You've got most of the information already.

At the start you've got lots of competing pressures.

a) The need to rush build.
The need to keep population up on your economic planets
(planets need a healthy poulation to make money)
c) The need to colonise (each colony has a base of 12 maintenance-this can be really significant early on)
d) The need for increase in production and reseach as well as economy.

You need to evaluate the situation, right at the start you need to work out which planet is going to go into the black and when. If you are worried err on the side of building too many econ buildings on planets. You must have population to make a planet profitable. If it is a research or manufacturing plant then it doesn't need people (so have small colonies on those types of planets).

Easiest to get into surplus is your home planet. You start off with a healthy population size.
Unless you can see a better planet to rush to. Start by building 2 or 3 rushed factories and set the rest of the planet to be econ buildings.

One trick which sounds counter intuative is to LOWER taxes while you are still in the black to get the 100% bonus to your pop growth early on.

Never empty your econ planets of people. There will be no taxes as a result.

Avoid maintenance on things you can live without. (Look at building early ships with low mainenance).
Research to Gal Stock exchanges ASAP... unlike the factory buildings (which are terrible early on) there is no down side to getting up to Gal Stock exchanges.

Get to a decent government. At least republic asap.

Research and build one morale building per econ colony so you can tax people at a higher rate. (Gal Stock exchanges also boost morale so they are doubly good for your strategy).

Obviously capture econ resources if available.

Hope there is enough to go on there.

I hadn't considered using my homeworld as an economy center... I was thinking that for research at first.
I'm going to go with your advice and give that a shot. Thanks a lot!

Myr

Iztok
I don't entirely agree with you.
I buy factories all the time. At least the first 2 or 3 on my home world and the first one on every other planet if I think my finances can stand it.

But you are right that rushing colony/constructors is a bad idea unless you absolutely have to (there is always that lovely PQ26 planet that you can just beat the AI to if you rush)

Spot on gmjapan. But one of the problems is you need to have a crystal ball in whether 500 or 1 is the right number to put on a colony ship.

If the planet has manufacturing and research bonuses (making it more useful for those purposes) then 1 is the best number early on. If it is going to be an econ planet then 500 is the best number. I head for small/medium PQs with small colonies (and use them for manufacturing/research) and the big PQ planets with big colonies and use them for economy.

As always with this game there are exceptions.

This was suggested to me a while back and I found it very helpful - Research Xeno Ethics as early as possible and go Neutral - you get the planetary improvements and terraforming for free, and your highest population colonies become maintenance free

Good suggestions so far. I'll add, that the first morale tech is +10 to morale and will help more than any other early tech, because it allows a player to raise the tax rate. The 100% pop bonus early from a 100% approval rate is a huge payoff for a small investment. Try and get to 1 billion pop on every colony early. This means 500 million on every colony ship. With the pop bonus, it works fine. I try to limit early rush spending to about 3000 credits, unless I find more in anomalies. The rest I save to fund the deficit until pop grows empire wide, for emergencies and to pay for invasions.

Federalist party helps. Some of the others actually hurt because extra production means more costs. Early trade, selling techs all can fill the early hole. I would not spend down to 200 bc in the bank because of the reasons I already mentioned. Running a deficit every turn for the pop bonus means a much bigger tax base later. This is worth a LOT more than an extra early building or two. It is often a long time for the last colony founded to actually contribute to the empire. Don't sweat it.

Don't research the techs for better factories, until the majority of colonies have at least one factory in place. The delay will make it worse rather than better.

I think that the size galaxy you are playing on contributes somewhat to whether you buy or build colony ships. I usually play medium or large and on medium if I don't buy as many colony ships as I can afford (usually down to about 1000bc) then I end up with too few colonies. I will often build them on my home planet and buy them on my secondary planet and then ship them empty to my home planet to put citizens on them. At the same time I buy at least one factory on the first couple of planets, but I prioritize colony ships over factories. There is usually a period of time where I have to put my production slider down near 50% for a few months after the colony rush while I get my planets building stock exchanges. On large or huge galaxies I can afford to take a little more time to build colony ships but I still buy some to have a better chance of getting those high PQ planets. Once I grab whatever resources I found then I start working on freighters and defensive ships.

Mismatched

Purely a suggestion, but any strategy which moves production away from 100% does not seem ideal to me. I use that as a sign I've probably over spent/under invested. (Rush buying ships is so expensive in comparison to rush buying factories). I set the production slider to 100% on turn one and it stays there the whole game. If I'm only trying to get to 2 or 3 planets (which is all you can rush build without meltdown) you may have a point but unless you've got everything set to rare then I can't see how your strategy works certainly not on medium/large maps. By about turn 20 I'm always generating a surplus even at 100% spend and by turn 4 I'm churning out colony ships every 2-3 turns (which is all my pop can stand in any case).

[Aside- you are redesigning you colony ships immediately, aren't you? You need to get max engines on them from the end of turn 1. Even to the point of upgrading your existing one (unless it will land the following turn).]

Knocking the slider down to 50% is not going to allow me to win on high levels of difficulty, believe me... I have a high enough mountain to climb with 100% production.

Star Dagger.
It is the main reason the civs with ion drive Yor, Drath etc are so overpowered. They immediately start with a speed bonus and if you research up to impulse it is so big an advantage in the planet grab it is not funny.

I am not going to bother reading what others wrote to you, but here are some tips:

1. I play on research normal, as getting your econ going will be slowed by slower research. You won't be building research every turn after you do the most basic techs. Probably won't matter that much though.

2. It is ok to buy your first factory, in fact, I think it is manditory. HOWEVER, don't be spending all your cash buying stuff. This will kill your econ as buying costs way more than building. Basically building costs bc, just like buying, but it takes much less bc, but more time. So, you are saving tons by building. Another problem with buying is you are paying maintenance on buildings you can't really afford yet because your population base is not high enough to gen enough taxes.

3. I usually don't colonize my 4 qual planet second, but look for a 10+ for your second planet. It is good to have more developed space early, and a 4 planet is effectively worthless. I usually will colonize it eventually just to prevent the enemy from building so close to my homeworld only.

4. Get your marketing centers going on your home world fast.

5. Research trade early, and get the econ capital going. I usually try and build the econ cap on a larger world other than my home world. ON that world, just build tons of marketing (econ buildings), nothing else other than required buildings (moral, farm, manuf).

5. Get trade routes going. Go far, to big worlds. Get to master trade and 10 routes asap.

6. research republic fast, then the other govt types as soon as feasible.

7. If there are econ resources nearby, make sure you snag them.


start at 100% spending, then ratchet down when you near zero bc to where you need to be. ONly build as much military as you need to keep the flies of you as they cost maintenance.

Another very large factor on your econ is population. I run at 100% moral for the first 20 turns or so as it doubles the growth rate. Then never run below 75% moral, or the pop growth suffers (it may be 70%, I have heard both). Build moral buildings early, which allows you to run at a higher tax rate as well. Research the moral path too. Moral resources help tremendously (although I have found bugs in the moral algorithms in 1.11 and before). I also build as many econ star bases as will fit around my homeworld, and around groups of my worlds.

While doing all this, don't neglect your military, culture, or diplomacy skills.

Overall, I find that keeping my research abilitys (via race bonuses and buildings) as high as possibly as well, which keeps my tech moving along.

Be careful not to go too fast up any one of the planet building tech trees ands also go equally. YOu can stunt your grow fast if you have banks (or whatever) too early as they will take too long to build if you have not built up your manufacturing.

I play with tech trading off because of what I am about to say, but tech whoring generates more cash than you know what to do with. Just sell your techs to the AI, and particularly the minor races. I haven't used this since 1.1, but I would imagine it still works well to generate revenue, but too much so IMO.

Really it is all a careful balance that is hard to convey in a thread like this. Hope this helps some. Play around with some of this, then you will find your own balance and be a master ad developing a strong economy soon enough without sacrificing other areas too much.

Also, since your tax base goes up by the square root of the population, losing 1 billion people really hurts when you only have 5 billion people. (24% drop in revenue). However, a booming population when you have low populations is equally helpful. basically, rush buying colony ships is most damaging when you have half of your empire in space not paying taxes.