Aim for 13-16 billion people. Add morale buildings to fit whatever standard you feel is necessary (41% or better at your tax level) and fill with stock markets. Starport is optional, these worlds are good for making transports or constructors, as long as you don't need them fast.

I make my insanely huge planets my Econ.  2 factories, 2 farms, 3 morale, and the rest stock markets.  I will drop an embassy or research center if there is a bonus tile for it, otherwise no.  I only put a starport there if I am hurting for them.  Sometimes I make my 4 and 5 PQ into a mini tax center, but usually like to use them for research and trade goods.

If you don't give a damn about your morale (as long as you're not killing your people), then you should try to obtain a PQ 26 or higher and load it with enough farms to make your population cap 100 billion. If you want to load it up with enough entertainment buildings to keep your people on that planet resonably happy. 45% approval is fairly good. In which case you fill the rest of the tiles with stock markets. If you're a cheater however, use the cheat that infinately improves your planet until it's a PQ 72 (or whatever the total amount of tiles is) and do the same thing, only this time you'll be able to put on a hell of alot more stock markets. imagine the cash flow you'll have just from that one planet. I'd love to try it. And then there are the seasoned players who will sceptisize this thread, saying that I'm a complete heretic. Be that as it may, I'd still love to try this out myself.

Till next time............

ROCK ON!!!!!!!

Eitherway I'm still gonna try out my idea (with cheats of course, once I get them, somehow)!!!

Wish Me LUCK!!!!!!

Let's RAGE!!!!!!!!!

Yeah well....

I am what is known as a video game "Heretic".

Doing things that others consider stupid and absurd, but in time they realize that I am indeed correct.

In a tiny map and/or with few opponents, sure.

I'm not sure what you mean by "do the markets stack multiplicatively".  Each market adds 25% to the planet's base income, so it's more like simple interest than compound interest.  In essence, this means the first four markets are worth "more" than the next four, as it basically doubles your (planetary) income.  Additionally, the markets are planetary-only...they do not have a civ-wide effect, but building even one or two on each planet doesn't take much time (at last check, stock markets cost 120 industry to build, or 1158 to rush buy-making the former the more attractive option) and is a fairly large income increase by percentage.

However, one can think of the average of the number of stock markets on a planet as being a civ-wide bonus if the planets are equal in population (and therefore tax rate, as you can't set tax rates individually per planet).  Further, this is from a base of 100 as well, so it multiplies by your civilization's economic bonus, rather than adding to it (note: for those of you to whom it isn't obvious, this is better).

When you consider that the two outliers here will be your homeworld(s) (for instance if you take over another civ's homeworld, even if it's a minor race) and planets too small to reach suitable "max" pop (basically sub class eight), which even in a tiny map are relatively small groups, the average population is very close to your mode.  Not to mention the fact that as tax income is a function of the square root of the population, your homeworlds actually are not making that much more (except in TA, where they also have a 10% economic bonus on the civ capital) than your average world and for our purposes can be safely figured as a normal world.

Essentially, an average of one stock market per planet is 25% more income than zero, two is 20% more than one, three is 16.67% more than two, four is 14.28% more than three, five is 12.5% more than four, and so on.  Each successive stock market provides less of a percentage benefit to your overall economy from the one previous, so on smaller maps it may only be justifiable to build one or three, but it's still worthwhile.

Then again, if you don't have economic problems, you can safely ignore them.

However, as I'm sure a number of players will tell you, if you aren't having economic problems, you're not expanding fast enough.  Which isn't to say that having economic problems is a good thing, but it's a rule that I personally live by (in GCII).

(Note: Obviously the above numbers ignore the fact that your planets aren't always at their max pop, more so when you've just colonized them.  It's safe to say if your games don't last long enough for all of your planets to grow to max pop, then you can ignore this post-and stock markets, for that matter.)

Sorry, no. Stock markets (and everything else) stack additively, not geometrically. One stock market on a 100bc planet would get you 125bc, the second would get you 150, the third 175, etc. Still, doubling your income from 4 buildings is far more effective than trying to do the same with farms and morale. Income is proportional to the square root of population, so to double the income of a 6 billion planet would need 24 billion, requiring at least 4 tiles to be used for farms and VR centers.

Or you can try simplifying things. Build one farm on every planet for a population of 13 billion and no morale structures at all anywhere. Get all trade goods, yellow morale techs and yellow resources.

I don't really specialize planets except for low PQ (10 or less) which are just for economics later in the game. If you look at Willythemailboy's example: if each planet has the same or nearly the same population, having a stock market on 2 planets is the same as having 2 stock markets on one planet. Of course there will be something more like 5 to 10 per planet and the rest factories and a research bldg.

Looks like the mistake I was making was upgrading Stock Markets from Bank Centers.  It doesn't work that way.   You have to build them directly.  SM's seem quite worthwhile now, but I still have yet to hit a situation that late in the game where I need the money.   By the time I research SM's, I need IP and RP, not BC.  But I do like that influence bonus.  A nice well-placed "economy" world will probably do some good things; and you get to recoup your money back while you're at it.  This may be a good trick to play on those Extreme Colonization worlds in the middle of the other guys' solar systems.

I don't plan on playing a Gigantic map anytime soon (except with sparse planets), but I just can't convince myself that economic planets are a game-winner.   They strike me as more of an empire-building/high-scoring thing that people like to do when the game's already won.  But I do like the idea of using it to culture-bomb/culture-defense a planet, though.   I may try that, if I can just bring myself to research Stock Markets.

@CaptainYar

No.  Not at all.  You gain more research production by building labs; building stock markets simply lets you fund them at a higher percentage.  I'm unaware if you're using IP to refer to influence points (correct) or industrial production (see previous point one sentence ago-in other words, you're wrong), but I believe it's the latter.

I can't imagine that someone who has been playing as long as I've seen you on these forums has this wrong, so I'll assume you simply failed to word it properly, but it won't do to confuse the newbies, should any be watching.

Perhaps I've been wrong for some time. What I was saying that the more money you make the more gets spent on research and production, whats left is your income. So, if all other things remain equal, I thought that an empire making 10,000 bc per turn would be producing more IP and RP per turn than an empire than has an income of say 1000 bc per turn. Therefore the more bc you make the more IP and RP you will have. I have played for a while pretty successfully but I know that i could be wrong, I'm not a player that looks at how the numbers are produced.

For example: if i have a planet that producers 50 shields and 50 hammers and I then cut taxes so that my income goes from 10,000 bc to 1000 bc. Would I see a reduction in the IP and RP of that planet? OR If the jagged knife event happened and i lost all of my money making planets and my income dropped dramatically (but i still kept the spending slider at 100%), would I then see a reduction in IP and RP?  You got me wondering now...

OK I was kinda refering to "income" as all the money that you make; that which that gets spent as well as whats left over as savings into your treasury.

But if you don't make any money, what does RP and IP get funded by?