Suggestion to improve Trade Value, direkt trade between empires, and Galactic Market

[Franton]

Some of the ongoing and permanently recurring discussions made me think, and I just came up with an idea that, I believe, has the potential to improve the situation in several fields that people keep complaining about. I only started to wrap my head around it, and since my idea is basically the introductionof a limitation, I thought I might post it here rather than the suggestions forum that many users don't bother to check regularly (myself included).

So here is my idea:
Limit the total amount of all 'manual' trading transactions (trade on the Galactic market and trade deals with other empires) to the amount of TV produced in your own empire,

Effects:
- the use of the Galactic Market is no longer unlimited: you can't 'produce' unlimited amounts of specific resources out of thin air as so many complained over the years
- Trade Value becomes much more important, without actually increasing it's direct economic value.
- This in turn make Clerks more useful: now that they're producing 4 instead of 2 TV each, they could be an important backbone to your economy if part of it depends on trades.
- It enforces a more balanced and self-sufficient economy, preventing cheesy abuses and encouraging AI empires to build a more solid economic basis

Unclear:
- should one time trades be limited as well, and by how much?
- is this too strong a limitation, especially when trading with a stronger economic partner (e. g. a friendly-ish FE)?
- how many players are there who don't think the abovementioned effects are not worth it at the cost of introducing a limitation?

Personally I think this would be a huge change for the benefit of trade, even for empires that are not megacorps or otherwise focused on trade. It would most certainly force me to put a lot more effort into TV than I do now. But I would also stop to automatically disable all clerk jobs, and actually make use of clerks! I think, overall, this could lead to more interesting games, but what does everyone else think?

 

[moyang]

This change just make trade value worthless, since it doesn't make thing itself.

Trade Value Rework: trade value as market currency would be a better solution.

 

[Bezborg]

I've made a few suggestions to this effect myself, over the years.

In one of them, I explored the idea of making trade value a "capacity", and trades reserve this capacity. It's interesting, but only to the player I think.

Trade value as currency would be more suitable for this game, in its current mechanical state.

 

[Dragatus]

- It enforces a more balanced and self-sufficient economy, preventing cheesy abuses and encouraging AI empires to build a more solid economic basis

That's kind of like saying something will encourage fish to walk on land. It's not encouragement they need, it's ability.

 

[Franton]

That's kind of like saying something will encourage fish to walk on land. It's not encouragement they need, it's ability.

What I meant is that an AI empire that obtains basic resources through trade deals and builds its economy around it may be in trouble when the trade deal ends and isn't replaced by a similar one. The AI *does* seem to build around existing trade deals, e. g. when I make a deal trading food for large amounts of energy and come back 5 years later, I typically find that my trading partner is able and willing to trade even more! However, at the same time the capability and/or willingness to trade anything else deteriorates over the same period.

I may be wrong, but I think that any restriction to the trade amounts would limit the damage to the overall economy dealt to AI empires in this way. Not so much be teaching the AI to be more clever, but by restricting it's ability to do more stupid things.