Game no longer fun - keep on running out of money

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.

And yet every opponent has planets and ships galore... I can get through the first turns OK, and once momentum builds I can run away from anyone... but it seems all they did was take it off of the front and add it to the back.

I must agree with the OP... Playing crippled for the first 40 or so turns is just a pain in the a**. If I want this kind of start, it should come by turning up the difficulty to beyond "normal". As it is, the rest of the galaxy goes on normally, and I sit and wait for two nickels to rub together so I can scrape out 4 worlds to everyone else's 10. It has gone from way to easy to way too much of a pain. Can't we find some middle ground here?

To the OP... Just wait until the game is final, then you can edit your homeworld along with some of the economic factors and make it however you want. Unless you play metaverse of course.... (you can do it now, but every time there's an update you have to change it again... )

T

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.

I always play on "painful" level or above as Terrans. Now, the Terrans do get a pretty good economic bonus, so you can take my comments for what their worth, but I have just not had the problems to the extent the OP describes (and I note he is playing Terrans as well if the post is accurate).

The economy must be more carefully managed now and I think that is a good thing. First off, one needs to increase taxes early on from the base 33% level. I run taxes at 49% early on and slowly wittle it back down. More on the tax rate later. Instead of going for propulsion and some of the early trade good techs from the start, I now focus on getting to trade as early as possible as well as the earliest level economic techs./ I have found that trade can get one out of the economic slump. Trading the Trade tech with the AI races can also be lucrative and has the effect of increasing the overally trade level, i.e., increasing your income along with theirs when those AI freighters start arriving. One must also avoid overbuilding research buildings early in the game because of their very high maintenance costs. In fact, I most often don't have any research buildings on Earth unless there is a bonus tile. The first mid grade planet I colonize becomes my economic capital and has nothing but a single factory, a farm and economic buildings. Early on, all of my planets are usually running a few economic buildings. As my economy builds, I can adjust that. Increasing one's influence by any means possible early in the game also increases tourism income, which becomes quite lucrative. I always try to build the Restaraunt of Eternity, which comes with the Trade tech and has the effect of increasing one's influence by 20%. As a result of my strategy, I often times never go below 0 BC early in the game despite the lower 3000 bc starting amount. That is especially true if my Survey ship is even remotely successful at finding treasure hordes. I also am able to run my taxes at less than 10% for long stretches and still bring in hundreds a turn. That number can increase to thousands if the increased tourism/trade events occur, which I've found to be almost every game. In my last game, I ran taxes at 1% mid to late game and was still bringing in around 1000 bc a turn.

I 've also seen the AI struggling with its economy-rarely do they have large fleets or highly developed planets early in the game. This is despite the economic bonus the AI does get in the upper levels. I am not buying the argument that the AI is not playing by the rules. Please don't take this as criticism, but I think this is more a case of players not adapting to the realities of the rules and the TA economic system. If one embraces those rules, it is possible to have a prospering empire pretty quickly. In sum, I see nothing at all wrong with the current economic system except that it maybe needs to be adjusted mid to late game so it is not so generous. Just my two cents.

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.

Anybody try using starbase production to begin planet production to stem some of the cost?

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.

I mostly play on "tough" - difficulty and never find it too hard to get one's economy going. Research or trade eco-techs early on, build a few eco-buildings and try to upgrade them to xeno banks asap which shouldn't take too long. Refrain from building anything that is too expensive for your economy to maintain - like research buildings, Thalan factories etc. Usually as soon as I start trading with other civs, my cash problems are a thing from the past. It's paramount to acquire leading-edge eco-techs early on and have the trade-routes maxed out and the funds keep rolling in bigtime.

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

My understanding is that the AI is playing by the same rules, at least up to Tough level. Beyond that, they get an economic boost and a few other things (I can't remember the details). I've been playing all my TA games so far at Tough, and while it's more painful managing the economy than in DA, I can do OK once I figured out the things mentioned in other posts here (don't expand too fast, limit buildings on new colonies, get trade routes started, watch your ship maintenance, etc.).

If it looks like the AI is cheating, I think the reason is that the tighter economy exposes the one big natural advantage it has, which is the ability to micromanage down to levels most players won't bother with, or can't optimize as well.

For example, I might adjust my economy sliders and each planet's production/research/social focus every few turns, or during times of crisis, or for special projects like cranking out a war fleet. I don't adjust those settings on every single turn, because that would drive me nuts. I'm just not that much of a micro-management geek. But I'm pretty sure the AI is adjusting all those settings on every single turn. And it can crunch numbers to find the optimum settings.

That's why the AI pulls ahead so easily in TA. It's just dumb machine efficiency and optimization, which is a BIG advantage when the economy is tight. The extra income flowing through the game in DA didn't help the AI that much, because it's still limited by the time it takes to build planet upgrades or research a new tech.

Do I like the tighter economy? I'm leaning a little towards a negative opinion on that, because I'd rather focus on "Big Picture" strategy. like which planets to colonize first, where to send my fleets, who's going to be an enemy and who's a friend. That sort of thing. I don't see my alien Great Leader and Conqueror of the Galaxy constantly huddled in meetings with his accountants, fretting about tax rates.

On the other hand, game expansions are supposed to make the game more challenging for experienced players, and this does accomplish that. I just wish the challenge had been in better AI, or something else that didn't require closer attention to the economy settings. I'm really not a big fan of micro.

P.S. the latest beta does have a 20% reduction in ship maintenance compared to the previous version, which I noticed right away in the new game I started. It's not quite as bad now.

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.

I've noticed that the AI employs a number of different strats as far as expansion goes. The Korath and Deringin do a mad rush for planets and do zero development for most of the early game, but slow down at a certain point. I've found with the Altarians and the Thalians it is best to hold expansion until new expansions will be profitable. For example with the Thalians you stay with one planet while with the Altarians you stop at 5 and make sure to have researched xeno ethics (good) then you can form a strong base from which to expand. Pacing and keeping tabs on your economy is very important. You can just expect to click buttons and take over the universe

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

I may be pointing out the obvious, so please bear with me. None of those entities listed in the quote above have any significant production bonuses. In fact, in Beta 4c, the Terrans have a military production penalty. On the other hand, many of the other races have significant production bonuses-even before the government is taken into account. Thus, I would expect that those empires (Arceans, Altarians and especially the Terrans) lag behind many of the other empires in raw production, all things being equal.

For example, the Thalan and Yor have substantial production bonuses. On top of that, the Thalan have a fantastic homeworld and get big bonuses from their unique buildings. The Korath have a large military production bonus. The Krynn have a significant influence bonus and also get some additional influence enhancing starbase modules. The Krynn also have a huge spying bonus which regularly enables them to steal advanced production techs from other races. Thus, I also expect that they will not only have good influence but also will often have good production. Still, I've not seen that they have a large production advantage over the Humans or Arceans. The Drengin get free ships any time they declare war or have war declared on them and have a decidedly militaristic approach to the game so the fact that you see wave after wave of Drengin ships attacking is not surprising. The Drengin also have industrial "buildings" that have zero maintenance, which allows them to build them with abandon and produce more ships. The Torians have a large population bonus, which allows them to develop productive colonies more rapidly. Those race characteristics are features of the game that do give these races production advantages (all techs being relatively equal). Thus, the fact that those races are regularly outproducing you is neither surprising nor an indication the game mechanic is broken. I often see the Thalan with multiple colony ships when I've only been able to produce one as the Terrans. I expect that given their large bonuses and highly productive super projects. As a final note, I have also observed in my games that the AI tends to sacrifice economics, planetary development, and even technological advancement in favor of large starfleets, which also contributes to the proliferation of starships noted in this thread by some posters. I almost always have much more highly developed planets at any given stage of the game and note that at the end of the game I usually have twice the number of techs researched as my nearest competitor.

When playing races without those production advantages, such as the Humans, Arceans, and Altarians, one must adjust his or her strategy to maximize the advantages those races do have. If you believe the game is broken, please produce some evidence. The burden is on you as the person making the claim. Until then, my experience with the game tells me that these features are working exactly as intended and that the AI is not "cheating" as I understand that term in the context of this discussion.

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).

I don't want to pile on the OP, but I thought I should bring up that I don't find TA to be that different than the latest iterations of DA in respect of the colony rush.

To be sure every race plays differently, but if you have experience with them in DA you shouldn't run into too many troubles once you adapt to the new tech trees in TA.

I have played a couple of immense crippling games since patch 4 started and I have not noticed a large difference in colonization efforts, other than what might be a bug I will post about.

My most recent game was with the Altarians and can only mention that much as before you must be deliberate in your colony rush. Pause to allow for population growth, maybe plunk down a morale building to keep your new colonies at 100% a little easier. It only takes 10-15 turns for them to be over 1 bilion people, which makes a large differnce.

Grab the economic tech that allows for econ treaties and get research and econ treaties from every computer player you run across. The econ treaties help a lot. Get the trade tech and put out freighters in between colony ship deployment.

If you are having trouble, play all factory it is a nice intermediate strategy that is a little easier on the pocket book and allows for faster initial production than the all labs. Remember that excess production is refunded in BC which is nice.

Econ treaties, trade and pausing in the colony rush is important.

If I am running labs, I upgrade my miner to a scout ship with as many sensors as I can jam on there to easily explore local stars. With factories, the first thing I produce is normally a scout ship. Don't colonize Wisp, or whatever your equivalent is right off the bat. It is too limited until you get soil enhancement.

I have not noticed any difference in my games with either the Altarians or Humans in terms of the colony rush.

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.

Your strategy?...

Probably.

First, 45% morale is bad. It means that your population growth is very low and on some planets of yours you'll even lose people.

But since people = money you're dooming yourself.

Try to maintain 100% morale as long as possible (double growth!). Finance your early expansion with tech selling, anomaly hunting, and other forms of diplomacy.

But get your morale up, that's the key to a healthy economy.

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Oh, and for those that allege that the AI doesn't play by the same rules / doesn't has the same penalties, etc. That's wrong!

The AI doesn't cheat, it plays by the same rules as the human player. It only gets an economy bonus on difficulty levels higher then though.

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.

I play TA on painful and usually take the max econ bonus, though I'm trying to wean myself off it. When I started it was always max econ + Federalists because that was easiest; now I'm getting good enough at managing the economy that I can try different combinations without getting slaughtered.

During the colony rush I expand as fast as possible while keeping my deficit less than 100bc/turn (and only colonizing the highest quality planets unless I need an outpost in a strategic location). I only build econ buildings, recruitment centers, morale buildings if there's a bonus tile, and farms on colonies to get them high pop and profitable quickly. Once you're in the green you can always build over a market center later to get a starport or factory or whatever. The exception is that I'll build labs on bonus tiles right away. I'll also rush a starport if I find a resource somewhere out on the edge of my expansion and I need to get a constructor built nearby ASAP.

When I run out of money in the initial rush I stop expanding and move the production slider back to the break-even point. Then each turn I'll increase production a bit, as my economy will be growing rapidly as the population increases and the econ buildings leverage that population growth. It never takes very long until I'm back at 100% production and building up my military, industrial and research facilities.

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.

I know about morale, but when you've crashed, you need taxes to make money. I will never let myself go below 45, and I like to keep it above 70. There is no way you can afford to do anything with your tax rate low enough for 100 morale. The magic number seems to be around 8-9% taxes, which is nothing. Either way, it just doesn't work. I can grow my population, and lose immense amounts of money, or I can try to stop the bleeding and have crappy morale. The real issue I'm having is that later on, it's still impossible.

I tried a game on cakewalk as the Drath. I had about 30 planets when I got bored and quit. All had a farm, a recruitment center, and a second level econ building. Aside from 5 starbases, I had no ships, and I was running 7 trade routes. I had economic treaties with one major and three minor powers. I'd even built the economic capital. How high could I run my economy? 57%, with periodic crashes down to the 20s when I researched new buildings and they got upgraded. That seems to be a pretty clear indication that something is broken.

Edit: I'm glad to see that some changes have been made. I'll just wait to play until after the next update, and see how it is.