Commercial pacts confusion

[snuttypie]

"Both empires will gain the economic bonuses of 10% of each other's Trade Value" from the wiki.

Say Empire A have 100 Trade Value and Empire B have 10 Trade Value, does this mean:

1. Both Empire A and B get each others bonuses for a total of 10% of the other Empire, plus 10% their own. Both will get 11 Trade Value.
2. Empire A will get 10% of Empire B's Trade Value; 1 Trade Value. Empire B will get 10% of Empire A's Trade Value; 10 Trade Value.
3. Empire A will get 10% of it's own Trade Value; 10 Trade Value. Empire B will get 10% of it's own Trade Value; 1 Trade Value.

The description really doesn't distinguish between which one it would be.


In the example below I have roughly 417,42 Trade Value. 10% = 41,74, with Trade League this is roughly the values shown. They will get 7,02 Trade Value. This implies that scenario 3 is the correct.

However, forming the pact (using Favors), I see no such increase. Doing the math comparing numbers before and after, I gained 3,5 energy and 1,76 Unity and Consumer goods. This implies that scenario 2 is the actual correct one. Hence the description should be changed to "Both empires will gain the economic bonuses of 10% of each the other Empire's Trade Value".

My thought on this is that forming a Commercial pact with another empire is rarely worth it unless they are a Mega Corp or Merchant. Mainly because you're boosting your adversaries. Unless you're trying to grow trust.

Also naturally, the text below in all the dialog and tooltip popups must be corrected to display the correct values.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

You get 10% of their Trade - Applying their trade policy

They get 10% of your Trade - Applying your trade policy

 

[A2ch0n]

You get 10% of their Trade - Applying their trade policy

They get 10% of your Trade - Applying your trade policy

Depending on the picture from the OP and my experience with trade empires, that can't be right. It's the opposite i think, you get 10% of your own and they get 10% of theirs or the textbox is completely wrong. The wiki says 10% of each other so officially you're right. But last time i watched my income after a trade deal, all three values (energy, unity, CG) changed and i'm sure my trade partner wasn't in a trade leage but i was.

So i don't know whats actually correct here.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

Depending on the picture from the OP and my experience with trade empires, that can't be right. It's the opposite i think, you get 10% of your own and they get 10% of theirs or the textbox is completely wrong. The wiki says 10% of each other so officially you're right. But last time i watched my income after a trade deal, all three values (energy, unity, CG) changed and i'm sure my trade partner wasn't in a trade leage but i was.

So i don't know whats actually correct here.

the tooltip is wrong

 

[Archael90]

Either way, bonuses from trade pacts should be shown somewhere so we could always see what is happening right now.

 

[Ryika]

You can't directly see them, but they are part of the "Trade" Income in the tooltips of the resources in the top bar.

If you enter a new commercial pact and hover over the resource at the end of the month, you can see that it does indeed change by an amount that is ascribed to the other party in the description (assuming nothing else has changed). So the description is wrong (and has been for a while), and option number 2 is indeed correct.

Which means that ironically, entering a commercial pact as a trade-focused empire is actually a pretty bad deal for you, unless you're intentionally trying to boost the trading partner.

Imho, a better solution would be to average out the incomes and split them between both partners.

 

[snuttypie]

You can't directly see them, but they are part of the "Trade" Income in the tooltips of the resources in the top bar.

If you enter a new commercial pact and hover over the resource at the end of the month, you can see that it does indeed change by an amount that is ascribed to the other party in the description (assuming nothing else has changed). So the description is wrong (and has been for a while), and option number 2 is indeed correct.

Which means that ironically, entering a commercial pact as a trade-focused empire is actually a pretty bad deal for you, unless you're intentionally trying to boost the trading partner.

Imho, a better solution would be to average out the incomes and split them between both partners.

Shame. And yes as you say it should be more of a fair split.

 

[Celydonn]

[...]

Which means that ironically, entering a commercial pact as a trade-focused empire is actually a pretty bad deal for you, unless you're intentionally trying to boost the trading partner.

Imho, a better solution would be to average out the incomes and split them between both partners.

I wonder why this was not implemented yet
Gues Paradox have just the "elites" in mind who play on hardest difficulty and ironman mode and it is still a breeze, not minding the people who just play casualy.

This is the very reason I only do non agression pacts with Ai empires.

 

[ZeeHero]

Shame. And yes as you say it should be more of a fair split.

Instead of a "fair split" with no regard to variables, it should take into account what each empire has to offer like real trade deals do. if an empire produces a ton of surplus consumer goods and very little energy credits, the bonus from a trade deal with them should reflect that in some way for instance.

the empires with actually nothing to offer should not be beneficial trade partners.

 

[Tamwin5]

You can't directly see them, but they are part of the "Trade" Income in the tooltips of the resources in the top bar.

If you enter a new commercial pact and hover over the resource at the end of the month, you can see that it does indeed change by an amount that is ascribed to the other party in the description (assuming nothing else has changed). So the description is wrong (and has been for a while), and option number 2 is indeed correct.

Which means that ironically, entering a commercial pact as a trade-focused empire is actually a pretty bad deal for you, unless you're intentionally trying to boost the trading partner.

Imho, a better solution would be to average out the incomes and split them between both partners.

I once played a RP MP game where I made a pacifist trade federation with two other people. We all had universal transactions, and were focused on trade. We made trade pacts with basically the entire galaxy, and were supplying empires with several hundred EC each by early mid game.

Whenever an empire declared war though, we’d cut them off. Amazingly this actually worked, as the sudden loss of close to a thousand monthly energy (in addition to increased upkeep from mobilized fleets) would cripple their economy.

The AI isn’t really smart enough to realize the implications of that, sadly. Because otherwise funding a rival could make them hesitant to attack you, lest they kill the golden goose.

The main purpose of commercial pacts, as designed, is to be used by megacorps to secure branch office locations. The megacorp offers a bunch of trade value, and while they don’t get much Trade in return they do get a market to expand into.

 

[ZeeHero]

Yeah if trade pacts affected AI behavior like that it would be much better and open more ways to play. I Want to buy my way into galactic power as an evil corpo tyrant! muwahaaha!

 

[HFY]

the empires with actually nothing to offer should not be beneficial trade partners.

Something something comparative advantage via specialization, there are no empires with "nothing to offer", blah blah blah foundation of Western economic theory mumble mumble.

 

[ZeeHero]

Well nothing particualrly useful in the situation could happen. like when theres a massive gap in relative power. but I would hope you know what I meant. there shouldn't be a uniform result when each empire has such different outputs, in both quantity and what it outputs.

 

[Sir Roderick]

Something something comparative advantage via specialization, there are no empires with "nothing to offer", blah blah blah foundation of Western economic theory mumble mumble.

Were you talking about this?

What do you want to see from the Trade/Economy rework?

I'm hoping Empire customization and builds will have a meaningful effect on the new stuff (Exclusive options perhaps). I want my trade league, and my megacorporation for example to have an advantage in trade and *feel* different as opposed to...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Spoiler

What do you want to see from the Trade/Economy rework?

I'm hoping Empire customization and builds will have a meaningful effect on the new stuff (Exclusive options perhaps). I want my trade league, and my megacorporation for example to have an advantage in trade and *feel* different as opposed to...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

• Jul 26, 2018
• #61

methegrate said:
This is why I like the comparative advantage model because, while this is intuitively true, it is not true in practice.

I wouldn't rely on Ricardo's work for much real life stuff TBH, especially not in any era in which labour is mobile to any significant degree...

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/08/ricardos-vice-virtues-industrial-diversity/
https://www.amazon.com/Question-Free-Trade-Economics-Discourse-ebook/dp/B01ETKDAXK

Briefly, you need the following assumptions to be true for Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage to work properly:

1. The comparative advantage is sustainable.
2. No externalities.
3. Production factors move between industries without cost.
4. No change in the ratio of income inequality.
5. Immobile international capital.
6. Short-term efficiency causes long-term growth.
7. Foreign productivity does not improve.
8. International labour is immobile to a large degree.

methegrate said:
This was the dominant economic thinking in the 19th Century, get big enough and you can take care of all your own needs.

It didn't work then because there were things you could not get at home: you can't really grow coffee in Britain, for example. This does not apply when you replace "country" with "solar system".

On the other hand if you're talking about just the industries you wish to protect or whatever then you're just plain wrong, as the case of the USA or Germany showed. Their tariffs against foreign products protected their own rapid industrialising economies to the point where they overtook free trading Britain in fairly short order.

methegrate said:
The result is that: First, you often can’t get everything at home. There’s nothing unrealistic about that. Maybe Bolognium is produced only under conditions found in certain nebulae. Maybe it’s only found in pulsar systems and you haven’t got any.

That's why I separated out strategic resources from everything else. In a realistic model, you can get everything you need in your home solar system. Absolute worst case scenario, you need more X than you can mine at the moment, so you have to build a few more solar panel satellites at your automated factory for your Dyson swarm to transmute it into existence from lighter elements.

methegrate said:
Or there might be something about the other empire that makes them a better producer than you. Eg: If Bolognium is only found at the bottom of an ocean, aquatic races will produce it far cheaper. So why spend 5 energy per unit of production when you could buy it for 3?

Yes, this is an example of what I was talking about when I mentioned foreigners getting it for you cheaper.

Mind you, if you're talking about a civilisation that can build ringworlds and the like, then everything changes again because you no longer mine in the conventional sense - you break down entire planets into raw materials, leaving nothing behind. A solid Dyson sphere with a 100 million km radius and a shell thickness of 2km would weigh around 2e30kg, or about as much as our own star. Oh sure, you can build it out of carbon femtotubes or whatever, but at this stage in an economy...

1. You can actually ship enough materials from A to B, in which case you just broke the Stellaris combat / fleet system, because you can legitimately throw quadrillions of warships about in battle. Master of Orion 2's "Doom Stars" aren't super-capital monsters any more, they're the equivalent of ships of the line, or cruisers or something. Warships destroying planets through collateral damage becomes routine.
2. You do everything on site, in which case trade is irrelevant as nobody can possibly ship enough material to you for it to matter.

methegrate said:
Why wouldn’t resources be unevenly distributed on a galactic scale? There’s nothing that says they should be.

Star & planet formation says they're going to be present just about everywhere. Now sure, certain places will have higher or lower concentrations of certain elements, but that is not the same as "none", or even "none in useful quantities". I mean, our own middle-of-the-road solar system has pretty impressive quantities of... basically everything we need to fill the solar system with quadrillions of people living at better-than-first-world standards. That includes plenty of very heavy elements like uranium, remember.

methegrate said:
Even when you can get or make everything, though, the reason a Stellaris civilization would trade is efficiency. If the Klingons make better, cheaper disrupters than me, I am losing wealth by not buying from them. Which lets me invest in making my luxury goods cheaper. In the end we both end up with more disrupters and virtual reality kits than we’d have if we made everything at home.

Whilst I get what you mean, you give a bad example, as in this case it means that when the Klingons declare war, your military-industrial base has been hollowed out by lack of disrupters and related products, and you find yourself conquered depressingly quickly.

Also relevant to Western economic theory, politicians and nobles stellaris jobs:

Spoiler

 

[HFY]

the tooltip is wrong

I thought this display reversal got fixed in one of the recent patches, but I guess it didn't?

Were you talking about this?

No, I'm talking about how one of the theoretical underpinnings of economic theory is that even if economy B is strictly inferior in every respect to economy A, then trade with B can still improve A by allowing A to selectively produce whatever A does best.

This is logically valid for a pair of sufficiently theoretical economies.

 

[ZeeHero]

Nothing to offer is a bit of an exaggeration, its more accurate to say, not much to currently offer.

 

[Incompetent]

If you have a commercial pact with your subject, is their pact income taxable?

If it is, then it's another one of those stupid micro-vassal exploits because you are effectively putting a global multiplier on your own trade income through no real economic activity whatsoever, just funnelling it through a random subject (who could have only 1 pop for all it matters, since the pact value is a fixed % of the other party's trade income).

If it isn't taxable, then it wouldn't be exploitative as such, but could have some use in propping up your subject's economy despite heavy taxes.

 

[The5lacker]

You can't directly see them, but they are part of the "Trade" Income in the tooltips of the resources in the top bar.

If you enter a new commercial pact and hover over the resource at the end of the month, you can see that it does indeed change by an amount that is ascribed to the other party in the description (assuming nothing else has changed). So the description is wrong (and has been for a while), and option number 2 is indeed correct.

Which means that ironically, entering a commercial pact as a trade-focused empire is actually a pretty bad deal for you, unless you're intentionally trying to boost the trading partner.

Imho, a better solution would be to average out the incomes and split them between both partners.

I mean, the whole point of the system is to incentivize low-trade empires to enter the trading market so diplomatic, trade-focused empires have something to entice them with. Them getting the better deal is fine so long as they're amenable to further negotiations. Trade value is the Carrot to the Stick of the fleet.

 

[Ryika]

I mean, the whole point of the system is to incentivize low-trade empires to enter the trading market so diplomatic, trade-focused empires have something to entice them with. Them getting the better deal is fine so long as they're amenable to further negotiations. Trade value is the Carrot to the Stick of the fleet.

Does that actually work though? An empire won't enter a Commercial Pact with you if they're not already neutral anyway, otherwise the -1000 opinion modifier will lock you out completely., But if they're neutral, you'll almost certainly be able to get them to enter other pacts, too. If not naturally, then certainly by spending a few favors, which if you're roleplaying a diplomatic empire probably costs you nothing because you'll be accumulating them passively through your envoys.

I do sometimes play that kind of diplomacy heavy empire, and I've never made use of commercial pacts to "leapfrog" toward other pacts. Maybe I've just failed to notice the opportunity, but it seems to me that if there is any benefit, then it's probably a pretty small one at that.

Regardless, the post you responded to is almost a year old, and I think I don't actually agree with it anymore, not entirely at least. The thing that I feel isn't very well designed is that you essentially pay Influence to give other people stuff without receiving anything tangible in return. I think I've suggested in another thread that maybe a more interesting design would be that the trade value remains one-sided, but that the "giving" part of the deal in return gains some of the diplomatic power from industry that the other side is producing, growing in size the more one-sided the deal is. This seems way more thematic to me, since if you're a trade power house, you probably do gain some control over the economic decisions that are made in the empires of your trade partners, and it plays into the diplomatic playstyle.

 

[zZander56]

You get 10% of their Trade - Applying their trade policy

This isn't actually true (unless it was changed recently) You essentially just get 10% of their TV and treat it as your own.

"Both empires will gain the economic bonuses of 10% of each other's Trade Value" from the wiki.

Say Empire A have 100 Trade Value and Empire B have 10 Trade Value, does this mean:

1. Both Empire A and B get each others bonuses for a total of 10% of the other Empire, plus 10% their own. Both will get 11 Trade Value.
2. Empire A will get 10% of Empire B's Trade Value; 1 Trade Value. Empire B will get 10% of Empire A's Trade Value; 10 Trade Value.
3. Empire A will get 10% of it's own Trade Value; 10 Trade Value. Empire B will get 10% of it's own Trade Value; 1 Trade Value.

The description really doesn't distinguish between which one it would be.


In the example below I have roughly 417,42 Trade Value. 10% = 41,74, with Trade League this is roughly the values shown. They will get 7,02 Trade Value. This implies that scenario 3 is the correct.

However, forming the pact (using Favors), I see no such increase. Doing the math comparing numbers before and after, I gained 3,5 energy and 1,76 Unity and Consumer goods. This implies that scenario 2 is the actual correct one. Hence the description should be changed to "Both empires will gain the economic bonuses of 10% of each the other Empire's Trade Value".

My thought on this is that forming a Commercial pact with another empire is rarely worth it unless they are a Mega Corp or Merchant. Mainly because you're boosting your adversaries. Unless you're trying to grow trust.

Also naturally, the text below in all the dialog and tooltip popups must be corrected to display the correct values.

View attachment 779613

The way it all works is that each empire receives 10% of the *other* empire's trade. So, option 2. The UI for commercial pacts has been busted in multiple ways for forever despite numerous reports, and reverses the numbers.