TheOneAndOnlyT

Join Date 03/2007

Someone please explain how the economy works

I can't figure it out at all

Okay, so I got this game a few months ago, and I've been playing it off and on ever since. The game is a lot of fun, and it seems like there are so many different potentials for how games can play out. Yet I've never felt the motivation to go past the beginning phase of the game, because I can't figure out how the economy of this game works. Every single time I start a game, I end up in debt and can't figure out how to get out of it without destroying my approval rating. I realize that you're supposed to have a negative income for awhile at the start, but I guess I'm just confused as to how long that's supposed to last. How can I get my economy stable enough so I actually start earning money instead of slowly losing it?

Also, the other thing I cannot understand is how Market Centers and bonuses to the "economy" stat work. For example, I'll have an income of -50 BC, but I'll build a Market Center and suddenly my income is -47 BC. Where is this extra money coming from? Nothing new seems to show up in the "income" column in the domestic stats screen. The same goes for whenever my "economy" stat goes up, and I can't figure that one out either. Someone help please?

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Hi!
Check Economy page on wiki.

BR, Iztok

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Yeah, the economy needs to be a bit more transparent. Too much goes on behind the scenes.

The Wiki page doesn't have all the answers. For instance:

Tourism, which provides income based on your influence and total galaxy population.

Ok... so its based on influence and total galaxy population. Then what? How exactly does influence affect it? Same with general population.

From the Tourism page:

Tourism is income based on how much influence a civilization has. Tourism is proportional to the population of the galaxy (giving all civilizations a bigger "pie" to take their "slice" from, based on how much influence they have). The amount of tourism income can be found on the Economy tab.

Still no REAL answers in there. How many BC do you get per share of the population? If you have 20% of the population, how much money would that be?

In all games nowadays, its like the game hides as much information from the user as possible in order to appear more difficult.

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Hi!
Check Economy page on wiki.

BR, Iztok

This helps, but it still doesn't explain what Market Centers do. How do they help my income rise if nothing new is being created?

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in all games nowadays, its like the game hides as much information from the user as possible in order to appear more difficult.

You could say it levels the field.
as some very experienced players will find all manner of exploits if the benefits were all explained.

Would it give other game developers too much insight into the AI if all formula were given out?

I guess a BC per xxx number chart cant give too much away or give too much advantage to the "Gods" of GalC2.

I bet the modders and those averse with the code could tell, but why give away such hard won secrets.

So maybe a little more transparency would be nice.

But i do see why some things are hard won.

Neil.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

This helps, but it still doesn't explain what Market Centers do. How do they help my income rise if nothing new is being created?

Actually, the Economy article listed above has a hotlink to the Wiki tax article that gives a more precise and useful definition of what your planetary income will be. Basically the short answer is more people equals more income. Also the various bonuses make a huge difference.

You mentioned another key item in the OP which is that morale and income are intimately tied together. Anything you can do to improve your overall morale will allow you to use a higher tax rate and therefore have a better income.

Certainly the obvious things about getting a good ecomony are things like economic racial bonuses, political parties that give an economic bonus, economic resource mining and various technologies and wonders that give an economic bonus. One of the biggest is the Mind Control Center which gives a 100% economic bonus but can only be built by evil civs.

Just as useful are all the similar abilities, mining, tech and wonders that give morale bonuses. Finally, one of the most neglected are the pop growth bonuses. These can be very powerful in being able to quickly develop planets to the point of profitability since more people quicker equals more money sooner. Also colonizing planets with as high a pop as possible assures that they grow as fast as possible and thus becomes profitable sooner. It can even help to use colony ships to "bus" more pop to newly founded colonies to speed up their development.

As far as the idea that information is hidden intentionally for the benefit of those "in the know", I really doubt it. The tax formula's were decoded mainy by Iztok with some help from others if I recall, and do provide total information into how the ecomony works, however I really have never found it a requirement to know any such formula precisely, it's merely sufficient to know that the more people you have the more income you make. And that the more economic buildings you have the more income you get from the people you do have. That's really all you need to know.

The hard part is as you alluded to, the fact that there are so many ways to proceed in this game and that everything is a balancing act between a mad rush to gain planets early and being able to develop the planets you do have. I've found that I've often done better in games where I've intentionally slowed down my colonization rate just so that the planets I do have end up stronger quicker. I call this the quality not quantity method. Again it's a balance because if all the AI's out colonize you 2 to 1 and you give them space to develop these planets then you will have no real chance. If you go this route you need to be ready to attack them before they have much of a fleet and the bulk of their planets are weak and easy to take. I look on this as merely the 2nd phase of my colony rush. This has the benefit of taking over planets where someone else has already built that first factory for you. This gives you a big leg up in development. It's great when you can get the AI to do some of your work for you.

Anyway, these are merely a few ideas out of the myriad possibilites of ways to play this game.

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Rough explanation of Market Center:

In your Domestic screen you set your tax rate, lets say it is 50% for example. This tax rate is then applied to the population of each planet individually. A planet with 1 billion people and a 50% tax rate will earn you ~50 bc but a planet with 10 billion people and a tax rate of 50% will earn ~500 bc (Note these numbers are wrong, the actual formula is fairly complicated https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Tax, this is just a simple example).

The market center modifies the earnings of the planet it is built on by 8%. So the 1 billion people generating 50 bc will generate 54bc with one market center, or 58bc with two market centers. The planet with 10 billion people will now generate 540 bc with one market center... again these numbers are wrong (pretty grossly overestimating) but the important thing is that planets with large populations generate more tax money and on large planets it is worthwhile to build market centers (and entertainment improvements to keep the crowds happy). For more info on how your modifiers are stacking click on the "details" button on the planet screen

Note that your population growth is related to approval/morale. For example 100% approval gets a big modifier to the population growth rate and will generate a lot more people each turn. But to get 100% approval you need a low tax rate and a low tax rate means that you will be making no money. So you need to balance building a decent sized population agaist squeezing the tax dollars out of them.

Some other tips for improving cashflow

Research:
Governments - each time you go up a government you get a 10% economy bonus applied to all your planets.
Xeno ethics - Good will save you base the cost of 5? colonies ~100 bc, Evil will remove starbase costs (which increase dramatically as you build more and more) Neutral will give you more trade routes
Entertainment Branch
Improve morale, build entertainment improvements and then bump up the tax rate

Trade:
The longer they are running the more money they make = more impact if done early. Very important for large galaxies with scarce planets, you will only have a few planets, low population and limited tax earnings.
An economy starbase built on top of trade routes will increase the revenue from a freighter when it is near that economy base. Personally I find starbases a pain but I have seen a few posts where econ starbases stacked along a trade route is considered worthwhile.

Explore:
Your survey ship hitting anomallies will generate money and keep you in the black to start with (more so with DL than DA). Consider researching sensors and then tacking a survey module with as many engines as possible onto a cargo frame. Two survey ships will generate twice the cash (but will clean the universe twice as quick)

Foreigners:
If you need a sudden cash boost speak to foreign races and sell off your technology, especially minor races - they rarely go anywhere and are pretty unthreatening even if they match you in the technology.

There are probably a couple more tricks but thats a good basis
Cheers, chug

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chugstar did a good job explaining. Like chugstar, i dont know the numbers, but the Tourism bonus basically works this way. The populations of all the major civilizations generate a small amount of "tourist cash". All this extra bc goes into a "pot". Then, all the civs take a portion of that money based upon their influence. For example, lets say the Humans, the Thalans, and the Yor all have 33 billion people total in each of their empires, for a total galactic population of 100 billion. For simplicity, we'll assume 1 billion produces 1 bc in tourism cash, so there is 100 bc in the "pot". The humans have 300 "influence units" ( i have no idea how they are really measured), the Thalans have 100, and the Yor have 100 (so there is a total of 500 "influence units"). Then the cash in the "pot" is divided based on the following proportions, the Humans get 300/500 (60%) of the pot, or 60 bc, and the Thalans and the Yor each get 100/500 (20%), 20 bc.

Besides the other effects of having high influence, this means that influence centers are basically like market centers, except that they return income based on everyone's population instead of just your own. If you are in a situation that has left you with a less-than-generous helping of planets and population, market centers wont be all that effective as you have little income to magnify, so you might make more money off of influence centers instead. Plus the higher influence could help you gain more planets.

Note: Tourism money is significantly less than standard income, so even a small population with market centers might give more money than influence. As i said, i dont know the numbers, so perhaps someone with more knowledge can fill us in as to exactly what the advantages are, and roughly where it becomes more lucrative to have markets over influence.

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i wont give weird math problems as to how this works but ill give explanations a shot.

If you read the market centers discription it says 'The market center is a good place for colonists to buy and sell things', typically when this action happens the goverment shall gain from it.

Tourisim takes from influence because that makes average joes think 'hmm... after being influenced ill go here for vacation.' Population effects it because theres more people to be touring. granted tourism gains are not usually very large sums. If you really need some more tourisim funding, try to barter for influence points.

With trade, longer routes, more populus planets, and economy bases with trade modules will effect the value of the routes. Also if your evil or good you can get money from others trading. And another important factor is if youre supported by trade, DONT LEAVE THE U.P. COUNCIL!! You cant trade if you leave, and the other races wont really trade with you. And try to use your tradable goods with races your doing a good amount of tradin with, I believe this increases your cash flow but im not certain.

Another thing is check allocated spending you might have to lower your spending, but not too much, lowering funding makes projects, ships, and researches take longer to complete. Also if theres a feild youre not really using ruduce its funding, and if your race has abiliteis that increase your feilds efficences, you can safely lower some funding to the feild.

You might also try this, get a class 4-8 planet and but put almost nothing but economic structures on the planet(and eventually a farm or 2)this honestly does help your economy. Also try not to build so much stuff right away, just pace your self, this should help a bit. You should also try to change your political party to republic, democrocy, or star federation. And if you sell your technologies try selling some ships, or influence points. Another helper, two words, ECONOMIC CAPITAL. Another would be that if a race really likes you try to beg for some money, but youll never be able to get alot, and be sure to have good diplomacy and military to get some more

Well thats all I can think of for now and I hope this lengthy explanation helped a little.

Oh, and something important to remember is you dont really need money in your treasury.

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Another small tidbit thats not super important but does help when learning. Try to keep your planets around the same population cap as all the others. That way when you adjust your tax rate, it changes morale on all planets by almost the same amount. If you have one planet with 20 billion people with a 55 percent approval, and 15 planets with 6 billion people and 90 percent approval, your rating might be say, 80 percent. Now you bump your taxes up and your rating is at 70 percent, but your mega planet approval goes to 40 or 30 percent and revolts. Obviously, planet tiles, foreign influence, etc. can make this more difficult to keep constant, but its just a guideline to go by. As you get more advanced you will figure out how many counter espionage/VR centers to build or how many farms to build etc.

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Piznit,

Have you really ever see a planet 'revolt' at 40 or even 30% approval? I don't even see the 'dissatisfaction / unhappy face' show up until down in the 20s, at best. However, at 40% approval, a planet WILL stop growing, and at 19% it will begin losing population.

I play with 30% approval on maxed out planets all the time, for the extra tax income - no problems. I pop it up before elections, of course, or my government would get thrown out.

Revolts that cause your planet to go over to another empire have nothing to do with approval/morale, you know. Loyalty flips purely due to the balance of local cultural Influence, modified by race loyalty. AFAIK there is no linkage between Approval and Influence, except in so far as very very low approval will cause you to lose population, which will in turn decrease Influence point production.

I love the twists and turns of this game.

drrider

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