Food is better than energy

[Nakkivene]

Well, I don't even sell all that much food, trade produces enough energy, and a pile of consumer goods which you can sell for energy if you need to. But havintg a big food production has the advantage of easily being able to mash out the food distribution decisions.

 

[Chthon]

Well, I don't even sell all that much food, trade produces enough energy, and a pile of consumer goods which you can sell for energy if you need to. But havintg a big food production has the advantage of easily being able to mash out the food distribution decisions.

You have to learn from the past, like we did with Fen Habbinis. Do not forget the food to feed your population.

 

[Todie]

To be clear to those who havnt looked at the files, the stellaris market does not operate purely on supply and demand. Rather, prices gravitatw back towards their orogional peice over time, wven if no purchases are made.

 

[Secret Master]

I guess I'm dense. Someone needs to spell it out for me.

Several people in this thread are running no generator districts (or close to none) and selling food to power their empire.

They are also claiming to sell a lot of food at prices higher than 1 ec per food unit consistently.

I can't seem to do that. Keep in mind I have had at least one empire running a surplus of 300 food a day. Manage trades manually, get near my food cap, then try to sell in huge blocks of 10k (to maximize value). I get plenty of energy doing this, but I couldn't possibly power my empire this way. And when I am selling this much food, I cap out again before prices cross back to 1 ec per food.

I'm running consumer goods-based trade. Are you guys just running pure energy credits from trade? How are you powering so many industries and ships with food sales and trade alone (without being a mega-corp with offices everywhere)?

 

[Gratak]

i've been testing / playing a lot on small/tiny galaxies while lookig at the market and its define-parameters. Its apperent that the fluctuatins of prices aught to have parameters that are dynamically sensitive to galaxy size in some way; on larger gaalxies, prices can sometimes stay displaced from their standard for longer periods of time because of supply / demand ratio. hoever, when supply/demand from empires is taht much smaller due t a smaller or less dense galaxy, the markets artificial parameters that pull the price back towars its norm become much stronger by comparision.

This can be modded, but i im not sure it can be done in a dynamic way in just one mod, since market parametrs are all in defines. Maybe you ahve more of a clue on this with experience from dynmic-difficulty modding @Gratak ?

I don't know of any way to mod the market price except the trivial and useless change of the trade fee. I fear it's all hard coded

 

[CrowScape]

Several people in this thread are running no generator districts (or close to none) and selling food to power their empire.

They are also claiming to sell a lot of food at prices higher than 1 ec per food unit consistently.

The point is that you don't need to sell higher than 1 Energy per Food. You need to sell better than 0.67 Energy per Food, due to the fact that agricultural districts produce 50% more resources than energy districts. As the base value of the market is 0.7 Energy per Food, this isn't that hard to pull off.

 

[TheGrouch91]

I guess I'm dense. Someone needs to spell it out for me.

Several people in this thread are running no generator districts (or close to none) and selling food to power their empire.

They are also claiming to sell a lot of food at prices higher than 1 ec per food unit consistently.

I can't seem to do that. Keep in mind I have had at least one empire running a surplus of 300 food a day. Manage trades manually, get near my food cap, then try to sell in huge blocks of 10k (to maximize value). I get plenty of energy doing this, but I couldn't possibly power my empire this way. And when I am selling this much food, I cap out again before prices cross back to 1 ec per food.

I'm running consumer goods-based trade. Are you guys just running pure energy credits from trade? How are you powering so many industries and ships with food sales and trade alone (without being a mega-corp with offices everywhere)?

Having 10% market fee really helps. Also high difficulties actually help as the AI cheats more but is still dumb as a rock and has to buy everything with their magic money inflating prices.

 

[Mithkabob]

It depends upon the kind of empire you are running. One with decent bonuses to trade can easily pay for everything without building any generators. More aggressive empire types and gestalts who lack trade value end up building a ton of generators.

I really like the variety in feeling as to how your empire runs based on what type it is, what bonuses your pops have, etc.

 

[TheGrouch91]

I guess I'm dense. Someone needs to spell it out for me.

Several people in this thread are running no generator districts (or close to none) and selling food to power their empire.

They are also claiming to sell a lot of food at prices higher than 1 ec per food unit consistently.

I can't seem to do that. Keep in mind I have had at least one empire running a surplus of 300 food a day. Manage trades manually, get near my food cap, then try to sell in huge blocks of 10k (to maximize value). I get plenty of energy doing this, but I couldn't possibly power my empire this way. And when I am selling this much food, I cap out again before prices cross back to 1 ec per food.

I'm running consumer goods-based trade. Are you guys just running pure energy credits from trade? How are you powering so many industries and ships with food sales and trade alone (without being a mega-corp with offices everywhere)?

Explaining it in detail is more extensive than I thought so I just got this screenshot and maybe it'll help.

As you can see I am producing energy from pops and I do have some fallen empire buildings but they're really not needed as I could just sell more of my excess food and consumer goods. Not a giant empire either.

It is also worth mentioning that this doesn't always work all game. Especially early game food is very important for growth and expanding your empire drains all the resources from your producing worlds. But at some point you start to outproduce the cost by so much that you'll have more and more surpluses.

 

[Todie]

I don't know of any way to mod the market price except the trivial and useless change of the trade fee. I fear it's all hard coded

There is a whole batch of parameters in defined ngameplay = {...
You can edit the fluctuation math and the time it takes for price to normalize on its own (for example) ... i have tried this and it seems to work; i can mod the market to be more or less volatile.


my pondering is if there were ways to affect this outside defines, to account for different galaxy-settings... im assuming no.

 

[Gratak]

There is a whole batch of parameters in defined ngameplay = {...
You can edit the fluctuation math and the time it takes for price to normalize on its own (for example) ... i have tried this and it seems to work; i can mod the market to be more or less volatile.


my pondering is if there were ways to affect this outside defines, to account for different galaxy-settings... im assuming no.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Not touching defined in my DD mods for good reason.

 

[Todie]

I have a feeling the only reason this works is because the AI is broken and so is starving. In the AI mod i'm using this doesn't work at all.

Explaining it in detail is more extensive than I thought so I just got this screenshot and maybe it'll help.

As you can see I am producing energy from pops and I do have some fallen empire buildings but they're really not needed as I could just sell more of my excess food and consumer goods. Not a giant empire either.

It is also worth mentioning that this doesn't always work all game. Especially early game food is very important for growth and expanding your empire drains all the resources from your producing worlds. But at some point you start to outproduce the cost by so much that you'll have more and more surpluses.

Ive been running test AI games and modding more than ive been playing, but from my understanding, stuff like this is indeed very context depent.

... you can make continous sales on a small scale without the price budging - regardless of other empires market-use.

But when you scale up a bit, it will make a big differance how much of the stuff you are selling that others are buying.... so it matters a lot how big those economies are, how self sufficient they are on these resources - what theyre buying.


The unmodded(/vanilla) AI budgets a lot of energy for market purcheses, and values food irrationally high. It can also stumble on itself and be forced to keep buying food /cgoods , but even if it doesnt, it trades a lot; buys and banks a lot of resources that it has no immediate need for.

Having said all that - on a small galaxy and lower difficulty, the size of a player-empire economy can potentially dominate the galactic economy quite quickly; even if AI keeps buying more than they should their growth stagnates, liniting how much theyre buying. just 4-5 AI + passive market recovery may not be enough to keep prices stable.

... if you alternate between selling two resources tho, you can probably do it - the passive recovery mechanic alone will make a peice recover in 2 years or so.

 

[Secret Master]

Explaining it in detail is more extensive than I thought so I just got this screenshot and maybe it'll help.

As you can see I am producing energy from pops and I do have some fallen empire buildings but they're really not needed as I could just sell more of my excess food and consumer goods. Not a giant empire either.

It is also worth mentioning that this doesn't always work all game. Especially early game food is very important for growth and expanding your empire drains all the resources from your producing worlds. But at some point you start to outproduce the cost by so much that you'll have more and more surpluses.

From the tooltips, it looks like you have a big chunk of trade going on. In fact, it looks like you are a mega-corp leveraging trade income to your advantage. The "Monthly Trades" part of the income seems less important than just having tons of trade.

Question: Are you running pure energy credits for trade in this screenshot, or consumer goods?

 

[Chthon]

To be clear to those who havnt looked at the files, the stellaris market does not operate purely on supply and demand. Rather, prices gravitatw back towards their orogional peice over time, wven if no purchases are made.

Yes, that is true, but the market bounce back isn't as fast as you might expect. It seems to be somewhere around 10 years to return back to base from the last transaction. This means if transactions happen frequently enough the bounce back hardly matters.

 

[aprogressivist]

I have a feeling the only reason this works is because the AI is broken and so is starving. In the AI mod i'm using this doesn't work at all.

This is a valuable point. The market may be working well enough; but if the AI's can't balance their budgets, they're going to suffer while the players make a killing.

 

[TheGrouch91]

From the tooltips, it looks like you have a big chunk of trade going on. In fact, it looks like you are a mega-corp leveraging trade income to your advantage. The "Monthly Trades" part of the income seems less important than just having tons of trade.

Question: Are you running pure energy credits for trade in this screenshot, or consumer goods?

It's consumer benefits. And yes at the moment most of my energy income comes from trade. But my point was that if I were to replace all of those energy districts on my ringworld with farms I would still have a big surplus. It may even be bigger. Basically the 3,5k from jobs would become income from trades. Which would be 4,8k which is roughly 40% of my total income.

I also mostly wanted to showcase that you simply do not need energy districts. Also I switched to a democracy for some testing (the admin cap malus got huge) and this is easily doable without the bonuses to trade from being a MegaCorp.

 

[Secret Master]

It's consumer benefits. And yes at the moment most of my energy income comes from trade. But my point was that if I were to replace all of those energy districts on my ringworld with farms I would still have a big surplus. It may even be bigger. Basically the 3,5k from jobs would become income from trades. Which would be 4,8k which is roughly 40% of my total income.

I also mostly wanted to showcase that you simply do not need energy districts. Also I switched to a democracy for some testing (the admin cap malus got huge) and this is easily doable without the bonuses to trade from being a MegaCorp.

Your screenshot shows me something a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread.

You seem to be leveraging trade to good effect and supplementing that with food sales. That's a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread. The impression I had was people were just running 100% farms and selling hundreds of thousands of food to power their empires.

Your demonstration is a bit more nuanced, and I actually understand what you are saying.

 

[Chthon]

Your screenshot shows me something a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread.

You seem to be leveraging trade to good effect and supplementing that with food sales. That's a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread. The impression I had was people were just running 100% farms and selling hundreds of thousands of food to power their empires.

Your demonstration is a bit more nuanced, and I actually understand what you are saying.

I never said food only. I said food and minerals. Minerals tend to sell a bit higher than food so it works out that a good mix is good. I don't have a single energy district at this point.

 

[Masoz]

You seem to be leveraging trade to good effect and supplementing that with food sales. That's a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread. The impression I had was people were just running 100% farms and selling hundreds of thousands of food to power their empires.

I believe the point being made in this thread is that food can replace all your energy districts.

Even if you saturate the market and hit the minimum cap (which I think is 0.6? Could be wrong), you make so much more food per district than energy that you just need to stop selling until it ticks back up to 0.7 to make a higher profit. That doesn't take that long.

You can't get away with saturating the market on refined goods though, because they are too expensive to make. Getting stuck selling alloys at 0.6 a month is BRUTAL. You're using jobs, raw resources, strategic resources, and several buildings to all power them up, all to just sell off the good at half a credit each.

Basically, energy districts suck, food districts are OP, and be careful when selling refined goods.

 

[Althizor]

Your screenshot shows me something a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread.

You seem to be leveraging trade to good effect and supplementing that with food sales. That's a little different than what I was getting from other people in the thread. The impression I had was people were just running 100% farms and selling hundreds of thousands of food to power their empires.

Your demonstration is a bit more nuanced, and I actually understand what you are saying.

Later game you diversify a bit more, but early/early-mid game can absolutely be ran on the back of pure food and mineral sales. I can make it to an ecunempolis without having any civillian industries, generator districts, or commercial zones.

Diversifying still excludes generator districts though.