[dogscoff]

Best way to explain is by example:

Empire A mines 100000 minerals per turn.
Empire B mines 80000 minerals per turn.

When they first start their trade alliance, they are at 1%. You can see this percentage on the same screen as the trade amount.

The result is that an extra 100000*1%=1000 minerals is generated from nowhere and given to empire B, and 80000*1%=800 minerals are generated and given to A.

Note that the extra resources don't come out of anyone's treasury, they are generated from nowhere.

Their trade percentage increases by 1% per turn until it gets to 20%
Assuming they have the same production, B would then get an extra 20000 minerals each turn and A would get 16000.

Same principle applies to rads, orgs and (in higher level treaties) research and intel. Note that empire B gets the better deal in this example.

If Empire C had an alliance with empire A, the income empire A gets from empire B is NOT counted when calculating C's gain, so C would get exactly the same income from A as B does.

Income from scrapping ships/ facilities and from gifts/ trades does not count when calculating trade totals either.

[ February 13, 2003, 11:02: Message edited by: dogscoff ]