Newbie Questions

take it easy on the rush buying of ships and improvements. that money has to last until you start producing income. if you get yourself in that bad a bind you need to turn down the spending slider. you see, once you go 500 or so in the red it stops spending until you get back out of it. and if you have a morale below 40% your population will not grow. that is planet morale, not overall. the number you see on the main screen is average morale for your whole civ. sounds like you jacked up taxes to try to dig yourself out of debt only to kill off your taxbase. 100% of 0 is 0. try to keep your average morale at 45% or higher at all times.

so, lower spending slider to stop the hemoraging. turn down taxes to allow your population to grow.

building lots of markets is good, but you need the taxbase(population) to benefit from it. colonizing from just one planet can be fine, depending on the map size and the difficulty lvl. i have no problem doing medium maps at tough setting with that method. i rush buy 0 transports tho. better to rush buy 1 or 2 factories and setting your production near 100% military. on new colonies you set your focus on social spending to steal some of that starship money to build your infrastructure. that is the target next to the social spending on the planet screen or just click on the social cell of the planet on the screen that shows your whole civilization. that shoud be enough to get you rolling. for now only build one farm per planet at most, and only size 7 or above, 6 if you really want. less than 6 you get nothing from farms.

gl

Buying ships outright (ie not waiting for a few turns for the production costs to decline) can be devastating to an early economy. I would recommend against buying more than 1 or 2 colony ships - it is far more effecive to buy factories instead.

Don't stop at researching Trade Centers! I usually try to continue directly to Stock Markets. If you can research these, your economy should stabilize itself. A key is to balance Approval, Taxes, and Overall Prodcution Spending. At the start of the game, jack up the Production to 100% and drop taxes so that at least a few of your colonies have 100% Morale(for huge population growth bonues). After about 20 turns, or somewhere after the colony rush, prefarably when most of your colonies have close to 1 billion people, raise taxes until your population is at about 50% Morale (keep in mind that the 50, 60, and 70% taxation levels drop average approval by 10, and anything over 80% flattens Approval at 1% no matter what else you do).

Your budget will likely not be balanced yet; if you can reduce your deficit spending to -75 BC or less per turn, and have (hopefully) about 1,000 BC still in the bank, you can hold off on reducing your Production Value for a few more turns. Once your treasury starts approaching critical levels (~100 BC) you will need to drastically reduce your Production Spending. Drop it down so that you make about 1 BC per week (this will prevent Deficit Spending from depressing the population but will leave you with as much production as possible). As your empire develops, first gradually raise the Production Spending slider to 100%, then reduce taxes until your population is at 60-80% Approval.

To wean the most from your planets, build all-economic planets. The general formula for maximizing the income potential of a class 10-18 planet (barring tile bonuses) is 1-2 farms, 1-2 morale boosters, and as many Stock Markets as you can fit (buy a factory before any of this, then convert it to a Stock Market when you've finished with everything else). You can usually make 400-500 BC with planets such as this (I wouldn't suggest using a higher or lower-quality planet, though; it either doesn't have the land to support all the infrastructure you need or can be much better utilized for other purposes).

Park your colony ships by the planets when you find one. Don't colonize the planet until you see an AI colony ship coming. That way, you can give your economy (population) a chance to grow before slamming tons of maintenance costs into the equation.

Hi I'm completely new to turn baised RPG's

um just to let you know the only role you really play is that of an entire empire. TBS(Turn Based Strategy) is more like this game . Strategy is who idea behind the game you are not some person just looking for things to win the ultimatly hard finnal battle per say you are leading a race from nothing to goly and distinguishment. just keep an open mind about possibilities to weaken or cripple the enemy and you will do just fine.

You should also look at your tax rate--

For the first 20 or so turns I keep taxes to zero to get the 100% morale population bonus that gives me max population growth. This improves the overall tax base (base tax income is based on population) and gives me people to man my colony ships. After that, I increase taxes to lower my deficit spending while keeping morale between 70-80% (again keeping up the population growth).

Build an entertainment center on higher population planets to up morale and researching morale-improving techs (I usually only go for the first one) allows you to raise taxes even more. Building market centers gives a tax rate bonus to the planet, so it is good you are doing this.

By the time my funds are down to 1000 or so, I adjust the sliders on each turn so that I have about 10 turns before getting to zero. This means that each turn my deficit shrinks and by the time my funds are near zero, I am starting to make money.

edit: P.S. starting out playing the game on tough may be a bit too challenging. Try playing the first couple of games on an easier level to get the hang of it.

Thanks all for the great advice, I think you've solved my problem I spent hours yesterday sreaching this forum for the answer to this question before getting the nerve up to just actually ask, I'm glad I did now.

Thanks again.