No, they still give 25%. The nerf was long ago.

Since there is now an improvement that boosts planetary economies by 50% I think I can see why they added this. As Thanlians I'm nearing the end of the game but about 50-70 turns ago I started raking in over 1000bc and got up to 4000bc per turn with 100% approval rating on all my planets except Thala. I also always have my production capacity at 100% unless I get low or want to finagle something. I also financed massive deficit spending (max was about -500bc) by trading techs (9civs on the 20x20 grid). To be fair I'm 1 turn away from technological victory at 0% research production and am just messing around. Even so my completely maxed ships are costing me about 2000bc a week (119/ship or thereabouts) and I'm still raking in 2000bc at 97% approval.

There are some serious planetary improvements now .

The Iconians actually researched that tech in your game? Lucky you. The buggers never seem to want to research that tech before being wiped off the face of the universe in my games (not by me, of course )...

Still, the Thalans are in a pretty unique position to get Stock Exchanges really, really fast, given the strength of their Hyperion Matrix. Take Creative, pop that sucker on a 300% research tile, set the sliders to 100% Research, and you'll see what I mean...

Once I got that and built a ton of them on my planets, it didn't take long at all for me to get to the top Economically (and in Influence too, thanks to that +5% Influence on each stock exchange) and stay there for my entire game.

True. You'll get no disagreement from me on these points.

I don't seem to have any problems with economy until I go to war. The extra money is in the trade treaties. I start the game at 100% spending and 50% taxes. my research is at 75%, social spending is at 10%, ships are at 15%. I also upgrade the starting miner to a colony ship.


The reason I run into trouble when I am at war is because I lose part of my trade treaty income. I mean other than I lose the trade treaties, if I have one, with the AI's that I go to war with.


I understand that civilian trade would drop but military trade would or should go up.

Even if your allies are not involved in the war directly. They could still support you behind the scenes. Like we did before we entered world war two with the lend lease act.

a little of both. people equal money. the more people the more money. usally I have a few plus 20pq planets on those I have 2 or more farms and 5 moral centers (yeah I use them to keep my moral up still it sucks getting thrown out of office) and at least 4 econ buildings and alwasy upgrade all of them when possible. First upgrade is to the econ then moral then farms.

Duh

You sure the trade income dropped due to loosing routes with the race you went to war with? No other income hits are being imposed? UP vote on a war tax for example?

I really need to go to war while not being a race with War Mongering/Profiteering and see if the money netted by them comes from the races' at wars coffers.

I'm actually enjoying the new economics & support requrements.

1.) Generally, I try to develop in stages matching the same level industrial advance to one with trade. Each world with 2 industrial advances and 2 financial. Do this slowly, as a very high industry improvement will actually stagnate your growth as it takes forever to build. This also manages your expenses for maintenance.

2.) Trade is a DO OR DIE elmenent. I trade techs, even at a loss to get them early. Shoot for the farthest stars you can reach, better return on your investment. This may mean 20-30 turns of support without income. The larger the map, the better the returns.

3.) I also develop governments before I do any serious weapons development. Happier people means more revenue as well, more efficient operations.

4.) PIMP YOUR TECH - sell tech to the minor races for quick cash, and ALWAYS click thier cash button when trading with anyone; they're allways willing to hand over a small sum of cash with every trade. It's an extra step, but each trade usually grafts 1-200 bc, filling the gap in the trade value.

5.) Build 'cheap' defenses. 2x Small fighter with 1 gun, per world. They keep the Dregin at bay mathematically, and it allows you to upgrade later to something more appropriate to the race on your border. And the upkeep is minimal.

Note: this is defense by appearance only, and I would not recommend it on a border with a hostile empire. It does however appear to keep them at bay long enough to get your war machine in order.

6.) Reduce your taxes as you grow. Yup, it works. happier people work harder, and the overall economy grows. As the money grows, try to maintain a minimum 25 bc per turn surplus. Any higher during your initial growth phase, increase production to utilize. Focus production/science/etc only on those worlds that have extreme planetary bonuses.

7.) Colonies at the start are a major $$$ drain (as they should be). Follow step 1, and hold off on building buildings other than industry and trade initially.

Anyways - these simple 7 steps keeps you out of combat, and your economy trucking along.

Yeah, Duh, the economy buildings are critical. Besides, loading up your planets with population generally backfires... the low morale makes it a huge pain to keep taxes reasonably high. A 25% economy bonus is nothing to sneeze at... a mere four stock exchanges will double a planetary economy!

Anyways: I've heard a really interesting idea suggested about ship maintainence. Basically, ships that are in orbit don't cost as much in maintainence, perhaps only costing as much as the previous value or less. This is rationalized by the fact that it's cheap to maintain ships in orbit, no supply lines need to be set up or protected. However, once you launch the ship, you start paying the full maintainence! Aside from making it manageable again, it also creates a neat element in warfare, since the duration and scale of a military venture is now an economic problem as well as a military one! Send too many fleets out at once, and you will start burning through your treasury until you bring them back home.

That change has the bonus of lining up with the AI's apparent strategies, too. They like to keep their fleets in orbit, instead of keeping them in the field to fight with.

I really like this idea.

+1

Hi!

Good one! Like in Civ in democracy, when your unit outside home city causes unhappines.

Another idea about ship maintenance: player pays only for ships over his logistic. If he has logistic 6, he pays maintenance for the 7th and above. This would finaly make logistic line worth researching beyond the third level.

BR, Iztok

My new game I'm playing as the thalans and doing quite well on the economy. I get 93 a turn for some of the trade routes. A key is having economic starbases with trade bonuses on them.

Kevin

Now, how much are the freighters costing in ship maintenance, how much are those starbases costing in maintenance? Deduct that from your 93bc a turn and see how much/or IF you are pocketing any money.

I just finished an immense game as Yor. I took max economy bonus and a morale bonus (don't think that was worth it beyond pop growth it provided). My tax for most of the game was 39%. Early in the game i did run a little higher to get infrastructure built and did run very low just after my colony push to try to pop boom with 100% approval to get a tax base faster.

The Yor is limited to one econ building, which gives 25% and a pop growth building with 10% econ on it. I b-lined for the main economy building and it helped compared to my other starts. I didn't build any trade lines (I think researching that tree is a waste till later with the Yor.
Early game is all about keeping maintenance down. Build only what you need and don't research upgrades to research/industry until you can afford the increased building maintenance. I went mostly labs becuase they were cheaper with the Yor special research building (limit one 3upkeep for 12 research).

No tech trading. By the end of the game tourism matched my colony upkeep and ship upkeep. 30k total income, 18k tourism. I ran 100% spending most of the game. Early on it was probably only in spurts, but i tried to keep my economy scaled to 100% spending. I started a war early and took over the humans empire, which basically sealed the game from there as i had basically doubled up.

I tried to size food production to support 18B pop (6 from colony pod, 3x4=12 from food). I read 20 is a breakpoint for the happiness? I don't know if the Yor can ignore it. So most of my planets came out 4 food, 1 econ, 1 cheap research, 1 factory, 1 pop boost/econ, starport, the rest fill with research buildings or aligned to bonus tiles.

When does starbase maint. kick in? All of mine say 0 in the info, but I don't know if the info window is broken or it only starts to apply after so many starbases or modules or... Anyway, you're neglecting that even if the starbase has maintenance it is only deducted once. As long as you build a starbase where there are multiple trade routes converging, it would have to have some massive maintenance to not be worth it.

Not certain if there is a point when it kicks in, I think its there from the start just like ships. In the economy tab the section for spending should state your starbase maintenance. That will be all sb maintenance, but will still give you an idea. The individual starbase windows may be bugged in the instance that you have maintenance for them.

Unfortunately I do most of my forum posting when I'm not around the computer that has the game installed, so my question was just a pure question, not a statement. I've just been very concerned about trade route incomes vs ship/base maintenance since the beta4 patch.

I think freighters should be built simple, if built at all. A tiny hull with a trade module, and maybe a life support for long-haul routes. If launched early, they can rack up a lot of money after a while, generating 10-15% of your income on a Rare-everything map. The last time I used freighters was several games ago with the Krynn, and the freighters had been sent to the Korx. They were generating 800 bc out of my 7000 bc income, as far as I can remember, in late mid-game. Until, one fine day, the Fundamentalists came along. They didn't affect me(I was Neutral) but they took over my trading worlds(which belonged to my Evil ally, the Korx), thus slashing my trade routes and killing trade income.

IMO, the biggest problem with trade is not the investment cost, break-even time or war-defense, but rather the risk of events like Jagged Knife, Fundamentalists, United Planets votes, Trade Embargos, Assassination, Pirates, Peacekeepers etc.

No problem, I also often post/read without the game in front of me, so here are some numbers that I just checked.

From an existing game, Terrans, Normal difficulty: 18 starbases, 90 bc maintenance or 5bc per week per starbase. I thought perhaps they might be different costs based on the upgrades installed etc, so I started a new game and built one econ starbase. The maintenance was 5bc. (Just as a point of interest, in that game I built no trade ships of my own but was making 320bc/week in trade compared to 200 some in tourism but I controlled 71% of the galaxy; medium map, uncommon planets and uncommon habitable).

So I researched trade, built one freighter (7bc/week maint until it reached its destination) and added the +10% trade module to the econ base. The base stayed at 5bc/week and my one freighter (after reaching its dest) was returning 6bc/week.

So no, starbases aren't that expensive to maintain and certainly it appears that an econ starbase with trade modules and trade is worth it.

No, the mini freighters do not have maintenance costs - the initial freighter does, but once it establishes the route it does not. I just double checked using the same startup game that I checked the maintenance cost of the starbase in.



Well, using the same figures from the test game I used to see what the maintenance of an econ starbase was (5bc/week), freighter maintenance was 7bc/week over 3 turns and econ base was 5bc over the same 3 turns. So the cost to set up my one trade route + 1 starbase with 10% trade bonus was 503bc (159/constructor, 149 for freighter - default ships, 36bc for upkeep until route was established).

The freighter was +1bc/week, so if it was by itself it would eventually pay for itself On the other hand, that 1 econ base + upgrade would much more quickly pay for itself if it were at a center for trade.

I almost always build an econ starbase that encompasses my home planet and the 2nd colony so that I could reasonably take that 503 and remove one constructor's cost making it only 344 (since I would have built it anyway).

So it can be profitable, but you have to make an effort to make it viable.

It does improve civ relations though, and that can be very, very helpful.

Worth it eventually. +10% to your freighter income of 6 only while that freighter is in the influence of the starbase (6+.6 = 6.6, truncated to 6). Even if it was rounded up to 7 (which it wasn't the last time I tested) you are gaining at most 1 bc per turn your freighter is in the influence of the starbase.

But the constructor to BUILD the module on the starbase cost at LEAST 176, and could have cost you as much 1500 bc... depending on how you paid for it. So, even assuming the trade module has been changed to round up, it would take you 176 weeks to recoup the cost of your one constructor by building the trade module.

BUT, you don't get your phatom +1 bc every week, only in weeks when the freighter is in the influence of said starbase. Typically, unless the planets are close, a trade module will provide its bonus only about 20 weeks out of every year... if even that much.

So you are looking at buying back your 176 constructor cost at 20bc per year. Now, it doesn't ACTUALLY take 8 years to recoup the cost of the constructor because the trade route does increase over time. It DOES take at least 3 years best case to recoup the cost of the constructor, and it is often more like 5 years.

My games rarely last 5 years start to finish, forget about waiting that long to start making a profit off of a module.

~ Wyndstar

Or, OK - if you are building constructors for 159 instead of 176... it will still take you at least 3 years to recoup the cost of adding a trade module to a starbase. And on average, much much longer to recoup that cost.

~ Wyndstar

Also, starbases don't effect ships while they are in orbit of a planet. +% trade that covers your planets has no effect. The trade module only effects ships in space with trade modules while they are in the influence zone of the starbase.

Also, if you haven't tested, ships in orbit around a planet do not benefit from any military starbases that boost ships even if the planet is in the AOE of the starbase.

The only exception to this is influence starbases.

~ Wyndstar

Actually the constructors are only 159 (at least mine are?). Anyway, as I said, it doesn't make sense if you're going to build an econ starbase with trade modules if there's only one trade route (unless you just want the relationship benefits). In line of the whole "spend money to make money" I guess

Heh, man Wyndstar a flurry of posts eh?

I'm going to test out that military starbase and orbiting ships 'cause I could have sworn that they got those bonuses, too. Not that I keep ships in orbit for defense anyway, generally speaking. Since I can't fleet them in orbit without building a structure, I prefer to just attack incoming ships before they get that far