Opening Game Strategies

First of all, pick some economy bonuses when choosing your race, abilities and political party.
Secondly, it helps to spend some ability points on either a morale boost or extra population growth.

Then during the game itself:
- Don't grab planets of planet quality 6 or lower, especially not if you already have better planets in the same star system. Those small planets will come under your cultural influence later on and flip to your side.
- Don't overdo the expansion because indeed it hurts economically. You can as well let the AI develop some nice planets so that you can take them over fully grown
- Cash anomalies which your survey vessel comes across (especially the 1000 bc ones help a lot)
- Clever research order: some extra research, population growth, economy bonuses early on will soften the economic blow
- Choose what you're building and in which order: all factories is a viable strategy but you need to be prepared for it. Otherwise you're better off adding also some economical & morale buildings on your homeworld. Get to the Econ Capital quite early.
- Tech trading: sell xeno communications, universal translator and some other quite basic techs to all AI's, especially minors, for good cash.
- Construct starbases on resources to get bonuses
- Trade routes don't help that much (especially in Twilight of the Arnor) but every bit helps.
- Before you advance to other government types, happiness is only important as an influence on each planet's birth rate. Early on, aim at 100% happiness to grow population faster. Then with for example 2000 bc left, move to 76% (another breaking point in the relation between happiness and population growth rate), then even to around 50%.
Take into account that at 46% happiness or below (if I remember the exact figure) the population of that planet stops growing.
Once you move on to other governments (to get the according bonuses), make sure to have at least 60-65% happiness just before each election. Inbetween elections, only the effect on population growth matters.

Cutting social spending will stop your planets from building any further or upgrading any buildings. Typically this is only good if:
- you need fast focus on research and/or military production
- you don't have any buildings or upgrades in queue anymore
Otherwise it puts you in a bit of a standstill. I'd rather cut military expenses to improve your income or speeden up your building.

Some good advice, Noctilucus, but I must take issue with this:



The two techs you mention provide diplomatic bonuses. By selling those to your opponents, you are effectively ripping yourself off, as the prices they will be willing to pay for techs is determined by comparing your diplo score and theirs. You want your diplo score to be much higher than the civilizations you are trading with. Not to mention, you want a high diplo score so that you don't look like a tasty target.

To add to Noctilucus' list, I would say to avoid building certain planetary improvements until you need them. For example, if your planet has less than a billion people on it, there's no point building a farm, even if you eventually plan to. Similarly, avoid building new research buildings or factories until your economy can afford to take the hit. All those little maintenance costs add up...

Well, I found the perfect mix, or at least on normal levels. I take all the planets I can get, small or big, does not matter. The trick is to not build anything at all, till they can self sustain themselves. Then I pump a trading center on each planet and go with factories and/or research center. At least for the beginning of the game it works. However, should I put a starport on each planet? I know you can defend them better, but I guess the maintenance is only 1 bc. What do you say of that strategy, would it prove in the long run hurtfull?

I'm going to disagree. Trade routes are usually the staple of my early economy until I get some population. Darn the Drath and that population penalty. Faster I get people to war the faster I can get even more money!

Hm, to be honest I never noticed that those 2 provide diplomatic bonuses  :NOTSURE: 
I always went for the few hundred bc I got for selling them, but indeed it's better not to give those techs away... Thanks, learnt something again

Tototot: I would agree in DA/DL, but in TA for smaller galaxies the income per trade route is typically only a few bc, so the payback period of freighters seems to have increased significantly compared to DA/DL.