Economics Struggle?

Yeah, try building market centers to raise money, and reserch tech that will upgrade them, also get the trade techs and build as many trade ships as you can, also work on building embasys and influience starbases that should help you out a bit, oh and if your worried about other races attacking you to soon you could always set them to be allied with you from the start that way no one will attack you and you can attack when your ready, try building enough warships for every enemy planet aswell as a few adv transports for everyplanet, win in one turn

Buy factories at the beginning to jump start the colonization race. 100% approval is nice, but will kill your economy very quickly at the beginning, keep a good approval so your people grow, but 100% is excessive. Market centers at the beginning will be your best friends, as well as an Economic capital, but research up to stock markets quickly.

Be sure you research planetary improvement and xeno econ early. Tthose tech usually turn the corner for me. You can also slow down on some improvements until your population is higher.

The market centers are good but they are not that effective until population has grown.

You are right to go for population growth but you can get there with less than 100% moral and it is not good to get too far into the red. It's a trade off and you have to find the right balance.

Finally, Federalist politics make it a lot easier.

Build entertainment centers as soon as possible. Buy one on Earth the first or second turn and morale goes to 100%. You can jack up taxes immediately without morale problems and raise spending without going into debt.

Happyness can be key, dont build the farms ( excpet on troop planets) and insteadg et happyness bonuses ( techs, race, resource, trade goods) now watch as you can pump up the tax rates to obsceene levels, ( 70-80 % maybe more)

Also, trade routes can save your hinny, both by making the bigger civs more reluctant to attack you and by giving you money.

All of the advanced governments give a vary nice bonus to your income.

And, dedicate some planets to the production of money. ( two factorys and tons of markets )

Lastly use your start money to build factorys at the start ( and one colony ship) your home world need the pop anyway for growth and in the long term you get more colony ship out of it.

try not too use the leasing option too much, and set your taxes as high as possible... starting out with a pop growth and morale will also help.

Also you don't need 100% morale, thats unachievable, keep it at 60% for begin games!

The other advice I have to give is that as early as possible you want a high (as possible) class planet set up (in advance with the build list) as an economic capital - the sooner that comes online - the quicker you'll be able to get the money flowing in... Mainly a matter of getting the right balance between farms/entertainment centres...

I find using colony ships to spread population around is helpful - having one full planet and heaps of nearly-empty ones makes less money than spreading the same number of dudes around... and it helps the pop growth too.

100% approval is nice, but will kill your economy very quickly at the beginning, keep a good approval so your people grow, but 100% is excessive.

Nonsense. 100% approval means a population growth bonus. That means that the population you steal from your capital to fund the empire is quicly replaced. At the beginning, I'm building colony ships from my capital as fast as it can, and it's still able to have a net growth.

Also you don't need 100% morale, thats unachievable, keep it at 60% for begin games!

Bad advice.

At the beginning of the game, all of your empire's population is located on your homeworld. Even after a few planets have been colonized, the majority of your empire's population is still on your homeworld. What that means is that one or two entertainment centers makes the majority of your empire's population growth double, along with a production bonus. Two approval buildings allows you to run a tax rate much higher than you could get without them, while maintaining population growth that kicks the crap out of what you'd get with 60% morale. In the early game, your most important resource is people. A strategy that allows for double population growth and only costs a couple of entertainment buildings pays for itself very quickly.

I find using colony ships to spread population around is helpful - having one full planet and heaps of nearly-empty ones makes less money than spreading the same number of dudes around... and it helps the pop growth too.

This is good advice. Spreading your population around helps increase your tax revenue, since taxes are based on the square root of your population before other factors are added. Two planets with one billion population each will give roughly 40% more tax revenue than one planet with two billion population on it, although you'd need to have twice as many economy upgrades since you've got two planets to deal with. Knowing when to start spreading people comes with experience and changes depending on what economic upgrades you've got, as well as some other factors like morale penalties for high population.

I've found that my rapid colonial expansion sets me on the path to several hundred billion credits lost each turn, but once I get a world cranking that is devoted to stock markets (with a farm, couple of moral boosters and embassy), it's generally enough to feul my early building projects.

The more you spend at first (wise spending, naturally), the more you stand to gain later, and quicker, too. More planets = more taxes, and more production capabilities.

I generally use my first turn to research Planetary Improvements, and then devote myself entirely to getting Stock Markets ASAP (with possibly a few weeks for cheap but vital techs like faster engines or embassies). Also, upgrading factories once or twice in the tech lineup once you're done with Stock Markets helps get the stuff done faster, which in turn means that you'll spend less turns spending money and more making it!

Keep taxes low early, maybe 10 to 20 turns, so approval stays at 100%. Buy at least two buildings and a colony ship early. Keep about 2000 of the initial 5000 as operating budget to fund any deficit.

Get planetary improvement tech as soon as possible. It gives +10 bonus to all. There is also a tech for +10 economy. After getting that tech consider raising your taxes to about 49%.

After every colony (or almost) has a factory get the +10 social tech with the next level factory.

The first morale tech for +10 helps a lot. Further along the line, Republic helps the cash flow.

Trade is okay on some levels of play if you can keep the peace.

If you can find a big planet to become your economic capital it will ease the money concerns. Put maybe three factories on it, then add economic buildings, happiness buildings and farms as necessary. Farms are only useful after the food limit is reached, so don't build them until that time.

Use extra colony or transports to even out the population. Population is the tax base. A planet needs at least 1 billion to get full growth. Send out colony ships full. It will hurt short term, but aid you long term.

Sometimes a player can lower the production and tax sliders in combination to boost approval for a few turns to get a bigger tax base.

Sell techs if necessary. Anomalies can give a lot of money if you are lucky.

Tiger 8 has some good advise.

Run out of cash? Do any of the following, roughly in order of decreasing effectiveness

1) Mine an economic resource a few times
2) Upgrade to more advanced government
3) Research economic tech that gives +10% bonus
4) Any tech that increases morale globally, or mine morale resources. This doesn't increase
cash flow directly, but allows you a higher tax rate.

These first 4 are global effects so they can help immensely.

The next few help a little but take a while to kick in because they are per colony effects , are indirect and/or are one off effects

4) Build more or more advanced economic improvements
5) Rsearch xeno-ethics, choose Good. This saves you the maintance cost of the 'inital colony'
on 5 colonies. That is a saving of 5*15= 75 bc per turn
6) Do lots of trading by forming trade routes and/or build economic bases among the trade routes
7)Selling Tech to opponents and/or finding cash from annomiles.
8) Influence supposedly helps tourism....

Personally I think keeping approval at 100% only indirectly helps cash flow. It's something you must do early on, to grow your tax base, if you wait until you are in dire need for $$, trying to boast your population growth by lowering taxes is a little too late.