Trade

[UesugiKenshin]

I noticed that when in the Trade menu, that by swiping the name of the system/sector that this allows the player to rapidly scroll through every system under their control. That kind of programming is very useful.

When playing a single player game with no other major races, then trade is of lesser importance.

Truly as far as I'm concerned, why would you ever trade valuable natural resources that you require for your own buildings and units? I would rather build these than buy them but I am no Ferengi. It's analogous to petroleum within a nation. It's a limited natural resource required by your citizenry and thus is essentially priceless in value, and so it's illogical to sell it on an open market based upon the current whims of those demanding it. This is doubly illogical as those who demand it...actually lack it...yet require it. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Trade should be about finished products or services that other empires cannot themselves obtain. Thus globalism is a colossal failure as is playing out now with the Covid 19 virus as we speak. It is wiser for each empire to locally produce their own finshed goods amd services and thus reduce shipping costs, keep wages realistic (versus slave labor from nations paying abysmal wage rates which is typically linked with property values or the lack thereof). Additionally the largest unnecessary polluter are cargo vessels spewing the equivalent of tens of thousands of vehicles. Look that last aspect up. Globalism cannot exist without these massive ridiculous polluters.

What trade should be are unique finished goods and services like Romulan ale, tribbles, some kind of Denobulan medical equipment, etc. Then have a freighter class of vessels shuttling these and establishing trade routes. That is how GalCiv 2 operates.

Then as that's the only way to acquire these, and as minor races get subjugated (who should have the rarest trade items), then declaring war would significantly and adversely affect both empires' trade economies. Or be a draw to cause conflict to acquire them. And think about how much better this is for minor races as they might hold essentially a extremely valuable resource(s). Like the precious gem Tanzanite can only be found in Tanzania.

In the late midgame, say the Federation or the Klingons or whomever has a natural resource that is essential for stronger ships or to acquire advanced technology (like rare earth minerals are today), or to allow certain buildings or higher level troops who need them for weapons or armor (like depleted uranium). Or the Cardassian blades made from jevonite. I would bet Klingon bat'leth blades would be in high demand as are Japanese katana made from swordsmiths.

That would be a superior way to handle trade.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Klingons would be repulsed by obsessing over trade, but that is the raison d'etre for the Ferengi. They would exploit every opportunity for gold pressed latinum as their research scientists are laughable as is their combat ability as infantry. They also control less then ten systems within the Star Trek mythos. But they could and would corner the market to rush every single project with money and thus might control powerful ships if not fleets if played according to canon. They control inadequate systems to generate fleets.

They would then use such wealth to constantly bribe minor races with resources. And try to do the same with systems within empires.

As such they would be loathed worse than Cardassians or Romulans.

[UesugiKenshin]

To not have to deal with the minutia of micromanaging unique trade items, they could be modifiers of the existing techtree and factored in with an economic benefit.

Example
Romulan ale adds an economic benefit and is generated as a side benefit of some building being available.

Example
Klingon bloodwine would likely make their warriors merry ie a morale bonus rather than an economic benefit.

Worf laughs merrily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-CKMWiKp2I

[UesugiKenshin]

Because trade is built around building mines and various kinds of extracting several different kinds of natural resources, one can exploit this to begin selling accumulated valuable ore or crystals. Then from the credits gained then rush infrastructure. Doing such things then makes it possible to accelerate scientific research and build better foundaries. Rinse repeat and then make better mines.

Doing so early on would allow you to subjugate the minor races faster and then consolidate your power. Then especially if in a good map spot and lacking wormholes (which mostly are random in where you end up...though some are stable wormholes and so a way to rapidly deploy and crush the enemy), then you can outsmart the minor and major races faster.

But that is not very fun...but I guess that's relative. Beating the AI by anything other than combat is boring to me.

Say you take a traditional Japanese martial arts class like jujitsu. Well an advanced student or one with already physical development and a wrestling history, then can after learning the techniques can defeat other students...often quite easily. And aggressiveness and discipline are variable so some have advantages in this as well as committing more time.

But that is actually the opposite of Budo and Bushido. Budo are the ways of War ie the techniques and Bushido are the ways of the samurai as a journey to learn the administration of those martial techniques to wage war and peace, as well as administer a fiefdom ie governance.

In Budo and Bushido, the true nemesis is the Self. The practioner is their own worst enemy, not the enemy they see or perceive in their heart is the enemy. The real enemy is sloth, lack of discipline, commitment, wasting resources, not governing one's one ability and thus unable to lead others. The real enemy is a lack of honor and though others may see some famous samurai as a notable person, what matters is honor and chivalry in the face of sacrifice and death. Few samurai lived up to this.

The real joy in jujitsu is being so evenly matched that it takes 100% of the aspects of one's being to defeat a perceived enemy, but then proving you beat your own weaknesses first.

Exploiting an AI that is not ready to fight is what a Cardassian would do, not a Klingon as there would be no honor in it.

A Cardassian would take joy in defeating sectors and bringing them under the empire's subjugation.

A Klingon would not only see no honor in it, but no joy either. It's a pointless victory like beating a child at chess.

[UesugiKenshin]

If you like 4X games where you enjoy the mental challenge of crushing the enemies in the fastest time, then the easiest way is likely playing as the Cardassians or maybe as the Dominion.
Then to challenge yourself you change the level and how crowded the galaxy is. Then intentially pick empires that lack the best ship and troop values. Maybe picking the Ferengi if you like pop-rushing and steamrolling as they get the best economy and trade profits?

To me that is a kind of cheating but there are lots of videos showing people winning using these strategies in various games.

When doing special research, some give financial benefits like reducing upkeep costs so that is a way to maximize profits which then get poured right back into faster infrastructure.

I think if you play this way, you find yourself disappointed as you win too easily and likely rarely have challenging battles where you might lose. This would be like being a player good at seduction who then rather than develop a life long relationship, then ends up always thinking the next conquest will have a better outcome and then is 55 years old and still not married with children.

[UesugiKenshin]

Mamet wrote and directed Red Belt as he so admired the origins of Japanese jujitsu and the journey as that became the mixed martial arts. If you understand that film, you understand the Klingons.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CA_L-riL5ik

[UesugiKenshin]

Playing as the Federation, you would maximize trade so you can bankroll projects that would rapidly cause an acceptance among the minor races where they eventually willingly accept membership. And then use their unique techtrees to build appropriate projects to overcome others like the Dominion and the Cardassians, then defeat everyone else as a grand popularity contest. It rings so false to me as a kind of grandstanding while pretending to be altruistic: the ultimate shallow cheerleaders. It is exploitation but deeply subversive.

You could emancipate subjugated minor races, and terraform their sectors, and act in ways that cause friendships to form. But it's really dishonest versus how the Klingon empire works. At least they are honest.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Achilles heel in BotE is that you need titanium present in about an amount of 100 to unlock better infrastructure...just as a minimum.

So that means you pull up the resource window and ensure that every sector always has at least 100 available of titanium to allow better buildings.

But that means a constant demand which causes titanium to have an inflated price. Which is weird as it's so cheap a natural resource in such relative abundance than it's near worthless as a bribe.

Then should you sell it because you need to pay for a war time footing (see the intelligence/counterintelligence topic), then this rapidly deflates the price.

Both are not properly altering the value of a natural resource. Think about it this way, the price of oil is relatively stable with variations during war time as transportation is impacted. But in the game, much of your natural resources are created internaly in sectors as the distance is VAST across a sector..as a sector is NOT a solar system.

Maybe every 20th sale of some titanium would vary the price.

Example
What we have today is world currencies and no money. Currency is worthless paper and honestly is debt and that's a complex subject. Currency is created every time a bank loans money that they do not have themselves through fractional reserve lending.

Currency is even.more complex as only 1% of currency is in physical paper. Thus what we really have is horrid inflation which is why portion sizes at the grocery have shrank and why the middle class has been destroyed as what a single guy made in 1990 at a factory has doubled due to inflation, but salaries are so stagnant that a husband and a wife might both work to get that salary. It's ruinous economics.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0
And that was before Covid-19.

Money is when a currency is tied to a natural resource or even many natural resources types to ensure financial stability with gold and silver being the ones most often utilized. Money is not debt but very stable. Money fights inflation by the linkage with a natural resource.

[UesugiKenshin]

So if I was wanting to use economic warfare in BotE, I would manipulate the natural resource prices AFTER having built my infrastructure and military. Then I could crash the natural resource prices by the above manipulation. The AI likely could not keep up. I would sell off my natural resources to max out infrastructure, research, and units, then drive the value down.

[UesugiKenshin]

Here's proof of concept

Screenshot_2020-04-05-20-56-38.png

Screenshot_2020-04-05-21-40-30.png

Note the wild swinging of the price of titanium. It went from 347 to 72 as I dumped titanium to cope with the crazy Cardassians doing insane sabotage on me as the Klingons. It will end up where if I wanted to respond in kind, I could sabotage them at will and crush them with my military.

I don't like using exploits but the intelligence agencies are seriously demented in BotE.

[UesugiKenshin]

Resource exchanges are internal trades of mined natural resources.

An established system with developed mining has an influx of some resource like titanium from a titanium mine. The mine has additions each turn(ore/crystals are being mined) and has titanium in storage that has accumulated.

You could load up a transport with titanium and risk traveling from the mining planet to the receiving planet ie as essentially a freighter, but that is costly at first as the transport costs money and has to be moved around and that takes time. Then such travel is risky as a sector can be blockaded by an enemy moving into the sector and disrupting trade.

OR do the following.

1. When you start out, titanium is a requirement to unlock higher value buildings, though you can intially make base level buildings. So you could execute a trade on the galactic exchange say by buying a unit of titanium.

Conversely to sell your titanium that you mined, you can sell it in units. I'll come back to that.

This creates a demand for titanium when you buy which raises the price and when you sell, it lowers the price of titanium.

All trades have a 15% tax too.

2. You can establish trade routes. You meet minor and major races and then based on demeanor, they may offer or you may offer to begin trade. It happens based on the demeanor between the two negotiating parties. When trading is permitted then you do the following.

You pick a sector that is generating mined material in the system screen. You then click on the trade window. Then you can create one trading route (or two resource routes per sector). Then toggle through the natural resources (say titanium), then when you click on on trade. An orange route icon is generated and you click on say a minor race's planet. Then you can direct so much ore to be transfered in increments of x1 or say x10 and then that ore will be transfered minus a 15% tax to generate profits.

3. Meanwhile some of your less established sectors say have no titanium. So you can do as above except click on resource to create a route generating a transfer of ore from the established mining sector to say a new colony so that new colony can then make better infrastructure. So instead of just a basic farm, instead as the Klingons you can have Level 1 hunting, or instead of a basic foundry you can built a level 1 foundry.

Obviously you want to establish titanium mines everywhere so that eventually such resource trades are unnecessary (as remember you lose 15% through taxation), and you may rather use trading routes instead as a mechanism to improve relations while the other minor or major race pays for the privledge as they buy your ore/crystals.

The process is unclear as how do you know what ore/crystals they need? How do you negotiate a sales price? I presume the sale is based on the galactic rate?

4. This creates an exploit. If I want to make money, I can buy titanium as that artificially creates a demand that rises based on volume. That is how I drove the price up by constantly buying small amounts of titanium. Then in turn, I dumped titanium ie sold it to generate cash which I then used to rush production so I could build intelligence agencies (security buildings).

One could rush all infrastructure and thus vastly accelerate research, industrial production by fara better foundaries, rush farming to address hunger, etc.

Now I loathe doing that, but it's in there in the programming.

I drove the price of titanium to about 340+, then dumped it on successive turns down to 72. On successive turns, there must have been a demand for titanium from the other five major races and likely the minor races too. The titanium price rose in excess of 100+.

One can make lots of credits ie gold press latinum this way, but it feels weird like being an obsessive Ferengi. You can drive up the value of a natural resource to make a profit when you sell it directly. Then buy small amounts to drive up the price again.

Screenshot_2020-04-06-10-27-00.png

Screenshot_2020-04-06-10-26-27.png

Screenshot_2020-04-06-10-26-13.png

Screenshot_2020-04-06-10-25-51.png

Screenshot_2020-04-06-10-24-33.png

Screenshot_2020-04-06-10-24-21.png

I don't like it as it ruins the natural effect of eras of infrastructure, research, and military units. Such ploys then can create unnatural budgets to accelerate what would be available.

It's unnecessary as the reason I found this is to cope with ridiculous levels of game crippling intelligence operations by the Cardassians doing sabotage missions that are IMPOSSIBLE given the vast distances of galactic space-time. Maybe in 2365 in turn 400 they could begin to do minor sabotage missions. Sure they could subvert diplomatic relations. It's absolutely impossible they could destroy major starships with cosmetically altered Cardassians on Klingon ships by turn 300. It stretches all credibility to the point of incredulity.

Megretz has two resource route to Venusia and Pandora and transferring these in whatever amount you elect to do x1 or x10 minus a 15% tax. It's better for Venusia and Pandora to make their own, but one could do one time supply runs so they have a base amount to utilize until their own mining operations then allow a natural progression of infrastructure building.

Even a powerhouse sector can only produce one infrastructure change, or troops produced, or ship built. When in actuality many sectors at that level would be doing all three in various amounts each turn. A powerhouse sector should not be limited to the same building queue mechanic as new colony, right?

[UesugiKenshin]

Timescale really matters. Is their four quarters per year, or is this in one year increments? Is it graduated or scaled where at first much time passes, then becomes slowly annual? The latter is how say Civ2 and Civ3 operate.

Typically it's annual when that actually makes no sense in 2365 where it's likely quarterly. Based on the level of foundaries and amount of citizens allocated to industrial capacity (which is too much micromanaging and so Iet the built-in managers do it), plus energy generation plus access to the required natural resources.

A sector is generating lots of changes at the advanced level with foundaries exceeding level 3+.

It's hard to have eras of appropriate ships, for example, unless the solar date is relevant yet even hardcore Trekker fans don't understand it well but refer to our own calendar to compare appropriate tech level in TOS to STTNG.

To me 200 turns (at the normal expansion rate) still feels like the TOS era, whereas by turn 400+, it likely will feel like the early STTNG era. That is a gap of 100 years divided by 200 turns so six month intervals. That works on a normal rate of expansion (not slow).

The rate of expansion would likely have to be higher to do appropriate warp travel to handle say a Dominion War with massive fleets. The galaxy in Star Treks with quadrants in theory, but largely lacking a stable wormhole means almost all warfare is in the alpha and beta quadrants. Thus very limited Ferengi and Cardassian encounters and no Dominion encounters.

I would have no intelligence missions on the easy level.
Then have graduated espionage missions after turn 200 on the next level.
Then have graduated espionage and sabotage missions after turn 300 on the next level.
And so forth as either intelligence should be severely altered in strength and success per game level, or only turned on at the impossible level in its current strength.

It's not merely a challenge; it's not fun or amusing in an otherwise brilliant game.

[UesugiKenshin]

So the way is I colonize a series of systems and build infrastructure first.

Then generate new colony ships and terraform as my range may be limited to create even more.

Those systems need natural resources as advanced mining has not taken place. So I build a couple rounds of basic infrastructure.

Then build resource routes from developed hubs where mining is advanced. These are seen as orange routes on the galaxy map.

Then when you look at the empire map and systems, and narrow the focus to resources, and then sort by titanium, the first planet only has natural discovered despoits of 4 units, but if you click on the actual planet, then in paranthesis it shows these transferred amounts of titanium ore. Now I can build the basic infrastructure or the advanced levelsor upgradae the existing ones.

It's faster (and may be your only choice at the beginning) to just buy some titanium units on the galactic exchange...with the caveat of inflating the price of titanium.

This way I can control such ore/crystal manipulation when beneficial to my empire.

As an economic weapon, just as OPEC or Russia or the USA wants to manipulate their petroleum prices, they sell from their strategic national stockpile and or control how much is being extracted to modulate the oil price sales price.

As a further economic weapon, based on intelligence reports, then if their economy is in economic distress, then I could sell mass amounts of some ore they routinely sell to limit their ability to raise funds by selling ore/crystal.

Note the highlighest bottom message that now there are items in global storage which reflects these transfers of ore/crystal through resource routes. It's creating caches of natural resources to control what infrastructure can be built ahead of schedule.

I'm showing what the system can do, and likely what it does do to develop faster infrastructure, not necessarily what you should do.

And then with a sufficient surplus treasury that gets accumulated, one can rush the infrastructure projects. In my opinion, it's better to build up slowly by increasing industrial capacity with better foundaries and have surplus treasuries for contengencies.

Whereas a different approach is basically spend all the treasury save 500-1000 credits as a bare minimum, and rush every useful project, and then outpace the AI and defeat it.

It depends on what you think winning is. I think winning looks like thrilling combat as many turns as possible until worthy adversaries then can challenge me. I don't like giving a weak AI enemy a butt whipping is enjoyable.

[UesugiKenshin]

Note that playing as the Klingons means even if you wanted trade agreements which technically only helps your enemy but giving them precious limited natural resources, they likely won't trust you as you are an empire of warriors and they fear subjugation, regardless of your innocent actions at the start.

Is it better to have strong enemies? I think so if roleplaying the Klingons as they love WAR.

Is it better to have strong emenies as any other empire? The answer is a resounding NO. in every case strong enemies will develop strong military units who then will oppose you. Thus trade is a double edged sword. So it's largely about exploitation and subterfuge. Neither are Klingon virtues.

A Klingon warrior sacrifices their life for the good of the empire and expansion. That requires credits and so some compliant minor races may end up being worthy members in the Klingon empire. Doing so is dangerous as the Delarians and the Xiborg have mighty early ships. I doubt it's even plausible they can become members, but obviously finally subjugated.

Is it wiser to negotiate until stronger and then defeat them, or saying forget about the duplicity and just ignore them until you can muster sufficient strength to crush them into dust? I think the latter but that would be what Worf would do, but Worf would never lead the Klingon empire whereas Gowron ended up doing so.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Gowron

Gowron is flawed yet convinces the Sons of Mogh (Worf and Kurn) to support his claim, then he ends up like all politicians and being a liar. Honest politicians don't exist and often are the true enemies versus other empires. The genuine nemesis is ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGRbSaTSdQI&app=desktop

[UesugiKenshin]

By implication then if the trade routes and resource routes are known...likely as a function of intelligence infrastructures at high levels and huge expense (it should be that way), then one can wage economic war by blockading trade of natural resources or by blocking the movement of critical raw materials of resources.

That should then harm the enemies' economy whether it shuts down production or income from minor and major races.

And that was one method the USA used to trigger the Japanese into launching an attack on Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile FDR illegally funded guerilla activities in Manchuria and actually sent pilots who waged an illegal war against Imperial Japan. He also illegally helped England three times.

War is most often indirect before the official declaration occurs.