Money troubles...

Freaking Altarians. I bet they even went on about how much better they were, and how they needed to rid the galaxy of "filth" or some such.



Felt good, didn't it?



Find out what you are losing money to. From the economics screen, see where your money is going? Planet improvements? Military? Leases?

How's your trade? Can you get more from trade? How's your tax rate? Can you bump morale to recover more taxes? How powerful are you? Can you er ... encourage ... (ok, threaten) ... other civs to give you money? Can you declare war on a wimpy civ and then sue for peace for a large sum of money? Or, alternatively, can you sell techs or trade goods to other civs to get your feet back on the ground?

MC>

~SDC~

Fellow bug Tru,

Did the Altairians wipe out your mini-freighters during the war? In my (admittedly limited) experience, 3-4 good trade routes makes the difference between a marginal empire and one that's rolling in dough.

Although it's since been pointed out to me as a bad long-term strategy, you can jack up taxes until your tax income is on the verge of dropping (usually around 60%). Next, fiddle with your spending slider until your the total for the turn goes positive. Most importantly, remember to adjust this back a month before the next election, or watch your 35% approval rating cost you your tech bonuses...In the long term, the hit to morale will hurt your population growth, but for a few turns it can beef up your treasury pretty fast.

teching is really expensive, consider cutting research costs.

I can usually run at 100% spending for military and social, but around 75% for research.

i had a game like that, i was doing fine until the alterians declared war on me, and i started loosing money -i had to end that game, i couldnt recover.

turned out that in that game, i was doing all of my trade with the alterians, and when they declared war with me, i lost all my trade routes. also, since i was kinda blocked in by the alterians, no other race was tradeing with me. the money i was getting from my mature trade routes with the alterians were pretty much financing my empire, but when i lost those when the war started, my money situation was hopeless.

who where your trade partners before and after the war? maybe that is the reason behind your money problems?

what i do now is that whenever i start a game, i decide my future alignment even before i send off my first trade ship. i believe through my experience that the Torians make pretty good trade partners -they dont seem to really care if im pure evil or what-not. i dont trade with the Alterians anymore, they are too unpredictable, even when i play pure-good.

thanks to all who replied. Many good ideas, certainly some of them I hadn't considered. I suspect that trade routes were the culprit. I also hadn't tipped to the idea of making an AI civ pay me to leave them alone. Oh, that's a good follow up question, in the negotiation screen when you are offering an agreeable deal, the words turn green, but before you offer up your techs, money, etc. the words are blue and there's usually something along the lines of "hey slave race we want cloaking or we'll kill you." Is there a point where that would automatically be green if a civ is willing to roll over for you? Or do you just have to send the threat and see what happens?

no all extortion demands are blue. you're just going to have to guess at what they will accept and not accept to pay for tribute

you should, however, have a significant military lead over them before you try anything of the sort.

When I'm overbudget, I'll start trading to minors first, then majors (the weak ones). I sell my tech and if I'm still losing money, I'll lower my spend rate. By late game on a large map, my spend rate is usually around 20-30% but I'm still cranking out the ships (love those starbases).

~SDC~