Final Frontier Trade Routes

[thelebk]

I apologize in advance for any cross posting, but it seems this is the forum I should have posed my question in in the first place:


I am playing the final frontier scenario and have noticed that my cities only have 1 trade route each, and only with my own cities. I have open borders with two other civs. My trade routes only net 1gp/turn. How do I get more trade routes/system, and how do I raise their value? I am going broke big time...

Thanks for any help or insight.

 

[Inky]

In Final Frontier you only get one trade route per system/city, unless you're playing the Syndicate (red). Open borders isn't enough, you must also have a trade connection via warp or jump lanes to your trading partners.

Trade routes in Final Frontier don't tend to make a lot of money, unless you are Syndicate. Even then, it isn't that amazing. You need other things to make money in Final Frontier. Specifically, in the relatively early game, Banking Systems and if you can build them, Stellar Markets, to boost your income, as well as Maglev (and later ComSatellites) to increase commerce output.

Also, running Monarchy is pretty much essential in the early game to keep afloat, as it boosts your capital's output by 50%.

No matter what you do, though, you're going to hit an economic wall in the mid-game. Only the Syndicate tends to be able to avoid that, and even then only with enough expansion so its trade advantages pay off. You must have multiple economy boosting buildings per system in order to keep afloat. You may need to build wealth or research in order to keep your advances coming in the midgame. The AI definitely will build research, so it is hard to compete without doing otherwise, unless you're quite good at rapid expansion and development.

 

[thelebk]

I had a warp lane to one of my partners with open borders, but I still received no trade routes outside of my own Civ. I then built a secon (and much longer) warp lane to anotehr neighbor I had open borders with, and then suddenly I got trade with BOTH partners! Odd! Also unlike normal Civ it seems worker units in FF do not build road networks to competitors while automated....

 

[Inky]

The connection must make it to the capitals, I think, in order to allow trade. Or else, the worlds you do have connection with offer less trade than your own.

The space pirates destroy warp lanes frequently, which makes it hard to get a complete route through to everyone. The only defense is route redundancy -- build lots of routes between every system to ensure that at least one remains intact.

I can't say how FF's automation works, but as the environment is radically different from normal Civ, I wouldn't be surprised if the construction workers can't build trade routes. They have little to do, really, other than build warp/jump lines around your territory, and perhaps hook up any resources that you haven't done manually. I suppose that helps explain why many AI cities are blanketed with road networks.

 

[thelebk]

Makes Sense, thanks.