You CAN have too many citizens

Very, very interesting. Are you *certain* this wasn't related to the 20K treasury penalty? (If you have more than 20K left at the end of the turn, you get an income penalty. Once you dip below 20K the penatly disappears.)

I know there's *something* in the game that makes late game income drop below the "expected" levels, but I've never been able to pin it down, so it'd be interesting if it's population.

I didn't have anywhere near 20k in the treasury. The reason I was getting worried was that my deficit was running my treasury down close to zero. I didn't know that the 20k penalty existed. Thanks for letting me know.

is that why one turn i have tons of money and the next i have none

Yep, there is a penalty at 20k in the treasury, but there are ways past it and once you get by it you can build a vast treasury. If you build a strong economy and can generate a large weekly income (don't know the exact number but 1k per week) that ought to get you past it. The 'economy boom' event will certainly blow by that penalty as it will allow your economy to generate upwards of 5k bc per week (I have seen 10k+).

A solution to your original problem is simple and you discovered it on your own. *Don't* build farms on 300% bonus tiles. Here are some tips from my experience.

1) I *never* build beyond the second farm tech.
2) Make sure you keep your morale structures at least one tech level above your farm tech.
3) For every farm you build make sure there is an equal number of 'happiness' buildings,
4) For v1.3 try not to have a population greater than about 15 billion or you will waste to many tiles on Morale buildings. Unless the planet has alot of tiles, say 20 or so, don't try to build to much population.

I am not sure how accurate this last tip is, I am only going by what I have seen and I could be misleading myself, but I build fully loaded econ starbases by my planets and I see my weekly income grow.

Cheers,
Reaver

Reever,

I almost entirely agree with you. However, a high population is one of the best resources there is. You can give up other things for a high pop. When you have that and Advanced Troops Mod, you'll be able to bombard and quickly take planets of civs who have better military than you. And you don't have to worry about being invaded. If your population is far above everyone else, and you're keeping up with soldiering, you're fine if anyone tries to invade your planets.

But I haven't been fair to you, because your numbered ideas are right on. On the last idea, I've played crippling as Thalans and had a 21-billion pop planet where I would dock a lot of my transports (which held 4 billion each). And I also had 3 other 18-billion planets. This was all on a Medium-level universe. So don't you large, huge, and gigantic players say this is insufficient without taking that into account.

Anyway, I was down in tech, and especially tech in weapons. However, my production was so high, due to my high pop, that I could churn out inverior ships and play wars of attrition. If I could get down into their best planets and compromise the defenses, I could send in my troops without worrying at all about the loss of, say, 10 billion people! That's when population can work to your advantage.

Well you really didnt need to drop your taxes for 1 planet if all the rest were above 60 percent and that planet was less than 25 percent f your total population.

The only 2 factors that you would need to worry about is if that planet was easily invadable wich the AI will use information warfare for sure wich could possibly kill anychance of defending it. But if it is tucked away far from the enemy you are safe from that but to be on the safe side at least keep an empty cargo haul(no maintanence upkeep) Late in the game the AI usually has uber life support.

The only other worry is if all planets are nearing 50 percent approval and you are running one of the interstellar governments you have a good risk of losing your power in the senate and get penalties instead of bonuses. Low morale planets dont rebel as far as I know but I think they are easier to flip by infuence.

So the biggest worry is making sure you dont have too many low morale planets to get you a penalty in a senate vote.

Also those planets are great for pumping out troop ships

Oaty, you're evil. I mean you must be playing evil. That's a great strategy. I'm leaning now towards evil as a most efficient strategy if, as seems clear, military victories are by far the easiest.

Low morale planets dont rebel as far as I know but I think they are easier to flip by infuence.

Planets never rebel unless they have been culture flipped or the fundamentalist event happens.