Trade in Godsfire (c) 1997 Richard W. Smith In the current rules there is no advantage to being at peace with a world and one dis-advantage: if you are at war with a world then the ruler of that world can not freely move subversion money into your system. So apart from the 'peaceful' scenarios, players typically declare war against one and all to force enemies to physically escort cash to their planet's surface. These rules will give a bonus to the economies of worlds that are trading with many other worlds. These rules will usually place more money in play which speeds up the game (a good thing in my humble opinion). You may be at peace with a player, but prevent trade. On the other hand, worlds controlled by two players in a shooting war may continue to freely trade with each other. Thus the rules that talk about landing subversion monies no longer care if star ships are fighting, they will controlled by weather or not the world that is receiving the subversion money is allowing free trade or not from the world that the money came from. Note that under these rules, between some worlds, money will travel faster than light. This is a simplification to avoid having to keep track of locations of merchant fleets escorting money. I believe that you will find these rules to be quite playable. Trade 1 Instead of getting one bonus giga-bucks for each world you control, the size of the bonus earned by a world depends on the number of other worlds that world is freely trading with (see table below). There are no counters that need to be moved, the 'trade fleets' are privately owned, are not controlled by any player and never appear on the map. It is assumed that if trade is not suppressed, it will naturally occur in the background. The only affects of trade are on the world bonus and on the ease that subversion money can be sent from one world to another (as per the normal rules for when worlds are at peace). The # of other worlds a given Giga Buck world is bonus trading with. per turn. ______________________________________________ 0 -1 (see Trade rule 2) 1 +0 2 or 3 +1 4 or 5 +2 6 to 8 +3 9 to 11 +4 (see Trade rule 3) 12 to 14 +5 (see Trade rule 3) Trade 2 For no reason may a world's income go below 1 GB / turn. Trade 3 To gain a +4 or +5 income bonus you must be able to use faster than light travel. (Without ftl drive, trade with the most distant parts of the cluster is so difficult and slow that it nets you no significant economic bonus.) Trade 4 Trade need not be symmetric. For example, Grom may allow Vand's merchants to trade freely at its ports but Vand may prevent Grom's traders. In this case, Grom may gain an economic bonus, but will pay the price as it will be easier for the player controlling Vand to sneak in subversion monies. If a player controls more than one world, some of her worlds may allow trade with other worlds and some may prevent it. Thus if a world is unstable politically, you may wish cut off its trade with hostile worlds until you can stabilize the situation. Trade 5 The status of trade with other systems may be changed once per turn after the landing of subversion monies. Thus if you claim the economic bonus, the enemy player will have time to land hostile monies. Trade 6 If a world is blockaded, the player blockading the system may choose to block trade with any or all other worlds. If the blockading player chooses to allow some trade, the blockaded world may still prevent trade with any or all other world's. (However it won't be able to prevent the landing of monies escorted to the system by enemy fleets.) Typically blockading fleets will stop all trade in order to strangle the economy of the besieged world. Trade 7 When constructing their own scenarios, players must decide which neutral worlds are trading with which players. Usually neutral worlds will trade with everyone until a player attacks a neutral world's units. From that point on, the attacked neutral will not trade with any of that player's worlds. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to write me at: pnrsmith@istar.ca