Trading Tutorial

Trading works when one player offers a number of Goods and desires a number of other Goods in exchange. Simple really, yes?

It would be except there are three complications:
1. The Trade System recognises two types of Player you can trade with:
1.1 Known Players: Players who you have 'discovered' in your neighbourhood or Players in your Fellowship
1.2 Unknown Players: All other Players
The Trade System charges a fee of 50% of the Demanded Goods, if you accept a trade from an Unknown Player.
So a simple trade would be, for example, 100 Marble for 100 Planks.
If you posted this trade and a Known Player accepted it, they would give up 100 Planks which you get and they would get the 100 Marble in exchange.
However, if an Unknown Players accepted this trade they would give up 150 Planks, of which you get 100, the other 50 disappearing and they get 100 Marble in exchange.

2. There are three tiers of Goods:
2.1 Basic Goods: Marble, Steel and Planks
2.2 Crafted Goods: Crystal, Scrolls and Silk
2.3 Magical Goods: Elixir, Magic Dust and Gems
Magical Goods are worth four times what Crafted Goods are worth and Crafted Goods are worth four times what Basic Goods are worth.
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3. You will have three of the nine Goods that you can produce at a boosted rate.
  You first have to research the Boost Technology. Then you collect relic of the Boosted Good; the more relics you have the bigger the Boost.

The Trader assigns a number of stars to trades. The number of stars denotes how equitable the trade is.
Three Stars means that the trade benefits the person accepting the trade;
Two Stars means that the trade benefits both Players equally;
One Star means that there is a slight benefit for the Player offering the Goods and
No Stars means that the trade heavily benefits the Player offering the Goods.

This means that what would be a Two Star trade for a Known Player is a One Star trade for an Unknown Player accepting the trade, because of the 50% fee that has to be paid.

If you trade your Boosted Goods, you can still have an equitable trade on One Star Trades, if your Boost is more than 50%. This is because you are getting 150% of the 'normal' yield for the cost in coins ad supplies.

It follows, therefore, that you can make the following trades at an equitable rate:
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This gives you an edge over most of the other Players, because you are making a better trade than they will be; most Players tend to stick to the standard trades. For Known Players your trades will be Three Star trades, rather than Two Star trades, and appear at the top of the list in Trader. For unknown Players they will appear as Two Star trades, rather than One Star trades, and be higher up the list than they otherwise would be.

Based on the above, I decided that, after my Boost rate reached 200%, I would not produce any more non-Boosted Goods, but would rely on trading to get my non-Boosted Goods. This tactic has worked well, except for the fellowship Adventures when I has to build some Level 1 Manufacturies in order to get some Badges needed and in one Tournament when I got short of Planks and only put up 1:1 trades by mistake. shortly after I replaced them with 1.5:1 trades my stocks got replenished.