Hmmm, I tend to have the morale racial bonus's so once I settle a few planets I usually up my a approval rating from 50% to 75% so I can get them producing people faster, I'll usually alternated that every once and a while to help my colonization waves (not really waves but w/e) up their populations and keep my economy afloat.

I go with the diplomacy and social production bonuses, but the last game I played I ended up with 100% moral on every planet and 1000BC surplus per a turn. I don't have an active militry though, its purchased when I need it. Most of the cash comes from my best planet, which is just economy centers, economy capital, mind control center (for 100% extra economy) and a farm or two.

Ah now, I disagree, I always build at least one farm on every planet, and several on larger planets. Having a big population is a huge benefit to economy, plus you get much harder to invade, and get a lot more influence. Morale isn't normally too much of a problem if you build all the morale trade goods, research the morale techs, and ideally grab a morale resource or two. The lots-of-farms technique has worked winning on Suicidal.

Saying that farms sucks now is silly.
Taxes never were directly proportionate to the population, in any version of the game.
I usually build at least one farm+morale+economy-buildings at pq-10 or better planets in 1.1-beta. Works fine for me.
Ain't it nice that it's possible to play in different ways?

This might be considered as na exploit ( atleast i feel its not right) i always set the tax so that my approval rating is 100% at the start of every game, then rush to ION DRIVE and sensors techs buy 9speed surveys ( i buy only 1 colony ship a start) and get all the sweet cash anomalies, i usually get 10000 just from anomalies ( + all other bonuses ) before the first council meeting. Remember 100% gives a big boost to your population growth so you get more money and later in the game when you mine all those morale resources or build some galactic wonders you can still have an approval of 100% with the max. tax rate ( 80%?).

Get that economy up and running fast. Without gold pressed whatever, you can not finance your military or research. A farm changes your pop cap on colonies from 5 billion, to 11 billion people or more. double your pop, double your tax income, increase your influence, increases your tourism income....that farm is worth billions of gold pressed whatever. Find and mine a moral resource, and happiness is not a problem. Having the 25% population growth at 75% approval really helps early in the game, and even late in the game, when I am build troop transports with 3 billion troops. Run that approval up to 100%, and never have a population problem, from cranking out troops.

I will agree with lower your taxes to get the bonuses is the best! i use to try to balance max tax vs max effeciency in my production. and i was having issues with my planets flipping. After reading about this on the forums i tried out dropping my tax from 70 to 30 percent... at first i didnt see the point i was strapped for cash my production went south but my peons where happy But about 10 to 20 rounds later i was rolling in the dough my effeciency was max and i was cranking out both social and military stuff Ez!

Happy cows make good milk!

Plus as stated above if i was really pressed i could whip out the max tax and pull in godly amounts of money to buy those troop transports / constructors to rush my enemies! DIE TORIANS DIE!!!

I'm finding that in Beta3 its a lot easier to "Max" your economy. Meaning that I have a 95+% avg approval rating, 100% spending (all 3 sliders still set to 33%, however), and I'm still getting hundreds of bc's per turn in surplus. Kinda surprising really, especially since it happened really early in my latest game (around when I got medium hulls).

When I started playing I went high tax/low pop, but I found that after the early game my economy would REALLY be lagging. There was definitely a bit of a learning curve involved, but dropping a couple of farms on each planet of any appreciable size (9-10+) let me get the money flowing. It doesn't really matter if that farm takes up a slot that a factory could be on if you don't have your production maxed out. If you're only producing at 65%, then you're just screwing yourself by building more factories that you can't afford instead of economic upgrades like farms/stock markets, etc.

p.s. In 1.0x, btw. I have no idea how farms work in the beta.

I think that you generally do much better if you have at least one farm on decently large planets, which for me is any planet with about 8 or 9 Planet rating.

First, I do not put a starport on every planet. In the games I play, I have not needed it. It may be wise early if you want to put cheap defending ships on every planet. But by mid game, its pretty stupid to worry about having a starport on every planet when you cannot even use it to build reasonably useful constructors.

To that end, the only decent uses of any square on any planet are super projects, trade goods, research centers, and economic buildings. I tend to designate any given planet as either an economic center or a research center. Economic centers only increase economy by a given percentage of the tax income. So building 1 farm has a much greater effect then just one more stock market will.

Anyway, I like to have at least 2 factories on a planet, so that upgrades happen in a reasonable time frame. Its simply retarded to have a farm and no morale structure. So you will need at least 4 or more squares. Now, a planet wtih 1 morale structure, a farm, and 2 factories, is just stupid. If your going to build a farm, its best to do so on planets with at least 7 squares. Also worth considering is that Embassies also work with populations to increase influence, assuming you care to use them.

Population has the benefits of extra invasion defense, increased influence, and more impact on the United Planets. It gives you something to fill your transports with when you decide you like your neighbors planets, and would like to have them.

The only negative effect of large populations is that they may adversely affect your approval rating when you crank up the tax rate, and that they force you to either research the morale tech, or grab morale mines, or morale trade goods. The benefits outweigh the problems.

END COMMUNICATION