Economy Themed Civ useless

No mention of Trade or Tourism. You are playing your "Economy" civ wrong. I can hit 2-5k bc per turn by turn 150 playing a "warrior" civ.

I also was trading with most other civillizations capitals. I do not know much about tourism though

Economic races do not need to be more powerful,  they're already kind of OP.   Learn about Tourism and take advantage of that,  you may end up changing your tune. 

It never made sense to me that trading was not more prominent for economic focused civs.  I wish it made more than tourism. 

I'd really like to hear your strategy for doing this. What Techs do you focus on, for instance? What buildings? And so on...

I started a simple game yesterday to see if I could do this, but a little guidance would be great!

I got a lucky start with several Precursor worlds nearby, so I should be able to play any strategy I want with this one.

Thanks in advance,

Richard

Tourism income is a percentage of the total number of parsecs (hexes) in your zone of influence.  So you have to build tourism improvements to start earning it, which typically means building a Port of Call (Interstellar Tourism tech) on all of your planets and the Import/Export Center and/or Paxton's Emporium (both from the Universal Translator tech) on your capital planet.  Then to maximize it you need to increase your zone of influence, which means increasing your cultural influence through building consulates (Interstellar Governance tech) and other influence boosting improvements and researching cultural techs like Cultural Exchange and Cultural Influence.

In my current game, at turn 83 on a huge map, I have 3892 controlled parsecs with 2421 parsecs controlled and connected to my capital. With Paxton's Emporium (3%), Import/Export Center (1%), Port of Call (1%), Capital (1%), and the popular race trait (+10% of the total of the previous, so 0.6%), I have 6.6% times (3892+2421) or 416.7 tourism income from my capital planet.  Most of my other planets have a Port of Call on them, so each of them contributes 1% times (3892+2421) or 69.1bc.  My total tourism income is 1275, compared to my 3 trade routes which are bringing in 55.

What he ^^ said.  

I also usuall have 1 Cultural Starbase per system. (Sometimes you get to overlap)

Tourism is a lot more profitable now than it has ever been thanks to it being based on territory, and since cultural growth has gotten a huge boost, even without any financial improvements, you can make hundreds per planet on tourism and a few economic relics alone.

Basically, to properly play a economic civ, you also need to focus on being a culture based civ. They pretty much go hand-in-hand. Those diplomatic bonuses also help keep others races from attacking you while you rake in the credits.

Nevertheless, I do agree that the increased cost of some buildings is terribly bad. 10K for a Solar Power Plant or like 14+ turns to build it? Hmm...   Cost-wise, this thing is basically useless if not for its adjacency bonus, and does not "shine" at all until later in the game. Same with coordination centers, really.

Thank you all for your help to better understand Tourism. Now, for something the same:

Along these lines, at about turn 40 or so, this is what I'm seeing as my per turn Income:

GDP:       227
Tourism:    45
Taxes:        17%
===========
Total:         46 ??? 

Now, how in the heck did we arrive at 46bc per turn?! Maybe I need to go back to school,

(The Expenses seem to add up correctly.)

Richard

GDP + Tourism = 272 (Total Empire Income), 17% of 272 = 46 (17% For the Government, the people get to keep 83% of thier "Wage" or "Buisness" or "Corp" etc)

Raise yo taxes. lol I swear, once your production is at a certain level, you can tax at 100% without any significant dent to production.

At 100% tax one would think a "normal" civilization would collapse, because why would anyone work anything if they would receive no money for that?

Either all work is done by machines (what would mean "100% tax" then?) or it some kind of communism or whatever

What about low Approval and its negative effects? I've been trying to keep them Happy in order to get the positive bonuses on each planet.

Ah, now I get it. I was totally misreading this. Thanks!

Thanks! I'm going to start a new game armed with all this information 

Am looking forward to it, but have to work for now. Damn the bad luck...

Quoting lyssailcor, reply 13

At 100% tax one would think a "normal" civilization would collapse, because why would anyone work anything if they would receive no money for that?

Either all work is done by machines (what would mean "100% tax" then?) or it some kind of communism or whatever 

Fortunately, in a simulated universe within a simulated universe, you can tax 100% as long as you build enough approval improvements. lol

It depends on your max approval value per planet. I can tax at 100% and suffer little to no consequences on most planets due to having a significantly higher approval value than pop value. Weaker planets can lose up to 30%, but as long as your approval is not in the red, you will not actually get any negative effects. You will just get a lower raw production bonus.

The overall raw production may take a small hit depending on how many approval % you lose, but you will still gain a lot more in income than you will lose in raw production. You can always counter with more approval improvements. If they did not remove the "Virtual World" improvement, 100% taxation would be even easier to abuse.   

"...2421 parsecs controlled and connected to my capital..."

Please bear with me, but what does "linked" or "connected" to my capital mean? How are they "linked"?

How do I make sure that is happening?

TIA,

Richard

Since I haven't seen a developer explain this completely, this is my interpretation (which seems to match what I see in game, but could be incorrect).

When the zone of influence of one of your colonies expands enough so that it touches the zone of influence of your capital, then it is "connected".  To put it another way, if there is a path from hex to hex from your capital to any colony where that path remains in your zone of influence at all points, then all of the hexes in the zone of influence of both capital and colony are counted as being "connected", and, in effect, are counted twice in the tourism calculation (once in the total and once in the capital).

To help this happen, build consulates and other influence enhancing improvements on your colonies so that their zone of influence expands as quickly as possible to reach your capital's zone of influence.

This is pretty much what I expected, too, but the game tells me that I have xx number of parsecs linked, yet I have no zones of influence "touching" (early game). Do you suppose it could have something to do with Mines or Starbases, too?

Now I'm really curious about how this works.

Thanks again for your quick reply,

Richard

Yes, star bases, asteroid mines, and mined resources also expand your zone of influence and get counted as connected in the same way as planets.  Note that you can also increase the rate of growth of star base influence by upgrading the star base to add certain improvements.  The star base defense upgrades and the ones that increase their sensor range all add per-turn influence, but the ones that upgrade only one weapon or defense type at a time do not.  Hover over the star base upgrades to see if the tooltip indicates something like "+5 Influence" - those are the ones that will expand your zone of influence.

You're a gem, Publius. Thank you for your input.

I'm wondering... do you still shoot for the initial Colony rush via the Hyperdrive Techs, or do you focus entirely on the tourism, culture, and trade Techs? Perhaps I was spoiled early on, but the Colony rush strategy is ingrained in my brain. Maybe I am wasting too much time with that and should set my sights elsewhere?

I seem to be good at getting a lot of planets, but ultimately they are spread a little thin. Perhaps a "taller" approach would be better for an Economy dominance? What do you say?

Thanks!

Richard

I'm an old fart who is stuck in his ways, so I also still shoot for a colony rush.  I like to play on large or huge maps with abundant almost everything so that there are sufficient planets to colonize, with fewer than recommended AIs to give me some room to expand.  I do research a couple of hyperdrive techs first, but then switch to techs in the governance branch to get the translator, and the techs required to build cultural center, entertainment network, and cities. My expansion is usually slowed by the lack of administrators, and now with Intrigue, by governmental limits.  I find I'm spending more time researching governance techs than I used to, switching back to colonization and engineering when appropriate and warfare only when needed.

I usually play custom races, my favorite combination is ancient/wealthy or xenophobic/something, since both ancient and xenophobic yield big research rewards.

Thanks, Publius,

You have been most helpful,

Richard

Thanks for the replies everyone, publius you were a huge help

Since Tourism works this way:

- total Tourism income is the sum of all Tourism building incomes

- each Tourism building's income is based on the total number of your influence tiles

- Tourism buildings are one per planet/player/galaxy (i.e. you cannot spam them on one planet)

... going wide or tall requires different economic strategies.

If you go wide Tourism is very relevant and will probably dominate your income late game. If you go tall Tourism is largely irrelevant and you have to rely on GDP (boosted by economic starbases) for your income.

Sadly, Trade as the third pillar of income does not cut it at the moment. It's largely only useful for diplomacy and I even ignore it in most games.

So, to answer your question: no, going tall is not better for economic dominance. It's actually worse because going wide ALSO allows for econ starbases around your key worlds (thus giving you high income from both Tourism and GDP). The advantage from colony rush strategy still fully applies.