Help building an economy

Keep in mind that at higher AI settings the AIs get extra bonuses.

Some basics:

- don't build much on the first few planets, unless there is an irresistible bonus tile

- wait until the new planets show a positive cash flow

- keep taxes low at first to take advantage of the 100% morale growth bonus

- raise taxes when you need to but try to keep morale above the next growth threshold (71%?)

- rush build very few items and try to stretch the first cash inventory

- soon build extra survey ships, and range can be extended by constructing bases, if necessary

- go hard at any green mining anomalies

- research Trade and trade it to everyone you can, then build the eco capitol, they will soon send you freighters

- research the cash flow bonus techs fairly early

- as soon as contact some minor AIs, get the diplo tech level up and get Research and Economic treaties from all of them

Especially at the harder levels, keep in mind that there are 3 phases of colony rush:

1) Initial

2) Adverse enviroment

3) PQ 1 and 2

Most PQ1 or 2 plants can become PQ16 with full tech. 

Basically what LTJim says but I'll tell you what I do.

1. at the start dock the initial colony ship with your homeworld as 100m citizens paying taxes is better for you.also set your flagship to auto survey and build 2-3 scouts as they dont have maintenance costs and set them to auto explore. reduce tax to 31% and spending down to 60% buy buildings on your homeworld to get its econ up and if you spot econ or res or war crystals start building a constructor.

2.I dont start colonising planets till the homeworld has 10B+ unless I see a High class planet 15+ then I go for all the class 7-10s+ meanwhile researching upto impulse tech to speed up my colony ships.

3. Planetary economies dont tend to profit till they start getting near their 8 B capacity and you have advanced trade centers or alien equivelent with recruitment centres. My planetary builds in early stages are buy a factory and let the comp build the rest of the buildings unless I'm flush with cash but generally goes as Factory-starport-econ market-recruit centre-research building-embassy-morale building depending on how many tiles you've got on your planet and if they have any bonuses? - That you have to think for your self on as nothing beats a human brain with enough training ie practice,practice,practice.

4.once the initial planetrush is over (unless relations take a dive!) i tend to start building freighters and if I can send them from my homeworld to their homeword, I do this because you get more per turn.I only send 1 freighter per major race and use any left over on the minors (dependant on how many opponents,routes etc)

Hope this helps

p.s Echelion does not accept responsibility for results while playing on higher differculties other than cakewalk! lol (joking)

Consider also this thread:

https://forums.galciv2.com/428571

Especially the last few posts.

Thanks guys for your advice.

I tried this slow approach - not colonizing until my homeworld was 10b population, and hardly building anything on new planets I subsequently colonized.

But I found out that the AI was beating me even worse than normal. It had taken all the decent planets, and left me with hardly anything. It took forever for my new planets to develop a positive cash flow so I gave up in the end. My economy was just as weak as before, only I was further behind my rivals than before.

My advice was not the same as Echelion's.  From that other thread:

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1) Dock the flagship and relaunch it and redock it until you have done all four "corners" of the square containing your Homeworld.  This maximizes what you can "see" at the start.  Once in a while, a good planet is revealed or an anomaly or a mining resource for a mining base.  For example, if you see a "green" one, shift tactics to get a constructor there before an AI does.  (AIs start off with absolute knowledge of placement of mining anomalies and planets).  Use that new knowledge to choose where to place the flagship when you give it its orders to "auto survey."

2) Dock and relaunch the starting colony ship in a chosen direction.  The initial load is 100 colonists and you want it to have 250 when it founds a colony.  Choose the direction to either be opposite the flagship or towards a juicy high PQ planet if one has been spotted already.

3) Create a colony ship design with an extra engine (if necessary, no life support modules), if your race setup allows this due to miniaturization and engine techs.  Convert/Upgrade your mining ship to that design on Turn 1.  Launch it the next turn in a third direction, unless the flagship has found a juicy high PQ planet already.

4) Especially at higher difficulty settings, a player has no time to waste early.  I advise you to get both initial colony ships some distance from your homeworld before colonizing, unless a planet at least PQ 11 is found, and preferable greater than 11.  Your goal here is to maximize the "envelope" of space in which your flagship can wander about discovering things, especially useful anomalies.  A few 500 and 1000 BC finds are incredibly helpful in the early game.  Those 1% bonuses to research and economy are also not to be sneered at. 

5) After a few turns, get some planet(s) building more colony ships.  You want to keep your homeworld population DOWN by syphoning off colonists to other worlds.  This is to allow higher tax rates while staying at 100% morale for the population growth bonus.  Your income is based on ALL population, not just those on the Homeworld.  (This changes some later when you have good morale and revenue enhancing buildings on certain planets, but you will not have those techs and the income to build them for many turns.)

6) If you colonize a planet in a system that has another good planet in it, you can build a small hull colony ship on that new colony with no engines and get it to a near planet in a turn or two.  Don't waste a good and expensive ship on it.

7) I don't use Trade, so I do not know about escorting freighters.  I do research Trade early, though, to place the Economic capitol on the Homeworld and to trade Trade especially to Minor AIs so that they send freighters to me.

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When you set up the game, especially when bumping up a difficulty level, do not be afraid to use the "control-N" key combo to ensure a decent starting set-up.  That is, iterate until you get at least one decent bonus tile, if not two.  For example, a 3X manufacturing and a morale tile are good.  You need to colony rush just as the AIs do, especially grabbing the best planets and mining anomalies nearby.  You just need to avoid the economy collapse, if possible.

Don't be too discouraged if the AI has a greater tax income than you.  A race that has become an economic giant can be cut down to size in no time by a small military strike force and a slew of transports.

The AI also tends to tax as much as it can without killing growth completely.  If you're giving up tax income in favour of rapid population growth, you can outperform the AI in the long run.  I try and have some tax breaks during a time of war to allow population to grow back.

Also, consider building your tourism revenue.  It can be very lucrative if you snag some blue resources and get a random event that opens up the tourist market..  I tend to build most of my culture buildings on worlds that have a base influence of 13 or greater.  You can tell what a planet's base influence is by looking at the tooltip for the planet's influence (planet screen).

Real men don't "ctrl-N".

The distribution of resources and bonus tiles at the start is random so, if you get a good bonus tile on your home world you might find nothing good on the planets that are within your reach.  Don't get too hung up on getting a perfect start, you can build more factories to power your colony rush if you don't get a manufacturing bonus tile,  Obviously the maintenance cost will be higher but you can find some way to compensate.

The thing that always slows down your colony rush is going into the red.  So it's vital at the start of the game to only build what needs building.  You can't afford to have twenty colonies all burning a few bcs a turn trying to get economic buildings up and running, you have to concentrate on just those colonies with the highest populations.  When you have more green to go around then you can think about building up the rest.

Colony maintenance and the research produced by each new initial colony adds to your expenses.  Consider how the influence map is going to look once all worlds have been taken - a low quality planet can easily be flipped by a nearby higher-quality planet that you own, for example.  So plan your colonisation accordingly.  However there are cases where you might want to make an exception, like a low-quality world that neighbours an asteroid field.  You don't want the AI to have a planet like that churning out colony ships.

As you get further into the game, the thing that will vex you the most is the cost of maintaining your military.  Upgrading to your most advanced design out there in every fleet can cost astronomical sums of credits.  So don't.  Upgrade only your veteran ships that have gained experience and hit points.  The rest are expendable until they have some experience. That said, when you have the credits to spend, you can roll out a basic upgrade, one that just changes the existing weapons but doesn't add anything else.

One of my most frequently-produced ships is a frigate with three graviton drivers - that's it, nothing else.  You can use these cheap designs to fill up fleets quickly and do what the Drengin do with their Super Dominator corvettes - swarm all over the enemy going pew pew at everything.