced Resources, and 2 for Zro and Dark Matter.

Worth noting that there is a bug though: The game updates these prices immediately when a save file is loaded, which does mess with the thresholds. You'll need to stop buying for a month if you save and reload, or just buy below the threshold in general.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Uhh... quite the opposite. Monthly Trades below a certain threshold do not move the price at all, because it will have moved back to base price before the month ticks over.

You know what i mean. You cannot establish an economy based on market trades, like buying 3k alloys per month while selling 10k minerals.

The alloys would cost 50k energy while the minerals would give you 1.5k (something like that)

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by Тривиум:

Considering that Trade doesn't scale into lategame I cannot fathom why it sucks so bad earlygame even on a trade focused empire? Just buying 35 consumer goods earlygame makes the price spike from 2.5 to around 3.5 Energy Credits or even more which pretty much means it's unsustainable even earlygame let alone midgame! Same goes for buying allow at 10-13 units per month. Price goes to around 6. Only minerals and food seems to stay at the same price with montly trades of 60 units.
Lategame when x10 times more units are needed for monthly trades the prices would skyrocket. Getting all possible bonuses to trade barely affect those unsustainable price increases which makes me wonder why would anyone pick Trade over anything else?
It seems like reducing the market fee and increasing trade bonuses doesn't decrease the huge price fluctuations BEFORE the galactic market is established. Establishing the galactic market ONLY makes the prices fluctuate more.
I've tested with 2-3 commercial pacts and Consumer Benefits and it's not much of a difference. I haven't tested spamming merchants and removing all clerks, because it just looks stupid/silly to be full of buildings that provide only a single job...

Its not bad, it just requires you to build a string of star bases to really make use of. That in early to mid-late game maxing your starbase count.

I can say regular empires get a significant leg up on gestalts. The extra energy helps them buy a few more resources and get a lead without have to have as many pops or consumer good efficiency. Mind you late game if the gestalt survives they tend to have resource efficiency. While regular empires get efficiency through ethics, government types, happiness, etc.

The goal is to get about a quarter of the number of starbase capacity as there is stars in your galaxy. That will allow you to collect all trade value without needing portals or gates. Since you will have many starbase for fleet capacity you can designate some of them to have 6+ star collection range. Reducing how many starbase capacity you need.

With a giant string of starbase you don't need fleets to patrol, keeping all your fleets open for defence and war.

AS FOR MARKET PLACE, you can buy up to 33 minerals per month, 11 alloys before the market price starts going up at beginning of game. Note, that market price will reset once galactic market forms. Since alien empires don't trade at your internal market rate you can game this to get rid of excess energy to buy more alloys or consumer goods than aliens without them taking advantage of the increased sell price of complex stuff.

Once market is formed aliens can take advantage of rates. By this point your energy economy should be rebalanced to not be heavily positive. And you can wait for market price to get low to move any excess energy you've collected.

[Тривиум]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Not sure if trolling... anyways

A "trade build" has nothing to do with the internal or galactic market. Literally nothing.

Funny how I can be trolling and at the same time having a sentence like this above. There should be some relation between trade focused empire and aham... The trade markets (internal and galactic). Clerks are the worst job in the game. It's counter intuitive for a trade empire build to spam Commercial Zones for 1 job per building.
Having the market be so volatile lategame makes 0 sense... Buying a silly amount of 13 alloys in year 2300-2400 shouldn't increase the price indefinitely especially when Trade doesn't scale.
The numbers you give are possible with like 2-3 DLC focused on trade federation and Merchant Guilds etc.
It's a cash grab mechanic. I can never get a good trade economy and I tried countless of times, but I have Utopia and no Federations and whatever other trade boosting DLC.

[ScreamCon]

Trade can be gamed to good effect early game, just need more trade tech repeatables for late game.

[Тривиум]

I made the maximum focused trade empire (without Federations DLC) and the performance is ABSOLUTE TRASH STILL!
1 clerk does 6.2 trade value and with all the bonuses it gets around +100% trade, so around 12 trade value total. A technician gives 28 energy with just TWO repeatables! I am yet to research Applied Superconductivity III
Spamming Commerce Megaplexes is dumb, as what I get is two ruler jobs for 30 trade value on the price of expensive building slot (with very bad RNG to even research it btw) and a lot of upkeep - 5 energy credits and 1 rare crystal. Around 3 consumer goods per ruler job. Even without repeatables pure energy generation looks more efficient.
Even with Trade Federation I will get around 30% more trade value which is still miserable! So buying the DLC even doesn't work for doing a nice trade focused build.
The only way trade is good is via diplomacy and trade agrements, but you don't need to go the horrible trade build for that.