Trying the Lumeris I figured I would follow in their pacifist ways and needless to say was impressed. After bringing the galaxy to peace and reaching trade agreements the economy literally flourished.

A solid 1.5 mil dust per turn, turn 142

One of 5 companies 

        List of internationally trading companies

My empire and its trade routes

I managed to have a good spread for company HQs in the galaxy

The Cravers were also in this game, but were pushed to an isolated star system then eventually absorbed by my empire's raw influence (along with countless other star systems). There is a lot I could talk about but this post would be Endless  so I'm keeping it short. Hopefully these numbers calm down a little bit in future updates though.

Additional info

I appreciate how this galaxy ended up in stark contrast to 1st one as the Cravers, war consumed galaxy, hull planets and an empire in complete rebellion.

Would love to hear and see some data on other people's crazy empires.

Impressive.

There's the promised potential, and even better underlaying trade routes.

May I ask about your glaxy, difficultity and other game settings?

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Wow !

Did you use Dictatorship's bonus on top of this ?

I had a Republic government with Trusted Broker, Super Tax and Fair Trade. Maybe I should of went Democratic for more laws, but didn't really try to maximize. I believe Dictatorship's bonus and Super Tax don't apply to trade routes or agreements.

lo_fabre wrote:

Impressive.

There's the promised potential, and even better underlaying trade routes.

May I ask about your glaxy, difficultity and other game settings?

Galaxy was Twin Elliptical, medium size, normal age and unique constellations.

Had 5 competitors, normal speed and hard difficulty.

Peace with filthy aliens? Bah! Heresy!

But since we're sharing, here's my interpretation of a crazy empire!

(granted it's not as good as yours but it's only turn 127!)

The companies (no trade with xenos!):

Company spread and positioning could have been better, but ultimately unimportant since income becomes ridiculous anyway. Every turn yielded thousands of every luxury, of which 999 was sold and the rest wasted

The Cravers came from the top arm of the galaxy, and were swiftly isolated. They have since been purged with Exotic Rations and the occasional Raze System, and their worlds are now populated with loyal Raian subjects.

Additional info:

Settings were Spiral-4, Medium Size, Normal Age, Unique Constellations, with 5 Hard competitors and normal speed.

The main thing I learnt doing this was that, no matter your race, don't ever neglect trade companies! Imagine how much crazier things could get once galaxy sizes larger than "Medium" become available.

SirBagel wrote:

Peace with filthy aliens? Bah! Heresy!

That's the spirit! The Emperor protects.

mixerria wrote:

SirBagel wrote:

Peace with filthy aliens? Bah! Heresy!

That's the spirit! The Emperor protects.

Bah, a corpse sits upon the golden throne. Death to the false emperor!

lo_fabre wrote:

I see you both used a unique constellation. One trouble I'm having with trade routes and companies is that if I use a non-unique constellation galaxy setting, I can't get full advantage of them util I get the wormhole tech in Era III, so delaying my growth.

As I accept the way Amplitude did it (really no troubles with this), I just want to know: Have you ever reached something similar with a non-unique constellation galaxy? And if so, how you dealed with the wormhole tech? Have you simply rushed it when reaching Era III?

I haven't actually tried a game without unique constellations yet! I thought that setting was for whether unique features like Tor and Auriga spawned so I always left it on. If wormholes let you trade by connecting systems as normal, I don't think it'll delay you by much as era 3 is where you also get the tech for +2 subsidiaries, the +50% star system trade value improvement, and the unique +100% star system trade value building. Before that, trade income isn't a substantial ratio to other dust income - era 3 is where things start to truly ramp up. I also repeatedly scrap old trade subsidiaries and buy new ones at increasingly further locations throughout the game.

Then again, maybe I'm underestimating how much slower the first wave of colonization would be when travelling to unconnected systems, and also the delays from lesser trade company experience due to having to initially trade across closer distances and having less trade companies unlocked. Maybe it'll take 20-30 turns slower to achieve the same results? Either way, it is inevitable that you'll become filthy rich if you keep re-investing the entirety of your dust income!

Just gotta say, the fact that the numbers can get so huge so quickly in even a medium sized galaxy doesn't bode well to me. When trade routes grow, is it exponential? If so, that's bad for balance. I can see the trade route tech being more important over the medium-long term than any military tech for a supremacy game, which makes sense given that this is at least partially an empire development game, but perhaps might not be for the best.

You don't even need to control the entire galaxy to get ridiculous amounts of income, with control over a constellation you can have trade routes that absolutely blow any system income out of the water, making them disproportionately important for development in even medium-sized empires. The way they generate income is opaque, as well. It would be nice if there were a guide describing how trade route income is calculated.

Trade route income growth should be bounded in some way, so that developing trade routes isn't always the correct decision. Perhaps logarithmic growth?

Another thing: strategic and luxury resources shouldn't have a cap of 999, that's obviously a placeholder but still...

TheTakenKing wrote:

When trade routes grow, is it exponential? 

I made saves every 10 turns or so on that play-through, so I went back and checked. 

Turn 20 - (13)

Turn 31 - (46)

Turn 40 - 110

Turn 50 - (324) (yes it's negative, thanks to those silly events that impose dust penalties per system when I'm mounting a massive land grab)

Turn 61 - 591

Turn 70 - 2.6k

Turn 80 - 6.4k

Turn 90 - 16.6k

Turn 100 - 32.8k

Turn 110 - 60.6k

Turn 120 - 203.4k

Turn 127 - 491.2k

Also note that true income by turn 127 was closer to 1 million after selling all the luxuries that capped at 999. It might be more accurate to double the numbers for the later turns, although the increase does plateau eventually as more trade doesn't increase luxuries past 999.

Tl:dr - looks pretty exponential to me. Then again, military supremacy was effectively achieved by the 60's and the rest of the game was spent playing Sim city.

With @SirBagel numbers:

This is exponential, or at least looks like it.