Most of what I see in the trader is either people needing the same goods I do or 1 and 0 star trades. Usually when I put trades up I make them 3 star, but the delays and decay make it very frustrating, so its not like I can continuously afford that, especially when Im getting nowhere close to what is needed.
This is why I've focused on aiming for event buildings that produce boosted +1/+2 in my cities...
Sure, they're still not nearly as efficient as many earlier prizes from years past, however, when I do eventually enter into Sentient goods, I'll have *some* additional non-boosted daily production and won't be 100% reliant on trading to get techs completed.
The downside being, my score is dog ****, since I tend to forgo things like additional armouries, factories & AW's, in favor of scoreless event buildings that simply produce more of what I actually need.
(ie: currently being WE's chapter, I need tons of Orks for negotiating the Spire through Lv2 each week... sure I
could build 4-5+ armouries, but why bother when it's far, far,
far more economical to simply plant 5-6+ Ork Nest + Scare Carriage + Ork Ships, etc to produce more Orks per square?!)