My planets are money pits!

With all the improvements you built also comes a maintenence cost. Usually most of your profit will be from trading , so that is why it is importnat to build trade routes and starbase economy modules in the sectors that your trade routes go through. Unlike Civ or MOO , you don't have to maintain each world indepedently liquid. Conversley don't build a lot of social projects as they are what drives up the maintenence costs

The best thing to do is go through the social projects and select all those that have no maintenance cost - put them in the governor queue. Find those that have low maintenance, but that you could really use for whatever reason and put them in different queues.

If you don't set your planets to build everything, it'll be much easier to keep them afloat.

~SDC~

Which projects do you build, then? As a quick experiment, I took a save that had a lot of stuff built and tried destroying different combinations of stuff to see if I could pare it down to something that would be less expensive but still allow relatively the same amount of productivity/research. Regardless of how much I managed to save in maintenance costs, the drop in morale and the resulting drop in income would always be greater than the amount saved in maintenance cost. I know this doesn't take a lot of stuff into account (how I can redistribute population, destabilation, etc.), so I guess my only point is that it's really hard to figure out what to build I clearly had way more manufacturing/research power than I could use without tribute income. But it didn't seem to make sense to destroy them either. So, what do you experts out there choose to build? Is it clear that some items are never worth it?

~SDC~

Of course, once you build morale-boosting buildings, destroying them will put you into a nasty death spiral - you make the populace happy, so they breed more, so when you remove the stuff that makes them happy, they become *very* unhappy.

The only projects I end up building on every planet are:

* Soil Enrichment
* Habitability Improvement
* Banking Center
* Manufacturing Center
* Anything that boosts economy with a low maintenance cost
* Shipyards - yes, they cost maintenance, but they also boost ship HP.

Very little beyond that. I'd have to start a game to find out for sure.

~SDC~

I tend to set my planets up into one of two categories.

They either build military ships, in which case they have just about all the social projects including manufacturing and ship bonuses etc.

The other planets just have projects that have no maintenance or are cheap (nothing with maintenance greater than 2 say) and no manufacturing bonuses. This way, I know that the 'military' planets are going to have more production for a given level of funding. And all the other planets just make constructors and transports. Ratio of about 3 to 1.

It's difficult but this way I can actually fund my economy at about 60% without trade but with an economic starbase thingamajig. Useful when everyone's beating down on you...

Trade!! I find myself often in the hole if I don't trade with other civs. Also go for the trade goods that you must research. Other civs will pay big bucks for that stuff. Sell your old ships...don't just disband them like I used to do.....heck you have to wheel and deal to get ahead. My economy in my current game is awesome, I'm bringing in 950 bc a month!! Of course I'm going through an economic boom right now but I still make over 120 bc a month with a normal economy. Also my tax rate is at a modest 38 percent. No recession in this game yet, but when it happens I'll just cut back a little and raise taxes.

Also, giving your ships away to a civ that you want to be friendly with is also a good idea. You do get *something* - improved relations - for the gift, so it's often a good idea.

Still, it really only works with civs who are aligned with you - good for good, neutral for neutral, evil for evil. Otherwise, they'll just dislike you anyway.

~SDC~

I usually just let my ships sit around. They're good for keeping your military rating up and ensuring you won't get squeezed for tribute.

Joeaverage, a standing fleet to deter being squeezed for tribute sounds like a good idea! What's the most cost effective ships for this purpose? Corvettes only cost 1 monetary unit per month to maintain. A frigate costs 10 units, thats pretty painful. Does a frigate give you 10 times the deterrence?

I just have a Battle Axe defending each star system and key starbases with 2 survey ships and a couple scouts running around and my rating is always above 100. Hardley a massing fleet. I rarely get squeezed for anything. If I do, I refuse, change production to a few offensive units and do some damage. Enough to get them to declare peace or else I'll take them out.

One stratagy I've used recently if I don't actually want to take over the planents is to bound their defenses to nothing and get someone else to declare war on them by selling them some of my ships I just used. They build transports and take over for me. This is only good if I actually want that civ gone and I don't want to mess with the systems myself of course.

Increasing the taxes lowers your population!!! Always be weary of govn't spending, generally it shouldnt be past 40% most of the time and always balance your budget. Increasing taxes is never the answer if you can decrease spending! Dont build moral improvememnts on planets with 100% morale. I usually leave moral out of quque and tailor it in on planet to planet bases. And keep a cash surplus to buy moral buildings in case of a sudden unhappiness. Also there are galactic events that either boost your economy or lower it.

You need only pay attention to each planet's individual bottom line only insofar as it effects your imperial bottom line. The imperial bottom line is what matters.

Generally i build all the 0 maintenance buildings first. Then i build the buildings that will pay for themselves. For instance a Fusion Power Planet boosts your economy by 10% and has a maintenance of 3. Therefore if the planet's income is greater then 30 the Fusion Power Plant will pay for itself. Next i build buildings that i think every world should have. Morale buildings and Research buildings. Next i will choose a couple of planets around my empire and make those my warship producing worlds. To facilitate this i build the ship-quality structures like shipyards and advanced quality controls.

There was a thread not so long ago that discussed the same problem we see here. The original poster had included a screenshot of his economic report, so it was easier to help him out. Generally speaking, the most common problem is high military or social maintenance. Trade and tribute are nice supplements to income, but they aren't the first thing to tackle if your spending bar is stuck at 5%. Trim your fleet size and reduce the number of buildings you have to support. You must understand that morale will naturally gravitate towards the 50-60% range. This is not something you can fight, you just have to accept it.

I usually set up two govenors. One to handle most of my planets, one to handle my "Core" planets where I'll have high income/production. Core is an arbitrary designation usually meaning my (approximately) 5 best planets, determined by Class and production ability, and in no real danger of getting sacked by the enemy.

The base govenor (Ford) gets all terraforming and economic upgrades, and the cost effective manufacturing upgrades. As for cost effective manufacturing upgrades, I'm much more likely to go with Anti-Matter power plant than Fusion, because it has a third the maintenance and 10% more manufacturing bonus, though 5% less econ bonus. Manufacturing Center is a no-brainer.

The Core govenor gets everything in the base govenor, plus all manufacturing/ship quality improvement. I find I seldom need more than 5 planets pumping out combat ships when I do this, and unless I'm at war, I can usually get by with just one.

In addition, depending on how research-intensive my game plan is, I might include Research Labs in the base govenor, and anywhere from Labs to all research improvements for the core planets.
Morale for the bulk of my planets is *ALWAYS* handled with techs/trade goods, though late game I might throw in the more cost-effective morale-boosters on my core planets.

With this plan, I find that I can usually keep up 100% funding through most of the game, once I make contact with alien civs and get trade started. In some games, I even start throwing more manufacturing/research and maybe a little moral into the base govenor. In fact, in my last game, I fell into the "something must be wrong with your economy" category, because I had 50K BC in the treasury and a 500BC/turn positive flow, with taxes set at 20% and funding at 100%. I basically turned my social spending down to zero and bought any social projects I wanted.

You know, until this weekend, I'd never played with govenors, I did it all by hand, and now I don't understand how I could do without them Trying to play any other 4x TBS is going to be a step backwards after this. No more accidentally building a Manufacturing Capitol where I wanted a Manufacturing Center, etc. Set it up once and let it go, and when a new improvement comes along, drop it in in one or two places, and go.

My general build order is this for planets

Banking
Soil Enhancement
Habitat improvement
Fusion
Man.Center
Ent.Network
Economic Center

Then i seperate according to what im planning, some become manufacturing worlds, some i make teleporters and stock markets and become money earners.

BUT Trade will always be your biggest earner in the mid-late game..set up lots, and get those starbases along the routes,.

~SDC~

Okay, people are mentioning building shipyards and such, have those actually been fixed such that they affect HP? Last time i tried building all the projects for boosting ships i didn't see any difference between ships built there and ships built at places with no improvements.

Since then i've been saving a fair bit of money by just not bothering with those improvements

I'm pretty sure that morale improvements are worth building, at least the most efficient ones. Better morale - more taxable population - you get more effect out of your economy improvements.

I stay away from fusion power plants on anything but my largest planets. 3BC maint each isn't small potatoes. In fact, if I've got the tech, I'll go with Anti-matter power plants instead. 1BC, bigger manufacture bonus, although longer build time and lower econ bonus. Of course, at 2BC difference, the base econ (without modifiers) would have to be 40BC/turn in order for the econ bonus to cancel out the higher maintenance.

Oddly enuf...I build EVERYTHING on every planet...albiet I don't play on Gigantic galxies, but still; I colonize everything class 13 and higher. I seem to make money fine and the UP almost always tries to sack me for cash at some point becasue my "economy is too large"...sigh... Makes governors easy tho; I just stack it all up on one and let fly

I never have problems with money either, even when I'm not doing huge amounts of trade. I set my tax rate to ~50% almost immediately, and hardly change it, and I still try to build just about everything on all planets (though they never all finish building it).

I looked around in my empire info, and nearly half of my spending was going to maintenance. Of course, that was with the spending slider down to 25%, production would easily be the majority of my spending if I cranked it up to full power. But by and large it looks like I've piled on too many social structures on my worlds, they have a tremendous production and research capacity that isn't nearly being used. Next go round I'll be more careful with what I build. Too used to MOO2 where you could cover any and all planets with buildings and expect to come out ahead for your trouble.

Live and learn, I suppose. Thank you all for your advice!

Also check your military maintanence. If you've built lots of expensive ships (battleships, dreads, etc.) that could be doing as much or more damage to your bottom line.

Actually, if your planets are breaking even, that's good. That means that trade is surplus income. Mine are always in the hole, except for a few "prize" worlds.

Great thread, gang.... lot's of good ideas. Now I better understand why I'm constantly underfunded.... I don't need all those social projects on each planet. I also haven't used the governors yet. I'll be trying them tonight.

Again, thanks for the insightful discussion...

jaycsco