Trade Goods

Yes, it can. You have basically bought a "license" from the minor to use it. Since you already have it, it doesn't show up on the minor's diplo screen for trade anymore and since you cannot re-license it to someone else, neither does it show up on yours. Check your stats screen and you will notice that you have gained the trade good bonus.

Thanks.

Since I hate cluttering up the board with new threads...

Is there a way to get a breakdown of your bonus? You know so you can see how much of the bonus comes from where. It probably wouldn't have too much use, but it'd be kinda cool.

It'd also be nice to be able to get more info on your trade routes, rather than having to go the diplo screen and check out the info from there.

No breakdown that I'm aware of.

Ives...I'm betting that the minor race you bought from was the Caronids. In all of my games at least they are the only minor power that developes Trade Goods and they often snag a bunch of them.

They sure are powerful.

I alway find that it is the Alexians in my games. And once they get one, they usually end up getting more

I wonder if either the Carinoids or the Alexians are "hard-coded" in the free tech they start with. (I'd always thought it was random.) Like you, I'm seeing these two in particular immediately start prodcuing trade goods, and the Alexians usually get Nano-Metal Composition (to go for Frictionless Clothing and Tri-blah Steel).

~SDC~

Neither majors nor minors start with any free techs. The minors do poure their entire income into research early on since they don't have any pressure to expand though. They will purchase wonders and trade goods just like the majors and human player would too.

1) I wish the other races would contact you when you build a trade good, and make an offer.
2) I wish there was some master list of who made what. The Arceans developed Aphodesiac, later on I'm trying to remember "Was is Arcean, Alexian, or Altarian?"
3) I really wish the majors and minors (particularly minors) built starbases to boost and defend their inhabited sectors. Instead, they spew out military craft and colony ships.

In my current super size Galaxy game (about 15 years into it, game wise)I am seeing quite a bit of Starbase buidling.

At first the AI focused on resources, but then it build Starbases elsewhere,too.

While some improvement can be made to the AI's performance in this regard, it is nevertheless quite good already.

#8 ZaH,

Disagree. I have played games under 1.03 where wandering settlers colonized a new system in the game. This random event has occured 3 times to me. They always start with one free tech, which appears selected also at random from the tech tree. They also improve the PQ of any one planet in their system to habitable levels; e.g., a blue star right next to Sol in one game went to yellow and contained a PQ16 planet once the settler event took place there.

I will try to save the occurrence the next time it happens so anyone interested can see it.

Alternately, perhaps someone more familiar with the coding of the event can check the file and post just what happens when it triggers. My installed version of the game is heavily modded by all the available player-created events on the GalCiv site, and I cannot establish whether my experience is due to a mod or the game as designed without a complete re-install (which I am loathe to do until I complete my current game). Thx.

~SDC~

Does anyone happen to know what happens to trade goods if you:

(a) Culturally assimilate the race with it?
(b) Successfully conquer the race with it?

From comments made above it seems that you get the bonuses but do not get to trade them at any time to others. Might make sense if you conquered the race in that the info is lost in the destruction of the conquest but if you assimilate them then why don't you get it to trade? Might be something that needs to be looked at for a future patch if possible.

~SDC~

I would like it if trade goods were more like trade.

What I mean is, I would like to option of leasing trade goods for a finite amount of time, i.e. making a deal to lease nanorecords for the next two years in exchange for a lump some of money, payments, technology, or whatever else you can trade. If you go to war with the supplier, you lose access to that particular good, until your able to make peace and cut a new deal or conquer him completely and steal it away from him.

In the game trade goods are like wonders, things so unique that they can't be copied or reverse engineered. It would reason to believe that if a alien race if providing you with something that makes your ships faster or tougher,helped you use diplomacy to gather allies against them, sped up you research, or made your people happy and healthy that they would stop as soon as you declared war on them.

If you wanted to get really complex you could have setup so only the ships built during the leasing period get the bonuses, all other trade good effects would just effect your civilizations statistics.

In the games current state, the best thing to do is try to be the one that manufactures all trade goods at all cost and never trade them away to anyone other than a minor race. If you let someone else discover them first, you can still get the bonuses through trade, but so can everyone else. Getting access to the trade good form some one else doesn't give you an advantage it only makes you even.

In a recent game I traded a research and pop growth trade good to a friendly major race in hope to get them to like me enough to form an alliance and some quick cash. I had a large tech and pop advantage and didn't see the harm. In less than a year my "advantages" has disappeared. My game basically ended when my "friendly neighbors" got Overlords while I was still trying to research avatars and decided they wanted to expand their empire and my expense.