Not too sure when I first started playing Stellaris again, but I was definitely not active on these forums when this thread was going on, and you folks seem to have a solid grasp on an aspect of this game that I know nothing about. Even though this thread is like 10 months old, I felt that asking for help here might be better than making a totally new thread.
This thread, seems like it revolves around making use of the games built in trade deals, and the various ways folks are going about doing that, and then I get totally lost when other things I know nothing about get brought into the discussion.
For a point of reference, back when my old windows 95/98/XP computers were still up and running, I played another Paradox game, called HoI2, and I remember having Doomsday/Armageddon installed, as well. Back in those days, I played as Germany (because of the David and goliath nature of their struggle), and I learned to make a trade deal right off the back, where I traded Supplies for Oil with, IIRC, Venezuela or somebody. Some folks called me out on that, not in a bad or mean way mind you, but as my limited understanding of the game had led me to realize, Germany needed Oil, and could easily trade something they could make in abundance for it, so I set up that trade deal in Jan, 1936 and by the time war cut me off, I had a stockpile that would last the whole game.
My very much more limited experience with Stellaris, coming as it is many years later on (other than my initial introduction, way back in the day), I had managed to forget the whole exploitative trade deals, and have been trying to just build what I need from within my own empires boarders instead. I was totally unprepared for other playstyles that didn't feature building massive numbers of foundries on the homeworld, in order to get the Alloys production increased as fast as possible, the better to expand my outpost/orbital station construction and mass survey fleets, with military fleets either totally ignored, or just mostly ignored, and heaven forbid that I should "waste" time (and precious Alloys) on defensive constructs on my upgraded StarBase's in the choke points.
I've already decided that Stellaris has way to many mistakes in it to really engage me long term, but the game is fun, and as long as I am enjoying the experience I'll continue to play it until a better game comes along, and as I tend to stick to one game at a time (mostly) this means that I'll be playing a lot of Stellaris, for some considerable time, and I am interested in learning as much about this game as I can, in order to have fun learning, and then being able to point out the things that don't work for me, in a polite and very clear way, so that maybe, just maybe, Paradox can write a future game that will be more to my liking, but more on that after I learn Stellaris as it is in v 2.2, and then the latest version.
If I figure out enough, can I ask some questions about the game I am currently playing, using Version 2.2? I realize that there will be differences from v 2.2 and whatever versions you folks are doing, but right now I am clueless about so many aspects of the game, I end up stuck in a rut and just restarting over and over again in mostly the first 10-40 years of the game.
So, is this thread a good place for me to get 'schooled' in how to play with trades?