economy

In the beginning of the game you can start what it is called the colony rush, build as many colony ships as you can to try to colonize all the planets around you, the second face is to set the research to 100% and research techs that will allow you to build some of the basic structures (manufacturing center, planet improvemnets to raise the PQ of your planet, etc,) the 3rd phase will be build for a while and then keep a balance between all 3.

I usually keep my military spending at zero when I'm not at war or building constructors. And if the game goes on long enough then eventually you get to the point where you've built everything you want to build, so in the late game you might even set social spending to zero. Basicly, don't spend money on stuff you don't need.

~SDC~

I have the same thing when I've overdevelopped my research capabilities. If I put spending to 100%, all to research, I can have huge deficits. It's all a matter of money versus production capacity. You can have 100% spending and 100% military or social and still have some money left every turn. it means that you earn monthly more than what your overall production capacity can spend. However if you have huge research capacities (tech, capital, omera research, with research center everywhere) then to have 100% spending means giving all the planets enough funds so that they use all their capacity. But that total can be higher than your income. Thus the deficit

It's after work, so if I am not clear at all, just say so, I'll try again

~SDC~

Thanks All

Just throwing my two cents in. You also have to take into consideration that military/social production costs are different then research. For M/S only a third of the total is free but for research 2/3 are free. The numbers you see on the planet screen above your shields etc. always show (6+2) let's say. This means that 6 of your points cost and the other 2 don't. This means that changing your sliders will have different affects depending on what you set each at.

For more info on this see the "Economics in GalCiv" article in the encyclopedia.

Hope this helps.

Ubique!
Dave

And here is my buck 35...

When you are doing Military and Social spending you are putting money into the economy. You are paying contractors to build what you need and they pay the laborforce and they inturn by beer and entertainment just like you and I do in the real world when we get a paycheck. So the money is circulating and that droves your economy up.

Now when you go into research you are investing money in the research and the scientists paychecks that are sitting in labs looking through microscopes running experiments. The portion put into the research itself, paying for lab space and time. building theoretical models and all that related stuf is a negative drain on the economy. The only portion of the money spend on the research slider that is returned to your economy would be what the scientist make. And we all know that researchers make smaller paychecks and really don't know how to party and spend what few dollars they do make. The only time you get a monetary return from research is once the theory is proven and it becomes a fact then the Military or Social builders can impliment it.

That is the reasoning behind the difference in your GNP when spending on Military and Social ~vs~ Research.

Later,
oldgamster

Money spend on "lab space and time. building theoretical models and all that related stuf" doesn't dissapear, though. It goes to someone, who will spend it somehow. The only time money dissapears from the economy is when someone puts it into a savings account and leaves it there. (This is me speaking as someone who's taken one introductory course in economics and doesn't plan to take another.)

While I am not an economist, I think even that is not disappearing money. The financial institution will lend that money to someone else.

~SDC~

Ok, let's see how much of this I remember. People do work and earn money. The money that they save is money that is not spent on consumer goods, so there must have been investment (business machinery, increased inventory, etc.) equal in value to what was saved.

Money borrowed from a bank is spent, put into someone else's bank account, and lent out again and again. The way my textbook talked about it made it seem like banks could created money out of nothing.

Lowering taxes boosts the economy by giving people more money to spend, and the people who they give it to when they buy stuff spend some of it and save some of it, and it keeps getting spent like that untill all of it's wound up in somebody's savings account. Increasing government spending has a similar effect, because that money is spent over and over again as well. Hey, doesn't that mean there should be an economy penalty for having a budget surplus, and a boost for a deficit?

There's no real point to this post, I just think it's fun to remember stuff from a course I took a year ago.

LOL you are right in the real world but this is a programed environment. Money spent on research is usually always a deficit and is only capitalized on after the research is finished and the new discoveries can be applied.

One other thing about all that stuff I learned at the old institute of higher learning is in practicallity about only 35% applicable in the real world. I see the new grads at work come in every day with a disk in hand of a bunch of info some professor gave them and they try to make our business fit what is on that disk... They missed the whole purpose of 12 years of school plus how ever many years spent in continueing education. The actual information learned is useful to a small extent. What the real lesson they needed to learn is that all that learning was there only to expand the mind and show that there are many ways of thinking even about one situation. That is the gem of education that no-one seemd to get.

Different ways of thinking is the big universal tool education should be giving us.

OK! I am hungry and I am rambling so I will get off my soap box and go eat!

Later,
a hungry oldgamster