I you don't like it, you could use another faction...



But yeah, this needs to be balanced.

Renamed the title.

I never bother with trade routes, hell i don't even know how to start them, considering the fact, no matter the race i meet, they tend to launch an unprovoked attack, so when i customize my characters, i always give negative trading traits to keep points for useful ones.

It isn't unbalanced if the AI knows it should just go to war with a race like that, but custom races have just been introduced so what did you expect to happen?

Isn't it balanced because of how weak the amoeba are in terms of military?

Problem here is that trade routes not only generate loads of money but also loads of research. For example 2 Systems = 6 routes. After short amount of time you will get around 60 research points out of it. I think thats why you can't beat them with military cause they have the better tech..

I find the trade rather weak..

Just calculate how big % of your income is trade.. its rearely above 10% even with those traits.

Licho wrote:
I find the trade rather weak..

Just calculate how big % of your income is trade.. its rearely above 10% even with those traits.

If you compare your entire science income for the system to the base science income, you will get this result, but you need to keep in mind that a lot of the bonuses are +%, so the net benefit of trade is much longer. There is also the exponential gain of getting science techs sooner when you otherwise would due to increased early game income.

Building a Custom Race with Amoeba Affinity + Merchants + Diplomats + Blockade Breakers (the big point) is seriously overpowered in term of economic power.

As soon as you get the First Contact with any Race, the Traderoutes start to get active in a gigantic fashion (4 homeworld, 2 for other system) yielding an enormous amount of money and sciene.

So much it feel a bit gamebreaking, especially because Blockade Breakers has a cost of 6 Points (which is way to low).



Some of the Custom Trait Points need a serious rebalance.

Increase the point cost of blockade runners and then it might be more balanced.

It works in SP but in MP when you just start getting decent bonuses from trade there is 2000MP fleet over your homeworld

Licho wrote:
I find the trade rather weak..

Just calculate how big % of your income is trade.. its rearely above 10% even with those traits.

Let me give you an overview what I experienced with my mates in MP (I won't talk about SP, since you can outplay the AI with almost every tactic/race).



First: We are obviously talking about custom races, since everybody wants to create his own fraction and some ridiculous overpowered combinations can be made.



Ok lets go:



We are 4-6 mates playing MP on different galaxy settings including AI, no pirates (at the moment; my mates hate them^^). I myself focussed on a Hissho race - without the original -20%science debuff and minor tweaks to improve the race. Call it Hissho 2.0 - the gameplay is most likely the same.



Second mate plays different custom-made fractions, most likely improved versions of the given ones.

Third mate plays a sophon-based race, heavily focussed on keeping taxes low and be good at research and benefit from superior techs etc.



AND our last mate, playing a full trade-based race with united kingdom affinity. -> The BEST, by FAR the BEST custom race at the moment.



I'm considering myself as a newbie to the game, but understanding the general gameplay and most tactics. Our Sophon player has a really good understanding of the game and I would consider him to be really really good at the game, same like our random-race player. But we have almost no chance against our trading mate.



Let me explain why: The game starts, everybody is colonizing, scouting and stuff. Here the first thing comes into play: 3traits: blockadebreaker + increased traderoutes by +2 and +50%increased benefits from traderoutes. The moment he discovers some of our starsystems we already lost.



He gains a HUGE, a damn HUGE bonus - 4 traderoutes on his homesystem, 2 on every colony with 50%increased benefits. This takes place in round 10-20. (10-20 rounds later (~50rounds!!!) he can double that again with the techs, remember that!) After that he is already placed first in FIDS and will never lose his number 1 status again.



Here is why: He gets so much dust and science from traderoutes -> He has MORE research output than our sophon player with +30%science and low taxes for even more science (and our sophon player is really not a noob) AND so much dust he can instant-buy systemimprovements to skyrocket his colonies even more.



And second thing: He gets +approval for every nation he is allied or in peace with. So he can raise taxes while he is trading and peace with us + the AI.



-> Now his race affinity kicks in like mad: increased production for taxes >50%. He can do this since he has +approval as trait and the +approval from being allied/in peace with other nations AND because of the huge science bonuses so he already researched the +approval stuff many rounds before most of us can do. When he reaches that point we definitly lost the game. He can pump out BETTER (thanks to research) and MORE (+0-50% production from affinity) FLEETS than us.



You can't stop him. You just can't. Maybe if we ally against him and block all our systems at the choke point, but he can still profit from the AI. (guess we need to turn AI off)



And if we ALL (if only 1 player forgets to block choke points, the traderoutes are created and game over) need to adjust our tactics just to counter 1 (!) player something is broken.



And don't tell me to kill him early on with aggressive bushido gameplay. I tried it and it takes like 10 rounds to colonize a system at the beginning with destroyers. So he can put up a decent fleet (remember race affininity -> more HP for ships) and fight me off.

I could succesfully hide ALL my systems to him, since i put a fleet up to kill his scouts, but he crushed with a small army through the blockade of another player and discovered some systems + the systems of the AI. -> game over.

I even levelled my combat hero while killing his scouts and stacking up the +5% more dps bushido for my fleets but it took WAY to long to invade him.



The fact that invasion in early game takes way too long and there are no restrictions from the invasion to him (blockadebreaker -> traderoutes work in those systems too; and he can even build fleets in that systems, something I think that has to be changed too = you shouldn't be able to build fleets in attacked systems) he cannot be killed like the AI with a rush strategy. At least not from 1 player alone.





I would suggeste blockadebreaker needs EITHER to be very expensive to have (20 points instead of 6; remember thats the key ability without this nothing works) OR rework into: traderoutes are not blocked when your systems get attacked by enemy fleets and remove the trade with nations on war/cold war)



Trade routes should only work when you have an alliance / cooperation with another race. Its just plain stupid that you can trade with nations while you are at war with them, while they cant trade with you. LOL

This is an exploit and i hope its not intended.



At the moment playing a science nation or trade nation is the key to victory.

The amount of trade bonuses depends on the population size.



So on planet with 4 pop , 1 trade route gives you something like +1dust,+2science. To get really huge bonus you need to have really huge planet.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
The amount of trade bonuses depends on the population size.



So on planet with 4 pop , 1 trade route gives you something like +1dust,+2science. To get really huge bonus you need to have really huge planet.

I forgot to mention, he also had the +population bonus for medium, small and tiny planets which gave him at least +1 additional pop on his medium starting planet too and he also tries to get +population improvements

I give you exact numbers



Race with All trade traits (diplomacy, merchants, etc..) and some trade tech (pretty expensive) on a system with:



23 pop : 3 trade routes +13 dust, +27 science each; total 39, 81 NOT AFFECTED by ANY bonuses

30 pop: 3 trade routes +17, +35

15 pop: 3 trade routes +8,+17



I can say that is pretty low, as you can see 15 pop has exactly 2 times less trade than 30 pop.



BUT:



34 pop system, with 14 level trade hero: 6 trade routes +70, +135 each; total 490 , 810

That is huge however takes like 100 turns to get , require high level hero and superb star system.



So 1-50 turn bonuses from trade are meaningless . Bonuses from Hissho or Cravers affinities are much higher.

CaptainPsilon wrote:
I give you exact numbers



Race with All trade traits (diplomacy, merchants, etc..) and some trade tech (pretty expensive) on a system with:



23 pop : 3 trade routes +13 dust, +27 science each; total 39, 81 NOT AFFECTED by ANY bonuses

30 pop: 3 trade routes +17, +35

15 pop: 3 trade routes +8,+17



I can say that is pretty low, as you can see 15 pop has exactly 2 times less trade than 30 pop.



BUT:



34 pop system, with 14 level trade hero: 6 trade routes +70, +135 each; total 490 , 810

That is huge however takes like 100 turns to get , require high level hero and superb star system.



So 1-50 turn bonuses from trade are meaningless . Bonuses from Hissho or Cravers affinities are much higher.

81 on a system science is quite significant. I just won a science victory with the Sophons (Vanilla) and my best research colony had 2735 research, almost 1000 of which from four trade routes. That's at turn 211 (the winning turn). At turn 72 of the same game, my best research colony was a mere 158. I only had three systems above 81.



Even a 15 pop home system with +8, +17 x3 trade routes is a huge boon to science in the first 20 or 30 turns.

Well my 23 pop system generates 182 science +82 from trade. It is equivalent of +45% research.

But my 12 pop system generates 108 science + 36 from trade = + 33%

And 3 pop system generates 66 science + 9 from trade = +13%



So generally flat % bonus to science (like science trait or craver/hissho/sophons affinity) is better because usually you dont have many 12 pop planets in mp game and under game i mean usual game where some warmongers are present. I get my 1st genocide/rage_quit normally by turn 40-50.



Plus there are 2 buildings that give you +60% bonus science on a system and this bonus doesnt apply to trade.

Plus there is planetary exploitation that gives you science affected by all +% bonuses.



The cost of all this trade staff is 30 points. So you can get +30% flat bonus instead and another +30-50% if you take sophons instead of amoeba.



15 pop system by the turn 20 ? Do you even build colonizers ? Anyway there is pop cap in the beginning so 6-8 pop on homeworld is your max. Furthermore usually you don't even have technology to travel through wormholes before turn 20. So no trade till turn 25 or so.



I dont say that this amoeba trade strat is horrible. I just disagree that it is overpowered. It works best on huge maps with moderate amount of players (not too packed not too low) and especially with peaceful players.



In my recent multiplayer game by turn 69 as hissho i had 3000 science per turn without any trade and +science traits.