You need more morale boosting buildings, or just upgrade them. Take some off your tax and spending. Keeping spending at 100% is not that easy, so just save big tax and full spending until you need to or feel like rush building. If your playing on a fairly big map with lots of habitable planets you should start with 0% tax, 100% spending. It'll help your race's morale thru the game and will keep the morale when you reach the planet grab phase. That'll help you keep relatively high morale while managing to stay in the greens (profit).And, also try putting more spending % in social (economy). If all else fails, research much more for economy (e.g. Xeno Economics). It'll lower other stats, but it will lift your economy. Think of it as a last but not that desperate effort to save your economy.   

Hmm..don't think I've ever touched the spending button. I feel now that I may be missing something...what does it affect, exactly?

Don't bite off more than your economy can chew! Too many projects at one time will drive costs up. Use 75-85% industrial capacity, using more just eats up money without much added benefit in most cases that I've found. Don't upgrade ships that are level 0. Start new builds and decomission the old ones as new ships come out (don't quick buy unless there's an emergency). Morale resources are useful, so grab them. If you get too much going at one time, you'll either have to resolve the economic crisis with a military conquest to expand, or stop some projects to free up funds. For example, your ecomony might not be able to sustain building 15 structures, researching a weapon, maintaining a fleet, and pay for other operating costs simultaneously. Drop some of the unecessary building projects, or stop work on the latest warships if they are not immediately needed, etc. That's what's helped me so far.

Make sure that you research better morale buildings before better farms. Usually I don't research farms at all.

And make trade routes, it will help your economy but not your morale. Many people say trade is worthless in GCII, but I use it and it makes big $$$.

If you can find a class 13-26 or above planet.Then put one entertainment building to boost morale,one starport and fill all but one tile with trade centres and upgrade them to stock markets,Leave one tile for economic capitol..i did this and i got a class 26 planet generating 668 credits per turn. If you dont have a high class planet i.e 13-26 class or above near you..select your highest class planet and follow the above procedure,then after researching xeno ethics select neutral..this upgrades your planets giving you more tiles to cram em with stock markets and gives you additional trade routes too. Build a strong network of economy starbase and max out your trade routes.also needless to say grab as many economic resource bonus asap and morlae resource to..they help in a HUGE way and research morale boosting bulidings when you av a solid economy and a strong millitary to protect your economy...hope it all helps..good luck

668/turn...That's not great at all. Once you get the planet to ~25 billion load it with stock markets, econ capitol and mind control center, it's easy to get over 2500/turn. And trade is not great unless you're playing a small map.

I know i know you've gotten around 2k/turn... Big deal. My economy can easily have a surplus of over 100k.

My last game at the end (september of third year) I was getting 7,131 income per turn, net profit of 2,235 per turn, at 65% tax (100% morale).

On trade routes, I had 12 routes running from home nine sectors to the Dark Yor homeworld (class 21, pop 10billion), with two fully loaded economic starbases on it, but only netted 603bc per turn at the end of the game. That's three years into the game, on the last turn, when the game is over.

7131 tax, 603 trade. Less than one tenth of my income. My conclusion: Trade is a waste of time and starship production, as far as trying to get money. It could be useful for friendship purposes, but as far as an economic resource, it's a tiny drop in the bucket.

End Game Save.zip

take this advice start the game out on a note to keep ecomomy above a negative for a decent ammount of time this would require you to spend points on economy or better yet Trade put some points into these and you should stay out of the hole for a decent ammount of time... addressing you concerns though here we go!

One of my biggest issues I think is morale. If a planet's pop gets above 10-11b.. my morale just plummets.

population is only a number; morale is the overal mood of your citizens on the planet one thing that people will constanly overlook thinking the only way to improve this number is to build a large number of enertainment structures to level it off; when in fact there is more than one way to raise your morale on a planet! Start here a morale improving structure will only make a certain percentage of the total population happier meaning that it will have almost a negated effect against higher population levels if you scroll over the morale on the planet screen it tells you what is making your people unhappy the most those are usually taxes which have the highest effect SO lowering the overall taxation of your people will increase there overall morale MORE than a morale enhancing structure will because your population is ever expanding. also a high quality planet will help assist morale somewhat. Overpopulated planets are those which have simply too many people for the morale to stay at a high level I usually encounter this at around 20 billion people where higher pop will increase the affected morale and will inturn lower the morale faster. Just lower taxes at these points in time and you should be more stable at sustaining a morale that is high. ALSO before I forget research Star Federation the morale will substainually increase overall when your government is giving support to the populace in such a way.

Don't neglect your stock markets either - those 10% morale bonuses add up. And make a point of making sure you get Harmony crystals and Ultra spices. I don't have much trouble at getting an overall happiness in the high 90s.

Completely agree there AngleWyrm, his post is a bit goofy.

I clearly said for PQ14 or higher. I agree most planets should only have 1 farm. Advanced farms work real well on those planets, as the stock markets are enough usually to keep them happy. My point was researching farms pays off, because someone above was saying that better farms are crap...

Ok whatever. I havn't tried doing just one farm everywhere, and i probably won't because population is key in metaverse scoring as well. I also like having a monster economy, so i have plenty of money worlds. It's nice to be able to upgrade entire navys, to be able to quick build a factory and a ship on each new planet, and never to be concerned with money.

I agree that folks should experiment here, and see what they like. New technologies are not always better.

Well I belong to the school of "one farm only per colony" except maybe in money worlds (doesn't everyone??) , and I research farm tech upgrades whenever one of my colony starts to reach its limit.