Well, I'm by no means a great player, but here are some suggestions to get you started:

+Population fuels your planetary economy to a certain point; to get population growth, which is what matters at the start of the game, pay attention to your morale. You get a boost to population at 75% morale and it DOUBLES at 100%, while 50% or less will slow it to a crawl and like 30% or less will halt it. Lower your taxes to get more population at the start of the game; you'll be in debt for a while, but that debt will purchase population. Also, always have at least one farm on worlds with lots of stock markets, but it might be a good idea not to have more than two (and make sure you don't put farms on the 400% bonus tiles if it's supposed to be an economic world, as you won't be able to keep that many people happy most of the time).

+Take economy bonus for your race (though I suggest spending points for it, getting some from politcal parties could help but you get shafted by not playing Technologists, so only play Federalists if you're desperate).

+Keep your Survey Flagship on auto-survey to get expensive anomalies.

+Economic resources (the floating green things in space) are extremely powerful, get any that you can.

+Research Xeno Economics as fast as possible and try to get to Stock Exchanges ASAP after that. Don't stop at Trade Centers or Xeno Banking, as they more or less suck.

+Trade with other races.

+Trade with other races.

Definitely. Trade is usually what initially gets me making a profit. As in, without it, my expenses for ships, espionage, etc. would just about equal my income. Feel free to plop down some economy starbases with trade modules close to the planets you're trading with if you don't expect to be fighting any wars with anyone near those bases soon. Especially place these bases in areas where many of your routes run close to each other so that a single base can provide income bonuses for all of them.

Also, don't feel like you should be in a hurry to build up the infastructure on your planets as soon as you colonize them. Remember that every point of military production, social production, and research costs you money and this cost isn't at all tied to your population (unlike your income). If you start plopping down labs and factories on all of the planets you colonize during the initial land grab without having a population large enough to support the related expenses, you're going to find yourself in a very deep hole. As DreadArchon mentioned, higher approval rates will increase your population growth rate, which will give you more income and allow you to start increasing your production and research capacity sooner.

Here's how to make a booming economy. Before the game starts, put your ability points into economy, morale, and population growth, and choose the Federalists or Populists as your political party. On your home planet, buy an entertainment network and set taxes low enough so the planet has 100% approval because at 100% approval, a planet's population growth doubles. That will keep your population growing fast enough that you can spam colony ships with 500 million people on them without depleting your homeworld's population too much.

After you've colonized, take your best planet and build your economic capitol there. Also build enough entertainment buildings to keep its approval at 100% to grow fast and enough farms so that it doesn't stop growing. And build more economic buildings too. The high population on this planet multiplies with its big economic bonuses to make tons of money. You can make more planets similar to this, just without the economic capitol. Usually, when I play, I have about 1 economic planet for every 2 or 3 research or production planets. Once your population has grown to a decent level (maybe 3 billion on each planet, more on the econ planets), you can raise your taxes until your overall approval is about 55% to really start making money.

Racial Abilities, resources, banks on surfaces... I NEVER rely trade...i truly HATE it. I hate being accustomed with other races ^^

In mid game i usually earn 2500+ every turn (its not much but hey).

If your'e evil, build the Mind Control Center... That thing works wonders!

one lesson you should have gleaned from the above recommendations is that : morale is growth fuel. that and population growth bonus are what allow your initial colony rush to not completely destroy your home planet population. population growth and economy bonuses are good buys in 1.2.

here is where most of the ppl that give advice on this subject go wrong: how you spend your initial cash is DEPENDENT ON YOUR MAP SIZE. i mostly play on gigantic maps so i can't tell you exactly where the turn around point is but if you rush buy colony ships on gigantic you tend to get in trouble fast. if you DON'T rush colony ships on the smallest ships you get into trouble. the alternative to rushing ships is rushing factories, which is the way to go on the larger map sizes. i am thinking the balance point between factory and ship is at about the medium to large map range. but ALWAYS save some of that initial 5k to get you thru the thin times while you planets struggle to become self sufficient. i usually hold on to a 1k reserve. if building factories, you don't have to rush every factory, but do rush at least the first on every planet you intend to produce colony ships on, and build a second before you start working on ships. this gives your population a little time to build up and increases the rate of ship production to a tolerable lvl.

back to the morale. at first when you have no population taxes don't ammount to much, so make POPULATION GROWTH a priority. crank down the tax rate til you hit 100% morale for a nice growth bonus up front. maintain it for about as long as you base your planet rush from your homeworld. once you have grown a bit tax rate becomes important so crank up your taxrate till your morale is at 75%(smaller growth bonus but still a useful one).

economy direct. if you see a econ resource make grabing it a priority. these can be the difference between a monster economy and a modest one in the end. and don't wait til you have your research improvements researched to a high lvl before you work your econ improvements up to stockmarket. stockmarket is what will save your bacon. bite the bullet after upgrading your research tech just one lvl and push straight thru to stockmarket(banking sucks). in the end it is the stockmarkets, not the population that drives your economy. and by end i don't mean end game. stockmarkets are what turn my economy from red to green, period. trade is nice, but not really enough to build a solid economy on. if 2k net sounds good to you then maybe you can base yours on trade, but i am not happy til i cross the 10k net point, trade won't get you that. ok, so how to get in the green and the big bucks. i already covered how to get the population you need, now for your population target. do NOT build your pop past 25b except in special circumstances. sure that 26 planet can hold a lot of ppl, but it is just a tease. you can build it to 45b with a handful of stockmarkets and a reasonable income or into a 25-35b economic giant with 10-15 stockmarkets. don't fall into the population trap, the morale overhead for large populations is a killer. economic growth from population is based the SQUAREROOT of the population while the morale penalty is more like on the square of the population. net result: you can make a lot more money with 1 farm(15b max pop) and 7 stockmarket than you can with 3 farms(35b max) and the one you can afford due to the 4 MORALE tiles you will need to support the farms! you can do just fine with 1 farm per planet, trust me.

production. don't let this get out of hand. sure it is nice to be able to crank out one ship per turn, but if you NEED to have this capacity you are likely struggling to survive. try to be the one setting the tempo if you can manage it. and factorys cost money to maintain, money you don't have early on. wait til mid game to build that monster shipyard. i try to keep it to 2 factorys per planet, and that is mostly so i can build my stockmarkets in a reasonable ammout of time same goes for research tiles. too many can break you. 2 per or less if you build a research planet early.

build farms as you need them, not before. 1-2 at most except in rare circumstances. such circumstances as planets with lots of influence bonus tiles.

morale tiles you can take or leave unless you put multiple farms. if you really want maximum growth rate build them, if your not in a hurry don't. i do just fine without, but i am usually running +30 pop growth and aphrodisiac so....
specifically 75% morale gives 25% growth bonus while 100% morale gives 100% bonus. now you can do your own math and decide

put it all together and i recommend your basic size 10 planet look something like this:
1 base colony
2 factories
2 research tiles
5 stockmarkets

with planets like this if your having economic trouble you have a real....gift, lol. remember, you don't have to have parity with the ai on every point. if you get behind a bit on research you can fix that later. same with influence, military, whatever. but with your economy in the red you are hamstrung.

ok, carpal tunnel here i come. hope i covered everything(but the kitchen sink). gl

You have to develop your economy first then comes the research and military.

See, I totally disagree. More research = better economic bonuses, and better everything else to boot. Research while going broke is always going to be useful later and will quite often prevent you from going broke again, while making money can only get you out of one bad situation and then you're totally screwed.

My current game is a good example of this. I've just come out of my third United Planets meeting, and I'm basically dead broke. My tech level is actually a bit below everyone else, but their tech levels have a linear growth rate while mine is EXPONENTIAL. I've seen this happen in previous games. If I can go a few more months without the AI declaring war--which I probably can, as I'm focusing on diplomactic stuff--I'll become a technogod and annihilate them like insects. My research is EXTREMELY slow to start up, but I'm untouchable (on Painful and below) when I get going.

p.s. Using the strategy listed above, I am able to maintain 100% work capacity throughout nearly all of my games. Another important note -- you need to grab morale boosting galactic wonders before other civs build them, or build starbases on any morale resource near you ASAP. The happier your people are, the more you can safely raise taxes; I often have a tax rate of 50% with my approval still in the 90's.

Some decent tips already posted. Morale buildings and techs can help as much or more than eco buildings and techs.

For players in a mid-game economic crisis that don't want to start over there are a couple of possible remedies:
Trade helps
Morale tech and buildings helps

If the situation is dire, lower the tax slider until approval is 100% on most planets. Then lower the production slider until the empire is at break even money flow. Several turns of increasing the tax base with the pop bonus, hopefully along with morale raising measures will allow an empire to operate in the green.

In other dire situations a player can demolish buildings on conquered planets that are running a huge deficit.

Shuttling people around to balance out morale and pop growth helps a lot.

ok, that's one factor i didn't touch on. morale IS money. high morale means you can crank up your taxation, but this is not linear. it is much like the population issue, past a certain point it just isn't effecient. econ improvements tho ARE linear, add as many as you like and get the same benefit from the 10th as you do from the second. THAT is why the stockmarkets are better than either morale or farms money wise. but for the morale wonders, those just rock. build on one planet and benefit on all you can't beat with a stick they are the reason i can get away with not building vr centers and such on most planets. and they are worth getting just to keep the other ai from exploiting them.

personally i never push my taxation past 59, often leaving it on 49 for the duration. even at these setting i have no problems getting around 30k net with 100% capacity, average ship production with only 1/3 of the planets conquered, stock settings, gigantic map.

If you look at the area you occupy on the minimap, you probably only need about 10-15% of the galaxy to be competative. More if obviously better though



I only just found this thread but this is my strategy for economy.



If you want to change the ability points of your race, then set it to 70% population growth, 10% planet quality and 15% moral for 10 points. If not then this strategy still works.



In the first turn set taxes to 49% and production to 100%. On the homeworld queue 5 or 6 factories, then a farm and the rest market centres. On the smaller world build market centres only. Set research to 100% and research up to impulse drive and during this time buy about 4 of the factories. Also set the survey ship to auto-survey.



Once Impulse drive has finished researching, create a fast colony ship with at least 1 support modual. If you are playing Yor I think you can squeeze an extra engine on. Anyway, now set your military production to 100% and do the colony rush.



After you are happy with the number of worlds, use this vague guide.



For every 10 worlds, have 1 for research, 2-3 for military and 6-7 for economy. Worlds should be determined based on what bonuses are avaiable e.g., a research bonus for research world, a 100% farm bonus for economy worlds and a manufacturing bonus for military worlds.



A research world is 25% factories and 75% research centres - nothing else. A military world should be as your homeworld, 5-6 factories, a farm and the rest market centres. An economy world should be 25% factories, a farm and 75% market centres. For really big economy worlds ~30PQ have 2 farms and 1 entertainment centre with the rest as normal. With really huge worlds ~40PQ+, divide them between research and economy.



As you want to build wonders, build them on the military worlds - replacing the market centres.



Now you are on about turn 30, and you have gone through all the worlds after the colony rush and queued the worlds to build as stated. Now set social to 50% and research production to 50%.



The first thing to research should be planetary improvements, then the basic factory, then up to level 2 of the economics branch which I believe will allow you to build the trade centres. You don't need the stock exchange right away because the trade centre will help your economy early on. Now it's a good idea to research up to Enhanced miniturization and Advanced hulls so that you can build Micro repair bots and Hull plating on the world with the manufacturing capital. Then I'd go for Xeno Ethics and select neutral so you can free the tiles and add even more market centres. Now research up to trade to build an economic capital on your most profitable world. Now research to the first level of government to get the vote. Now research up to manufacturing centres, then stock exchanges, then neutrality learning centres. Then research up to level 2 farms, then habitat improvment and build Aphrodesiac. Then research the planetry invansion branch (all of it) and up to Advanced Planetary Defence and build the TriQuan training.



At this stage, without trade, and without a military you are invincible to attack and this strategy works up to masochistic, it's just that as you increase difficulty you need to increase your inital colony footprint... up to about 40-50%

Some obvious points not touched upon.

1) Mine your morale and econ resources! If I get 1 or 2 of them, cash flow is seldom a problem, and I tend to be a bit more spend thrift.

2) Techs that can help out spending a lot include government techs (+ econ) and morale techs (helps a bit by allowing higher taxes)

3) Each colony initally has a 15 bc maintance cost, and until your colony grows large (typically about 5 Billion depending on tax), you are actually losing money with each colony.

Your main source of income early on will be your homeworld, so building 1 or 2 market centers there early can sometimes be a good idea. You can decommission them later when they are no longer necessary.

here is where most of the ppl that give advice on this subject go wrong: how you spend your initial cash is DEPENDENT ON YOUR MAP SIZE. i mostly play on gigantic maps so i can't tell you exactly where the turn around point is but if you rush buy colony ships on gigantic you tend to get in trouble fast. if you DON'T rush colony ships on the smallest ships you get into trouble. the alternative to rushing ships is rushing factories, which is the way to go on the larger map sizes. i am thinking the balance point between factory and ship is at about the medium to large map range.

This sounds right. Like a lot of disputes about strategy , map size seems to be a big determinant.


On the largest map, you are going to grab a lot of worlds on average, so this means a longer period in which each colony is not self-sufficient so you need a bigger reserve. Also rush buying a colony ship as opposing to rush buying factories and using them to build colony ships is a difference of only a few turns, not a big deal if you are on a gigantic map, but may be a big different on a tiny map.

I play primarily on medium maps, and I can get both strategies (rush buy ships, rush buy factories or even a combination of both) to work. I started out rush buying colony ships initally but I have often that Rush buying factories however is more comfortable for me, you get about roughly the same results in terms of colonies captured, but under less monetary pressure.