Preamble:
Today, we will cover another idea that has been floating around in the community since quite some time, maybe since Stellaris' 1.0 release even:
"Trade is the life blood of ALL nations."
Current State:
Currently, trade is limited to goverment-level transactions between two empires, or between an empire and a enclave (usually the Merchants).
However, this only represents the trade between two governments who apparently control 100% of all ressources within their respective empires (Communism's waving).
The only, remotely recognizeable, representation of civilian trade could be the +EnergyCredits% bonus from Individualists.
Some could argue that this 'lack' of a trade system is just the result of trade simply being 'not realistic' in such a highly advanced era of galactic scale, but I'm much rather inclined to think the dev's simply didn't priorize creating any system like this yet (and, let's be honest, there ARE other aspects of Stellaris requiring work right now). Thus, we assume there is no real trade economy in Stellaris yet and we'll build it from scratch!
Concept:
First off, we have to define what our Trade System is supposed to achieve. In this case, I'll aim to add a new layer of diplo-economic interaction between empires, which provides a viable ressource income, can be specialized into (with traits, construction, ethics, laws), is more effective for smaller empires (to add a new way of promoting tall over wide) and can be used to pressure other empires on a galactic scale.
For the ressource income, we now define a new ressource "Trade Goods" (abbreviated to TG). Trade Goods are an abstraction of the physical wealth an empire gathered by means of trade, and can represent anything from construction materials, to weapons, to fuel, lab tool, software or gardening equipment. I'll later explain what use Trade Goods are, for now just assume more is better.
You gain TG by, duh, trade (or potentially through events). For this purpouse, each empire now generates a 'Trade Strength' which represents the internal production of valuables or other goods worthy of trading (technically Trading Goods, but obviously worthless to the own empire, because it supplies it's own needs already), but as well trade ships, freighters and other civilian craft, which will not be represented explicitely on the map (unless, maybe, as 'background deco' floating and travelling through systems, without actually interacting with other ships).
Trade Strength is generated primarily by buildings, such as
Furthermore, we can assume there will be boosts to TS generation by means of traits (i.e. 2-point trait 'Natural Traders - +10% Trade Strength' or a repeatable tech with +5% Trade Strength, and maybe a change to make individualist more trade-capable, etc), but will leave those considerations at that (until we get to the Economic Control Law...).
Before we go about trading, we have to watch for two limitations, however: First off, TS is only generated from planets in systems connected with our 'center of trade'. Which, initially, is the homeworld, unless a seperate 'Interplanetary Trade Hub' is built. 'Connection' is fullfilled if the system's borders touch, through other owned system borders, the center of trade's system borders (aka, the controlled space is not interrupted). This even holds true if the space is 'only' interrupted by an ally or vassal, even then we assume that trade beyond that other empire will end up trading about on it's own). This is, as well, one measure to make trade a tall-empire focussed mechanic.
Secondly, to maintain this 'network' and represent the logistic effort of effectively guarantueeing all corners of our controlled space have access to all trade produced in our empire, there is a demand we will refer to as 'Internal Trade'. With only your capital, 100% of your trade will be avaible. The first colony will multiply this value by 1-(X/100) (where X is the 'number' of the colony), the next one again, and so on. In examplary numbers, this means with 5 colonys, 10% of your TS will be drawn to Internal Trade, 30% on 10, 60% on 15, 85% on 20, 95% on 25 and pretty much 100% on 30, implicating that large empires will actually provide enough commerce inside their own borders, causing merchants to ignore the troublesome and risky inter-empire trade alltogether, at the expense of the government's wealth. However, TS passed on to 'Internal Trade' is NOT wasted, just 'less valuable' and will be discussed further below. Just remember that smaller empires will profit much more from trade then overly large once, which is a gameplay balance decision since large blob empires are usually swimming in ressources anyways.
After adjusting our values, this Trade Strength is now the representation of how much 'Trade' our empire can 'do to another empire' (calculated on a monthly basis, like all other ressources). Of course we first need trade partners for this, which we initially have none. However, upon meeting any new empire, you can now offer a trade pact, which is a one-sided permission to engage in trade (if you give someone 'your' trade pact, they can trade to you, but not vice versa). Per default, most AI's will accept a dual-sided trade pact offer, unless they are isolationistic or hate you (they won't even accept one-sided trade pacts!). Note that Trade Pacts and Open Border agreements are entirely unrelated.
Once you got trade pacts going, your trade will start flowing to the other empires. To determine 'how much' trade goes to whom, we use a new calculation labelled 'Trade Attraction'. The Trade Attraction of any empire is, in it's base, as high as it's Trade Strength. However, the attraction is further modified by what I shall now introduce as 'Trade Regulations':
Each empire can set, for each other empire, a Trade Regulation. Regulations range from 0% (NO Trade, aka not having a trade agreement (and setting a no-trade regulation effectively breaks a trade pact for obvious reasons) to 125% in 25% increments (no trade, heavily sanctioned trade, sanctioned trade, restricted trade, free trade, subventioned trade).
However, to make things more complicated, you have to remember that your traders have to reach a target empire in some way. For simplicity, we assume that traders will use whatever freighters they charter from the empire's they are travelling through, and all empires can have civilian ships move freely in their borders and somehow the same applies to neutral territory. Now, just because traders CAN move through other empires with no physical restriction, doesn't mean they're allowed to. As you can guess; Trade Regulations. If traders from empire A have to travel through B and C to reach D (determined by border connections, as described above), the Trade Attractiveness of D is not only subjected to D's Trade Regulations towards A, but as well by whatever is the worse Trade Regulation B and C hold for A/D respectively. I.e. if C and D are at war, A will not be able to trade with D (through C), as C will have a 'No trade' regulation for D, even if they have a 'open trade' regulation towards A (Like, yeah, we are trade partners, but we won't help your traders trade with out sworn enemy who is trying to raze our planets). This 'pick the worst of two' principle applies to the regulation used for the target country, too: If we (A) have a 50% trade regulation towards D, those 50% will be used instead of their 75%. There is only one exception case to this: If the two regulations to be compared are the subvention (125%) and free (100%) one, the subvention takes precendence (if, in A>B>C>D, B subventions A and free-trades D, the regulation modifier for passing through B will be 125%). This ONLY applies to the 125%/100% combination, not to any other (i.e. 125%/75% is still 75%).
Taking the ABCD example and assuming everyone has 'restricted trade' (75%) to each other, this would result in D's Trade Attractiveness to be multiplied by .75*.75*.75=0.42. Furthermore, travelling through neutral space (if no better connection exists) always counts as restricted (because difficult transportation and pirates), albeit regardless of 'how often' neutral space has to be traversed. Note, though, that areas of the galaxy which contain no systems (i.e. center/edges or the space between spiral arms) is not traverseable.
Now we know exactly how 'attractive' (lucrative, to the civilian merchants) trade towards our respective trade partners is. All that's left to do is to sum up the trade attractiveness of all trade partners, normalize it (for non-nerds, that means 'divide down to make the sum of all values equal 1') and then we have the % (0.xx values) of how much trade will be drawn to each trade partner. In example, if we have 60 TS and two trade partners with the same trade attractiveness (regardless of how high it is in comparison to our own TS), 30 'trade' will go to each partner. If the one partner B has TWICE as much attraction as partner C, however, instead 66%=40 will go to B and 33%=20 will go to C. And so on. In total, this means trade will tend to flock to whatever empire has the strongest trade (and best path of loose regulations). Which usually means you will mostly trade with your friendly neighbours.
In the exceptional(ly sad) case of you not having any trade partners, all your trade will flow into internal trade instead. But this is a hopefully rare edge case.
Once we know how much trade is going where, it is time to figure out what we actually gain. Let us assume that we (empire A) ship 30 trade (strength) to empire D. Here, the value of our trade is calculated. The base of this is '2', but trade value is strongly modified by a set of factors:
Of course the revenue doesn't go to you alone, trade doesn't work like that. Instead, it's much more reasonable to assume the trader offloaded some goods that our empire had in surplus and instead loaded other goods the other empire doesn't need. In total, this means both empires made a respective gain, in the ideal case 1:1. Who gets how much is determined by the 'Trade Share', which has a base value of 60 for the origin and 40 for the target empire (because, this is economy, not 50:50 trivialism). However, before we grab our share, the customs official of the empires we just passed (and are going to pass through again) insists on his share. And, worse, even our trade partner's custom might try to steal our justified gains.
Just as the Trade Attractiveness was modified by each passed Trade Regulation, each of these regulations now applies a Trade Share modifier for their respective empires to the cashgrab calculation. I will list all the modifiers later, but for now just assume that a 'average' restricted trade setting will add +10 Trade Share for all involved empires. In case of passing through neutral space, this Trade Share increases to 20, reduced to 10 once the neutral pirate flagship is destroyed, or 15 if no neutral pirate faction spawned (needless to say, any TG allocated to this trade share are considered 'lost' to pirates through raids or extortion). Furthermore, there may be modifiers to each empire's Trade Share, like a new 'Greedy' Trade (+5 Trade Share, -5% Trade Attractiveness) or maybe a new diplomatic interaction (demanding 10 Trade Share from all your tributary's trade).
In our ABCD example, this means the final trade shares are 60/10/10/50 respectively. This is, again, normalized and then applies to the generated trade value of 90, giving us about 41 TG. Which is little less then half the total share, but hey, it's still more then what we sent in TS (which was 30). And, furthermore, you can assume that, if all trade partners have equal strength, you will gain the same amount from other empire's trade flowing to you (+- a few), more if you are the stronger trade power.
Of course now you may complain that teching into trade is pointless, because it will actually give a lot to your trade partners and many small bits to everyone nearby you are forced to trade through... but keep in mind that having a high TS as well means other empires will send more trade to yourself. And, ideally, most of your trade will be flowing to those who have low trade regulations, through empires which have low trade regulations. Ideally, you will run trade through a chain of 'Free Trade' empires with no loss and a 60:40 gain at the end.
Now we can determine how much TG our trade generates, generally assuming it will be somewhere in the 0.9-1.4 times our TS range. Additionally, we, of course, generate TG from whatever other empire's trade towards us. This amount is provided to our empire's ressource pool of Trade Goods on a monthly basis. Per default, our empire can store 500 TG, increased by 200 for each Trade Depot and probably modified by techs with % boni.
Now, what are TG used for? And the exciting answer is, EVERYTHING. There is no explicite need for a new ressource with new things to pay for, thus we instead make trade goods a 'secondary' ressource, which's only use is to be traded into other ressources. However, to avoid the issue of 'Look at me, I only produce mineral, but the enclave provides me 200 energy monthly by spending some minerals' scenarios, this trading is limited in scope and burst: Instead of clicking 'mystically convert' buttons, you can assign TG to energy, minerals, tech or influence in 25% increments. You can spend as little as 0%, or as much as 300% (with no more then 100% for each ressource), and as a result each month this percentage of your TG gain will be converted to the respective ressource (at a ratio explained further below). This means you can easily spend three times your income, as long as your storage is filled. But in most realistic cases you will be running 75% and stock the remainign 25%, yet allowing you to flexibly boost whatever ressource you are lacking, through trade.
For the conversion rate, we have two options here. The simple would be to simply (hah) declare a fix ratio for conversion. I.e. determining that 1 TG gives 3 energy credits, or 1 TG gives 0.6 points of tech for each category, etc.
Much more interesting, however, would be a galactic, dynamic pricing system. For each (25%-)point of conversion, the conversionrate (starting from afromentioned fixed base values) becomes 3% more expensive, whilst the prices for the other 3 ressources drop by -1% each. This price variation is then calculated for ALL empires converting trade. (If you really want to be precise, you could as well scale the % increase by how much trade goods are actually converted, but meh.)
I.e. if there's 20 empires, and each converts one part (25%) of their TG gain to energy, the price for energy would be 60% higher (i.e. only returning 2.x energy instead of 3). However, the other empire converting to influence would gain 20% more influence (well, technically 17%, since it's own conversion would raise the price again, but you get the point). Thus, an interesting dynamic would be created, where it requires more trade goods to 'purchase' whatever other's are purchasing, allowing another level of complexity in the style of 'when do I stock my TG and when do I use them to convert into what'.
Next up, Internal Trade. Do you remember the >2 payout I mentioned two pargraphs further up? If you followed me to this point, you must be saying 'Wait, if everyone takes shares, isn't it far more efficient to have no trade partners and just trade with yourself for full'? And the answer is, quite obviously, no. Any trade 'to yourself' only has a base value of 0.4 (modified by the various % modifiers). This serves both to make self-trading unfeasible, but as well to avoid 'blockaded' races, or super-large empires, to have 100% useless trade strength.
If you go through the bother of doing the math for growing numbers of colony, in respect to different levels of trade specialization vs the gain from 'free' trade strength and internally bound trade, you will come to realize that trade grows rapidly up to ~10 colonies, after which internal trade starts out-'eating' the growth in trade strength from new colonies, up until effectively all new colonies will only add to the all-encompassing internal trade, which makes trading very inefficient (in terms of slots : ressource gain ratios), but still an 'flexibility' option to large empires.
Additionally, it allows us space for another, widely demanded mechanic: Food Transfer.
Since Internal Trade encompasses all good-based logistics inside of your empire, it's feasible to assume that a colony suffering from food shortages would be an attractive trade opportunity and thus quickly find itself supplied by food from other colonys. Effectively, any food over-produced by a colony which is not further growing is added to an empire-wide pool and can be redistributed to colonies who have less then 1 food, at the cost of 1 internal trade strength per food (keep in mind each is only worth 25% of outside TS). All remaining Internal TS is converted to Trade Goods in the afromentioned ratio.
Now, with the mechanical concepts of trade thoroughly explained, we can move on to the strategic meta-level, at which the player's (and AI's) decisionmaking influences the galactic trade. First off, there is a 'Trade Control' law with the options:
-Free Market Economy
-Selective governmental control
-Fully government-controlled trade
Needless to say, Xenophiles and Individualists will be drawn towards the Free Market, whilst Collectivitst and Xenophobes will prefer (or enforce) quasi-communistic market control.
'Free Market Economy' grants the advantage of being overall more powerful in trade, at the expense of having much less control. A Free Market Economy empire will automatically (be forced to) accept any dual-sided trade pact offers. Between two empires with this law, trade pacts are even established automatically. Furthermore, an empire with this setting can only apply the 'subventioned', 'free' and 'restricted' trade regulations. Even to rivals and other hated species (albeit war will still, temporarily, disable trade and enforce a 'no' trade regulation). Compensating for this severe disadvantage, however, Free Market Economy grants +20% in TS generated and +10 to Trade Share incoming or outgoing from your empire (but not applying to trade passing through your empire). Generally, this will be the setting for any trade-focussed 'passive' empires who will avoid conflicts.
'Selective govermental control' is the middleground and provides a decent amount of control over trade, but will not provide advantages as powerful as the previous setting. Under this law, trade pacts are controlled by the empire, and said empire can chose any trade regulation except the 'heavily sanctioned' one. Furthermore, TS generation is increased by 10%. This is the 'neutral' setting for empires which dont want to risk giving favorable trade conditions to enemies, or are simply not interested enough in trade for the bonusses of Free Market Economy to matter.
'Fully government-controlled trade' implements a system in which every aspect of free economy is regulated heavily, leading to maximum control and better management of internal trade, at the expense of being rather unattractive to trade with. Under this law setting, the empire controls trade pacts and can employ any regulation except the 'subventioned' one. On the plus side, the amount of colonies counting towards the Internal Trade consumption is reduced by 20% (effectively making every 5th new colony not affect the internal trade) and +5 Trade Share is applied to any trade passing through the empire's border (but does not apply to directly incoming/outgoing trade). On the downside, the empire's trade attractiveness is reduced by 20% (this does apply to trade passing through, as well). This makes the law the go-to choice for nations not bothering with trade (to simpyl leach trade share of trade passing by) or very large empires which use the Internal Trade consumption reduction to remain viable trading effectiveness despite their size.
With the options of regulation for each different trade control type explained, I'll now move on to explain the avaible regulations:
The 'subventioned' trade setting is selfless on an even larger scale, since it increases the trade flow, but reduces your own share of the generated value. However, if you trade without a third party involvement (aka, to a direct neighbour, or only through free-trade empires), to a target which as well applies subventioned trade towards you, the ratio of value distribution will remain approximately the same (technically, it shifts from 60:40 to 50:30=62%:38%, but eh), but there will be more trade flowing due to the increased attractiveness. Therefore, subventioned trade is a means of increasing an already stable trade relation with a nearby ally. Or alternatively an altruistic way of supporting another empire by making it easier for other empires to trade towards it. As well, note how the bonus from Free Market Economy cancels out the Trade Share reduction, making it an even more viable option to them.
'Sanctioned' and 'heavily sanctioned' Trade are an effective way of cutting down the trade towards an empire, as well as making it harder for other empires to trade with the target, without outright breaking down trade pacts. Most effectively, this can be employed if your borders completely encompass the target empire, which will cause all trade flowing through you to be entirely unaffected attraction-wise (if everyone is reduced to 25%, for normalization noone is), but will yield you a large portion of Trade Share. Alternatively, it can be used as part of a onesided (and militarily enforced) deal whereas you limit the other empire's trade flow, but they are forced to grant you free trade. Trade between your two empires will be low, but you will be able to trade past them, whilst the reverse won't hold true.
Following what was just written, let's move on to the diplomatic implications of this new trade concept:
Unless at war, rivalry or strong hate (and, for FME empires, even despite the latter two), AI's will always agree to form trade pacts, which grant +5 to the trust cap and 0.1 trust growth. It's a minor formality, after all. Any kind of trade-based diplomacity will receive a new option in the diplomacy screens, starting with a 'Offer Trade Pact' below the 'Negotiate' option. Assuming the trade pact is in place, you will instead gain the option of 'Discuss Trade Relation'.
The main purpose of this is to mutually agree to lower the trade regulations. In this menu, you can offer the other empire any of the 'better' trade regulations, compared to what you already have implemented (thus, usually 'free' and 'subventioned'). Depending on the AI's personality, it's oppinion of you, the strength of your trade compared to theirs and a comparison of your military strength, the AI may accept, causing both of you two adjust your trade regulations accordingly (alongside locking them for 1 year). Note that it can be contraproductive to upgrade from restricted to free trade with a neighbouring trade-superior empire, as it could cause more trade to flow past you without gain, making the AI less likely to accept this, unless you have exceptional relations or are militarily dominant (and thus gunboat-diplomacy the AI into accepting out of 'diplomatic' concerns). As for the upgrade to 'subventioned', this is less of an issue, but AI's will usually only accept if they have a 100% trade connection to your empire (as otherwise, mutual subventions would likely benefit whoever else is having Trade Share in their connection). In any case, the reverse may happen as well, with the AI asking the player to agree to an upgrade of trade regulations. Refusing will damage relations based upon how important trade is for the respective AI personality, but likely not enough to start an incident by itself.
Furthermore, it is, as earlier mentioned, of course possible to adjust Trade Regulations on your own side at any given time, both up- and downwards. However, having a trade regulation worse then what the other side offers incurs an oppinion penality, scaled by both the size of the difference and (again) the AI's interest in trade. Additionally, if the relations and conditions (mentioned in the previous paragraph) apply, the AI might decide to match it's regulations to yours at some point. I.e., if you are best buddies and the AI would accept a better trade regulation anyways, but you instead decide to just manually upgrade your side, it will likely follow suit in short time. In reverse, downgrading your regulations will likely cause the AI to follow suit (or, in extreme cases, such as suddenly downgrading a free-free to a heavilysanctioned-free, break ther trade pact entirely).
Additionally, you can, in negotiatiomns, select a new menu for 'agree to free trade with' and a selection of empires the currently contacted empire has trade pacts with. Effectively, you can 'bribe' other empires into providing free trade towards whatever empire you select, usually in order to get yourself a 100% access to a willing trading partner. Such an agreement holds for 5 years, unless both sides of the deal only contain continous payments (like monthly energy/mineral/TG transfer), in which case it will be fixed for 5 years, and then go on until the trade regulation is cancelled.
With 'restricted' being the default setting, any, mutual, regulation above will grant an relation boost and vice versa (again, scaled to the AI's interest in trade). Furthermore, a FME empire will look disfavorably at FGC empire's (but not the other way round), and additionally a trade-oriented empire may dislike you for sanctioning their allies, or like you for sanctioning their rivals.
As last element of this diplomacy section, we will introduce the 'continuation of trade with other means': Trade War. A trade war is effectively a war with the war goal of enforcing the target empire (and possible it's allies) to granting you 'free trade' (alongside a new trade pact), locked in for several years.
Speaking of AI personalities, for trade, we will have 5 groups to look at:
1. Free Traders (or whatever that super-rarely occuring personality is actually called) should be made more common, i.e. by increasing their weight if the afromentioned trading traits are present in the species. This personality values fair competition and free trade over everything, and will take offense to anyone not agreeing to free trade conditions, and will even agree to those if it can be contraproductive (idealism > profit).
2. Ruthless Capitalists are the other side of the spectrum and will priorize their own trade profit over any other concern. They will usually employ SGC, yet open many trade pacts and only very rarely move away from restricted trade conditions. They are even likely to talk weaker empires into free trade, just to downgrade their regulation shortly after, trying to intimidate neighbours in granting them superior conditions. Accordingly, they will react extremely displeased to anyone trying to regulate trade against them and may even go to war to enforce free trade on lucrative targets.
3. Federational/Peaceful personalities will generally be less concerned about trade conditions, but simply see trade as another way of reinforcing diplomacy and will simply seek to establish trade relations with any polite neighbour, regardless of what themselves may gain. As well, they are more willing to ignore unfavorable trade conditions with their own allies (i.e. Ruthless apllying restricted-free to Federationists).
4. Neutral personalities (like Erudite Explorers or Honorbound Warriors) will not priorize trade too much, usually stick with SGC and be minor players in the galactic trade. Likewise, they will be significantly less annoyed by trade shenanigans, since their low trade power means they aren't going to lose much, anyways.
5. Hive Minds and Isolationists (and probably the other kinds of Collectivist personalities) will disregard trade, either due to their tendancy to priorize expansion (which, as described, makes trade less efficient) or due to their isolationism. They will generall stick to GCT, keep very few trade partners (and those usually on sanctioned levels) and will not care about trade whatsoever.
Needless to say, FE as well fall into the 5th category. For now. (Trade-focussed FE, anyone?)
Lastly, at this point you may wonder: "Why even bother with all this, if I can just have my empire focussed on produce either energy or mineral, then blob indefinitely and just use a merchant enclave to trade for the other ressource?" The very concept of being able to infinitely and instantly trade at a fixed, never-changing rate, even if it's 2:1 is, plainls said, stupid. It's a detriment to the gameplay and makes mineral-blased blobpires possible, because they can fuel their fleet by merchant enclaves alone.
To fix this, I suggest a simple change: Instead of having 'click to convert massers of ressources' buttons, have the merchant enclave offer 10-year 'trade contracts' which apply energy/mineral modifiers on a monthly basis. I.e. trading 10 energy per month for 5 mineral per month.
Yes, this is still a fixed rate of conversion, but it's so much less infinite in amount. If you then allow 3 options of 10:5, 50:25 and 100:50, you will already have resolved the infinity issue by instead installing a hard cap of +50 something per month.
And, alternatively, you could go further and instead make the exchange ratio 3:1 and instead offer TG:Ressource trade contracts which are more favourable then the innate TG conversion.
But I'll leave those details up to discussion.
Conclusion:
Thank you for taking your time to reading this long, math-y suggestion.
I would love to see such a concept, even if implemented in a much simpler way, in the game, as it would add a new layer of economy, interlinked with diplomacy and serve, potentially, as a tool to make tall-over-wide a viable playerstyle.
If you enjoyed this concept, you might as well enjoy the previous and next entry of my series:
< Occupation, Integration, Annexation and a Cold War <
> FTL Rework - From 4 make 12 >
Today, we will cover another idea that has been floating around in the community since quite some time, maybe since Stellaris' 1.0 release even:
"Trade is the life blood of ALL nations."
Current State:
Currently, trade is limited to goverment-level transactions between two empires, or between an empire and a enclave (usually the Merchants).
However, this only represents the trade between two governments who apparently control 100% of all ressources within their respective empires (Communism's waving).
The only, remotely recognizeable, representation of civilian trade could be the +EnergyCredits% bonus from Individualists.
Some could argue that this 'lack' of a trade system is just the result of trade simply being 'not realistic' in such a highly advanced era of galactic scale, but I'm much rather inclined to think the dev's simply didn't priorize creating any system like this yet (and, let's be honest, there ARE other aspects of Stellaris requiring work right now). Thus, we assume there is no real trade economy in Stellaris yet and we'll build it from scratch!
Concept:
First off, we have to define what our Trade System is supposed to achieve. In this case, I'll aim to add a new layer of diplo-economic interaction between empires, which provides a viable ressource income, can be specialized into (with traits, construction, ethics, laws), is more effective for smaller empires (to add a new way of promoting tall over wide) and can be used to pressure other empires on a galactic scale.
For the ressource income, we now define a new ressource "Trade Goods" (abbreviated to TG). Trade Goods are an abstraction of the physical wealth an empire gathered by means of trade, and can represent anything from construction materials, to weapons, to fuel, lab tool, software or gardening equipment. I'll later explain what use Trade Goods are, for now just assume more is better.
You gain TG by, duh, trade (or potentially through events). For this purpouse, each empire now generates a 'Trade Strength' which represents the internal production of valuables or other goods worthy of trading (technically Trading Goods, but obviously worthless to the own empire, because it supplies it's own needs already), but as well trade ships, freighters and other civilian craft, which will not be represented explicitely on the map (unless, maybe, as 'background deco' floating and travelling through systems, without actually interacting with other ships).
Trade Strength is generated primarily by buildings, such as
- Planetary Capital (the 3rd tier colony center, +1TS)
- Galactic Empire Complex (the empire unique capital colony center, +2TS)
- Trade Port (new building, unlocked by low-tier research, +1TS)
- Large Trading Port (mid-tier upgrade of former, +2TS)
- Trade Depot (mid-tier, increases the storage of TG, and grants adjacency bonus of +1TS)
- Interplanetary Trade Hub (high-tier empire unique, relocates the 'center of trade' from capital to this planet, +2TS)
- having a homeworld, granting an inital TS of 2
- building Trade Dock spacestation improvements for 1 TS each
Furthermore, we can assume there will be boosts to TS generation by means of traits (i.e. 2-point trait 'Natural Traders - +10% Trade Strength' or a repeatable tech with +5% Trade Strength, and maybe a change to make individualist more trade-capable, etc), but will leave those considerations at that (until we get to the Economic Control Law...).
Before we go about trading, we have to watch for two limitations, however: First off, TS is only generated from planets in systems connected with our 'center of trade'. Which, initially, is the homeworld, unless a seperate 'Interplanetary Trade Hub' is built. 'Connection' is fullfilled if the system's borders touch, through other owned system borders, the center of trade's system borders (aka, the controlled space is not interrupted). This even holds true if the space is 'only' interrupted by an ally or vassal, even then we assume that trade beyond that other empire will end up trading about on it's own). This is, as well, one measure to make trade a tall-empire focussed mechanic.
Secondly, to maintain this 'network' and represent the logistic effort of effectively guarantueeing all corners of our controlled space have access to all trade produced in our empire, there is a demand we will refer to as 'Internal Trade'. With only your capital, 100% of your trade will be avaible. The first colony will multiply this value by 1-(X/100) (where X is the 'number' of the colony), the next one again, and so on. In examplary numbers, this means with 5 colonys, 10% of your TS will be drawn to Internal Trade, 30% on 10, 60% on 15, 85% on 20, 95% on 25 and pretty much 100% on 30, implicating that large empires will actually provide enough commerce inside their own borders, causing merchants to ignore the troublesome and risky inter-empire trade alltogether, at the expense of the government's wealth. However, TS passed on to 'Internal Trade' is NOT wasted, just 'less valuable' and will be discussed further below. Just remember that smaller empires will profit much more from trade then overly large once, which is a gameplay balance decision since large blob empires are usually swimming in ressources anyways.
After adjusting our values, this Trade Strength is now the representation of how much 'Trade' our empire can 'do to another empire' (calculated on a monthly basis, like all other ressources). Of course we first need trade partners for this, which we initially have none. However, upon meeting any new empire, you can now offer a trade pact, which is a one-sided permission to engage in trade (if you give someone 'your' trade pact, they can trade to you, but not vice versa). Per default, most AI's will accept a dual-sided trade pact offer, unless they are isolationistic or hate you (they won't even accept one-sided trade pacts!). Note that Trade Pacts and Open Border agreements are entirely unrelated.
Once you got trade pacts going, your trade will start flowing to the other empires. To determine 'how much' trade goes to whom, we use a new calculation labelled 'Trade Attraction'. The Trade Attraction of any empire is, in it's base, as high as it's Trade Strength. However, the attraction is further modified by what I shall now introduce as 'Trade Regulations':
Each empire can set, for each other empire, a Trade Regulation. Regulations range from 0% (NO Trade, aka not having a trade agreement (and setting a no-trade regulation effectively breaks a trade pact for obvious reasons) to 125% in 25% increments (no trade, heavily sanctioned trade, sanctioned trade, restricted trade, free trade, subventioned trade).
However, to make things more complicated, you have to remember that your traders have to reach a target empire in some way. For simplicity, we assume that traders will use whatever freighters they charter from the empire's they are travelling through, and all empires can have civilian ships move freely in their borders and somehow the same applies to neutral territory. Now, just because traders CAN move through other empires with no physical restriction, doesn't mean they're allowed to. As you can guess; Trade Regulations. If traders from empire A have to travel through B and C to reach D (determined by border connections, as described above), the Trade Attractiveness of D is not only subjected to D's Trade Regulations towards A, but as well by whatever is the worse Trade Regulation B and C hold for A/D respectively. I.e. if C and D are at war, A will not be able to trade with D (through C), as C will have a 'No trade' regulation for D, even if they have a 'open trade' regulation towards A (Like, yeah, we are trade partners, but we won't help your traders trade with out sworn enemy who is trying to raze our planets). This 'pick the worst of two' principle applies to the regulation used for the target country, too: If we (A) have a 50% trade regulation towards D, those 50% will be used instead of their 75%. There is only one exception case to this: If the two regulations to be compared are the subvention (125%) and free (100%) one, the subvention takes precendence (if, in A>B>C>D, B subventions A and free-trades D, the regulation modifier for passing through B will be 125%). This ONLY applies to the 125%/100% combination, not to any other (i.e. 125%/75% is still 75%).
Taking the ABCD example and assuming everyone has 'restricted trade' (75%) to each other, this would result in D's Trade Attractiveness to be multiplied by .75*.75*.75=0.42. Furthermore, travelling through neutral space (if no better connection exists) always counts as restricted (because difficult transportation and pirates), albeit regardless of 'how often' neutral space has to be traversed. Note, though, that areas of the galaxy which contain no systems (i.e. center/edges or the space between spiral arms) is not traverseable.
Now we know exactly how 'attractive' (lucrative, to the civilian merchants) trade towards our respective trade partners is. All that's left to do is to sum up the trade attractiveness of all trade partners, normalize it (for non-nerds, that means 'divide down to make the sum of all values equal 1') and then we have the % (0.xx values) of how much trade will be drawn to each trade partner. In example, if we have 60 TS and two trade partners with the same trade attractiveness (regardless of how high it is in comparison to our own TS), 30 'trade' will go to each partner. If the one partner B has TWICE as much attraction as partner C, however, instead 66%=40 will go to B and 33%=20 will go to C. And so on. In total, this means trade will tend to flock to whatever empire has the strongest trade (and best path of loose regulations). Which usually means you will mostly trade with your friendly neighbours.
In the exceptional(ly sad) case of you not having any trade partners, all your trade will flow into internal trade instead. But this is a hopefully rare edge case.
Once we know how much trade is going where, it is time to figure out what we actually gain. Let us assume that we (empire A) ship 30 trade (strength) to empire D. Here, the value of our trade is calculated. The base of this is '2', but trade value is strongly modified by a set of factors:
- Manufactory (mid-tier, can only be built upon ressources (i.e. that energy crystal one, or alien pets) of any kind, providing +3 minerals and a empire-wide Trade Value increase of 2%)
- National Quality Control Center (high-tier empire-unique, granting +5% Trade Value and +10% Trade Attractiveness)
- any strategic ressource (+1% for each, counting duplicates (but not those traded away))
- any luxury ressource (+5% for each, luxury ressources are new 'strategic' ressources which do not have any strategic yield except boosting trade value and are individually unique in the galaxy, imagine stuff like 'glowing gems' and whatever)
Of course the revenue doesn't go to you alone, trade doesn't work like that. Instead, it's much more reasonable to assume the trader offloaded some goods that our empire had in surplus and instead loaded other goods the other empire doesn't need. In total, this means both empires made a respective gain, in the ideal case 1:1. Who gets how much is determined by the 'Trade Share', which has a base value of 60 for the origin and 40 for the target empire (because, this is economy, not 50:50 trivialism). However, before we grab our share, the customs official of the empires we just passed (and are going to pass through again) insists on his share. And, worse, even our trade partner's custom might try to steal our justified gains.
Just as the Trade Attractiveness was modified by each passed Trade Regulation, each of these regulations now applies a Trade Share modifier for their respective empires to the cashgrab calculation. I will list all the modifiers later, but for now just assume that a 'average' restricted trade setting will add +10 Trade Share for all involved empires. In case of passing through neutral space, this Trade Share increases to 20, reduced to 10 once the neutral pirate flagship is destroyed, or 15 if no neutral pirate faction spawned (needless to say, any TG allocated to this trade share are considered 'lost' to pirates through raids or extortion). Furthermore, there may be modifiers to each empire's Trade Share, like a new 'Greedy' Trade (+5 Trade Share, -5% Trade Attractiveness) or maybe a new diplomatic interaction (demanding 10 Trade Share from all your tributary's trade).
In our ABCD example, this means the final trade shares are 60/10/10/50 respectively. This is, again, normalized and then applies to the generated trade value of 90, giving us about 41 TG. Which is little less then half the total share, but hey, it's still more then what we sent in TS (which was 30). And, furthermore, you can assume that, if all trade partners have equal strength, you will gain the same amount from other empire's trade flowing to you (+- a few), more if you are the stronger trade power.
Of course now you may complain that teching into trade is pointless, because it will actually give a lot to your trade partners and many small bits to everyone nearby you are forced to trade through... but keep in mind that having a high TS as well means other empires will send more trade to yourself. And, ideally, most of your trade will be flowing to those who have low trade regulations, through empires which have low trade regulations. Ideally, you will run trade through a chain of 'Free Trade' empires with no loss and a 60:40 gain at the end.
Now we can determine how much TG our trade generates, generally assuming it will be somewhere in the 0.9-1.4 times our TS range. Additionally, we, of course, generate TG from whatever other empire's trade towards us. This amount is provided to our empire's ressource pool of Trade Goods on a monthly basis. Per default, our empire can store 500 TG, increased by 200 for each Trade Depot and probably modified by techs with % boni.
Now, what are TG used for? And the exciting answer is, EVERYTHING. There is no explicite need for a new ressource with new things to pay for, thus we instead make trade goods a 'secondary' ressource, which's only use is to be traded into other ressources. However, to avoid the issue of 'Look at me, I only produce mineral, but the enclave provides me 200 energy monthly by spending some minerals' scenarios, this trading is limited in scope and burst: Instead of clicking 'mystically convert' buttons, you can assign TG to energy, minerals, tech or influence in 25% increments. You can spend as little as 0%, or as much as 300% (with no more then 100% for each ressource), and as a result each month this percentage of your TG gain will be converted to the respective ressource (at a ratio explained further below). This means you can easily spend three times your income, as long as your storage is filled. But in most realistic cases you will be running 75% and stock the remainign 25%, yet allowing you to flexibly boost whatever ressource you are lacking, through trade.
For the conversion rate, we have two options here. The simple would be to simply (hah) declare a fix ratio for conversion. I.e. determining that 1 TG gives 3 energy credits, or 1 TG gives 0.6 points of tech for each category, etc.
Much more interesting, however, would be a galactic, dynamic pricing system. For each (25%-)point of conversion, the conversionrate (starting from afromentioned fixed base values) becomes 3% more expensive, whilst the prices for the other 3 ressources drop by -1% each. This price variation is then calculated for ALL empires converting trade. (If you really want to be precise, you could as well scale the % increase by how much trade goods are actually converted, but meh.)
I.e. if there's 20 empires, and each converts one part (25%) of their TG gain to energy, the price for energy would be 60% higher (i.e. only returning 2.x energy instead of 3). However, the other empire converting to influence would gain 20% more influence (well, technically 17%, since it's own conversion would raise the price again, but you get the point). Thus, an interesting dynamic would be created, where it requires more trade goods to 'purchase' whatever other's are purchasing, allowing another level of complexity in the style of 'when do I stock my TG and when do I use them to convert into what'.
Next up, Internal Trade. Do you remember the >2 payout I mentioned two pargraphs further up? If you followed me to this point, you must be saying 'Wait, if everyone takes shares, isn't it far more efficient to have no trade partners and just trade with yourself for full'? And the answer is, quite obviously, no. Any trade 'to yourself' only has a base value of 0.4 (modified by the various % modifiers). This serves both to make self-trading unfeasible, but as well to avoid 'blockaded' races, or super-large empires, to have 100% useless trade strength.
If you go through the bother of doing the math for growing numbers of colony, in respect to different levels of trade specialization vs the gain from 'free' trade strength and internally bound trade, you will come to realize that trade grows rapidly up to ~10 colonies, after which internal trade starts out-'eating' the growth in trade strength from new colonies, up until effectively all new colonies will only add to the all-encompassing internal trade, which makes trading very inefficient (in terms of slots : ressource gain ratios), but still an 'flexibility' option to large empires.
Additionally, it allows us space for another, widely demanded mechanic: Food Transfer.
Since Internal Trade encompasses all good-based logistics inside of your empire, it's feasible to assume that a colony suffering from food shortages would be an attractive trade opportunity and thus quickly find itself supplied by food from other colonys. Effectively, any food over-produced by a colony which is not further growing is added to an empire-wide pool and can be redistributed to colonies who have less then 1 food, at the cost of 1 internal trade strength per food (keep in mind each is only worth 25% of outside TS). All remaining Internal TS is converted to Trade Goods in the afromentioned ratio.
Now, with the mechanical concepts of trade thoroughly explained, we can move on to the strategic meta-level, at which the player's (and AI's) decisionmaking influences the galactic trade. First off, there is a 'Trade Control' law with the options:
-Free Market Economy
-Selective governmental control
-Fully government-controlled trade
Needless to say, Xenophiles and Individualists will be drawn towards the Free Market, whilst Collectivitst and Xenophobes will prefer (or enforce) quasi-communistic market control.
'Free Market Economy' grants the advantage of being overall more powerful in trade, at the expense of having much less control. A Free Market Economy empire will automatically (be forced to) accept any dual-sided trade pact offers. Between two empires with this law, trade pacts are even established automatically. Furthermore, an empire with this setting can only apply the 'subventioned', 'free' and 'restricted' trade regulations. Even to rivals and other hated species (albeit war will still, temporarily, disable trade and enforce a 'no' trade regulation). Compensating for this severe disadvantage, however, Free Market Economy grants +20% in TS generated and +10 to Trade Share incoming or outgoing from your empire (but not applying to trade passing through your empire). Generally, this will be the setting for any trade-focussed 'passive' empires who will avoid conflicts.
'Selective govermental control' is the middleground and provides a decent amount of control over trade, but will not provide advantages as powerful as the previous setting. Under this law, trade pacts are controlled by the empire, and said empire can chose any trade regulation except the 'heavily sanctioned' one. Furthermore, TS generation is increased by 10%. This is the 'neutral' setting for empires which dont want to risk giving favorable trade conditions to enemies, or are simply not interested enough in trade for the bonusses of Free Market Economy to matter.
'Fully government-controlled trade' implements a system in which every aspect of free economy is regulated heavily, leading to maximum control and better management of internal trade, at the expense of being rather unattractive to trade with. Under this law setting, the empire controls trade pacts and can employ any regulation except the 'subventioned' one. On the plus side, the amount of colonies counting towards the Internal Trade consumption is reduced by 20% (effectively making every 5th new colony not affect the internal trade) and +5 Trade Share is applied to any trade passing through the empire's border (but does not apply to directly incoming/outgoing trade). On the downside, the empire's trade attractiveness is reduced by 20% (this does apply to trade passing through, as well). This makes the law the go-to choice for nations not bothering with trade (to simpyl leach trade share of trade passing by) or very large empires which use the Internal Trade consumption reduction to remain viable trading effectiveness despite their size.
With the options of regulation for each different trade control type explained, I'll now move on to explain the avaible regulations:
- Subventioned Trade (125% Attractiveness, -10 Trade Share to incoming/outgoing trade, fixed 0 Trade Share on bypassing trade, not avaible to FGC)
- Free Trade (100% Attractiveness)
- Restricted Trade (Default setting, 75% Attractiveness, +10 Trade Share to all trade)
- Sanctioned Trade (50% Attractiveness, +20 Trade Share to incoming/outgoing trade, +15 Trade Share to passing trade, not avaible to FME)
- Heavily Sanctioned Trade (25% Attractiveness, +25 Trade Share to incoming/outgoing trade, +20 Trade Share to passing trade, only avaible to FGC)
The 'subventioned' trade setting is selfless on an even larger scale, since it increases the trade flow, but reduces your own share of the generated value. However, if you trade without a third party involvement (aka, to a direct neighbour, or only through free-trade empires), to a target which as well applies subventioned trade towards you, the ratio of value distribution will remain approximately the same (technically, it shifts from 60:40 to 50:30=62%:38%, but eh), but there will be more trade flowing due to the increased attractiveness. Therefore, subventioned trade is a means of increasing an already stable trade relation with a nearby ally. Or alternatively an altruistic way of supporting another empire by making it easier for other empires to trade towards it. As well, note how the bonus from Free Market Economy cancels out the Trade Share reduction, making it an even more viable option to them.
'Sanctioned' and 'heavily sanctioned' Trade are an effective way of cutting down the trade towards an empire, as well as making it harder for other empires to trade with the target, without outright breaking down trade pacts. Most effectively, this can be employed if your borders completely encompass the target empire, which will cause all trade flowing through you to be entirely unaffected attraction-wise (if everyone is reduced to 25%, for normalization noone is), but will yield you a large portion of Trade Share. Alternatively, it can be used as part of a onesided (and militarily enforced) deal whereas you limit the other empire's trade flow, but they are forced to grant you free trade. Trade between your two empires will be low, but you will be able to trade past them, whilst the reverse won't hold true.
Following what was just written, let's move on to the diplomatic implications of this new trade concept:
Unless at war, rivalry or strong hate (and, for FME empires, even despite the latter two), AI's will always agree to form trade pacts, which grant +5 to the trust cap and 0.1 trust growth. It's a minor formality, after all. Any kind of trade-based diplomacity will receive a new option in the diplomacy screens, starting with a 'Offer Trade Pact' below the 'Negotiate' option. Assuming the trade pact is in place, you will instead gain the option of 'Discuss Trade Relation'.
The main purpose of this is to mutually agree to lower the trade regulations. In this menu, you can offer the other empire any of the 'better' trade regulations, compared to what you already have implemented (thus, usually 'free' and 'subventioned'). Depending on the AI's personality, it's oppinion of you, the strength of your trade compared to theirs and a comparison of your military strength, the AI may accept, causing both of you two adjust your trade regulations accordingly (alongside locking them for 1 year). Note that it can be contraproductive to upgrade from restricted to free trade with a neighbouring trade-superior empire, as it could cause more trade to flow past you without gain, making the AI less likely to accept this, unless you have exceptional relations or are militarily dominant (and thus gunboat-diplomacy the AI into accepting out of 'diplomatic' concerns). As for the upgrade to 'subventioned', this is less of an issue, but AI's will usually only accept if they have a 100% trade connection to your empire (as otherwise, mutual subventions would likely benefit whoever else is having Trade Share in their connection). In any case, the reverse may happen as well, with the AI asking the player to agree to an upgrade of trade regulations. Refusing will damage relations based upon how important trade is for the respective AI personality, but likely not enough to start an incident by itself.
Furthermore, it is, as earlier mentioned, of course possible to adjust Trade Regulations on your own side at any given time, both up- and downwards. However, having a trade regulation worse then what the other side offers incurs an oppinion penality, scaled by both the size of the difference and (again) the AI's interest in trade. Additionally, if the relations and conditions (mentioned in the previous paragraph) apply, the AI might decide to match it's regulations to yours at some point. I.e., if you are best buddies and the AI would accept a better trade regulation anyways, but you instead decide to just manually upgrade your side, it will likely follow suit in short time. In reverse, downgrading your regulations will likely cause the AI to follow suit (or, in extreme cases, such as suddenly downgrading a free-free to a heavilysanctioned-free, break ther trade pact entirely).
Additionally, you can, in negotiatiomns, select a new menu for 'agree to free trade with' and a selection of empires the currently contacted empire has trade pacts with. Effectively, you can 'bribe' other empires into providing free trade towards whatever empire you select, usually in order to get yourself a 100% access to a willing trading partner. Such an agreement holds for 5 years, unless both sides of the deal only contain continous payments (like monthly energy/mineral/TG transfer), in which case it will be fixed for 5 years, and then go on until the trade regulation is cancelled.
With 'restricted' being the default setting, any, mutual, regulation above will grant an relation boost and vice versa (again, scaled to the AI's interest in trade). Furthermore, a FME empire will look disfavorably at FGC empire's (but not the other way round), and additionally a trade-oriented empire may dislike you for sanctioning their allies, or like you for sanctioning their rivals.
As last element of this diplomacy section, we will introduce the 'continuation of trade with other means': Trade War. A trade war is effectively a war with the war goal of enforcing the target empire (and possible it's allies) to granting you 'free trade' (alongside a new trade pact), locked in for several years.
Speaking of AI personalities, for trade, we will have 5 groups to look at:
1. Free Traders (or whatever that super-rarely occuring personality is actually called) should be made more common, i.e. by increasing their weight if the afromentioned trading traits are present in the species. This personality values fair competition and free trade over everything, and will take offense to anyone not agreeing to free trade conditions, and will even agree to those if it can be contraproductive (idealism > profit).
2. Ruthless Capitalists are the other side of the spectrum and will priorize their own trade profit over any other concern. They will usually employ SGC, yet open many trade pacts and only very rarely move away from restricted trade conditions. They are even likely to talk weaker empires into free trade, just to downgrade their regulation shortly after, trying to intimidate neighbours in granting them superior conditions. Accordingly, they will react extremely displeased to anyone trying to regulate trade against them and may even go to war to enforce free trade on lucrative targets.
3. Federational/Peaceful personalities will generally be less concerned about trade conditions, but simply see trade as another way of reinforcing diplomacy and will simply seek to establish trade relations with any polite neighbour, regardless of what themselves may gain. As well, they are more willing to ignore unfavorable trade conditions with their own allies (i.e. Ruthless apllying restricted-free to Federationists).
4. Neutral personalities (like Erudite Explorers or Honorbound Warriors) will not priorize trade too much, usually stick with SGC and be minor players in the galactic trade. Likewise, they will be significantly less annoyed by trade shenanigans, since their low trade power means they aren't going to lose much, anyways.
5. Hive Minds and Isolationists (and probably the other kinds of Collectivist personalities) will disregard trade, either due to their tendancy to priorize expansion (which, as described, makes trade less efficient) or due to their isolationism. They will generall stick to GCT, keep very few trade partners (and those usually on sanctioned levels) and will not care about trade whatsoever.
Needless to say, FE as well fall into the 5th category. For now. (Trade-focussed FE, anyone?)
Lastly, at this point you may wonder: "Why even bother with all this, if I can just have my empire focussed on produce either energy or mineral, then blob indefinitely and just use a merchant enclave to trade for the other ressource?" The very concept of being able to infinitely and instantly trade at a fixed, never-changing rate, even if it's 2:1 is, plainls said, stupid. It's a detriment to the gameplay and makes mineral-blased blobpires possible, because they can fuel their fleet by merchant enclaves alone.
To fix this, I suggest a simple change: Instead of having 'click to convert massers of ressources' buttons, have the merchant enclave offer 10-year 'trade contracts' which apply energy/mineral modifiers on a monthly basis. I.e. trading 10 energy per month for 5 mineral per month.
Yes, this is still a fixed rate of conversion, but it's so much less infinite in amount. If you then allow 3 options of 10:5, 50:25 and 100:50, you will already have resolved the infinity issue by instead installing a hard cap of +50 something per month.
And, alternatively, you could go further and instead make the exchange ratio 3:1 and instead offer TG:Ressource trade contracts which are more favourable then the innate TG conversion.
But I'll leave those details up to discussion.
Conclusion:
Thank you for taking your time to reading this long, math-y suggestion.
I would love to see such a concept, even if implemented in a much simpler way, in the game, as it would add a new layer of economy, interlinked with diplomacy and serve, potentially, as a tool to make tall-over-wide a viable playerstyle.
If you enjoyed this concept, you might as well enjoy the previous and next entry of my series:
< Occupation, Integration, Annexation and a Cold War <
> FTL Rework - From 4 make 12 >
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