Sorry about the delay in posting a report -- I had a conference in early August and have been busy with my graduate work since then. Anyway, here it is.
Overall Strategic Notes
The goal was to have as high of a trade as possible at 2425. In addition, if the game resulted in a win, then the trade value at the win or the trade value at 2425, whichever is *lower*, would be added to the score. From a practical standpoint, this means that if you don't complete on 2425, then you should ensure that your trade value is at least as high when you do win.
Most of the inter-turn (i.e. when you press "next turn") is actually considered as the year right before it. The clearest example of this is probably when you colonize a planet and it says that you colonize it in the year xxxx; it'll match the year that you just completed. However, part of it
is considered the year after, such as when it alerts you to the ships that are built.
Anyway, the year of the council also follows this rule. So council votes actually occur on 2374, 2399, 2424, 2449, etc. Because of this, follow this Imperium's rule (that the trade on 2425 is what counts), to maximize the trade value (assuming you weren't already at the max percentage in 2424) is to not end the game on the 2424 council, but take the trade value on the turn after that (2425), and then play through to 2449 and win by council vote that year. This way you get an extra turn's worth of trade. Hopefully it won't make that much of a difference though, but that's what I did here.
Also, the way updating a trade agreement works seems to be different from what is mentioned in the official strategy guide (OSG). In it, the math essentially works out to averaging the existing agreement and a new agreement that's worth the difference between the old and new agreements. So if your agreement is currently at 100 BC, and you update it to 150 BC, then it's like averaging your current percentage of 100 BC with a new one of 50 BC with the initial percentage (normally -30%, but -5% for humans). So in the OSG's example, if you have a 100 BC agreement and you're currently at 8%, and you update it to 150 BC, the OSG says that the new percentage will be:
[100*(8%) + 50*(-30%)]/[100+50] = [(8) + (-15)]/150 = -7/150 = -4.66667%
This amount is then truncated, resulting in -4% as your new trade value, so your trade will end up being 150*(-4%) = -6.
The importance of this is that according to the OSG, then, there is no penalty for updating your trade agreement (other than potential rounding issues) -- it will simply be as if you made a second, new agreement at the difference in trade agreement values, and then add it to the first, when updating trade agreements.
However, the game actually works differently than this. It seems like rather than taking the
difference between the old and new agreements to average with, it actually takes the
new agreement amount entirely to average with. So if you have a 100 BC agreement and you update it to a 150 BC agreement, it calculates the new percentage by averaging between a 100 BC agreement at the current percentage
and a new 150 BC agreement. This means that you will have a penalty of your current trade agreement's percentage. So again, with the same example as above, if you're currently at 8% with a 100 BC agreement and you update it to 150 BC, then the new percentage will actually be:
[100*(8%) + 150*(-30%)]/[100+150] = [(8) + (-45)]/250 = -14.8%
This will round to 14%, so you will actually get 150*(-14%) = -21 as your trade value.
So for example, based on the OSG, if you update your trade agreement, and your new agreement is exactly double of your current value, then your new percentage would be halfway between your current percentage and the initial percentage (-30%, -5% for humans). But the game will actually give you only
one-third of the way between your current percenage and the initial percentage.
Attached is a save file where you can see this for yourself. I'm playing as the Klackon with a trade agreement with the Silicoids of 100 BC, which is currently at 8% (my trade on the planet screen shows 8). If you talk to the Silicoids and then update the trade agreement to 150 BC, you'll see that the trade ends up at -21 (corresponding to -14%), rather than the -6 (corresponding to -4%) that the OSG says you should get.
Anyway, so basically, you do take a penalty for updating a trade agreement. However, this is still better than nothing, since you at least will still have some progress, rather than holding off on trade agreements entirely. It just means that you shouldn't update it frequently, but only occasionally, and only when you can make a substantial gain. I think this point might have been made before because I recall seeing it somewhere, but wasn't able to find it.
Now, for humans, the trade agreement starts at -5% and goes all the way up to 125%. Depending on your relations with the race, you can average anywhere from +0.3% to +3.3% gain on each turn. Going from no agreement at all to max is a difference of 130%, so if we assume that you can maintain affable relations, gaining 2.5% on average each turn, then it will take you about 52 turns to get to max. So to max out your trade in 2425, you'd want to start your trade agreement at around 2373 or so -- if starting from absolutely nothing. But if you do have a trade agreement in effect already, then you can do your final agreement somewhat later, based on how much progress you've already made (even though it takes the above penalty). Also, if your relations are better than this, then you can do your final agreement somewhat later. At any rate, sometime in the 2375-2400 region is when you should do your final trade agreement to maximize your trade amount in 2425.
Another wrinkle in this is that you and the other races are continually improving your productivity (hopefully), so it's not really just a matter of maxing out your trade agreement (i.e. having the agreement hit 125% for humans). Rather, it's a choice between starting earlier and ending up with a higher percentage of a lower trade amount, or starting later and ending up with a lower percentage of a higher trade amount (higher because everyone's productivity is higher later on). It ends up being somewhat of a guessing game on whether or not the other races will have a higher productivity next turn or not (or, actually,
by how much), which will be important later on for one of the races.
Anyway so that's that in terms of the trade agreement itself. Overall, strategically, my approach to this game was to be happy peace-loving touchy-feely with everyone. I would give out techs a lot to max relations with everyone, to decrease their chances of randomly declaring war on me, and to maximize how quickly my trade accrued (especially later on). Unlike most trade strategies where you only gave out useless techs, this time I prioritized giving out useful econ techs, especially for the minor races, to boost their productivity and thus our trade agreement amounts. Unlike many games where you don't really want to sign a non-aggression pact (NAP), in this game I signed NAPs with the other races as soon as the borders closed, to boost our relations further.
Although not as interesting (since this Imperium was about trade and not galactic domination), this is an animated gif of the map at each turn:
Early game
At the beginning, in 2303, I could either colonize a small artifact colony to the north (Vox), or a large poor colony to the south (Rhilus). I chose to take the artifact to the north because I can then tech up more quickly, and it puts me toward the middle of the map, in a better position to meet other races (to start trade agreements early). If I had chosen the poor colony to the south, I would have gotten a bigger population base to send out troops to colonize planets with.
After some scouting, by 2308, it turns out that the southern planets were a poor, another poor, and an ultra poor. Ouch. They're sizable planets but would take forever to develop.
Nothing much happens for a while. I encounter some Klackon ships to the north and west, Silicoids to the east, and Bulrathi to the north, but they're just ships so not really sure where the races are located.
In 2323, I colonize Keeta, northwest of Vox. A couple of years later, I see Meklar colony ships and a fighter heading for Kronos to the north, which unfortunately was right where I was about to expand to next. So I could choose to take it over and save the money from not having to build a ship for it, at the expense of getting into a possibly ruinous early war with them, or let them cut off my expansion to the north and focus on other planets instead, for more econ via trade. When they colonized it in 2327, it turns out it's their first colony, so I could go to war with them and conceivably win (since I have 3 colonies that could pump troops compared to just their main colony). However, when I traded with them, I got range 5 from them by trading my death spores, and this allows me to colonize some of the other planets and skip Kronos, so I chose to do this instead, even though my borders will end up looking kind of weird. So my colony ship will head for Hyades (west of Keeta).
In 2331, the Klackons with 55 fighters arrive at Hyades on the same turn my colony ship arrives, so no soup for me. They colonize it and I move toward Seidon in the north. In 2332, GNN announced that the Silicoids had 6 colonies already. Hmm. I formed a trade agreement for 75 BC with the Klackons, whom I just met since they just colonized Hyades and took it away from my colony ship.
I colonized Seidon in 2336. Finally got one uncontested after several rejections by the computers. My colony ship pilots were getting tired of going all over the place and just missing out on settling down.
In 2337, I formed a trade agreement for 75 BC with the Meklar, and colonized Beta Ceti to the west. Unfortunately, the next year, the Darloks conquered the Klackon's Hyades, which broke contact with the Klackons and thus, also my trade agreement with them. I guess it's a good thing I didn't take Hyades though if it's the center of confrontation between different races. Anyway, I assume that their victory was a short-term one so I didn't do a trade agreement with them, but tried to trade techs instead. Unfortunately, they didn't want any. But I took a gamble and threatened them (reasoning that our relations later on is what matters, rather than now, and they're minor enough of a race that warring with them isn't too big a deal) and got 350 BC. Yay! I could either put this toward my next colony ship, or towards researching inferno for an inferno rich next to the Meklar's homeworld. Well, my colony ships are basically going south now, so there's no hurry in building them more quickly, but getting inferno before the others would open up the rich planet, which will be nice. So it goes into my artifact planet, Vox. I also increase my trade with the Meklar to 100 BC.
In 2341, the Silicoids had a fighter with their colony ship at Herculis (poor planet to the southeast) so they drove away my scout that's guarding it. Because of this, I formally met the Silicoids. I traded my range 5 to them for their range 4 to boost my propulsion level. The Klackons also took back Hyades so they were in contact again. More importantly, I saw that there was a barren ultra-rich to the north (Arietis), which will be in range once I get inferno.
In 2342, I found Bulrathi's Ursa to the west. So this means that the Silicoids was completely unopposed, on their own in the east. They'll likely be the runaway computer race in this game. They already had 9 colonies, compared with 1 or 2 for each of the other computer races, and 7 for me. At this point, I decided I'll expand to the north, so that my colonies would end up in a sort of hourglass shape.
The next year, I got inferno, so it was time for me to start getting the rich planet next to Meklon (Tyr) as well as the northern ultra-rich (Arietis). I also updated redid my trade agreement with Klackon at 100 BC.
In 2355, I traded my inferno tech to the Meklars for their nuclear engines. It was a bad trade for me, but I wanted my newer colony ships to reach their destinations faster, since my production colony, Sol, was so far away from the outlying colonies.
Anyway, at this point I figured I should redo the trade agreements, so Keeta and Vox started putting their resources into reserves so that I can artificially boost my production when I redo the agreements, since they're based on our production levels.
In 2361, I colonized Tyr (rich planet next to Meklar homeworld), and in 2362, I colonized Arietis (ultra-rich to the north). In 2362, I also maxed out my production, reaching just barely over 1400, and made or updated trade agreements with everyone I could: 350 BC with Silicoid, 100 BC with Darlok, 275 BC with Klackon, and 350 BC with Meklar. I also did a lot of trades with everyone. I didn't mind trading away some good econ techs to them to boost their production.
In 2369, the Klackons colonized Dunatis (to the west) and triggered the council vote. I was about to colonize it in 2368, but I saw their warship coming so I declined to colonize it when the colony ship arrived. Oh well. Anyway, the council vote wasn't very interesting; it was between me and the Silicoids. They voted for themselves and everyone else abstained, so I voted for them (which was still less than 2/3 of the votes) to boost my relations with them.
In 2374, I colonized Celtsi, so I have 12 colonies now. A little word on this. The OSG says that once you have more than 1/4 of the galaxy, you start getting an "overexpansion" relations decrease from the other guys every turn. The decrease is equal to however many more stars than 1/4 of the galaxy that you have. Since a medium galaxy has 48 stars, I figured that 12 colonies was considered safe, since the relations decrease would be 0. Unfortunately, I soon found in later turns that this wasn't the case, and started getting warnings from other races fairly often. So yeah, apparently this isn't true; I need to stay
below 1/4 of the galaxy (or 11 in this case), and I get a penalty once I
equal it.
Mid Game
At this point, it was time to start thinking about doing my final trade agreement. So my incomplete colonies were (as usual) maxing out their factories as quickly as possible, while my completed colonies put their resources into reserves to store up enough for maxing out my production. Beta Ceti, one of my southwest colonies, would also be sending troops as much as possible to the other southwest colonies since it was already close to completion.
In the early 2380s, the Meklar colonized Vega (south ultra-poor) without my noticing -- oops. Meklar also got the northwest colonies, while Silicoids got the northeast colonies; at this point, my scouts weren't doing anything to prevent them from colonizing, so I scrapped them. So basically, the top half of the hourglass never came to be. In the early 2380s, I also started redoing trade agreements for the final time; after redoing them, there won't be enough time for a new one to build up trade. When I redid my trade agreements, I also gave them a bunch of techs to boost our relations, and signed a non-aggression pact with them since I wasn't expanding anymore, and it was a matter of keeping peace with them from here on out.
The first one was a 150 BC trade agreement with Darlok and a 125 BC trade agreement with Bulrathi in 2383. They were the minor races, and it didn't look like they were going to get better any time soon, so I did them somewhat earlier to make sure that they could get as high as possible by 2425. On this turn, I also gave away a lot of techs to the other races to boost our relations and help their productivity, but held off on redoing their trade agreements.
Around this time, the Meklar also sent a warship to Celtsi, my southwestern-most colony. Since I didn't have any warships in the area, I couldn't beat it off right away, but I eventually did get something there after a few turns and got rid of it. In 2385, however, I noticed that they were sending transports to it. So I decided to let them take it over since that would put me down to 11 colonies, below the overexpand threshold. Thus, from then onward I was sending troops away from it as much as possible; since I still only had nuclear engines at this point, the troops would take forever to reach their destination, and hopefully I would have gotten more terraform by then to absorb them. So every turn I sent the maximum number of troops away, enough to give the planet lots of waste but that didn't matter anyway, they would be left for the Meklar to clean up. I would slightly lose on my production but that didn't matter anyway since my production bar was significantly higher than everyone else's, and I would lose my trade with the Bulrathi since they would be out of reach after the Meklar take Celtsi. So I switched my teching to propulsion to see if I could get range 7 quickly. Unfortunately, the next turn revealed that I would be getting sub-light drives without range 7. Oh well.
In 2388, I updated my trade agreement with the Klackons from 275 BC to 625 BC. I figured it was about time and I didn't think they would be improving in the near future. They took Dunatis from the Meklar in 2393, however, which would've boosted their production and hence our trade if I had done it then, but oh well.
In 2392, the Meklar captured my Celtsi, which had nothing but waste at that point. Because they would be sending troops from a nearby colony on the next turn, this meant they were at a peak in their production (until those troops arrived much later), so I redid our trade agreement here from 350 BC to 950 BC, gave them a bunch of techs, and set up a NAP with them. I realized at this point that I should be researching a bunch of cheap techs to give away to boost our relations. The goal at this point was to keep everyone as happy with me as possible, so their trade agreements could build up in percentage as quickly as possible, and since I could get cheap techs much more quickly, I should be working on those. Sometime around this, I set up an Excel spreadsheet listing every single tech up to the 15th level (which later became up to 20th then up to 25th) and whether or not each race and I had gotten them, to figure out when to give which tech to each race. The reason is that you get more of a boost when the tech you give them is higher than their tech level, so I wanted to be sure to give my techs to each in the right order to max out my relations bonuses from giving techs.
In 2394 I updated my trade agreement with Silicoid from 350 BC to 1150 BC. I don't have much in the way of notes on this though, I actually forgot to record it when it happened. Anyway, I do remember that actually at this point, because my production was higher than everyone else's, their production was the limiting factor in how good the trade agreements could get. I also remember that I had NAP's with everyone around this time to boost our relations as much as possible.
At the 2399 council, the Silicoids voted for themselves, with 10 votes, while everyone else voted for me, totalling 12 votes. I had 11 votes, so I could've won by voting for myself, but since I was playing for max trade, I elected to abstain and play on. I got range 8 in 2400 so I was back in contact with the Bulrathi, so I established a trade agreement of 250 with them.
Around this time, I also started giving one tech a turn to Darlok and Bulrathi, because I had too many techs to give them. What I found was that regardless of how high I got my relations with anyone, it would always drop down to "peaceful" the following turn. Imperium 34 mentions this, that you could only get (or stay) above it if you were allied with the race, but I didn't want to ally with anyone in case they sucked me into war. In retrospect, I could've allied with the Silicoids since they weren't in contact in anyone else anyway (or at least, they never got into a war with anyone else) for more trade, but that was only in retrospect. Also, according to the OSG, positive acts if you were already beyond peaceful (i.e. harmony, unity, or friendly) would only give you 1/3 of the benefit. So the point is that I would keep people at peaceful/friendly as much as possible, giving them techs if they dropped below, and giving them techs until I was friendly with them (at which point the 1/3 benefits kicked in). This was contingent on having enough techs to give, so I was rationing it out when I needed to, but with the Darlok and Bulrathi I figured I would have enough already to give them one each turn until 2425.
So at this point I was giving out techs every turn or two or three to the other races, whenever our relations dipped a bit. I was also researching the cheaper techs to give out. By 2415, I had around 5 techs "in queue" to give out to the major races, and likely to get another 4 or so in the next 10 years, so I started giving everyone one tech a turn. It turns out that I had bad luck and actually didn't get all 4 that I planned on, so I ended up skipping a few near the end. Oh well.
End Game
In 2424, with the trade portion complete, I decided I would likely play on to 2449. I would only need to maintain my trade at or above 2425 levels, but the other thing is that I need to be one of the top two for the 2449 council, and didn't want to get more planets to avoid the overexpansion penalty. So I focused now on maximizing my planetology for population, and stopped giving out free techs to everyone.
At the 2424 council, the Silicoids gave themselves 11 votes, but everyone else voted for me with a total of 16 votes, with the Meklar contributing 10. I had 11 votes as well, but chose to abstain to play on. However, it just shows how close I was to being knocked out of contention.
In 2426, I researched doom virus, only to find I don't get terra 60, so I started complete eco instead.
In 2427, GNN announced that a comet would hit Vox in 7 years. Somewhere along the line (not sure when), I had made around 20 medium-size ships, mostly to deter the other races from wanting to attack me. So I moved them to Vox to take care of the comet. Unfortunately, the Klackons ended our NAP. Oh well. As long as they don't declare war on me it's fine.
In 2428, I noticed that the Bulrathi had a fleet heading for Beta Ceti, so I started making a top-of-the-line warship with auto repair to deal with them.
In 2431, I got complete eco, only to find I don't get terra 80, so I started bio terminator instead.
In 2433, I destroyed both the Bulrathi fleet at Beta Ceti, as well as the comet heading for Vox.
In 2437, I got bio terminator, only to find I don't get terra 100 (notice a pattern?), so I started advanced cloning instead. I also got overexpansion warnings from Bulrathi and Meklar, which was surprising because I only had 11 planets now. Maybe the overexpand at 1/4 of the galaxy thing is a trigger that once switched on, is never switched off even when you then fall below the threshold? Or maybe they start warning after a certain year even if you don't have 1/4 of the map? I don't know. But I decided to redo my trade agreement with Bulrathi from 250 to 375; it won't benefit me in 2449, but it would allow me to stay above the 2425 trade amount for the 2474 council just in case I got into a war with the Klackons. Basically, a buffer.
In 2438, I decided to just get terra 40 from the Meklar rather than waiting, to boost my population a bit. I would have preferred to trade something to the Klackon instead of the Meklar, but I still couldn't talk to them after they ended the NAP in 2427 (!).
In 2439, someone framed me for sabotage on the Bulrathi, so the next turn, I gave them auto repair to appease them and clear up the warning. And I noticed in 2441 that I could finally talk to the Klackon. I gave them doom virus in 2442 and re-established a NAP with them.
In 2443, I got advanced cloning, so I started complete terraforming, but it's iffy if I will complete in time -- I would just be starting to get into percentages in research by 2449.
In 2445, the Meklar ended their NAP with me. In 2447, the Silicoid, Darlok, and Bulrathi all ended their NAP with me as well. This is probably because I hadn't been keeping up with relations with anyone. I also don't know if I'm still being affected by an overexpand penalty.
Anyway, by 2449, I hadn't gotten complete terraforming, so trying to max out my population was a bust, because I didn't have any terraform techs between terra 30 and terra 120 (complete terraforming). Oh well. The council vote was between Silicoid and me. The two of us had 12 votes, while everyone else had 18 votes (Meklar had 10) and all voted for me. So I won in 2449 by diplomacy.
Below is a graph of my trade by year which I started recording each turn halfway through playing this, and also the sum of my trade agreements with everyone by year. Keep in mind that as human, my actual trade can be up to 125% of the agreement value.
A note on trade agreements: I noticed that there seems to be a bug with trade agreements when you lose contact. When you lose contact with a race, the trade agreement is supposed to end, and it does. However, when you reestablish contact, and make a new trade agreement, it's as if the old one were still in effect. This happened with the Bulrathi. When I lost contact with them in 2391 (because the Meklar captured Celtsi), we had a trade agreement of 125 BC. When we reestablished contact in 2401, I did a trade agreement with the Bulrathi for 250 BC, but my trade value
increased from 1109 to 1121, so I started off with 12/250 or 5% instead of the human -5%. If I got my math right, this means that I had a fictional 25% to 27% of trade under the original 125 BC agreement which was started in 2383.
So it's
possible (but I'm unsure on this) that the trade value continued to accrue even though we were out of contact. Which means that it's possible to exploit this (though difficult), by establishing a large trade agreement with someone, then losing contact with them to wait out the initial negative trade period, then reestablishing contact once the trade should have turned positive. I guess I can take a look in the save files to see if this was the case.
