Help: Diplomacy & Trading

Alliances are gotten through the research of the tech 'Alliances' and then you have to get the races to like you more until they are on a 'Close' Relationship (i think). Galactic resources are the odd shaped things floating in space that only constructors can be built on, like the red cone thing and the yellow cylander (sp?). Also, even if you are researching a lot, the other races could be researching the Techs you are not and trading amongst each other.... making it seem that you have fallen behind a lot, in this case just trade for their techs. When races demand things of me i tend to deny them but then I'll trade with them... regular trade of techs and sending freighters usually keeps me on a good note with the other races. I'm not sure what else i can help with.

~SDC~

- Check out the new expanded manual - version 0.99.010, available from the downloads page. Much more help for you in there.

- Your relative military might has a lot to do with whether people demand stuff from you - start building some combat craft earlier... Suggestion: focus on ATT-heavy vessels (they give the most deterrence value) and try to stay in the top 3 militarily (according to the stats tab of the domestic policy screen).

- The word 'trade' confuses the heck out of people, because there are two quite different game concepts:
(a) "using a freighter to establish a trade route, which has little trade ships bringing in income each turn" = 'trade' on the income screens
(b) "selling/swapping/buying tech/ships/planets with other races" = 'tribute' on the income screens.

Most of this has been said, but I'm gonna put it in a quick Q&A:

1. I can't seem to get races to like me - they always demand stuff and when I deny them, the relations go down the toliet. How can I get them to like me? I give them some money and influence points, even a technology or two but they still don't warm up.
Unless you plan to initiate a war, build lots of Star Fighters and Corvettes early on...make sure your military might graph is always at least 3/4ths of the top guy's (preferably higher) and you won't get bothered. Because ships are currently valued for these purposes by ATT+DEF value, SF's and especially Corvettes have the best cost/maintenance/deterrance combination until you hit AMM's and capital ships (which are quite costly, but are also actually useful in actual wars, unlike, for the most part, corvettes).

Also, if you have a trade route (est. via freighter) with a race, both you and that race will gain income from it every turn. The more income a race gets from trade with you, the more your relations will slide toward the positive end of the spectrum over time; after all, they don't want to interrupt their very lucrative trade routes with you by going to war unless they stand a VERY good chance of winning.

2. How can I access the more complex treaties. I can't establish a peace treaty, alliance, trade treaties, or anything!
Peace treaties are only active if you are at war, and even then are not enforced on you (the AI will lay off you for awhile if you negotiate peace with them, but you are under no such restriction, and there are currently no consequences for going back to war the next turn). Alliances require both the "alliance" technology and "close" relations with the potential ally for the option to even appear on your diplomatic menu. Even then, how favorable they are will be determined by your relative strength. If you can swat them like a bug, they'll be more than willing to compensate you handsomely for entering into an alliance with them. If they thing they're in a better position than you, they'll want some concessions before they'll agree. "Trade treaties" as such don't exist - freighers establish trade, and while you can deactivate any trade route you please once it is established (even those established by AI's to your planets), generally they're only interrupted by war.

Trade
1. I'm kind of baffled by this whole trade thing. I know that you can build a freighter and send it to another friendly star syatem and make a trade route to bring in some extra income. But what are these galactic resources I keep hearing about, how do I get them, and how do I get "franchises"?
As Ralegh said, "trade" constitutes 2 distinct things in this game.

One, which I'll call "diplomatic trade" involves contacting an alien ambassador and offering it a deal. The AI will trade techs among each other via this method extensively (above "normal" difficulty), and will even occasionally offer YOU a tech trade. However, only you as the player will ever initate monetary deals, ship or system trading, etc. Even then, trading for enemy starbases or planets is of course prohibitively expensive. This is affected by "diplomacy" bonuses.

The second item is the "trade route" trade. Trade routes are established by freighers and add a certain variable amount of money each turn to both participants' treasuries. This is what "trade" bonuses affect. Trade routes are also an important diplomatic tool for improving relations, as mentioned above.

2. Not really trading, but I always seem to fall a little behind in the tech area even though my rating is around the 90's and I'm doing over a quater of the research galaxy-wide. What's the deal?
If you want to stay ahead of the AI's without traiding AT ALL, you need to be doing something near as much research as all the rest combined. Generally, it is expected that you will trade techs that the AI's value heavily in exchange for useful techs that they're willing to part with. However, because you can trade a single tech to every civilization that doesn't have it yet, even unfavorable deals are useful.

Say you have 3 decent techs that nobody has yet, but are otherwise behind. You trade these techs to every other civilization, and each one gives you only 1 or two equivalently useful techs in return. Now where are you? Say all 5 majors are around. Each of them is 3 techs ahead of where they were...but you are at least 5 and possibly 10 techs ahead of where YOU were. And none of them can further trade the techs, because now everyone has them. See the benefit?

A few random tips from a moderate-to-good player:

Resources are _important_ in the endgame. While each only gives a 5% bonus initially when you build a starbase there, you can (with the appropriate techs and large numbers of additional constructors) enhance these bonuses to a maximum of 59%...59%! Imagine having +59% economy bonus and +59% morale...high tax rate, insane income, and a happy populace to boot. And that's with just two resources. Granted, it takes a LOT of investment to get them that fully mined, but you see the potential.

Speed is _important_ in the early game. A speed pick is possibly the most overlooked pick by new players. What it essentially does for you is double the speed of your colony ships, constructors, and transports. This means that you can expand faster than the AI's who don't make similar picks, and if you are careful, grab more systems and resources.

HTH,
-EtherMage
~SDC~
[Message Edited]

EtherMage, I think you missed a module, fully upgraded resources give a 63% bonus, if I remember correctly. Not a big difference.

One time I managed to grab 5 military resources early on in a game, and grabbed two more before I started warmongering, and had all 9 on the map by the end of the game. It was fun watching corvettes attacking sensor drones and then dieing The AI even lost a phoenix to a sensor drone. This was back when military resources increased HP as well as ATT & DEF.

It's actually 68%.

Basic starbase: 5%
Resource refinery: 5%
Advanced refinery: 7%
Mining barracks: 3%
HQ: 6%
Hyper mining: 8%
Ultra: 9%
Nano: 10%
Zeta: 15%

scary that I just knew that off the top of my head...

Ahh, my bad. I didn't actually think to add everything up in my head -- for some reason I "remembered" that value from somewhere...odd. Of course, the point obviously stands: dominating resource ownership can make up for any number of other handicaps.

Of course, if you have the free resources to a) research all the techs to access the mining modules and produce enough constructors to fully mine reasources while c) not falling behind militarily, then you're probably doing pretty well already anyway.

-EtherMage


~SDC~