Always a negative income starting the game

You just need to adjust your tax rate/production sliders until you start showing a surplus. It's not that hard to do. Raise your taxes, lower your production sliders until you get into the green. Those are the sliders above your Military/Social/Research ones. Just be careful you don't raise your taxes too high and have your Morale go into the red. As for your planets showing negative income, you might see that on quite a few of them for awhile until you get a few upgrades for your markets. Another approach is to have a planet or two that has pretty much nothing but markets. Make them economic planets whose sole purpose is to fund your empire.

Oh, and a social slider of 60 is way overkill. You need to balance things out more. I play with 35% Military, 30% Social, and 35% Research. Favour one area too much and the others are going to suffer.

How is the population on your worlds? That is the single most important factor in income.

If you have the original GalCiv2: Dread Lords (not GC2 Gold), make sure you've got the latest patch as well (1.4x is available on the downloads page of this site). Any advice you may get will be geared towards the current version of the game.

I run in the red for quite a while too in my games but your problem may be worse because you are focusing so much on social production. Every new building you make costs extra money every turn so you want to build improvements more gradually. If you do that you might still run in the red for a while but you as your population grows on all of your planets you will suddenly find yourself sitting pretty at a point about 35-45 turns in the game.

It would probably be best to take the +30% economic bonus and the economic party in the beginning if you are having a lot of trouble with making money. That will give you 50% more money from your population. Also a good idea to get you started is to not blow your starting cash buying ships and a bunch of improvements (a couple factories on your homeworld is fine). Try to keep the debt under a 100-130 bc a turn and your cash should last you until you are profitable. The idea of one or two market worlds that Belanos mentioned is an excellent strategy.

Adjust your taxes first, and you production values. After a while, once your new game colozation rush slows down your economy will start catching up. Getting trade early and getting some good trade routes is a good idea too.

money is my single biggest challenge with this game too.

I have been playing galciv since galciv1 was released and back then i remember being astonished at the preset economic desaster awaiting me for each new game.

What i eventually realised was this - in most other games you actually have to do stupid things to run out of money, however in Galciv your finances are already set up to self destruct you regardless of you doing stupid things. Of course doing stupid things like buying with finance will turn you broke even quicker!

Finances at the start of a game before you even do anything are basically a total desaster and typically i will spend the first half hour of each game desperately trying to wrestle my finances into the green. That is just normal for Galciv.

It doesn't have to be. I'm never losing money because I constantly adjust my spending in relation to my taxes. If I'm showing a loss, I simply turn down my production. There are times where I have it down so low that I'm not able to build anything for a few turns. But it doesn't take long before the new planets I colonized, which are the cause of the drain, start building population and contributing some taxes. The first thing I build on a new planet, after rush building a Starport, is a market so that the planet can start contributing ASAP.

There's absolutely no reason for going into the red in this game, it's just a question of making some adjustments to your Tax/Production sliders. And in time you'll be able to run your empire at 100% output and still be making a profit. The key phrase here is "in time". The first part of the game you just need to turn down your production until your cash economy catches up.

If your lucky! i have tried turning gov spending down to zero and still been loosing money!! and no i had not even used credit contractors.

Mind you, turning down gov spending is a good way to make your game a serious challenge which is nice! Since the AI will leave your low spending economy in it's dust!

I think a lot of people play this game with a deficit for the first 50 or more turns.
It's definitely a little counter intuitive - the game sets you up with all this cash and you're tempting to spend, spend, spend! But as other posters have said, if you blow your initial funds you'll be bankrupt in no time. Even if you just fill your planets with factories and research centers through normal building you'll be running in the red.

Resist the temptation to build a mess of factories right off the bat.
As your planets develop, build some market centers along with the factories instead.

Make sure your survey ship is getting anomalies - build another one if there's a lot of anomalies on the map.

I've had a lot of success with actually turning my taxes down at the beginning of the game until my morale was 100%. The extra population growth early pays off in the medium to long term.

Sell some techs for cash (this worked better before the most recent patch...)

Turn down your overall production as a last resort. If you have to turn down the overall production that means you've built too many factories and labs for your tax base to sustain. Next time build less factories!

Build starbases and manufacturing and research capitals - they give you bonus production, which only costs 50% of regular production.

I do this every single game. Like I said, I never lose money and the most I've ever had to turn down my production slider to was about 30%. But it doesn't stay there very long. Once my new colonies start building some population I can put it back up. It usually takes me awhile to get it up to 100%, but it certainly never reaches 0.

Are you turning up your taxes as well? Try raising it so that your Morale hits 45%, and leave it there until your economy gets rolling. That's the point just before you go into the red and start running into problems. You'll get a little bit slower population growth at that point, but it's at least not stagnant. And eventually you'll be able to turn it back up.

I always blow my intial funds right away, building colony ships and scouts. I also rush build a Market on my Home planet, and a Starport on any other planet I colonize. And I rarely have a problem having enough cash to build one either. Occasionaly it happens if I've been rushed to take a planet before the AI does, but I'm normally always able to construct a Starport and start buidling a ship immediately. I then put a market at the top of the queue so the planet can start paying for itself as quickly as possible.

That was just an example of what 'can' happen. Normally my government spending stays on 100 from day one and never goes down - but i have to work and slave damb hard to achieve it!

Also watch out for building labs early. They cost more than youd think in maintenance.

What's the effect, exactly, of running at a deficit? I've noticed that, early on, my net might be, say, -50, and let's say my treasury is at 500. But it *stays* at 500 instead of dropping to 450. Obviously, it must be making up for the shortfall somehow, but I can't tell what it's doing. Slowing down production, perhaps?

There is some good advice in this thread.

One thing I do to get my economy going ASAP is to keep taxes DOWN so I get morale at 100%, thus pop growth at the double-bonus. Then, use an extra colony ship or two to ferry people from your homeworld (with the highest pop) to newer colonies that are trying to get going. The difference between trying to build pop up from 500 million or from 1 billion (or from 2 billion), is huge. Things just start to happen much more quickly that way.

This is something I've never seen the AI do well. Their newer colonies tend to have very low populations, which is a big disadvantage to them.

Well, using colony ships or troop transports as population movers is thinking outside the box. Something today's AIs aren't really very good at.
If there were a module dedicated solely to moving people as opposed to colonising/invading it would be different.

I keep my taxes at the point where my moral is above 70%, so that my population grows quickly, yet I have income coming in. I NEVER rush buy a starport. I will rush buy a basic factory, and then build a market center, then build a starport, if that planet is going to get one. It is a long time before anyone can invade your planets, so they don't have to be defended.

There is a big difference in growth of your population also between 500 or 1000 colonists. Ferrying population off your home world to populate other worlds will keep the morale of your home world above 70%, which increases population growth....come on people breed like those galatic roaches do!

I always have deficit spending, early, yet I do not allow myself to go into the red. Another thing I will do is park my colonizer next to a planet I want to colonize, but what a few turns, so that previous colonized planets have a chance to start growing and contributing, then grab the planet when I see other colonizers moving to take the planet. Zooming out to icon level helps with this.

I play my early economy for a ‘soft landing’. Like other have mentioned, I decrease taxes until I get 100% morale at my low pop world (which isn’t hard); higher population worlds have morale that is lower, but that is OK. In the early game this costs next to nothing, but the growth is significant over time. Since population = taxes this is a good thing. My income is always lower than the AIs, but my population is absolutely huge. When most planets are established (~3B to 6B) I’ll increase my tax rate so that average morale is ~75%, and then watch my economy absolutely shoot ahead of the AI because of my population advantage.

This means I deficit spend for at least a year. To fund this I like to keep a good amount of my starting cash in the bank. To conserve money I’ll rush buy a few colony ships after they are half built if my build rate is slow (less than 1 colony ship every 3 turns) since this is much less costly than rush buying the whole thing. I’ll buy 3 factories at my capital so I have a much better production rate, and maybe a factory at a key starting planet. Other tactics mentioned by others – surveying anomalies, trade routes, selling tech, financial improvements at planets, moving population around – I will do to keep my bank account healthy and population growing.

There is a time, however, when the above tactics simply don’t work and money is hemorrhaging much faster than my economy is growing. What I do then is my ‘soft landing’ where I set my deficit to 10% of my remaining cash by reducing production. So if I have a 1000bc in the bank I can run a deficit of -100bc, and this is adjusted every few turns. This avoids a financial implosion that can cripple your economy. Even if I don’t get an infusion of cash I can generally grow my way out of this problem since my low population planets are still growing quickly. As a last resort I’ll bump the tax rates up, and then I like to keep it so that my morale is still 75% or so.

There are many strategies to manage your early economy, which is one of the most challenging items to do. You’ll find what works best for you and fits your play style. GalCiv2 frequently has many options for any problem, which is one reason why it is so much fun.

Hydro

I got sucked in yesterday with my economy very early game stage! (masochistic level)

I had quite a few nice techs to sell so i decided to rush buy the diplomatic translators thinking i would quickly make the money back. It put me in the red by about 4000bc then when i tried to sell my techs, i got a shock...

Most of the AI's were too poor! i had to limp along at zero production making 18bc a turn until the AI's could afford my techs.... wasn't my face red!

This rush phase is all new to me. I've never been in a situation where I was losing money before. Just started trying some new techniques I read about here. Had a tiny map with rare everything, 1 AI player (random) and random intelligence with events on, and minor races on, and tech trade disabled. I played Terran and got Yor, no minor civs and only 12 habitable worlds. Bought a basic factory on earth 1st turn and landed my colony ship with 500M on Earth which had a pop of 1B. Then took 50M and put them on Mars. Set Mars to build a Factory. Bought a cargo hull and upgraded to a colony ship. My flag ship was on autosurvey and after 6 anomolies stopped, so I put it on autoexplore. Meanwhile I was colonizing all the worlds it discovered with half the pop I was growing each turn. I set my military to 10%, my social to 10%, and my tech to 80% and researched my tech building 1st. I kept lowering my taxes to keep 100% approval each turn. Every world was set to build a basic factory 1st. I got 10 worlds and Yor took 2, and 7 mines. Thanks to some lessons on rally points for ships and colonies it wasn't overwhelming anymore. After the rush phase I built a spare colony ship and began moving pop off Earth to Mars. At 12B (max pop) I moved 190M per turn without affecting Earth's pop. In around 30 turns I was a cash cow and began garrisoning my planets with cargohulls filled with weapons. When my military production was starting to lag I researched the next level of improvement. During upgrade I changed social to 80 and tech to 10 for 1 turn and then the next turn I bought the new military improvement - did the same with tech improvements too. Now I think the game is basically over so I'll try another with 2 AI. I know there are players who will read this and see lots of mistakes. I could use the critic, believe...

I always lose money at first. Because I always start with at least 3 factories per planet during the colony rush. After I colonize a few planets, I build sensors and start looking for anomalies to tide me over. I build the first few econ techs. Build impulse drive and then go back to economic developments--pushing toward banks and stock exchanges. Then in DL I get the 3 extra squares from neutral. I am doing the colony rush all along (I am on crippling). Then advance to republic and democracy which give the economy a needed boost. By the time the colony rush is over and I am building fighting machines (before troop transports). During that time my colonies that are not losing colonists anymore build up to give me a good tax base. I try to keep my morale at 75% or higher.

After I build enough fighting machines, it is time for troop transports and a military victory.

Also make sure that you are not trapped by the other AIs at the beginning. Hit Ctrl-N to get a new map. Make sure the icon is on that shows where the AIs are.

i just buy the ships to colonize planets really quick and once i have a good base of operations i work on boosting economic and technological techs

If you're just learning, then more opponents is better. You can learn how to use diplomacy with/against a variety of races. Some are fodder as allies, some as purely tech-trade cash-cows, and one or two as targets of opportunity.




Wow, what version of DL or DA are you playing? I don't remember 1 billion as the starting pop, and I've been playing since at least DL 1.3.




Why not just buy a colony ship? I'd think your approach would be more expensive. I've never done it though, so I could be wrong.




It will be very important for us to know whether you mean astroid mines or resource mines. And are you playing DL or DA? And what version?




Might as well fill that ship up. Were you building econ buildings on these planets? Earth will refill itself quickly and you'll get Mars going much faster with 500M instead of 198. Of course, if Earth is actually at 1 billion, then your approach is better at this point.



If you only have one opponent, then your military rating isn't going to be so important. Therefore, you might as well be building true warships, like small-hulled ships, instead of cargo-hull ships. Only use cargo ships as false military ratings boosters when you're worried that an opponent might attack with a much stronger force very soon. In fact, I've never used cargo hulls for such a purpose. I just build what I'll use in the future.




I wouldn't work my way up so slowly! It's actually better to have more AI much of the time. And you'll learn much more quickly if you learn to use the Foreign Relations aspects of the game. They are really a make-or-break aspect when you're playing on higher difficulties.

Go ahead and try a larger map (medium or large) with a lot of opponents. If you get annihilated, at least you'll learn much faster than this slow kind of approach.

Good luck to you, and keep us informed as to how you're doing.

Dear CornhuskerMac, I was playing DL, last version. Sorry about the bad info on colony ships. For some reason, I said 500M when actually it was 100M and I dropped 50M off at Earth. I was going for small amounts of colonists initially - just enough to claim a world before the Yor got them, and still grow. I figured if the Dread Lords would send out a transport with only 10M, then why shouldn't I. Left alot of Yor colony ships disappointed.  I read about building empty and upgrading in another post. The author claimed, and I verified, it was cheaper than a complete buy. It took 1 turn to build after the buy, and 1 turn to upgrade, so I figure I saved a couple hundred bc for 1 extra turn - it was around ~1400bc for a straight purchase and around ~800 for just a hull and about ~300-400 for the upgrade to colony ship. You get 1 colonist - enough to claim a world, even if you have to transport extra bodies to get anything useful. Those were 7 resource mines in a small DL map. The cargo-fighters were an idea I read about in another post and wanted to try. Since I didn't have small/tiny hulls yet, it was an alternative to being helpless. I just built a bunch of empty cargo hulls in my planets and when the military graph showed I needed ships every turn upgraded 1 each planet until I caught up. In theory it seemed workable ...but when I tried another game (small map 2 random AI at suicidal, rare everything I got the Korx and the Thalians who allied against me week 5 and both declared war. Even with tech trading disabled they still had way more than I could get - apparently they invest heavily in espionage. I lasted about 15 turns and by then the Korx had conquered the Thalians and began invading all my worlds. My cargo ships lasted about 1 turn and I quickly ran out of money buying defenders, so they just moved in and made themselves at home. My next game was a medium map with 1 player at suicidal, minor races on. I got Iconians and the Dark Yor. The Yor started with constructors that moved 3 and got all the resources before either of could get any. Even with tech trading off, they had everthing the Iconians and I researched because all their money was going to espionage. The Iconians were fighting them immediately, allowing me to steal 1 resource. I tried to send cargo hulls with life-support to all the resources and wait for an opportunity to steal them but it didn't happen. Dark Yor had more worlds than both of us and every time the Iconians - who had transports captured a world they got a tech. Eventually they creamed me, cause I got only 3 worlds - the resources were the bridge beween star systems and I didn't have enought range. When I tried upgrading my cargo hull to transports or colony ships, the ship got put in stasis and immediately started back home, so I was slowly roasted and lightly seasoned ...   

Hi!

Sucidal AI is bad for learning. They got so big bonuses not a single person without an expert knowledge of game mechanics can overcome them. For learning the ropes better try "though" (full AI without bonuses).

BR, Iztok

Thanks for the info mate!!!   I've started a test game at tough, created the senario to test some ideas about eliminating unwanted SBs ...