I've been watching this thread for the interesting discussion. I have to say that in some games i end up with lots of cash and others i don't. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing wrong. It seems the critical point is right toward the end of the colonization rush that i start to fail in my money, if i don't hit the techs to fix it quick enough i usually end up too far behind to recover in the game. I'd be curious to see some people's strategy on that. do you just make all marketing planets? food planets (i tend not to do this any more because morale is tricky)? or? and how do you balance that vs research (which is what i tend to fall behind on if i focus too much on $).

I will say, since the nerfed power plants, I have not had a problem with late-game money; and let me tell you, I don't build markets at all, and I only build morale structures on the approval bonus squares.

But I remember playing Thalans in the beta. They used to pay full price for industrial sectors, and they paid for them immediately. Plus you stacked the un-nerfed power plants on top of all those industrial sectors. They just drank money. What Stardock's done since then is nerf Thalans, so they paid 25% price for factories and don't build immediately--which is okay--and they severely nerfed power plants--which I think was a bit too much. What they did was curb industrial output. The ceiling on late-game money is still there. Plus you've got this 20k treasury limit or you start taking penalties...uh, why??? How is it unbalancing to have money that just sits there? Sure, there are MUCH higher priorities in 1.50X right now, but I do think it's fair to say that late-game economy is somewhat neglected. And I'm okay with that if it means the FoW bug, defense, and tech trading get fixed.

The end result is the same. Having a Factory on a +100% tile means the equivalent of having two factories instead of one. The same would hold true if there were a +100% econ tile with a market on top of it. It would just double the percentage output of that particular building.

Based on what you just said, I think your money issues are in how much population you're loading into the colony ships. I know what happens: you've got some small-pop world that has manufacturing bonus squares, and they crank out the colony ships. But you can't populate them. Or the planet's location is sweet, right on the frontier, but it has no population. So now you're stuck with all these 40-million pop planets you just colony rushed.

You need to rape your home world for population. Try to get it all the way down to 2.5B. Spread it as evenly as you can. Some maps are harder than others, but if you can pull off some ferrying, that should help the sporadic money problems.

As far as those money planets, some people swear by them. I don't. The best way to balance your short-term budget is just not to build anything. If they're not doing anything strategically significant at the moment, just turn them off and let them grow. Then turn them on as your budget allows. A lot of people do these money planets with the idea that a little short-term hit to your budget will pay off big dividends later. But you don't NEED the big dividends later. You need the money NOW.

Now thats was something I hadn't thought of. I do usually only colonize from my home system. I tend to research half way decent engines so that i'm only drawing pop from where i can. What i didn't think of doing was stopping production on planets. I usually do that mid game. Early game I tend to do factory - market - factory -market on most new planets and then add research on some as need and starports on others..

I think there are plenty of ways to jack up your economy as it is. On BR, Iztok's list he didn't mention farms - population increases taxes (as long as you don't go overboard) and when that's multiplied you gain a lot more BC.

The only thing I think is really wacky about econ is the whole "money world" thing. I usually need a lot of them once the war machine gets rolling. Just how many worlds full of nothing but stock markets can galactic business really sustain!

After just starting a new game, I realized that we already have two buildings that work on a percentage basis, yet have special bonus tiles. Both the Embassy and the Entertainment Centre boost their respective areas according to percentages. So if a bonus tile can work for them, there's no reason why a Market couldn't work with a bonus economic tile. The mechanics are already in the game, it's just a question of adding a tile.

I had forgotten about those as well.

I suppose the mechanics are there (do manufacturing multiplier tiles multiply manufacturing capitals' output?) and it could be implemented then.

Well, my argument against econ tiles has been defused. Good luck with the programmers. (And if you can find out about that manufacturing capital question of mine I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

I've seen this discussed, capital buildings don't get any benefit from bonus tiles apparently. I don't know firsthand though.