Do you immediately start building infrastructures at planets you have newly colonised? I mean, the planets other than your original starting planet?

I find that holding back on developing your new colonies until you are ready to afford it helps a lot.

I've also found if you're on an anomaly-rich map, build survey ships ASAP. I've even bought them outright as they'd typically find more than enough cash to justify their purchase, and several anomalies improve your economic bonus, so that helps.

Toning down spending/versus savings sure helps. I try and keep my approval rating near 100% near the beginning of the game which makes population increase more quickly, so while I have a negative income to start with, I'll get a faster population, which then means better tax revenue. You will need to compensate with morale research/buildings, and be careful to not over-grown planets before you're ready to put on buildings that will control your reputation decline.

I believe you can click on the Details button on each planet for a more extensive break-down of spending/earning, but really a tool tip over that (just like how you get a break-down for production) would be helpful. Stardock? (hint, hint).

I adjust the sliders between military, social, and research all the time, depending on my goal. For instance, I may want to crank up research to get a key tech. Once I get that I then tone that down and increase social production to build that tech on my planets, or create a new ship that uses that and increase ship production.

I'm under the impression that the amount of revenue you get from trade depends on:

*Your overall economy
*Your bonuses/technology related to trade
*Starbases along the way
*Distance the trading planets are from each other

One thing I would like to see is have the ability to create a trade ship from one planet, send it to another planet I own, and THEN send it to whomever I want to trade with, so I could choose better where I want trade routes established, other than just the planet that made the trade vessel (another feature request). Unless this is possible already?

I see the problem there, from a programming standpoint. Some planets have a +Starship bonus. Those ships should have a starship bonus based on the planet they were built on. That means all ships must have a planet_of_origin attribute, whether they're trade ships or not. In order for this to work, you would have to have separate planet_of_origin and planet_of_origin_for_purposes_of_trade_modules attributes.

The following is not all about economy, I was thinking what is it that make my games work out.

This is how I usually do (in DA, slightly different from DL)
- play humans on tough on a hooj map
- set main spending slider at 100%, adjust taxslider so peopleare like 50-60% happy
- purchase a factory, build another factory, a lab & 2 markets, then purchase a scout ship (own design to get a slightly faster one than the builtin one). And set espionage slider so it costs me 1bc/week.
- first research is Universal Translator (2nd is Xeno Research)
This is all before I move any spaceships.
Then:
- explore and colonise, use the Flagship mainly for anomalies (avoiding wormholes)
- Soon as the factories & lab is ready, prioritise shipbuilding and have Earth crank out colony ships.
- Occasionaly & depending on how many money anomalies I get, purchase first factory in a new colony or a colony ship or a scout
- most important early research goal is impulse drive, and the first diplomacy skill then soon after that sensors. When I get sensors I upgrade all scouts to survey thingies and grab anomalies
- build diplomatic translators soon as I can (setting Earth to prioritise social production meanwhile)
- Get Trade early in the game AND sell (or trade to others) at once, you will get trade income from their trade routes going to your planets
- go for Sensors IV & build Eyes of the universe. Don't trade Sensors IV until you built the Eyes.
- build freighters and get some trade routes going

I also like to sell Alliances and Xeno Ethics to all others (When choosing Ethics I pick neutral dfor the terraforming & the learning centers)

During all of this I keep an eye on the tax slider.

There's a lot more to the game than this but this usually works for me. Around the time I get a couple og trade routes going is when I begin making money. Occasionally I have to endure 5-10 weeks of too much (< -500bc) debt, but just stick it out.

You should be able to make this work, after that you may care to experiment with other settings or playing other than humies. Note I have only ever once been attacked during the above process (today, as a matter of fact) and that was by a pissant 2 planet civ which ought to have known better, I invaded them and also took over their resources, all of it.

Gut Luck

A few tips about economics:
High Command Hegemony Strategy Guide

(its a "work in progress" )

Myself,the only time I've fussed with the sliders on the "main" economy window is when I either want a tech fast or if I have all the techs I want and don't want to research more (in which case I turn it down to 1%)

OK... here's a situation I ran into recently. I'm at war with two races and I need to create a buffer zone (I'm in the corner). I take over a few highly developed planets that have extremely expensive infrastructure. I'm taken way negative and don't have the spare population do build it up manually. Are you suggesting in these cases you delete all those costly infrastructure buildings (factories and labs)? It seems like a difficult thing to do late-game when it's so expensive to build (or re-build) those fancy industrial sectors.


and everyone... thanks for the geat ideas! About to start my next game and am going to employ what I hope is a better understanding of the financials.

The numbers have never added up right on that screen, ever since the days of Galciv1. It looks to me like the "Ship Maintenance" item is wrong, in more ways than one.

First, your total spending slider should be 100% except in a dire economic emergency. If you are forced to have the slider below 100% or you'll go into the red then you already have too many factories and research centers and you should not build more or you'll just make the situation worse.

Second, your basic new colony building makes 10 industrial points. So if you have overall spending at 100%, then you only need 10% social spending to make that first production point. If you are at 100% overall spending, then the initial colony is also producing military and research output. You can redirect some of that to social spending by clicking on the social spending focus on the colony. So basically, as long as you have 100% overall spending, you should always be able to make 4 or 5 points of social production on your new colony.

Sometimes 4 or 5 points per week is too slow, particularly if you are building higher-tech infrastructure. In that case you can build the cheaper, older-tech buildings, buy the first couple of factories, or bite the bullet or raise your social spending. The spending breakdown sliders are designed to force you to choose overall priorities. Sometimes that means new colonies get screwed because social spending (read: infrastructure development) isn't a high priority for your empire.

Grayshot,

You can try to set the planet to focus on social production. You can do so on the colony screen. At the top of the screen are three boxes that indicates your military, social, and research spending points. Next to the points is a circular symnbol, click that to focus most of the planet's resources towards social production. Note, doing so will slow production of any ships on that planet and will also reduce the planet's research contribution.

Another thing to try is adjusting your taxes and spending on the Domestic Policy screen:

1. Increase the tax rate until your Approval Rate drops to 75% (or whatever you prefer). Don't forget to check this screen from time to time. If your approval rate drops too low then lower your tax rate.

2. The Spending slider is not at 100%, by default (at least in Dreadlords). Bring that up to 100%, or as high as possible while still earning some money each week.

3. Play around with the sliders for military, social and research rates to your liking.

It is important to earn money every week because there will be times when you need to rush production.

I tend to focus my research on techonologies that boosts my morale, improves production, and allows me to build more advanced economic structures.

Examples of tech to research in order of research:

a. Xeno Engineering => Social Production +10
b. Planetary Improvements = > +10 to Military, Social, Research Production
c. Xeno Industrial Theory => Social Production +10, allows you to build Factory
d. Xeno Economics = > Economics +10, allows you to build Adv. Market Centers
e. Xeno Research = > Allows you to build the Xeno Lab to generate more research points.

I would put priority on those 5 techs.

To begin to improve your morale you'll need to research the following techs:

a. Xeno Communication = > Diplomacy +5
b. Universal Translator = > Diplomacy +5, Embassy
c. Xeno Entertainment = > Morale +10, Multimedia Center

As you can see, you'll need to research three techs to begin to boost your civilization's morale. That allows you to maintain your high tax rate.

I had many issues with overpopulating planets being unhappy, overseeing the overall economic impact of ignoring banks and maintenance costs, so I read a few guides and this is the conclusion I got:
o) Your goal in the game is to achieve positive income while maintaining full production!
o) When picking race abilities, go for high Economy and Morale bonuses. That seems to be the best combo to help you achieve your goal.
o) You reach that goal by by paying A LOT of attention to where you build research centers, factories, and when you decide to start building fleets
o) Never overpopulate a planet! This was the mistake I did in my first games and that screwed up my whole idea. Never allow for ore than say 13-16 mt of food on a planet, or otherwise you will have huge issues keeping that planet happy and possibly wasting too many slots on multimedia centers and such which cost a lot of maintenance!
o) I think of planets as following:
- Planet quality better than say 11 with production tiles and asteroid belts -- Production planet. This planet should have a starport, mainlny factories, manufacturing capitol and have ability to build galactic wonders on soil enhanced and such tiles. The planet should have 1 to 2 banks and 2+ multimedia (depending on pop) centers to address economy and happiness. I do not want to lose the potential of offseting the big cost this planet will be to me so I focus slightly on making taxes off of this planet, so I always boost income with a few banks.
- Planet with research tiles- Always a reasearch building on it. Research buildings are expensive and it better cost me less per one to maintain the planet.
- Planet good research tiles- Technological capital. This is the only solution that works good for me in terms of research.
- Good quality planet- Most likely a balanced planet with a starport and 3+ factories and good mix of moneymaking. Research a secondary.
- Poor/Medium quality planet (maybe 8 and below) - This is my moneymaker. Has enough production to build out the tiles (and decomission it if needed), farms to support 9-12b of population, miltimedia centers and banks!
o) Unless your planet seems to be not easily defendable, Do not waste a slot on a starport unelss it's a "production planet" or a "Good quality planet" (see above)
o) Military costs weekly maintentnace. Try not to spend too much in military until you are ready to do smething with it. Produce cheap, slow constructors with small hulls to build economic centers around your strategic populations, capture galactic resources, and even military starbases on enemy teritory that will piss them off (this is for storyline missions) and make them waste their defenders until you are ready to move in.
o) General order of research (for me)
- Overall race stats. Plkanetary improvements and such.
- Econmy level priority.
- Factory level priority.
- Other moneymaking techs.
- Happiness techs.
- Research techs.
- Now trade with your good miliaristic friends when they are a few levels of research ahead of you in some weapon techs, propulsion, or minitaturisation and continue from there.
- Fill in with military techs and plan on getting high damage small ships, then miniaturization and logistics, then high damage medium ships, then even more miliatary until you are much better than the rest.
- Research planetary invasion now.
- Diplomacy and such should be a matter of "taste".
- Wonders and high improvements once you have taken over some good planets

o) General order of shipbuilding
- At the beginning, focus slider on military at least 60%, you should crank out a lot of colony ships (even convert your intial ships to colony) and capture as many planets as you can. Follow the "colony rush" examples.
- Then you crank out survey ships to get you some money back. You have hopefully researched sensor s and other yada-yada to make a decent survey ships. Follow other guides for this.
- Make cheap constructors.
- Make a defender or two.
- When researched enough into good weapon tech, make a small fleet and hit on the first conventient target.
- Upgrade your weapon tech to match the enemy and crank out unbeatable ships. You better be able to do this by now, or otherwise you didn't follow the instructions.
- Build transports on all your starports and wipe out the maps, and repeat the proevious steps if needed.

o) Approval:
- I like to have 100% approval on most planets most of the time to boost planet population. Mid to late game that approval is good around 60-70 percent.
- Regularly examine each planet (in domestic stats window) and address the least happy panet by building an entertainment tile on it.

DISCLAIMER:
These advices are based on my very bad previous experience, limited experience with the DL campaign, forum guides, and a few ow my excellent rounds against the normal AI.


I still have issues with spies though. If 4 AIs are placing spies on my buildings, there's almost no way for me to defend. I have to prioritize to always have one spy spare for "checking on planets", and rest for neutralizing critical inflitrated structures. Maybe someone can advise? Is this maybe addressed in a beta release? Should I install a beta?