Getting thumped by economy with AllLabs

Well, remember that all that research costs money.  And the research buildings cost maintenance.  I'm a big fan of building NOTHING on newly colonized planets until the population gets high enough to make some money via taxes.  Credit goes to Mumblefratz for this crazy-sounding-yet-definitely-helpful technique.  The initial colony generates 14rp I think, which is not too shabby.  Try building nothing on new planets.  Your ecomony will be much easier to manage.

KD

Like KrazyDock said, don't build anything on new colonies until they reach at least a positive income, perferably only once they reach max population. Set those to focus on research until then (while they have no buildings). This strategy, among others I picked up from Mumblefratz, makes even suicidal difficulty seem like child's play.

I would build mostly economy buildings on the homeworld to start with. The more BC you make, the more research you can fund. I think the Alterian's first spamable real econ building is the Adv. Market Center, which you need to research Xeno Economics to get. Once your economy is stablized, then you can start building more research buildings. Don't forget to make a few econ-centric worlds to fund all the research though.

'Scuse me while I trim and fiddle with this...

Overall, I think you may just be pushing your tech too hard too fast in combination with leasing (which, IMHO, should only be done either when you expect to win so soon, the cost per turn of leasing would work out better than buying, or when you simply must have that project/ship/whatever next turn or face significant losses.)

I do not play TA and do little of the ALL Labs strat.  There was a thread discussion I had recently with Mumblefratz and some others on beating it at Suicidal that touched on several of your items.  Nonetheless, some aspects should be common to both DA and TA.

First, apparently there is a limit on the number of techs you can gain by research in a turn.  IIRC, it is N+1 where N is the number of planets you own.  Thus, early in tech trees, when the research points per level are smaller, you may "waste" resources.  That is, if you shift to, say, engine tech after several turns of building labs, you may advance only 2 levels when - if you had 3 planets - you would have advanced 4 levels.  The point is, that you may need to fine tune your research budget every turn.  The second point here is that a heavy research approach would seem to require at least some minimal expansion.  The simplest approach to this is to use the initial colonizer quickly and to convert the miner to a colonizer and use that quickly, also.  The micromanagement can get high here, very high.  For example, you could SAVE before hitting the Turn button, then experiment and iterate with the sliders until you found the precise settings that got you the tech advancement you wanted, with no excess.  Once found, go forward, then hit SAVE before the next Turn, rinse and repeat.

Second, tax revenues grow directly with population, but maintenance costs are a constant.  Thus, a low pop colony will not generate enough funds to balance its own budget.  Thus, any building you put on a low pop world will be a drain on your budget, so choose carefully if you build anything there at all.  Note, that any world you invade will have a low pop and still have all its pre-invasion buildings and their maintenance charges.  Thus, almost every invasion produces a budget hit until that world's pop rises a lot, by natural growth or pop transfers.

Third, one quick help is to run quickly through Translator-Diplomacy-Trade just to get the Economic Capital and build it on your high pop homeworld.  You'll want those techs anyway, to build the Translator good for the Diplo bonus (and to deprive all others of it), but also to be able to sell Trade as soon as possible to other AIs, especially Minors.  Let them set up the Trade routes to you.  Yes, they get more BCs out of them than you do, but it's still free BCs for you and their money is what you will be selling those techs to them to get back!  So, the more BCs the minors have the better!

Fourth, if you rely extensively on leasing, then you may need either to win early or grow a huge economy to support it.  The latter would seem to be tough if you get past the early game and Medium or larger warships begin to appear.

Fifth, I think the Purple mining base bonuses to Research do not consume resources.  I could be wrong but - if true - then you may want them and their upgrades to get a higher priority.  Certainly, the Green Economy ones should always be sought and upgraded.  I've not seen much gain from the Yellow Morale ones in taxes.  That is, the morale seems to approve some with each, but I've had little luck in raising taxes from them.  Instead, I'll see the morale from my current tax level go up then, if I push up the tax rate even one more unit, the drop off is where the old drop off had been after that same one unit increase.  YMMV, but that seems to be what I've seen.

Are you sure?  It would surprise me if the bonus is free.  Most "bonus" points, whether research or production, are charged at 50%.  I've never heard/read anywhere that resource mines would be any different.

I just did an experiment which suggests that this bonus is NOT free.  I loaded an old save where I was spending 1388 bc on research and 1730 bc on "bonus production/research".  I destroyed two of my own mining starbases on reserach mines (not fully developed; I think they were +14 and +34).  On the same turn, I checked the numbers and they were unchanged.  Knowing that this might simply be a case where the numbers are not updated right away, I hit the turn button and the new numbers were: reserach spending 1388 bc (unchanged) and bonus production/research was down to just over 1000.  A big drop.  I was paying for all of that bonus research.

KD

I've been going without building on colonized worlds for a while, although it alone doesn't do much good. Instead I realized in my last game something I can do to solve half my problems: instead of simply reseaching the Shrine of the Mithrilar, I build it on my homeworld, which lets me pump my tax rate by ~50% and although I'm still deficit spending I deficit spend a lot less. This lets me balance my budget with comparatively little tech trading. Now I'll probably mass more leases, just to put my new-found $$$ to use.

I've been a bit reluctant to sell the Trade tech. Yes it nets money and the AI thinks quite a bit of it, but it does give Diplomacy. Still worth it? What about the trade good ... with All Labs those usually take so long to build I just lease it from the day it's available and burn a big hole in my economy. Regarding upgrading resources ... to do that, I have to either lease Constructors, or put focus on Militay (= no Social). It's a bit dubious. Still worth it?

I started playing at Beginner (was the first time I played GalCiv too, won that game without even building a single warship @_@), then cranked the difficulty up gradually. My last game was Masochistic; I think I still have a chance of winning although my computer burned out so I can't play right now.

To cope with the AI's improved powers at higher difficulty I might need to go to war sooner, economy not withstanding. War would be best before the AI builds its first combat ship,but just declaring war is hard because even with AllLabs it's still ~16 turns to research Planetary Invasion and then another ~7 turns to build a Transport while my labs churn through the different invasion tactics, and then even more turns for the Transports to get to their targets, all the while during which the AI might just build a couple of cheap ships and thwart the invasion

ok one major flaw in your strategy is leasing. I NEVER lease, expecially early on because this absolutly KILLS your economy.

Also, i too am a tech player, however, its much better to have economy first off. Building labs at the begining is ok, however too many wont do you any good. I build maybe 1-2 labs, but i first buy a few factories, and then start to build colony ships.

Also, early on u dont need 100 percent morale. i usually have 60-70 percent. This keeps population growth high, and i get money in. So, i say build more factories on ur homeworld than labs. I usually build some research worlds AFTER my eco is bringing in more than 500 plus after its working at 100 percent effciency