TL;DR: Trade food and minerals for alloys and profit with alien empires.
Become a tech/economic powerhouse fast.
Provided you meet a somewhat friendly neighbour, you can start trading resources with them.
However, in the early stages, the AI sense for resource value is a bit skewed, which you can abuse.
Minerals and Food are important, but they are also easy to produce (using only base values):
1 district + 2 pops for 8 minerals or 12 food per month.
Compare that to alloy production:
1 building + 2 pops + 12 minerals for 6 alloys.
If you go to the galactic market to sell basics to buy alloys, you have to pay the 30% market fee twice - for buying and selling.
So in order to get a factory's worth of alloys, you have to pay ~32 energy for 6 alloys (except you can't: only bulk purchases).
And in order to get the equivalent amount, you have to sell ~45 minerals for 32 energy (except you can't: only bulk sales).
So: 45 minerals for 6 alloys.
Now let's trade with a friendly AI:
24 minerals for 6 alloys.
Again for emphasis:
Market: 8 minerals for 1 alloy
Trade: 4 minerals for 1 alloy
That in itself is already great, but consider how much it would burden your economy, if you wanted to produce those 6 alloys monthly by yourself from scratch vs trading minerals for them:
Granted, producing alloys gives you 1 pop to assign elsewhere, but consider that there are plenty of different bonuses to mining available from the start, compared to only a handful of bonuses for alloy production.
And you have a building slot left over where you can put in something else. Like a research lab.
And you get the extra housing.
And you cripple the AI war economy (if they weren't cheating bastards).
However, over time, the AI re-evaluates resources value, so it likely won't work at a later stage. But it's awesome for the early game.
Works just fine with food, too.
I also wrote a small spreadsheet calculator for you to use when evaluating a trade:
Trade favorability 100% means, you get the same deal you would have gotten with the galactic market. Anything over 100% is a better deal.
Use the orange cells to enter your offer and the other empire's counter offer and you can immediately see if the deal is good or not.
Later, when prices on the galactic market are inflated, adjust accordingly in the Current Prize column.
Links here:
Become a tech/economic powerhouse fast.
Provided you meet a somewhat friendly neighbour, you can start trading resources with them.
However, in the early stages, the AI sense for resource value is a bit skewed, which you can abuse.
Minerals and Food are important, but they are also easy to produce (using only base values):
1 district + 2 pops for 8 minerals or 12 food per month.
Compare that to alloy production:
1 building + 2 pops + 12 minerals for 6 alloys.
If you go to the galactic market to sell basics to buy alloys, you have to pay the 30% market fee twice - for buying and selling.
So in order to get a factory's worth of alloys, you have to pay ~32 energy for 6 alloys (except you can't: only bulk purchases).
And in order to get the equivalent amount, you have to sell ~45 minerals for 32 energy (except you can't: only bulk sales).
So: 45 minerals for 6 alloys.
Now let's trade with a friendly AI:
24 minerals for 6 alloys.
Again for emphasis:
Market: 8 minerals for 1 alloy
Trade: 4 minerals for 1 alloy
That in itself is already great, but consider how much it would burden your economy, if you wanted to produce those 6 alloys monthly by yourself from scratch vs trading minerals for them:
Produce 6 alloys | Produce 24 minerals | |
---|---|---|
Buildings/Districts | 1 building slot + 1.5 mining districts | 3 mining districts |
Mineral cost | 950 | 900 |
Working pops | 5 (2 metallurgists +3 miners) | 6 miners |
Food upkeep | 5 | 6 |
Consumer Goods upkeep | 1.75 | 1.5 |
Energy upkeep | 3.5 | 3 |
Granted, producing alloys gives you 1 pop to assign elsewhere, but consider that there are plenty of different bonuses to mining available from the start, compared to only a handful of bonuses for alloy production.
And you have a building slot left over where you can put in something else. Like a research lab.
And you get the extra housing.
And you cripple the AI war economy (if they weren't cheating bastards).
However, over time, the AI re-evaluates resources value, so it likely won't work at a later stage. But it's awesome for the early game.
Works just fine with food, too.
I also wrote a small spreadsheet calculator for you to use when evaluating a trade:
Trade favorability 100% means, you get the same deal you would have gotten with the galactic market. Anything over 100% is a better deal.
Use the orange cells to enter your offer and the other empire's counter offer and you can immediately see if the deal is good or not.
Later, when prices on the galactic market are inflated, adjust accordingly in the Current Prize column.
Links here:
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