I'm against the cap system in general, but if there has to be one it should take your total economy into account. The same limit for a tiny galaxy with 5 habitable planets and a gigantic one with 400 is a bad idea. (And this applies to all kinds of reductions possible.)

Re Brad, "business," and incremental budgeting, BP OMowe is correct that public/private sector is irrelvant. But things can be different if the organization is using zero-based budgeting (admittedly rare in business and not common in gov't).

ZBB has merit b/c it forces all units in an organization to re-justify their budgets annually, but it demands much more work than the much more common pattern that sees so many office workers being handed supply catalogs in the last month of a fiscal year and being told "just order stuff, we have too much money in account X."

Given what a hassle ZBB is IRL, I can only imagine that a good AI would need Octo-Core processors to handle it

On the contrary. A company or goverment hoarding cash will suffer consequences,,be it stockholders demanding larger payouts or paxpayers demanding that the cash is spent on inprovements that while giving the citizens an easier life doesn't improve the goverment's income.

consequences are another thing (and would be the better solution as stated further below) - but RL govs. still don't have a cap (except maybe some floating point number overrun bug in accounting systems)
(but then i guess RL governments would be lucky to get a positive balance anyway - like clintons black zero !)

lets stick to game terms:

as a galactic ruler (you know stalin-style

i don't have stockholders ! (no, voters don't count - they are sheep like in rl)
my taxpayers in dictatorship gov. are only resources to be used as - btw. exactly as in the manual written - tax-base and soldiers !
and even going the nice republican route the player is the single entity in total control - and if making all planets approval does not prevent me to make zillions of credits then change the maint. cost of happiness-increasing-building.

The more reasonable way to place a limit on cash "hoarding" would be to use things like the good ol' SM civ used to have (as rockoon already mentioned) : corruption, management waste, population demands, and civil unrests if not met, not to mention a possible spy-op to reduce cash-levels
or the far better solution : a real competitive AI that challenges you to decide either to run debts to defend vs. annihilation or dying rich in the not so far future

An unimaginative hard coded cap is the solution of (i am forced to say : "Anfänger")
...Or at least make the cap just a 32bit number

iven what a hassle ZBB is IRL, I can only imagine that a good AI would need Octo-Core processors to handle it

Me thinks that an AI would be better handling ZBB, cause it has a simpler solution to get to a goal without "thinking" about past experience and past budgets - but in a strategic environment this could lead rather to erratic behaviour if the decision making process is done every turn.
Since iam not an ai-programmer i just post the question if AI could work like the chinese gov. : making a 5year plan and executing it ?

in gc2 i could save my 6digits of BC

If your experience was like mine, you probably spend *lots* of time paying the penalty but had such a strong economy that you didn't notice it.

It took me building a ludicrously large economy and then an industry base that could spend those ludicrous sums before I got to a point where the over-20k penalty actually put my income in the negative.

This penalty frustrates the bejesus out of me too. Especially when I have a mind control center, and hit the economic event that doubles my income. I even lower my tax rate until I am at 100% morale, but usually still generate 5-10 k or so profit.

What I would *like* to see, is not a penalty, but a spending overdrive when you hit this limit. Like, I'm always maxed out at 100% capacity, but if I adjust my sliders I can still get way more or less out of my production/research buildings. It would be nice if I just spent my money to get each of these stats at 100%. More realistically, separate my research and total social/military production to get 100% on each, since the research buildings and social buildings have nothing to do with each other (save the capitol/initial colony).

I do also like the point about the ship upgrading. I've seen quotes for my upgrades around 800,000 bc. So it's nearly impossible to buy outright. And I'm usually afraid to make one of those long term investments that I can afford per turn *now* because my economic event might end in the middle of it, completely bankrupting me.

I guess I can just micromanage more =\.

*planet list*
*sort by social production*
*scroll to bottom*
*click, buy*
*click, up*
*click, buy*
*click, up*
&&&1 hour passes&&&
*click, buy*
*click, up*
hooray, now on to the rest of my turn... uh.... what was I doing?

If you're talking about upgrading all ships in a class at the same time, this can easily get into the millions of bc's. One thing that I do to make this easier is to have two identical versions of the ship I want to upgrade then alternate which one I'm building and which one I'm upgrading each turn. One turn I'll build hull_a while I'm upgrading hull_b then next turn I swap. That way I can upgrade all of one type of ship and I only build as many of them per turn that I know I'll be able to afford to upgrade. This eases the micro management a bit.

I like this idea. I like it a lot. I'd have to change the way I use the governors, but that's pretty darned smart.

have two identical versions of the ship I want to upgrade then alternate which one I'm building and which one I'm upgrading each turn. One turn I'll build hull_a while I'm upgrading hull_b then next turn I swap.

I agree that this is a smart workaround, but it's still a workaround. From time to time, ship upgrades top my list of "UI Things That Are Weak for Long Game Players." Other fleet & ship mgmt things are in the same neighborhood for me--IMO, the planet mgmt is getting too far ahead of the fleets in terms of UI improvments.

At least the Colonies page has a new weakness for DA: no info about environment status re the 50% and 100% enviro techs.

I agree that this is a smart workaround, but it's still a workaround

Yes. It's still a workaround. Someone (and IIRC it might have been you GW) had requested the ability to upgrade all ships within a fleet at the same time. This would also help ease the micro management pain of spending money.

I mean, I don't really care for this arbitrary limit either, but I worry that if I complain too much, I might get something far worse. At the risk of putting ideas into peoples heads, I fear something like a massive progressive tax that ends up being 90% at high income levels just to punish those that can efficiently develop an economy. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

with a revenue of 284149, spending of 63408 and income of 228896 the resulting balance (i.e. next turn) was -4130

Yeah... oops... now that i look at it again it seems right if that is your *current* balance.

Thank goodness for curves or I would have failed accounting... Just cuz I can do integral calculus doesn't mean I can add and subtract lawl

Where is the logic

I certainly appreciate the core scoff here, but assuming you are trying to bring in formal logic, "the logic" doesn't really apply b/c this is a game.

In the informal sense, "logic" basically means "whatever passes for the local rules," and for GCII the 20k cap is part of a pattern of design elements that appear aimed at keeping player attention focused on the economy for every turn. I'm part of the camp who think the cap should be scaled to map size, but I've been converted to accepting the general concept as wortwhile even though I don't love the exact implementation.

Once your treasury exceeds 20k,,you get an income penalty but unlike the 80% taxes morale penalty,,this one is easy to live with.

Maybe you should like... read the post from the OP who shows you when it can be difficult to deal with.

We know it's not a "cap"... it's the generally accepted way around this forum of saying "hard coded value" (since it's non-modifiable).

I think you need to learn a bit more about running an empire then.

While you're saying things like this and ALL-CAPSING YOUR POST, why don't you just jump up and down screaming "n00bie n00bie n00bie!!!" instead?

As for screaming "n00bie",,it's a good suggestion.

I certianly hope you are not pointing this in my direction.

I agree that the cap should go. For starters we don't have have an economic advisor. Also we shouldn't be forced to micromanage our economy so.