I would definitely sorely miss the 100% econ bonus version of the MCC, but I'm willing to take that hit to overall score in the interest of game balance. If you look at all my games you'll see that out of the 300 or so games among my characters, I have maybe around 20-25 that werent played as evil. The MCC is the primary reason for this for us zealous MV people, as you mentioned.

Perhaps a better solution though would be to increase or add bonuses to both neutral and good to make them more competitive score-wise, and leave the MCC with the old econ bonus. This would avoid the ill-feelings that would occur if the MCC was simply nerfed, and would not negatively affect the MV as a whole either. People could explore each alignment and still have the same scoring potential regardless. I think that would increase interest in both the game and the Meteverse.

Sentient species taste better...

I don't understand either. It seems like there's been a hundred threads on the topic in the year or so I've been on these forums.

Yeah, I definitely remember multiple threads about this over the last year. Considering that, I wouldnt expect there to be any such changes soon, or maybe ever.

Sentient species taste better...

Hey guys. Thanks for the assist. I can see that it is going to take some getting used to.

As far as expanding too soon, most games I only get two or three planets under my belt before I start seeing financial woes. And I find that if I don't start stocking up on planets pretty quickly I fall horribly behind on research and lose that way. Either way I am not a happy little Dengin Power Mad Dictator.

I did OK with my most recent game, but only stayed a float by having one of the other major races surrender to me. Then the Dread Lords came in, and that was a whole different unhappy tale. But I don't want to whine so i am going to go back and try again.

Any other suggestions, would be greatly appreciated.

Completely agree. I would like to see all alignments be equally viable.

Frankly, it doesn't make much sense to play other than evil most of the time. And, because of that, it gets a bit boring. It would be nice to have a reason to play Good once in a while.

Back on topic (for the OT MCC issue, my vote is a proper fix - evil already has it too good), I'm with the_spyder. I am playing the Korx in an immense galaxy with very few planets (I don't like to manage large empires, but I do enjoy when life support actually matters). I have all eleven trade routes filled, a few money-only planets (about 3 of my 13 planets), and most planets at 8 billion or more people. Yet for some reason my economy is just crap. I couldn't colonize as fast as other races, I can't seem to keep my research up as well as others. I can't maintain as large a fleet as others. I just don't get where I've gone wrong.

Ahh the good old Neutral, what happened to you?

Which is more or less my point. If the economy was changed to make more sense, that is great. I can see some benefit. Some of the changes make a lot of sense to me. But it seems more to have been done to break the game than anything else.

So, as I said before, when I play the Dengin (or any evil race), I invariably (and usually early on in the game) get a resolution passed limiting the number of trade routes available to Evil races to 2 or 3 at most. And I am never prolific enough to be able to out vote that resolution, which then persists for the rest of the game (presumably as I usually die or quit shortly thereafter). If the game all but requires trade, and then restricts a certain playing style to all but preclude trade, I am obviously missing strategies to combat that. Any help would be appreciated.

Also, the suggestion is not to race to colonize planets. Yet very quickly in almost every game I play, the point at which I am still struggling with 3/4 planets, ALL of the AI opponents have 10-15 or more with no problems. And they immediately swamp me with research advancements. Am I missing a trick?

Now, I am not as advanced or tactically expert as some of you other players, so maybe I am missing something? So any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I've never found trade income to be at all significant when compared to income from taxes, so I'm not sure why it seems to be a game-breaker for you. Only early on in the game is it a useful source of income. I really only use trade for the diplomatic boost, so I can always go to war at a time of my choosing.

Devote some of your early colonies to purely economic structures right from the beginning. Maybe build 1 factory for quicker building, but after that build nothing but econ and perhap 1 farm. Specializing your planets is key. I alwys specialize for either econ, militray production, or tech with every one of my planets.

Sentient species taste better...

I find that the _domestic_ economy just never gets to the point where you are not losing money every turn. Add in the imperative need to sink money into espionage (which does _nothing_ to make you money, given the mechanics) and you can only grow if you're willing to build things at a glacial pace.

OTOH, if you allow tech trading, you can grow your economy rapidly with influzes of foreign capital. That is, max everything that improves your Research value. Keep spending at 100%. Split spending 20% military, 20% social, and 60% research. Focus on techs in the yellow: Trading and Diplomacy. Also crank out any tech that you can complete in under 5 weeks. Then, whenever your bank account is about to go into the red, go to the Diplomacy screen. Contact _everybody_, one after the other. Offer to sell any tech that is NOT weapons, Trade, Diplomacy, or improves research, ship speed, or production. Things like Sensors and planetary improvements. Pick the lowest value tech you can find that fits that criteria, then offer to sell it to every other race.

If you've built up your Trade and Diplomacy values, you should be able to sell that low-value tech for anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand bc's to _each_ of the other races. Avoid the temptation to buy techs that others have but you don't. And if you hit on a race with a shallow bank account, make up the price tag difference with Influence.

I find that this strategy allows me to keep my economy running at 100%. And the longer you do that, the faster that you'll build up an inventory of salable techs. Every time I go to market, I usually come away with 10-30,000 bc's in my bank account.

Oh, if you do focus on research (with the 20-20-60 split), you'll want to colonize plaets as fast as possible. Every new planet settled with 250 colonists immediately adds 7-12 research points.

If you find yourself in a bind because you suddenly need warships _fast_ or something of the sort, switch your economy split emphasis to military or social for a turn or two. But remember to switch back to the research emphasis ASAP.

Anyway, I find that this strategy works quite well for me. (Don't know what I'd do if tech trading was turned off though.  :NOTSURE: )

So I do a lot of what you say. I start out with 100% production and do an immediate 20/20/60 split. My home planet is usually 75% research driven and I reach out to the "colonies" for financial and production support. That is until I find a planet that gives extra benefit for something. Then I adjust accordingly. All of that works just fine. I think part of my problem is that I keep on thinking this is DL and force/purchase buildings in the beginning.

I also agree that tech needs to be maintained, for sales as well as to keep the arms race even. I am curious about you not selling "Trade" tech. Am I wrong in thinking that, as soon as a race gets trade, they start trading with YOU? This stimulates both economies. I often get the info screen that shows how much I am trading with others, and how much they are trading with me. So this is usually one of the first technologies I trade with others.

I don't sell/trade all technologies. Certainly not weapons, unless they are way behind me in that area. I might sell deflectors when I am equiping my ships with Barriers, for instance. But I never come ahead with as much BC as you indicate. Maybe I am doing something wrong?

Any other ideas/suggestions? Techs that help out? Stuff that is useless? I used to think that the Sensors line of tech was awesome because I could get sector monitors. Now I am not so sure. In the beginning I try to focus on stuff that gives me bumps to research/social/military production as a blanket (Planetary improvements, Unconventional Warfare, etc...) and population boosts. I also shuttle colonists between higher populated planets and lower ones to max out the economy. But this takes a LONG time. Do others do this as well?

(scratches head)

You shouldn't be finding it *that* tough.

I'm not trying to be funny here...have you tried raising your tax rate? If you focus on getting racial morale bonuses (from resources, the morale techs and trade goods) you should be able to put the tax rate pretty high without having to spam morale buildings on your planets.

In the early colony rush stages, though, keep your tax rate low so you can keep morale at 100% and get the big population growth bonus that gives.

The reason you don't sell Trade is because the price they give you for the techs you sell is calculated as a differential between your Trade/Diplomacy skill and theirs. That is, if you are the _vastly_ superior horsetrader, you'll get considerably more money for it. So that means you want to them to be tradecraft inferior for as much and as long as possible.

Also keep in mind that anything you sell to one race very probably will get passed on fairly soon. That is why, when you decide to sell something, you should sell it to **everyone**. Better that you get the money from the sale than someone else getting it.

As for taxes, I set my tax rate to where my collective average Morale value is 52%. With that, the home planet tends to drop like a rock (even with Loyalty and Morale modifiers, so I really like to get the Re-education Center ASAP. (After construction of which, I really don't care how low the home planet's Morale sinks.) If however, if _any_ planet hits a Morale of 30% or lower, it becomes necessary to drop the tax rate until it gets back up to at least 40%.

[As you may have guessed, I have concluded that your return on investment for keeping Morale at 100% = rapid population growth just isn't worth it. What's the point of having LOTS of happy people if it means you don't have the cash to keep production running at 100%?]

I'll have to say I'm not a fan of the current economic model - it 'forces' you to play a certain style now. Before you have more flexability on creating building or developing planets - now its more of "sit and watch them grow".

I thin kthe maintenance costs of the planet improvements is too high and should be modified based upon ifyou have a small or large empire.

This being said -to balance things out - you also have to modify your income - number of trade routes should scale with the size of your empire.

Income scales by the square root of population. In the early game (roughly the first 3-12 months, map size depending), the absolute difference between a tax rate of, well, *anything* and 0% is minuscule and irrelevant relative both to your costs, and the economy you'll have later on.

Thanks to the joys of compound growth, by taxing too much to get 100% morale during this period, you are *considerably* delaying the time it takes your new colonies to reach populations which will be self-sustaining when you do decide to put the tax rate up. In the (mid to) long run, your approach makes *a lot* less money, and in the early game, the extra cash it brings in is so tiny it's almost completely irrelevant.

The economy is the reason why I almost always play a Super Breeder race. As random50 explained, keeping the morale at 100% for as long as possible is the quickest way to get your economy up and running.

Even when my economy is solid, I still keep my planets with a population below 9 billion at 100% morale. I value morale bonuses heavily because morale = economy, especially for a Super Breeder.

During the colony rush, I will gladly sacrifice production if it means I can have another turn of 100% morale for newly colonized planets. If my economy is really hurting, I keep my tax rate high, but I do a few turns at a time with a low tax rate and 100% morale to 'burst' my population up. This makes my economy more manageable, while still taking advantage of the Super Breeder ability.

But how does all that affect the bottomline amount of research and production? Those are my real objectives. If you can crank out the tech advances, you can make up cash shortfalls by selling off Ancient History techs (in comparison to what you currently have available). Like If I sell off Sensors I and Sensors II when I'm at Sensors IV, I'll make enough to float my Treasury for about 25+ turns. AND I can afford to sink 25% of GDP into Espionage. (By the time you have 20 stockpiled Spies, it will cost over 500 bc's per turn for at least 10 turns just to make one more Spy.) [But once I've got 25 stockpiled, I drop Espionage to just 1% (next Spy in 30 turns) and the Treasury practically explodes.] Along about Turn 100-150, I bump Morale to about 72% (homeworld about 40%) by dropping taxes. The cashflow will be such that I have to "go to market" about every 25 turns or so (until I get that Espionage monkey off my back).

[It's definitely a good idea to minimize just how many techs you sell off. Anything you sell is something the other guys will not have to spend time and money researching themselves, effectively narrowing the tech gap between them and you. So even if this is an easy way to build up your Treasury, it _will_ eventually translate into a tougher opponent to defeat on the battlefield. So, just sell enough to keep out of debt and keep production going full blast.]

I've tried to bump the overall morale to 95+% in the mid- to late-game. The amount of money you dump between 95 and 96% is HUGE -- and between 96 and 97% is even much more than that. And between 97 and 98% even more. Etc. The cost per percent gained starts to become clearly pronounced after 70-75%. If I got a corresponding bump in military and social production, it might be worth it. But I haven't noticed anything like that. So, I'll just settle for solidly Content and pour my resources into what _will_ enable me to stomp everyone and anyone: Research.

Up until this weird nerf, I found trade income to be extremely lucrative.

Pile on some starbases, and make it so all your routes go through the same blob of them. If you can get that UP vote to fully open trading, you'll be making mad bank. My trade income used to rival my tax income.

I totally agree. Now making war feels real - a drain on your economy. Woe to a huge empire who finds itself battling 3-4 foes at once!

Huh - didn't quote for me for some reason .... I was agreeing with a post that liked the changes and listed the new depth.

It means you can afford it without having to tech whore.



You don't *need* high morale at that point of the game! You only need it at the start (unless you're going for high metaverse scores, for which high morale boosts your score)



Every single planet you colonize is a money sink. Initial populations are tiny, incomes are pitiful and maintenance is always higher than that income. You need to get yourself out of that economic hole as quickly as possible. The way to do that is to build morale structures and tax very lightly, even 0% if necessary, so each planet can grow to a solid population before its individual morale starts dropping below 100% (I used to aim for that to start happening no earlier than 2B population on a planet). Stay at this tax rate until money starts to get very tight. If you balance it right, you should find that when you really need the cash, you now have enough population to provide it simply by bumping up the tax rate.

Yes, I am aware that tax rate and production rates can be varied to differing effects. Problems are

• the higher the tax rate is, the lower the population growth. Which is fine, but if you are a race that does planetary invasions regularly, you need a population that can bounce back fairly quickly.
  
• If I start playing with a lower tax rate/production rate, my tech falls so far behind that I am using bows and arrows against quantum torpedoes, which really doesn't do much for the whole invasion scheme.
  

I am not saying the problems are unsurmountable, just that the changes took me a bit by surprise. And I am looking for good discourse on how others feel about the change, and what tactics they have used to over-come them.

I play with tech trading off. I am in an immense galaxy with uncommon planets, common stars, common most everything else.... I am playing the Yor. The AI is Tough (maybe one step up.... don't remember)

I am in the lead and doing fine with my economy. I have 100% production, am producing spies and have my planets filled in terms of their tiles. I gave the Yor a morale bonus, econ bonus, and pop bonus and took the +20 econ government (can't remember which one it is)

I personally like the new economy - especially when it comes to war. Now, to wage war, your economy REALLY feels it - which is realistic in a way I like.

I feel, after reading the forums for several days, that a lot of people want every race to be every thing. What I like is that now there HAVE to be different strategies. Someone can always make a custom race if desired. The flexibility is immense.

The Yor, as far as I can tell, are not one of the "smoking" economical powers - so I am hopeful when I switch races I will do even better.

And, forget to mention, that my start, while good, is outpaced by at least 3 other races (I have max # set in galaxy) in terms of planets/size.

My 2 cents.

I figured I'd share the basics of my economic strategy since I, also, initially had financial problems in ToA.

One thing you may want to consider first is playing with an economically strong tech tree like the Korx. This will make managing your economy much easier. That's what I did after losing my first 2 ToA games playing with the Yor tech tree.



You might want to consider making your homeworld have more of an economic focus when you're in the early stages of the game. Fill up the empty spaces with economic buildings. Research is really expensive. Just ride the homeworld's colony-module research points until you get a good planet to completely focus on research. By then you can have a couple other planets that are focused on making you money. I usually have a lot of planets that have a bunch of economic buildings and 1 farm (which I add when the population gets close to the 6b limit). This strategy is difficult in ToA with some of the race-specific tech trees such as the Yor and the Thalan. It can be done with the Thalan tech tree, it just takes longer to get the economic buildings, and then on top of that you don't get farms.

Also, I'm not sure about this, but it seems like the higher forms of government boost your economy a good deal. I'm normally fine-tuning and balancing my budget and then I get Interstellar Republic and my profits start soaring. I believe the tooltip descriptions for the governments show bonuses in influence and diplomacy, but I feel like there is an economic boost as well. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just coincidence in that my colonies I filled with economic buildings are getting higher populations and more tax-payers.

As for the sliders, I barely ever come off of 100% production with this strategy, but I absolutely will if I'm losing too much. I'll usually drop the production if I start losing more than 50bc a turn. I think the only times I've done this recently is when I'm playing with the Thalan tech tree.

I haven't been playing this game for long, but I agree that the economy is more difficult in this expansion. Most of my games have been in the ToA beta in the last 2 months. I do, however, have to disagree with you in not liking the economic changes. I think it is more challenging and more fun.

By the way, this is my first post on these forums, and I would like to express my gratitude to the Stardock team for creating this amazing game. I'm a long-time Masters of Orion fan. My interest in those games eventually brought me to your website and the rest is history. This game is so great. I also love your forums and the support you offer here. Thanks Frogboy/Draginol and the rest of the Stardock team.

For post number 2 I would like to add that I didn't want my real name to be my forum name. Just making sure my nickname shows up on this one.

The big change I noticed is that in the early game the key to your economy is... Survey ships. Most of the games I play I never have to reduce my spending level below 100% even when I have my espionage bar maxed out. Early on the only way this is possible is by building a large fleet of fast survey ships to go out and gobble up all that free money.

Survey ships can easily make the difference between being able to advance far enough down the economy research trees to stabilize your economy at 100% spending vs running out of cash and sitting at like 5% for a few hundred turns while you wait for your population to grow.

Another key early on for me is keeping my approval rating at 100% so my population grows as fast as possible. I don't care about my expenses until my survey ships run out of anomaly ATM machines. Fertility centers and the Aphrodisiac wonder are also an easy way to max your population fast. Fertility centers are especially nice because they're so cheap you can quickly fill nearly every tile on a new planet with them without having to buy any outright.