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Join Date 02/2006

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Need help with economic strategy

When I first started playing, I didn't even touch the industry slider in the Domestic Policy dialogue. I left it at 50% and found that sufficient for beginner-level games. Of course, the AI is very limited at that level. With AIs set to Bright and the AI's less impeded, 50% simply didn't cut it, so I started setting the slider 100% right off the start.

100% obviously allows for a faster start, though it saps the treasury rather quickly until one's economy has matured. This can take quite a long time, though, especially if one ends up taking alot of planets. Having half a dozen planets, I quickly found myself having to drop the industry slider back down, sometimes very low. In my last attempt with this strategy, I ended up droping it down to about 15%, for a while. Needless to say: with six planets still needing development, nothing much was happening, which seemed to quickly destroy any advantage I had early on.

Part of the problem may be linked to my general building strategy. On a new colony I buy the first factory and let the rest build by itself. After that first factory, I queue up another, then a lab, a factory, a lab, etc. Somewhere in there I add a starport and the last two tiles go to food production and an entertainment structure. If there's a tile with an influence bonus, I'll add an embassy, but if not I usually only bother on border worlds. Obviously what's missing is economy structures.

In my last game I dedicated a couple planets to economic production. One problem may have been that I researched new economic techs too early, which meant more expensive structures early on for relatively new colonies. Those advanced structures require more time and money to build, thus slowing economic growth.

So what can I do to improve my strategy? Running out of money and having to drop my industry slider does nothing to help matters when the Drengin or someone else who doesn't seem to like me come knocking. I find myself usually late in building defenses, resulting in easy conquests. What I need is to strike a balance whereby my economy is able to grow in time to pay for planetary development, but I'm not sure of how I should go about this.

Any thoughts on this matter would be appreciated.

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My basic plan:
-At the beginning set taxes to I think 49% (I like to have an average approval rating of around 55-60%, so set your taxes accordingly. Morale takes a huge hit going from 39%->40% and 49->50% etc so be aware of that) Set your spending to 100%. Rush buy a few colony ships and your first factory as well as constructors if you find resources around. I go factory, factory, manufacturing cap on my homeworld. Econ cap usually gets put on (do it asap, the capitals rock!) an expansion planet with the highest planet quality, usually like if I find a nearby 12 PQ or something sweet.

-After rush buying stuff keep around 1,000 BC around so you can still keep it at 100% spending for as long as possible. I emphasize social production on my home world (and every new planet) to get all of my tiles working, then shift to military or research. I build at least one farm and +morale building on each planet as well as 1-2 banking structures. I also play as the Federalists (+20% econ)

-You want to build your farms somewhere in the middle of your social queue so that you are always growing and not stopping growth, then all of a sudden are at 5/17 max pop. Oh yeah farms are usless on PQ 6 and below planets, I think around PQ 9 one farm is a good idea but don't quote me on that, it's just a ballpark figure. There is some hidden max pop every planet can hold which is based off of its PQ, someone has a list somewhere.

-After that if I am getting low on money I cash in a few techs to minor and major races. You should do a lot of tech trading around turn 40 or so, you might think giving away techs to other AIs for 100ish BC is a bad deal but hey they will just get it anyways, might as well make a few bucks so you can keep on 100% spending.

-Go for trade pretty fast (I do it before I get weapons) Bust out some long trade routes, and try not to go through any enemy space.

-I'm not a fan of econ techs, the first building is 15%, that's pretty darn good. Banks give +24% and you should get them evetually but +9% is not really worth straining your starting research and industry.

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100% obviously allows for a faster start, though it saps the treasury rather quickly until one's economy has matured. This can take quite a long time, though, especially if one ends up taking alot of planets. Having half a dozen planets, I quickly found myself having to drop the industry slider back down, sometimes very low. In my last attempt with this strategy, I ended up droping it down to about 15%, for a while. Needless to say: with six planets still needing development, nothing much was happening, which seemed to quickly destroy any advantage I had early on.

Out of money with 6 planets? Did you Purchase a lot of stuff? Remember, that costs TEN TIMES as much as Building the same thing.

Purchasing a few Colonizers or Factories might have made sense when you were limited to 50% production. But when you crank it up to 100%, you have to change your strategy: try not to Purchase anything unless it's an emergency.

What I do is turn Production up to 100% at the start, and turn Research and Military Spending to zero. This allows you to build several Factories on your homeworld in practically no time. Then I turn on Military Spending, Focus my Homeworld on that, and start cranking out two Colonizers per turn.

Only after I have about five or six production planets colonized do I start my first Research planet and turn Research back on. When you turn on Research, you will see that the net Credit loss per turn will suddenly drop (because you have far fewer labs than factories.)

With this strategy I have never come CLOSE to running out of money.

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How well do these strategies keep up with the arms race ? I played my first game on 'tough' last night and the AI is spanking me soundly in the research department AND trading amonsgt themselves so fast that by the time I get a tech everyone else already has it.

MG

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If you increase happiness you can increase your tax rate. After your Factory and Xeno Lab, try building an entertainment network. Once your entertainment network is built, check your slider panel and increase your taxes. Try to keep your happiness between 55-80% at all times. (these numbers are just a good range to manage between). My build order looks something like this.

Factory
Lab
Entertainment
Market
Farm

If my planet has food or approval bonuses I may skip building a lab and turn that planet into a economic capital. I rarely if ever build more than one Market building. Keep Entertainment researched whenever possible so you can keep bumping up your tax slider.

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Hey, one more question since I cant seem to get any of my original posts to show up...

Do you guys restart if you get less than 5 colonies in the initial land grab? I have been playing on large, occasional stars, 6 opponents, challenging AIs, and getting crushed. But that might be becasue the last two games I played, I got confined to 4 initial colonies with one class 11, and the rest 7-8.

MG

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Perhaps you should try investing in the planet quality ability. That way if you do get stuck with a class 7 or 8 planet there is a better chance you'll get a resource bonus.

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I always like to get my economy up and running really fast by keeping most of my people on my homeworld, and keeping morale/approuval at 100%, this doubles the reproduction rate as compared to 99%...this allows me to get lots of people to tax relatively quickley..i keep moral up either by lowering taxes and dipping into my treasury a bit more then i would like for a while before i have enough people to raise the taxes, or I build entertainment centers early on in the build queue, before farms...better to have really fast reproduction a the start.

hope that helps you...and btw, i never take my industry below 100%.

Edwin

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Well, I tried some of the things suggested, particularily managing the military/social/research slider, and the results were better. On my homeworld I concentrated entirely on production, almost entirely ignoring research. I dropped the research and military sliders to nil and completed building on my homeworld very quickly indeed. I ended up buying about three colony ships, which I probably could have avoided doing simply by shunting the budget back and forth between social and military.

Ultimately, I was still behind in the arms race, but that's probably more my fault than anything else. My survival against the Yor was due to the ability to very quickly produce ships at my homeworld.

At the beginning of the war I was producing a fighter each turn, which the AI seemed particularily annoyed by. I eventually managed to trade some tech for peace, which lasted about a dozen turns. By then I had managed to build a military starbase, to augment my defense. I managed to stick with a couple fleets of fighters while I researched and traded for better tech. Eventually, I charged forward, destroying all resistance with my new ships, and with a few pairs of troop transports I took his homeworld -- which coincidentally was in the system neighbouring my own homeworld's. He surrendered to me and I spent the rest of the game watching the other races kill each other, allying with the survivor at the end.

My other worlds were where all my research and economy was based. I had five other worlds. One was Mars, which had a factory and two labs, one was primarily research, one was primarily economy, and the other two mediocre worlds were balanced between production and research. I avoided doing much research that would result in building upgrades, in the beginning. My primary concern early on was to get all of my worlds finished their initial buildings, then I would put my research into entertainment tech, then production tech, then reasearch tech. The result was very smooth transitions.

I don't think I ended up dropping the industry slider below 40%. My taxes were almost always at 49% and in the end they were still that way and I had 100% approval.

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Buy a factory on Earth, and maybe a constructor. Then, you'll need about 2 more factories and a farm later, which leaves 6 squares. All of which go on economy. I keep my tax at about 55%, going up to 60% during war, and I had some rather high pop. planets to get tax from. I did that for my first Intelligent game, having given the Terrans some economic bonuses, and mid war when I was making frigates costing 553BC, and espionage on my enemies, I was still making something like 200bc per turn at 100% capacity. My reserach was miles ahead, but I lagged a bit on ship building (No problem, as one of my Crow class friagates could take out a Drengin fleet of 4 of their state of the art cruisers). The point is, maybe I got lucky from having the two Dark Yor worlds next to me contributing a lot, and a class 22 planet with 11 banking centres, but even if you dont have that, make sure maybe 2 good planets are using HUGE economic bonuses. This will let you focus other planets on research, and you'll smash everyone else.
Even when your "cheese eating surrender monkey" allies continuosly give in to the Drengin.

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small remarks about buying, planetray improvements and economics:
- if you rushbuy something, try to avoid interest if the total cost is greater than the first option
- don't forget that interest will impact your budget for many turns
- if you rushbuy a ship, you can put the military slider to 0 since military spending won't be used
- rushbuying the first factory on any colony you have is nice. It allows you to build fastly other building
- build farm only if you need it: don't forget that you will need morale enhancements to keep your people happy and population reduce the effectiveness of moral building. It migth be better to use tiles with trade center than building a farm and morale ehancers

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For my first game I have been constantly changing the sliders - sometimes on a per-turn basis. eg if I need to push out a constructor fast followed by a fighter, I turn military right up until they are built, then if I need a new tech as my attack fleet approaches a planet, I whack up research to get that planetary bombardment tech finished, then push the sliders back to the middle for a few turns to get a more balanced build in all areas. Sometimes I have set the sliders up so that for example a new ship and a new related tech arrive on exactly the same turn...

So I have been really micro-managing these bars. It is my first game, however, so maybe I shouldn't be doing this ..?

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I rarely ever adjust the sliders besides the spending slider. It sounds like I'm really missing out on some advantages. I usually buy the first factory then set up a lab, then a market, then usually another lab. I concentrate mostly on research, my goal being to always be out teching everyone. I buy colony ships early and send them to any planet I can get a hold of that isn't isolated by other races. I find if I don't do this early on, there won't be any left within a few dozen turns.

I think I'm going to take some of these ideas and use them, noteably:

1. Have a planet concentrate on one goal, tech, produce, econ.

2. use the sliders more often,

3. use planet advantages to decide on what to concentrate on, precursor mine? I think i'll make this a production capital.

Thanks guys.

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Based on what I've read in other threads, the the social projects slider is very important. Any money allocated to social projects when none are being built is apparently wasted.

As such, when you're really needing to ramp up the war machine, dumping the social projects slider down to nil may really help research and ship production.

Something that really helped me in my last game were the "focus" buttons in the colony management screen. I first learned about them in one of the random tips that appear while the game is loading. They really helped when I had some colonies still building social projects, but others having finished their own. Since (as I mentioned above) unused money spent on social projects is wasted, I could redirect at least some of those funds to other areas. On the planets that finished their projects, I usually set them to focus on research.

I can't really say that I did any better at the beginning in that last game, though. I ended up performing a massive land grab. The map was medium sized with loose star clusters, common habitable planets, uncommon planets, uncommon stars, uncommon anomalies, and normal-paced research. There were three other civs: the Drengin, the Altarians, and the Torians.

In that galaxy, I managed to colonise five worlds (including Mars). One was a beautiful gem of a world: quality 7, but it had a +700% manufacturing square and a +300% manufacturing square. Positively amazing. . . Another was a Q17 planet. The other two (not Mars) were great as well, at Q10 and Q11. Definitely some great grabs, but. . . they made me poor.

In order to colonise all those planets quickly, I ended up buying three colony ships. Yeah. . . it was bloody expensive, at >900bc each. I ended up selling alot of tech and had to put myself into debt for a while to stall the Drengin from sinking their teeth into my poor little empire. The situation got much better and when the war started, I was able to adequately defend myself. Once again: military starbases rock.

One rather pitiful mistake that caused a minor panic occured when I accidentally purchased a ship for 1300bc, when I only had 500bc in the treasury. I spent the next five turns digging my way back out of the hole. . .

The Drengin had a massive advantage. They had four star systems, but two of those had two habitable planets and one had three. The 4th system had a single Q10 planet. Then they took out the Snathi, who had two very good planets in their home system. Needless to say, I was their only rival and I was once again quite late in my military production. I mentioned that I held my own quite well when war started, but it was a full defense. . .

The Altarians and the Torians seemed to settle any differences they may have had and tried to take on the Drengin together. It didn't take long for them to start asking me for help. I gave them alot of defense tech -- which they never used. As soon as my economy was stable and most of my colonies were upgraded to an adequate level, I started rolling over the nearest four Drengin planets.

At this point I noticed that a minor race deep in my territory -- one whom I had traded extensively with -- was allied with the Drengin. The Drengin were attacking several of my freighters and at one point I saw a few fleets belonging to that minor race trailing the Drengin force. They weren't attacking each other, though. Needless to say, I was kinda pissed off. That minor race wasn't at war with me, but the fact that he was allied with my enemy and attacking my allies while sitting safe within my territory was rather irritating. I took his homeworld and in the process found that his ships were more powerful than mine. . .

Actually, the Drengin's ships were more powerful than mine, too. The difference between us was that I always put an engine on my ships and they didn't. That meant one more weapon per ship and in a fleet of fighters that's a major advantage, especially if they happen to get the initiative. Even when they didn't have the initiative, I simply couldn't kill them fast enough, resulting in some uncomfortably close battles.

Anyway, this thread is supposed to be about economy, so to conclude: the social/military/research sliders can help alot, especially the social slider. When you can't yet afford to drop the social slider to nil, the focus buttons in the colony management screen can at least help one lessen the amount of wasted money by setting certain colonies to allocated more money to research. I still have to work on not going bankrupt, but the results are getting better. . .

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Either you're all lying, or I'm doing something wrong (I'm willing to bet on the second, though

). I've created a really strong military faction and expanding like crazy. Or at least trying to - in almost every game, I NEVER find more than the first two habitable planets that are always in the starting system (by the way, Stardock, would you mind randomizing it a bit? starting with a 10 and 4/3 planets all the time is getting a tad repetitive, don't you agree?). And if I do find some habitable planets, they're already colonized or are right next to a different race. Why aren't they right next to me? I've chosen "lucky" and it doesn't help. I only get a nice habitable planet about 1 every 6 or 7 games. A few suggestions would be nice, thanks.

And besides, without any technology (I'm pumping fighters like crazy), I'm getting my ass kicked. I destroy their ships, but when I invade or they invade, my army is creamed, since I lack the proper technology to defeat them, even with a good soldiering bonus. What can I do to balance their technology edge? Or was I attacking too early? And please don't tell me to trade for techs, my diplomacy is pathetic, I can't trade a million bucks for a cup of coffee.

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A suggestion for you Great Mirror. You should try a custom map. Two of my favorite maps so far are Destiny and Domination. Try them with 4 opponents and see how your game goes. I'm still no good at random maps because you never know how hard you should try to expand. I usually end up with 3 fantastic planets, but I overextend myself and end up getting taken out militarily.

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Heheh. . . I certainly did get pretty lucky in my colonies. The map in general seemed to have much more habitable worlds than I usually see, with my settings -- at least for the Drengin and me.

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now i'm confused, i've been playing this game since it came out. and i read this stuff, and i do most of it, i'm not as focused on the production slider, and i don't keep as much track of trade as i probably should, but by mid game i'm usually bleeding cash badly, and with my spending at 50 percent, i'm losing omre than 1000 bc a turn, and that's with 35-40 percent taxes. lately, my games have involved building at least a few econ structures on every planet. when i started playing this game my cash flow was fairly good, but lately all my games seem to end with my hemmoraging money very quickly. i don't know if i'm retarded or what, but i must be missing something critical here, i just can't seem to make planets profitable ever. that's with at least 11b people on them. i can't even overcome the spending costs, much less the planet maintanence.

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Zagadka60, if you e-mailed me one of your game saves I'd be happy to check it out and see if I can make some suggestions as to how I would have structured differently. I'd be willing to do this for anyone who seems to have trouble economically. My e-mail address is my username (minus the citizen part) at gmail.

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a good thing to do also is redesign the basic ships to have the most engines as they can hold, and range support for the scout. a cargo hull for the scout to fit the most you can. that way you can find AIs faster, trade for their faster drives, so your colony ships can reach those planets before the AI

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Another try!

This time I was able to manage my economy such that I never had to buy a colony ship. I did end up dropping my industry slider for a while toward the end of the initial colony development phase, though the lowest it got was around 35, I think. I also tried setting a couple planets aside for economic support . Both planets were far enough back in my territory that it would take about four or five turns for them to reinforce my front lines, anyway. Also, that they were far away from everything made them ideal for setting up trade routes with.

I used two methods. One planet was loaded with farms and entertainment centres and the other was loaded with econ structures. The former was a good PQ16 world and after terraforming was up to PQ22, by the end of the game. My final population was 35 billion, though it could probably have gone higher had I researched a second farm tech. The other planet was PQ12 and I think it went

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