You're either expanding too fast, over-building for what you can afford (I've found that sometimes I have to leave build queues idle for a while, cause planetary maintenance was killing me) don't have enough people, or are building too many ships. Ship maintenance costs are huge in the last few beta releases. Or you need more econ buildings. And to make it more fun, each race has their own econ speed. (try playing the Yor...)

What you did in DA/DL will quickly bankrupt you in TA.

It's all very well to say he's over expanding too fast but the problem is (as I've stated elsewhere) is that the AI, even on fool, does not suffer the same penalties and can expand with inpunity. By the time you get your economy on track, each AI race has territory two to three times your size and the fleets to protect it. Right now the game is apaulingly balanced and needs a lot of love to redress this. By all means limit our expansions but ensure the AI plays by the same rules.

A couple of things to consider.

First, the Recruitment Center is one of the BEST early buildings. It is cheap to build, adds 10% econ, and more importantly adds 20% pop growth. Pop Growth is an important stat early that is largely overlooked.

The faster you get more people on a planet the faster, they become self-sufficient. More people means more taxes.

Building a small fleet of survey ships also helps slow down the money crunch. Don't be afraid to let planets sit idle. A planet that sits idle does NOT use its production resources so YOU dont actually pay from them. So colonize the planet, build a Recruitment center, and then do nothing with the planet till it maxes out it pop. The AI does this all the time.

Without a doubt the economy is much more difficult. So far I've adjusted my play by building many more economy buildings and starbases, trading techs for as much cash and just plain suffering through the initial tough times.

I've only played 3 at challenging so far (one as each alignment) but I won all 3. Give it time and remember this is still just a beta.

You do have to be more careful with your economy. However, once you get a decent population base you should be fine but 6bil per planet just isn't going to cut it. I find that I only have a few industry heavy planets and use them to do all my capital ship building. Most of my planets are econ/farm heavy to subsidize my empire. seems to work well on tough

It's not just the economy I'm finding the AI not suffering penalties from. They have superior Social and Military production and can pump out Conolly ships like no tomorrow. As I said before, I've played on fool and normal and both within the first 40 turns will have two to three times the space I have unless I'm very, very lucky with my auto-survey which allows me to churn out conolisation ships of my own. Every single race researches faster than the player and so after around 200 turns, I'm just begining to research military techs, having followed an economic strategy in order to not be in crippled debt.

Now I've so far played the Humans, Arcean and Altarian all of whom play identically. I've also had to stop selected the Korath Clan, The Yor and Kryn Consulate since they're the most ridiculously over powered races in TA, having insane Inluence growth, Military and Social production and research. Playing against these three races means I find the game just insanely tough and I've played DL and DA to death so know how to play the game.

I'm all for making it less of a land grab in the early stages of the game but my experiences playing this Beta lead me to firmly disagree with the last two replies and maintain the opinion that this game's balance is badly broken. If you're playing the Terran Alliance, try playing another race such as the Arcean and try the oponents I've mentioned and see for yourself. I said this in another post earlier - in one game (I was the Humans) after around 100 turns, the Drengin declared war on me and in one instance alone, the turn took ten minutes to complete due to wave after wave sent at my one Ranger class ship and they had a lot more on the way. There's just no way that is balanced.

Very true. I also try to get to Xeno Medicine as early as possible.

I played as humans in my last game (Immense, common planets, painful, and admittedly I did take maximum economic bonus as I wasn't sure what I'd be up against in first game on painful and 4b). I managed to get a few decent colonies and culture-flip Mars from the Dregin, almost all of which I left for a while with a few basic buildings or even just a recruiting centre. I also built the restaurant of eternity and an econ capital on Earth, along with lots of trade and influence-boosting buildings. I offset the tricky beginning by trading whatever tech I could get away with for alien tech, abusing ridiculous diplomacy bonus to pick up money, influence points or research treaties once they became available. After a while, this started to pay off and I was able to start Phase 2.

The AI go a bit mad with colonising, and the worst culprits are the Thalan, who play like the "old" Thalan and capture worlds too fast for their now-restricted population growth. Unable to build anything on these new planets (either through poverty or not having researched yet) and with their population stagnating, I was able to repeatedly buy outlying Thalan planets for a modest sum or relatively low tech. Then all I had to do was set it to build a Recruiting Centre, and in four weeks or so I had a planet with very healthy population growth. As the effect of having so many planets began to pay off, I had more money coming in, meaning I could follow the poor Thalan around buying their planets, leaving only the core that would be flipped back by the "all embassies strategy". This works best against Thalan and Drengin, and playing as Terrans or Drath, because of the gulf in diplomacy, and is much easier with tech trading on. Thalan are the most obvious targets overall, as their huge swathes of high quality, low population, undeveloped planets sell for a pittance.

Anyway, what eventually happened was that as the recruiting centres and 100% morale did their magic, my taxable population and influence became so high that I could buy and sell my rivals with impunity, develop decent trade routes that eventually became and keep my military just imposing enough that no-one tried to get clever. Tech trading paid off when I traded with the Iconians for the +50% econ Merchant Complex, which I proceeded to build on every planet...

The Drengin and Torians outproduced me for much of the game, as did the Thalans before my economic stranglehold and a war with the Iconians drove them into an early surrender, but who needs production when you can buy whole enemy fleets? I guess this was the thinking behind the Terran MP penalty.

OK, there's more than a little abuse here, and it's not particularly suited to smaller maps or fewer opponents, but it's one way to overcome the tighter economy - by the end, I had thousands of BC coming in every turn - and win a convincing economic-diplomatic victory. I pulled off something similar with the Drath in an earlier beta, using war profiteering and trade alongside their diplomatic skills, but this style of play really belongs to the Super Diplomats and their ability to wrangle really quite silly trades.

Incidentally, CommanderZod, I reckon you have a point about the Krynn, but I've mostly found the Yor a pushover to play against (compared to the Drengin or Korath), while my worst TA loss to date has been with the Korath. I suppose it's a difference in playing styles, but I've not found these races to be overpowered (Korath can be lethal if they get a good starting position, but also collapse into obscurity if they can't get enough colonies early on to mass-produce spore ships).

The beginning of the game is now incredibly frustrating. The economy absolutely sucks. As the Korx, I was able to colonize a grand total of 5 other worlds before my economy tanked completely. Even with taxes as high as possible (in keeping with 45% morale), and my economy at 0, I'm losing 45bc/turn. After about 80-100 turns, I'll slowly start to break even, and can raise my economy up to something like about 20%. By the time I produce another colony ship, a few hundred turns may have passed, and the AI will be vomiting huge fleets of colony ships all over the map. I even tried taking the difficulty down three steps from where I normally play, and no dice.

The only possible hope for any decent progress early in the game is the economic boom event. Humans do a little better, because they have an econ building, but even there I find it impossible to run a developed empire at 100%. This with second level econ buildings, and no navy whatsoever. As the Drengin, I was never able to run at more than about 35%. It's absolutely pathetic.

Also production/research/miniaturization/sensors on maso+, not to mention, IIRC, more customization points.

But no, it doesn't cheat. It actually plays -exactly- by the rules, which is something the human player isn't limited to. See all labs/all factories/etc, which is by far not the only example, but probably one of the best. I'm not calling that cheating, and most people don't think it is-though some do. The simple fact of the matter, however, is it is something that is within the bounds of playing the game that the human player can do but the AI does not know about.

In my own experience, I've found TA to be economically tougher than DA, but not so much that I can't afford to expand. I haven't played that much TA yet, though.

Internally we've changed the economy to make it easier.  The changes we made had unintended consequences. We were trying to punish constructor hoarding.  You'll see the next beta has much improved economics.