Trade and Commerce: Mod thoughts

[TheLand]

I was thinking about how trade might be implemented in Stellaris and, while it's hideously too soon to start planning mods, these were some of the thoughts I had about how it might be modded in. I'm scribbling them down here in case I want to come back to it in future, and peoples' reactions on what might be fun/feasible would be cool

Goals
The overall goals for this might be
1. Add to gameplay by offering more detail and choice around trade and resources (but broadly in keeping with the overall level of abstraction)
2. Improve the viability of being a small, peaceful power compared to a massive blob. (It's too early to tell whether blobs are over-powered in Stellaris, but they normally are in Paradox games at release. However, in the EU games being a small trading power is a feasible choice, and mods that make this more viable in Stellaris would be cool).

I can see two ways towards this which are probably both moddable - one new mechanic and one improved one...

Interstellar Commerce
* Establishing Commerce Links would be a new Diplomacy option (in Trade Deals)
* This represents trade between two reasonably friendly powers, that occurs below the abstraction level of the game as a whole. I.e. starships flying backwards and forwards between worlds of the species independently of their governments
* Both parties to a Commerce Links gain a small passive income of Energy, Minerals or both. This represents the overall gains from trade
* Establishing the links costs Influence [and possibly other resources?].
* Commerce links are cancelled if the nations are at war with each other
* The level of the income from Commerce Links depends on:
** The duration of the commerce links. It takes several years for income to reach a good level, and it continues to grow very gradually after time. After 100 years your economies are closely integrated and the gains are large
** The size *of your trade partner*. The more worlds in your commerce partner's empire, the more income you get. This is asymmetrical so a small nation gets more benefit from trading wiht a vast empire than the other way around. However, this is a much-slower-than-linear increase (e.g. the value of trading with a 10-system nation might be twice the value of trading with a one system nation)
** The number of other commerce links you have. The more commerce links you have, the bigger the bneefit from each of them. This is to simulate the effect of being a "trade hub" and being the Venice or the Liverpool of your part of the galaxy [Doesn't quite work though: if you have a block of 5 nations all trading with each other, all of them can't be the trade hub for all of the others]
** Your Ethos, Traits and Government Type. A thrifty materialist xenophile nation governed by a plutocratic hegemony will gain more from trade than a spiritualist military junta
** Possibly The nature of your homeworld and your phenotype, compared to your trade partner's. Similar species type and slightly different homeworld (e.g. Continental world if yours is Tropical) would add value.

Strategic Resource improvements
Another approach that might work instead or as well would be extending the strategic resource system.
* The number of strategic resources should be relatively high [~20-30? of course the actual number isn't confirmed yet, but only about 4 have appeared in the videos so far]
** This helps ensure everyone has some kind of resources to trade potentially
** This would probably necessitate reducing the impact of each resource (possibly considerably)
** Potentially lots of flavour here
* Strategic resources should appear on more worlds, so most worlds have access to at least one
** [possibly not starting homeworlds]
* However not all resources would be available.
** A resource starts as a 'potential' resource, visible as a planet attribute
** Potential resources turn into actual resources when they are exploited, which is a process that happens below the level of abstraction [to avoid huge micromanagement & exploitability]
** How likely a resource is to become available / how long it takes to exploit depends on government type and ethods: militarist nations are more likely to exploit military resources, decadent materialists luxury resources, etc
*** A 'blob penalty' should be incorporated: it is much less likely you will extract a new strategic resource from your 50th planet than your 2nd
* As well as/instead of allowing specific construction, access to strategic resouces could give (small) empire-wide modifiers
** These global modifiers could depend on your ethics
* Strategic resources would continue to be traded in the trade agreement interface

Anyone got any thoughts?

 

[machinekng13]

Sounds like a good subsystem to help patch up this aspect before the inevitable Wealth of Nations in space.

Interstellar Commerce
* Establishing Commerce Links would be a new Diplomacy option (in Trade Deals)
* This represents trade between two reasonably friendly powers, that occurs below the abstraction level of the game as a whole. I.e. starships flying backwards and forwards between worlds of the species independently of their governments
* Both parties to a Commerce Links gain a small passive income of Energy, Minerals or both. This represents the overall gains from trade
* Establishing the links costs Influence [and possibly other resources?].
* Commerce links are cancelled if the nations are at war with each other.

I really like the basic concept, as it seems like it'd be fairly straightforward to implement and the trade-offs are obvious. The influence cost means that one is going to have less influence to establish frontier outposts and establish policies, so instead of a binary expansion/control trade-off, we have a triparite expansion/control/wealth trade-off.

* The level of the income from Commerce Links depends on:
** The duration of the commerce links. It takes several years for income to reach a good level, and it continues to grow very gradually after time. After 100 years your economies are closely integrated and the gains are large
** The size *of your trade partner*. The more worlds in your commerce partner's empire, the more income you get. This is asymmetrical so a small nation gets more benefit from trading wiht a vast empire than the other way around. However, this is a much-slower-than-linear increase (e.g. the value of trading with a 10-system nation might be twice the value of trading with a one system nation)
** The number of other commerce links you have. The more commerce links you have, the bigger the bneefit from each of them. This is to simulate the effect of being a "trade hub" and being the Venice or the Liverpool of your part of the galaxy [Doesn't quite work though: if you have a block of 5 nations all trading with each other, all of them can't be the trade hub for all of the others]
** Your Ethos, Traits and Government Type. A thrifty materialist xenophile nation governed by a plutocratic hegemony will gain more from trade than a spiritualist military junta
** Possibly The nature of your homeworld and your phenotype, compared to your trade partner's. Similar species type and slightly different homeworld (e.g. Continental world if yours is Tropical) would add value.

I like this in general as well. One other idea would be to have a comparative advantage system, where each trade partner would receive flags depending on whether or not their mineral or energy production is higher. This would help emphasize the import-export nature of commerce, and would influence the trade-offs of the commerce link. For example, if you're engaging with trade with a high-mineral empire, you might have an event where a mineral plot on one of your planet loses its base bonus, due to it becoming comparatively noncompetitive. This could lead to unemployment and unhappiness. On the other hand, if you're the higher energy partner in such a trade, you may see a bonus to one of you energy plots due to increased competitiveness, or see an energy bonus on a bare plot. Similarly, if you have a mineral-focused sector, they may become unhappy if you're trading with a more productive species, while your energy districts would be happier if you can start exporting energy. You could always refocus your sectors, of course, but if they've had time to specialize it may take them a while to retool.

Strategic Resource improvements
Another approach that might work instead or as well would be extending the strategic resource system.
* The number of strategic resources should be relatively high [~20-30? of course the actual number isn't confirmed yet, but only about 4 have appeared in the videos so far]
** This helps ensure everyone has some kind of resources to trade potentially
** This would probably necessitate reducing the impact of each resource (possibly considerably)
** Potentially lots of flavour here
* Strategic resources should appear on more worlds, so most worlds have access to at least one
** [possibly not starting homeworlds]
* However not all resources would be available.
** A resource starts as a 'potential' resource, visible as a planet attribute
** Potential resources turn into actual resources when they are exploited, which is a process that happens below the level of abstraction [to avoid huge micromanagement & exploitability]
** How likely a resource is to become available / how long it takes to exploit depends on government type and ethods: militarist nations are more likely to exploit military resources, decadent materialists luxury resources, etc
*** A 'blob penalty' should be incorporated: it is much less likely you will extract a new strategic resource from your 50th planet than your 2nd
* As well as/instead of allowing specific construction, access to strategic resouces could give (small) empire-wide modifiers
** These global modifiers could depend on your ethics
* Strategic resources would continue to be traded in the trade agreement interface

I'm not sure if we know enough about the strategic resource system to start tinkering with it yet, but I like the idea of unexploited v. exploited resources. I would also suggest the idea of special buildings that produce strategic resources from an energy/mineral upkeep.

 

[nweismuller]

For the OP: remember that 'Materialist' doesn't have to do with an affinity towards material wealth, and is uncorrelated with interest in trade. 'Materialists' in Stellaris terms are oriented towards a philosophical position that only accepts the material world as real and seeks to understand and master it through science and technology- more 'Dawkins' and less 'Madonna'. The Individualist ethos is more closely associated with trade, both from bonuses and flavor text.

Vis-a-vis 'trade hub' bonuses- perhaps a better way to handle that would be to grant a bonus to your trade income for every pair of empires you have trade links to that do not have trade links to each other, rather than a straight bonus for number of trade links you have. This should probably be smaller than the value of a direct link between those two empires, and would represent serving as an alternate conduit of trade.

 

[TheLand]

Thanks! Useful thoughts....

 

[EmperorZelos]

As an EUIV modder I can say that a lot of that is possible to do if the events and stuff are remotely similar to that of EUIV

 

[Daetrin]

Personally, my opinion is that trade shouldn't impact mineral and energy income at all.

Rather, trade should affect happiness, migration, ethos, and diplomacy.

Partly this is just because adding ways to net those would diminish the importance of developing worlds properly and so on - that or require a rebalancing of costs to account for the increased income. Partly it's because we've already seen trade-as-income in every other game and I'd like to see something different. And partly it's because I'd like to see a richer ethos and diplomacy system.

Happiness: "What is it?" "It is...it is...it is green." vs "They took our jerbs!"
Yes, it's not just a bonus to happiness. You have a benefit from trade in the form of exotic goods, and that will definitely make people happy. But trade can also shut down industries or at the very least compete with local goods and that can make people unhappy. Since happiness is not on a per-planet basis but a per pop basis you can have both of these things happening on a single planet. The way that you'd deal with this would probably be some combination of planetary, sector, and empire wide edicts - since this should fit into the core vs. sector paradigm, you shouldn't need to fiddle manually with trade nodes and such. Rather you should be able to consider broad strokes approaches.

As to what would actually determine whether a pop gets a benefit or a malus from trade influence, I have no idea. Presumably since an actual trade expansion would introduce an entirely new set of mechanics, those would be in it.

Migration: "I'm going to Disneyworld!" vs. "Our new neighbors are what!?"
This already exists really, since we see migration happening, but trade should create preferential migration directions and destinations. Heavy trade between two planets should mean more migration between them, after all.

Ethos: "Have you heard the good word of Grolb?" vs. "Have you heard the good word of Blorg?"
Trade should clearly spread ethos more quickly. If you want to increase the assimilation of your newly-conquered system, you'd definitely want to encourage trade there so your ethos will infect the local populace. On the other hand, separatist factions on heavily-traded worlds might have the ability to reach out to other planets to join their cause, so that goes both ways.

Diplomacy: "No two countries with a McDonald's have ever gone to war." vs. "They are ripping us off."
It's clear that trade can result in improved diplomatic relations, and in fact could be a direct reduction to border friction since a bunch of close worlds will also be able to trade a lot. But on the other hand, if your trade policies are taking advantage of the other empire somehow, they might break off trade and be even madder than before.

Overall, I want there to be good and bad things about trade. I don't want it to be simply maximizing a number. When trade is beneficial, your population is happy, your ethos is spreading, your neighbors are pleased with you, and people can get where they want to go. When trade is not, your population is unemployed, separatist ethos are spreading, you're getting unpleasant neighbors, and other empires are mad that you're trying to rip them off.

 

[EmperorZelos]

Personally, my opinion is that trade shouldn't impact mineral and energy income at all.

Rather, trade should affect happiness, migration, ethos, and diplomacy.

Partly this is just because adding ways to net those would diminish the importance of developing worlds properly and so on - that or require a rebalancing of costs to account for the increased income. Partly it's because we've already seen trade-as-income in every other game and I'd like to see something different. And partly it's because I'd like to see a richer ethos and diplomacy system.

Happiness: "What is it?" "It is...it is...it is green." vs "They took our jerbs!"
Yes, it's not just a bonus to happiness. You have a benefit from trade in the form of exotic goods, and that will definitely make people happy. But trade can also shut down industries or at the very least compete with local goods and that can make people unhappy. Since happiness is not on a per-planet basis but a per pop basis you can have both of these things happening on a single planet. The way that you'd deal with this would probably be some combination of planetary, sector, and empire wide edicts - since this should fit into the core vs. sector paradigm, you shouldn't need to fiddle manually with trade nodes and such. Rather you should be able to consider broad strokes approaches.

As to what would actually determine whether a pop gets a benefit or a malus from trade influence, I have no idea. Presumably since an actual trade expansion would introduce an entirely new set of mechanics, those would be in it.

Migration: "I'm going to Disneyworld!" vs. "Our new neighbors are what!?"
This already exists really, since we see migration happening, but trade should create preferential migration directions and destinations. Heavy trade between two planets should mean more migration between them, after all.

Ethos: "Have you heard the good word of Grolb?" vs. "Have you heard the good word of Blorg?"
Trade should clearly spread ethos more quickly. If you want to increase the assimilation of your newly-conquered system, you'd definitely want to encourage trade there so your ethos will infect the local populace. On the other hand, separatist factions on heavily-traded worlds might have the ability to reach out to other planets to join their cause, so that goes both ways.

Diplomacy: "No two countries with a McDonald's have ever gone to war." vs. "They are ripping us off."
It's clear that trade can result in improved diplomatic relations, and in fact could be a direct reduction to border friction since a bunch of close worlds will also be able to trade a lot. But on the other hand, if your trade policies are taking advantage of the other empire somehow, they might break off trade and be even madder than before.

Overall, I want there to be good and bad things about trade. I don't want it to be simply maximizing a number. When trade is beneficial, your population is happy, your ethos is spreading, your neighbors are pleased with you, and people can get where they want to go. When trade is not, your population is unemployed, separatist ethos are spreading, you're getting unpleasant neighbors, and other empires are mad that you're trying to rip them off.

If possible you could have both systems

 

[S.C. Watson]

I would be jazzed if Paradox took a page from the Stars! playbook and used physical resources instead of abstractions.

My notes from another forum:

I desperately want some sort of in game (physical) raidable / tradable resources - in other words, I'd love to see the civilian side of the game developed some. Trade ships with way points could be raided for their resources, and instead of abstract storage, we'd have physical locations where the resources are produced, stored, and used.

This way, if you invade someone's industrial sectors, you could conceivably cripple them, and get a nice boost to your resources.

Trading would be the moving of resources on ships from one point to another (this could be automated, it doesn't need to be micromanage hell), both within your empire, and with allies / trading partners.

For reference, find an old copy of Stars! and check out how they managed it. It was simple, elegant, and fun to use. For the record, Civ Colonization did quite possibly the worst job of managing resources I've seen. So don't bring it up.

In Stars!, it really added a strategic layer that most other 4x games just simply lack.

You often had trade depots (small to midsized colonies) where resources were dumped from the outer colonies, and then huge shipping fleets that transported the resources into the core systems. All these things had to be protected - and, your depots eventually grew into major trade hubs & core systems. It was organic, really awesome, and very fun.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

Since influence is the only thing that you can't improve in the game, I think it would be interesting if instead of costing influence and gaining resources, a trade route could actually cost resources and gain influence. That would make it something that everybody would want to participate in but it still wouldn't be mandatory. The drawback is that this could terribly unbalance the game since I'm sure influence gain is capped for a reason. Just a thought.

 

[EmperorZelos]

I would be jazzed if Paradox took a page from the Stars! playbook and used physical resources instead of abstractions.

My notes from another forum:

I desperately want some sort of in game (physical) raidable / tradable resources - in other words, I'd love to see the civilian side of the game developed some. Trade ships with way points could be raided for their resources, and instead of abstract storage, we'd have physical locations where the resources are produced, stored, and used.

This way, if you invade someone's industrial sectors, you could conceivably cripple them, and get a nice boost to your resources.

Trading would be the moving of resources on ships from one point to another (this could be automated, it doesn't need to be micromanage hell), both within your empire, and with allies / trading partners.

For reference, find an old copy of Stars! and check out how they managed it. It was simple, elegant, and fun to use. For the record, Civ Colonization did quite possibly the worst job of managing resources I've seen. So don't bring it up.

In Stars!, it really added a strategic layer that most other 4x games just simply lack.

You often had trade depots (small to midsized colonies) where resources were dumped from the outer colonies, and then huge shipping fleets that transported the resources into the core systems. All these things had to be protected - and, your depots eventually grew into major trade hubs & core systems. It was organic, really awesome, and very fun.

In space empires you had radioactives, minerals and organic ones which would be good.

 

[S.C. Watson]

In space empires you had radioactives, minerals and organic ones which would be good.

Heh - I worked on Space Empires

While you did have those, they were still abstractions, and Aaron didn't like the idea of having physical resources. He felt that it would be a special kind of micromanagement hell. And, he's not wrong if it's handled poorly.

 

[EmperorZelos]

Heh - I worked on Space Empires

While you did have those, they were still abstractions, and Aaron didn't like the idea of having physical resources. He felt that it would be a special kind of micromanagement hell. And, he's not wrong if it's handled poorly.

I doubt the first sentence out of scepticism only.

As for the rest, that I agree with but some more variety would be fun than just htese 2

 

[S.C. Watson]

I doubt the first sentence out of scepticism only.

Go here: http://www.oreganoproductions.com/Illustration.shtml
Scroll to the bottom.

Cheers,
~S

 

[TheLand]

While you did have those, they were still abstractions, and Aaron didn't like the idea of having physical resources. He felt that it would be a special kind of micromanagement hell. And, he's not wrong if it's handled poorly.

Quite! Not sure how many people in this thread have played Victoria or Victoria 2, but they had dozens and dozens of resources and complicated supply chains. Paradox ended up automating them so heavily (to avoid tedious micromanagement) that I wonder if a simpler model would have had more actual effect. Even then the resources in the national stockpile didn't have a map location.

The fact that resources, once extracted, don't have a location is also fairly difficult to change via modding...

@Daetrin I see what you mean about trade being not just about energy and minerals. If it doesn't give those resources, though, it wouldn't achieve the objective of giving an alternative strategy to blobbing....

 

[Latheloi]

@Daetrin really like the idea of trade routes mostly actually having a role that isn't +minerals +energy. What about if the various effects that could come about from trade (like, happiness from access to all sorts of goods, ethics spreading) came in the form of events, given that a lot of them would be rather fluctuating. Would be simpler than trying to model an intergalactic political economy!

For the permanent bonus of trade routes, I would think that influence would really make sense. Relatively little without links to other empires, but then more valuable the more major the hub is. Possibly have an influence cost in setting up the route, so it is more of an investment.

@TheLand the problem of how to deal with multiple empires all trading with each other could be solved if trade routes set up an actual physical route on the map. Because then the physical locations of the empires would dictate which was the real "hub" of activity.

The actual set up of the trade hub could just be as simple as a space port module.

Another point (which I think I suggested on another thread, but it bears repeating), is that trade hubs should probably hae the disadvantage of effectively giving active sensor links for empires trading through that hub.

 

[Daetrin]

@Daetrin really like the idea of trade routes mostly actually having a role that isn't +minerals +energy. What about if the various effects that could come about from trade (like, happiness from access to all sorts of goods, ethics spreading) came in the form of events, given that a lot of them would be rather fluctuating. Would be simpler than trying to model an intergalactic political economy!

For the permanent bonus of trade routes, I would think that influence would really make sense. Relatively little without links to other empires, but then more valuable the more major the hub is. Possibly have an influence cost in setting up the route, so it is more of an investment.

Well I think you would want to simulate it at some level, even if it was just an intensity map with pathing, because different FTL types would make different worlds trade nodes. For wormholes, it would be where you make your hubs. For warp, it'd be central worlds. For hyperdrive, it'd be systems that link with lots of others. And as your tech changes, your trade networks would change too.

 

[Latheloi]

Well I think you would want to simulate it at some level, even if it was just an intensity map with pathing, because different FTL types would make different worlds trade nodes. For wormholes, it would be where you make your hubs. For warp, it'd be central worlds. For hyperdrive, it'd be systems that link with lots of others. And as your tech changes, your trade networks would change too.

Oh, yes, I agree that simulating where the trade pathed (based on trade agreements, hub positions and FTL tech) would be important.

What I meant was the effects of the intergalatic trade (like access to luxury goods, unemployment owing to competition and so on) could just be events which give a modifier, rather than trying anything more complicated

 

[[Q]uik]

* Establishing Commerce Links would be a new Diplomacy option (in Trade Deals)
* This represents trade between two reasonably friendly powers, that occurs below the abstraction level of the game as a whole. I.e. starships flying backwards and forwards between worlds of the species independently of their governments
* Both parties to a Commerce Links gain a small passive income of Energy, Minerals or both. This represents the overall gains from trade
* Establishing the links costs Influence [and possibly other resources?].

This is about the most boring type of trade; ever. "Press button, gain money" - prevalent in almost every type of 4x. It's so dumb and boring - Trade in of itself is really bad if it's not dynamic. While trading in EUIV is pretty dumb too, at least that requires some form of effort AND is dynamic. (the growing part doesnt help either, still - passive)

** The size *of your trade partner*. The more worlds in your commerce partner's empire, the more income you get. This is asymmetrical so a small nation gets more benefit from trading wiht a vast empire than the other way around. However, this is a much-slower-than-linear increase (e.g. the value of trading with a 10-system nation might be twice the value of trading with a one system nation)

So a big nation has absolutely no reason to trade with a small nation..

this suggestion is essentially "bog standard 4x trading press trade and watch money". This is - in my honest opinion; BAD.

The idea of strat resources is interesting though and to be honest - the only way to implement trade properly is if you're actually giving something, in order to gain something. Victoria did this well as the goods you produce, are sold off and thus you gain money - and civilian sector existed. Civs need food etc and thus has to buy said thing (which you can tax) etc.

But just a "press button get money" trade system just sounds like yet another way to improve income - which is neither balanced nor a good way of implementing it, IMO.

 

[TheLand]

@Latheloi, @Daetrin - the diea of trade routes being actual routes is an interesting one though I can see it being very difficult to mod in, sadly.

@alioli - yes, I think it's a fair criticism to say that what I have down as "commerce" is very generic. I think it can still enchance the game, though, if it helps non-blob strategies be effective and/or makes diplomacy more interesting as you are trying to set up your best possible trade partners...

 

[Vasious]

I agree with the assertions that Trade should not create Energy or minerals out of nothing

The energy and minerals have to come from somewhere so both trading partners wont suddenly see a surplus

An increase in happiness from consumer and luxury goods is a nice idea, with the possible cost that foreign Ethics spreading due to the import of foreign goods and culture.

Perhaps the item would be once a trade route was establish it gave a small positive modifier to happiness, and a small increase in ethics divergence
Then write event to cover:
A Boom in local industry exporting goods to trade partners -> More happiness
Local producers being pushed out the market by imports -> Less happiness
Spread of ideas and innovations -> Small gain in research
Reaction against foreign ideas -> small loss in research but decrease in ethics divergence
Foreign Culture takes hold in the youth -> a greater increase in ethics divergence

Probably several levels of each with triggers depending on the age of the trade relationship and the number of trade partners, the ethoi between the trade partners. So Xenophiles might be more succptable to ethics divergence events

So you gain happiness and all the benefits of that brings, at the cost of an increase of ethics divergence
As the relationship continues there will be civilian economic ups and downs as well as the risk a foreign culture taking root, as much as you export your own