The ultimate in trade

from Stardock Forums
Just wanted to voice an opinion on the best way I know how to make money as of late...

I posted in a previous thread about the Terraformer, and how I was using Technologists with maximum research bonuses to hit the Terraformer ASAP.

I've played 2 games since then...and drew a new conclusion...selling tech is the BEST way to make money.

A few reasons:
Unlike ships & bulk cash and other things that you can only give away once...tech can be traded to EACH RACE, immediately making it at least 5 times more valuable than any other trade good.

Tech keeps on coming! Once an alien race pays you tribute monthly for the last batch of tech, new tech comes that they will be willing to pay for again. This keps your monthly cash flow way up.

Lack of diplomacy does not seem to be as much of a factor when selling tech. I know it plays a role, and the more diplomacy you have the more money you'll get. The fact is, alien races in harder games will refuse the opportunity to buy bulk cash or ships, but they will always want new tech!

Here's an example...I research with all of my bonuses, set 10% military, 10% social, and all the way up on research. I leap ahead in tech and make a huge effort to get in contact with as many races as possible in the beginning. I open a window and drop 9 techs into it (use your imagination) and get 100bc per month for 24 months from one race, 22 months from another, 24 from another, etc etc etc...than financially rape the minor races too.

Not only do I shoot ahead in bc by selling them useless techs, but they end up so broke that they have to stop spending anyway!!! I often take as much in influence points as I can get too.

It's been highly successful in my latest crippling small map.

Just an opinion...happy playing!


Lord Alzandrion
750 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Don't forget about selling to minors too. True, they sometimes run out of cash pretty quickly but I have minors still loaded with cash till the end of my gigantic game. This is because they were trading with me and they were out of harm's way (ie not losing all their money to threats).

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
uhm youre wrong the best way to get cash is declaring a war against a noobish AI and ask all of their planets for peace
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree with Alzandrion, selling Tech is the way to do it. This seems particularly ridiculous with a high diplomacy bonus - I just finished playing a game on Tough where I started with the pacifists, and bought Diplomatic Translators early (from Mitrosoft, ouch!), and refused to trade them to anyone else. With ~60% more diplomacy than most others, I was getting truly ridiculous amounts of cash for selling tech - particularly from minors. I could get like 150bc per year for 20 years for selling 3-4 moderate usefulness techs, and even more when selling off some key military techs. It was insane - I got more income from tech sales than from trade or taxes, and at 100% spendnig had an average profit of ~200bc per turn, every turn. This of course allowed me to get a tech lead and purchase almost all of the wonders and trade goods before anyone else. Strangely, I couldn't sell trade goods for all that much any more, despite the fact that they're more powerful. Result of the AI tweaks I guess.

I also managed to buy economy and military resource starbases from opponents for tech (expensive but worth it, stopped DOWs on me - I got screwed in the resource grab, only managed to pick up an influence base).

I was a great way to play - having a mediocre military, not a huge influence, but good relations with pretty much everyone and buying other people into wars to stop anyone being too strong. Playing the information broker rather than military conqueror was heaps of fun - and I've never found any other game that really let you play (and win!) this way.

Kudos, Brad!

|Zero|

Edit: Oh, and also managed to get like 10 times the Metaverse score of any other game I've played.
[Message Edited]
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree that selling techs is very useful. AIs should do it more so you don't get so much of a chance.
Also, I've noticed that if you have five techs you want to sell to someone, and you sell them all in one go, you don't get as much money as if you sold them one at a time. I assume this is a delibarate feature, but I can't see what it's for. All it does it make the tech trading more fiddly for players who have spotted this effect.


~SDC~
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
"I've noticed that if you have five techs you want to sell to someone, and you sell them all in one go, you don't get as much money as if you sold them one at a time."

Hey Matthew Downie, thanks for the tip...I tried it and it's confirmed. More $$$!!! Also, I'm finding that even on tiny masochistic maps this still works!!! So well on my last game in fact that I locked down the AI and put them in too much debt to build anything!

Too bad I still can't submit my score (:(


Lord Alzandrion
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
AIs should do it more so you don't get so much of a chance.
End of quote


The AIs don't sell for cash, but they will trade techs amongst themselves pretty extensively on difficulties above normal (if I'm not mistaken). The only reason that you can even sell techs to them at all is because they all seem to focus on the same techs, leaving lots of others unresearched.

This is also the reason that if you sell a tech to a major civ, you better sell it to all of them in one turn or the one will trade it to all the others as soon as he can.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
one thing i dont like is that when you trade a tech to a major, they dont give you too much money for it, BUT when you try to buy a tech off of them, they are asking for huge ammounts of money! (by they way, i always make sure that im the one with diplomatic translators, but they dont seem to help too much)
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah seems a bit one sided sometimes. Some good points above! I made the error of trading tech to one AI over another many times befor I realized what the hack was going on ( thats is them running off clicking thier heels together and selling my hard earned research to everyone including my enemies :D ).

Just lately I've been doing a fair bit of planet trading with the minors mid game which has been working well on 'uncommon' planet maps.

Querry if I may. I was playing a game and I had some super long sale agreements with just about ever race (you know like 10 bc per month forever . . .). Whats the consequence of war on these agreements? Are all deals off? And secondly does having long term arrangements as mentioned deter others from attacking me? :notsure:
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
As far as I know, once you ink a deal it goes on forever, even if that race gets destroyed or goes totally bankrupt... In my last game I needed some extra cash for my final push, so I sold ALL of my remaining techs to the two strongest minors, for something like 1000bc/200mo. :P
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I ran into a problem in my most recent game when trying to sell tech. I was playing in a tiny galaxy and only one Major race and one Minor race had any money to buy tech with. This lack of cash really put a crimp on my money strategies.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
As far as I know, once you ink a deal it goes on forever, even if that race gets destroyed or goes totally bankrupt...
End of quote


I've seen it go both ways in my experience. I've had long deals with a major or minor race stop paying once they surrendered or conquered. But I know I've seen I minor continue to pay even though they were long gone.