Burkalicious

Whoa. I'm a little suprised to see this thread still up. It must have piqued some people's interests, and I suppose that is a sign of the quality present in this discussion. I appreciate all the responses and the wonderful insight so many have divulged to this thread. Thanks to VahnNoa for clearing up how the black market can be manipulated effectively. Other than that... I'm glad to see the recent contributions have brought this thread to the front page so that, ma

Thanks for the replies guys. ChaoticMagician, the Vasari perspective is starting to take shape now. I'm going to have to re-work my strategies from a later trade port boom to really pushing that resource extraction (when I'm going economy on larger maps). Thanks for the help. P5yy... I'm pretty sure you used "window" 2 dozen times or so in that response lol, but the metaphor came across clear and well symbolized. I had been fooling around with theories lately myself, and have

Oh boy... Seems there has been a [I]big[/I] misunderstanding here. But before I get to that, I now understand what you meant by the trade route. You were refering to how a trade bonus at the ports on the longest route applied to all ports connected, and not just the chained ports therein; and to that I concur. Misread on my part. It might be worth it to add that the larger income gained by a larger trade route applies to all ports everywhere in your empire, and the bonus is constant and suffers

Thanks for the well thought out post, Raging Amish. I agree with and follow myself most of the economic guidlines you seem to employ, some of them new to me which is exactly what I was looking for; a learning experience via forum. I must digress though with your view of the trade route bonus (that white line). I do build trade ports on every planet I colonize at some point or another and I notice that the longer my chain, the more resources each individual port rakes in. In fa

My dilemma is that I'm not really sure about when I should start building trade ports for more income early game. I know that it's not worth it when you have your capital and starting asteroid as the income from another planet would be greater than a chain of 2 ports. At what point is it more beneficial to research trade ports and spend the credits/metal/crystal to set up a trade chain on my early planets, as opposed to spending those resources on a larger fleet to colonize more? Should