n00b Questions

Hello, everyone...my first post. I've recently purchased GCII-Dread Lords, and of course I have some questions. I've spent some time reading through some of the topics here, especially the ones concerning economics (what else, right?).

I've just been familiarizing myself with game mechanics, and in the current game I'm playing [all 9 races, AI-normal, large galaxy] I've run across a few "anomalies" that require some explanation. It's early in the game, so I have taxes set at 48%, military slider to 0, and the other two at 50.

When looking at the data screen for a particular planet, I see another category below the income line that says "Expenses". I'm already paying maintenance costs for various structures, so what does "Expenses" cover? For some planets, it's considerably more than upkeep, for others, not so much.

A second question is: when adjusting the mil/soc/res buttons at the top of a planets building screen, what does it mean when one or another of the blocs goes opaque? I've also noticed that small hammers (or beakers) merge into a larger one but there's no change in build time.

Last question, for the moment, has to do with setting up a 'cash' planet. I've read several guides on the matter, and I realize there's no set way to do much of anything in this game Most guides say to build 2 fun buildings for every farm...first. Then fill in a factory or two, and finally econ buildings. I've tried this, and the building queue mentioned above seems backwards, to me. Needless to say, I've restarted several times after making some rather poor decisions, and this seems to be one of them. If the farms and fun buildings come first, the colony runs in the red for a very long time, and I get strapped for cash to build ships...of any kind, including freighters. Currently, I've tried building the econ structures first...waiting until the pop. caps, then building farms & fun buildings. Seems to be working much better but opinions are very welcome.

I'm sure I'll have more ? later. Thank You.

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Some things to keep in mind:

You don't have many people at the start of the game.
Taxes provide money based on how many people you have.
Population growth rates are based in part on morale.
Taxes reduce morale.

In other words, in the early game, a high tax rate is a bad idea; it doesn't give you much money, and it keeps your population from growing. I usually try to keep my taxes low enough so that my smaller colonies stay at 100% approval, which doubles their population growth.

Expenses include both upkeep costs (paid per building) and production costs (money transformed into research or manufacturing points). Remember that labs and factories do not produce their output from nothing; they just transform your money. If you have too many of them (or build them on big bonus squares), you can bankrupt yourself.

The opaque square means that's what you've told the colony to focus on; it diverts production from the other two areas to the one with focus.

Econ buildings are a good default choice for a building, since it's hard to have too much money. For a good money planet, you want a large population (18-20 billion is decent), and a high Planet Quality. I've found that one farm and one entertainment building is usually enough, and fill the rest with econ buildings. I usually start the planet with a factory, and build over it once the rest of the planet is full. You don't need farms or entertainment until the population has grown a bit (5 billion or so).

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