RESEARCH AND TRADE

[Byeohazard]

First I must say I am having a great time with this game! The atmosphere and mood is quite good. For the most part the game has been superb with allowing me to figure things out easily. The UI is very well done. I do have a question about Trading and research pacts I assume trade credits are tied to the factions economy strength. Along the same lines I am not sure how the numbers work with research agreements and what influences that.
Thanks in advance..looking foreword to hearing back from the community!

[Flaviusx]

My sense is that trade pacts are fairly underpowered. I've never seen them clock in for more than 20 or so credits per faction, and most of the time much less than that.

By the time I was hitting those numbers in my last game in trade pacts, my economy was in surplus for 2k/turn. (This is very late game, near a tech win with a couple of dozen cities at least half of which were 20+ size.) I could have broken every trade pact and still been netting 1900 credits/turn. For large stretches of the game the trade pacts were pulling in 1-2 credits per turn. Maybe I'm too used to Civ5 trade, where the gold pulled in via trade is far more significant and absolutely essential even. Trade in Pandora seems to me mostly a way to sweeten relations with other factions rather than a significant source of income in of itself.

Research pacts are stronger in relation to what you can produce domestically and tend to bring in larger amounts in absolute terms than trade pacts.

[willgamer]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

My sense is that trade pacts are fairly underpowered. I've never seen them clock in for more than 20 or so credits per faction, and most of the time much less than that.

By the time I was hitting those numbers in my last game in trade pacts, my economy was in surplus for 2k/turn. (This is very late game, near a tech win with a couple of dozen cities at least half of which were 20+ size.) I could have broken every trade pact and still been netting 1900 credits/turn. For large stretches of the game the trade pacts were pulling in 1-2 credits per turn. Maybe I'm too used to Civ5 trade, where the gold pulled in via trade is far more significant and absolutely essential even. Trade in Pandora seems to me mostly a way to sweeten relations with other factions rather than a significant source of income in of itself.

Research pacts are stronger in relation to what you can produce domestically and tend to bring in larger amounts in absolute terms than trade pacts.

I don't know how to verify it, but the tool tips indicate that the largest benefactor of a trade goes to the poorer partner.

Perhaps you got so little because your economy was much larger?

[Byeohazard]

Thanks for the info! I am still wondering what determines the amount you receive in either circumstance. For instance, if I have a lot of science type structures will that multiply what I receive from another player or does it have more to do with how strong the other players research is (he has more to give me if his research is strong) I notice you can get a rough idea of how strong research, economy etc is doing by how many dots they have by each when looking at the diplomacy screen.