Would you trade away gravity accelerators?

Never! Never trade them for anything!

The only people I'd give them away to are the minor civs. My personal feeling is that I want the speed advantage that other majors will not enjoy. This is related to why I'll never trade Trisortium Steel or Diplo Translators. I need those advantages over the AI when I deal with them in the future. So that's where I stand

I think it depends on what stage of the game you're in and what kind of victory you're angling for. I think I might have traded them in a culture victory pretty late in the game.

depends on the situation. never in the expansion phase of the game, but later on i will if it'll get me something decent in return. if i do trade it, i tend to trade it to everyone since only peddling to the minor races just means the minor races reap the benefits of trading it to everyone else...

Yes, I have traded them before. Minor races are a favorite, but I also traded them to major civs that are down, but not quite out, so that they can fight back a bit better. The way I see it, if I give the things to a crippled major, then he can have the same speed I do because my obviously superior fleet will still wipe the floor with him if I have to be the one to finish off the guy myself later. I would probably never give it to a major that has a better economy or position than I did. This would be like a mercy trade for an obviously inferior potential foe.

I trade them off to, as has been mentioned, minors if need be. I'll also happily trade them off either to a major who I'm in tight with or one that's so downtrodden it's not going to make a difference.

What I don't ever do is trade them to anyone powerful who I might be going toe to toe with down the road.

David Chong, the minors can't trade it if you trade it to them.
I'll trade them to the minors definitely. To a major that is allied, maybe, or to make them accept an alliance.

NO-ONE can trade away the trade goods you trade them. You just let them also benefit from them.

I'm quite happy trading Grav Acs to the Minors. I don't trade them to the majors though, except in very rare circumstances (helping an underdog survive a few more years, etc).

my bad.
i thought i was able to trade away things that i had traded for. musta gotten it confused with tech.

Is that true? Trade Goods acquired through a trade cannot be traded away to another race? Does this apply to the majors, minors, and human players?

Yeah, all trade goods are like this. Say you get grav accelerators. You can 'sell' this to majors/minors, but they can't redistribute it. Part of the license agreement Gotta love the injection of RL in galciv.

Also i just noticed that you can't trade trade goods that you took from the AI via invasion. I am not sure if you get the bonus or not, i think you do. I hope you do. In my last game the wretched cartinoids developed 3-4 trade goods and had 20+ defense ships and 20M population at a time where all i had were transports and corvettes. Needed to wait to dreadnaught tech to smoke their tail. Hopefully someone can confirm this issue.

I never trade diplo translators to anyone but I trade all other trade goods to the minors. Instead of worrying about whether you get the goods when invading the minor with trade goods, one good thing to do is to position your invasion fleet right outside the minor system, trade all tech and trade goods you have to including diplo translators to get the Minor's trade goods. Then immediately invade. They're gone so they don't get to trade any of the techs you just gave them.

I was wondering what's preventing you from infringing on the "trade good patent"? If you're at war with someone, why should you respect their patents? Maybe you should be allowed to infringe on "trade good monopolies" if you withdraw from UP?

On the subject of not getting trade goods when you invade the owner, it works the same way with wonders too it seems... Also, if you unbuild a wonder you should be able to rebuild it. Hopefully this will get fixed eventually...

I think kryofx means capitals, not wonders.

It makes sense for wonders. I mean the FIRST Galactic Exhibition is a big deal. Who cares about the second Galactic Exhibition?

I remember one time when the terrorist minor civ trashed Earth to class 10, where I had built all my capitals.

fsk - How'd they manage that, just a massive invasion force and brutal WMD tactics? You didn't have Earth well-defended enough? Or was it some nasty event?

How do i keep the &!@$ minor civs from building trade goods before I can?!? They always do it, and about 3 turns before I finish them, to boot, wasting many turns of production! (Note: Im new to this game, as my scores suggest)

IonMage --

You either have to invade them and take them over, or wage war on them and demand enough tribute to shut their economy down. Both will be very difficult early on, say, huge maps, because they could literally be on the other side of the galaxy.

(And it IS irritating when some one-planet minor in some isolated corner literally all the way across a huge galaxy gets Aphrodisiacs, and you can't even find him to bid for it until it's the game's rather far along.)

From my experience, you cannot conquer trade goods, ie. you don't get the benefits through conquest of the system the TG is on. What happens is that you basically put the TG out of future circulation (previous guys who have traded for it are unaffected).

Wonders are conquerable though.

IonMage, don't despair. It is more than likely that you would soon build up a superior tech advantage to the minor. Trade for the TG with techs that they want. It is rather easy to get them this way and it saves you the effort in building the TG actually.

As mentioned in another thread, Staffa and I both rejoice in our games when we hear about minors completing TGs.

Are you sure that wonders are conquerable?

In one game, I invaded the planet that had built Eyes of the Universe and I didn't get the sensor range boost. Has anyone else performed that experiment?

It wouldn't be hard to repeat the experiment on tiny/rare/normal.

Capitals are conquerable, but I don't think wonders are.

To Drizzt_DoUrden:

The terrorists trashing your homeworld is one of the abilities of a terrorist minor civ. They can just magically turn your homeworld into class 10. The event text says that you will get your PQ back when the terrorist minor civ is eliminated, but that didn't happen in the game. This was an older version.

Now, I don't let new minor civs live very long. There's no way to find out if they're terrorists until you eliminate them or get attacked. When the new minor civ event happens, I sell them all my trade goods and then invade.

Well, the tech-trade for TG sounds fine, and i do agree it IS better when a minor gets it and not a major, but the conquering trick is questionable; they ALWAYS have the trade good by about halfway through the expansion phase; a time when i have like no military, and building one is suicide (still need colonies and bases). And at this time, they always seem to have at least 10 defensive ships around each star system... argh.

By conquering them, you mean later on, right?

How does purchasing them by way of, say, mitrosoft or galactic manufacturing, and making the money back by leasing them to the minors sound? Could i get a deal for 8 bc a year for the next 300 years for a TG from a minor?

fsk+, I believe I have conquered eyes before as I distinctly remember hitting Ctl-R to refresh the sensors to take advantage of my newly improved sensor range. Maybe someone else who have also conquered wonders can double confirm.

IonMage, if you luck out with a +1 weapon or a free warship early on, you could take out minors very quickly if they are nearby. They usually take a while to get deflectors and shields.

In fact, in my current maso tiny which I am playing. I managed to take out Alexians with one transport and my +1 surveyor. They were very near in next sector. Carinoids were in the sector next to Alexians but as they had 2 systems, they reached shields and churned out battleaxes. Using superior diplo, I convinced them to attack the Alts which was diagionally above them. Cari BAs charged out to attack and weakened the Alts. I then attacked the weakened Alts, conquering their system (with 2 nice planets). Then I moved to conquer the Caris while their BAs were out of position (they are v slow - 1 move).

Regarding leasing, it depends on the difficulty level you are playing (it is not advisable on maso). TGs are more expensive now but on easier levels, you would probably be able to get back your money using Mitrosoft (though u would not be able to get a 300 year deal, max 100 turns I believe) and leasing it to a number of majors/minors.

Just to add that the recent update changed the mechanics of leasing so Mitrosoft may not be the best option. [Message Edited]
[Message Edited]

Re Conquering of wonders

I've just confirmed that you cannot conquer wonders. I conquered the eyes in my maso tiny game and found that the sensor range is not enhanced. My mistake in the post above.

hmmm... nothing seems to stop some of the majors from trading the techs to the minors, but perhaps i should try this. My main problem is getting transports on time (if i attack that early, the transport ship will take fooooooorrrrrrreeeeeevvvvvveeeeerrrr to get there, for one)