Yea, no kidding i didnt imply they sped up population growth only that they increased the population cap and some players dont know how to manage morale as larger population sizes have a increasingly large negative effect to moral to simulate overcrowding (i believe its capped at 25bil). [/Quote] Okay. The main problem is homeworlds, where you load them up with industrial buildings, toss one tile for farming and upgrade that when necessary, while they keep growing and growing after the colonising stage... And before you know it, they are damn unhappy. Then it's time to mine some morale resources... [Quote] If youve got a 100% bonus to food production tile and dont put a farm on it you are effectively wasting an additional tile.

Well for higher PQ planets you definitely need at least 1 tile for farming, so sure, put it on the bonus tile. I don't think anyone is dumb enough to not do this. Unless it doesn't matter already. And it goes without saying that you want to earn big $$$ you better watch population caps and morale.

And its far more profitable far more profitable to have 2 farms and 8 stock markets rather than 1 farm and 9 stock markets. You should be aiming for populations in excess of 20bil and ideally around 30bil+ for income generating planets. Ie on Quality 10+ planets depending upon bonuses available.

I guess it all depends on your strategy. I seldom get past 25 billion (and i'm at 100% approval + racial bonuses to pop) because it is game over by then on a medium map.
That's why I don't have such a big deal about worrying about 30 billion+ planets. I never ever build more than 1 farm, not that I wouldn't if it calls for that, but I've never seen it happen to worry about it.

Anyway Bigger PQ planets tend to be full of splendid soils (300%), a lot of times I get 2 or more in a single planet. or 1 tile with 100% , 1 tile with 300%, then i ignore the former, though of course, i won't build on it, if i have a choice.

With one tile alone at the highest farming levels(you should have this if you are doing stockmarkets) I can support up to 30 billion!

The point is you are definitely going to buld less farms compared to, economy related, industry or research buildings, and most times you need only 1 farm, unless you are on a big map, and/or are using some insane race cusomised for pop growth.

I've never reached 30 bil+ level, because on medium maps, you are winning like crazy already by then, so worrying about 30 billion level colonies is highly theortical for me.

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I'm a big fan of Stock Markets. You need money for everything else. The influence and morale bonuses are just extras, but they're nice to have.

Ground defense buildings are horrible.

Actually I have done those kind of races too. It's way too easy to just kill them with your economy and population... Pretty boring, and I don't even build stock markets!!

Star democracy et al, give me all the economy bonus I need really. Once I start getting profits of over 1K per turn, with spend rate at 100%., approval at >80%, I don't really borther much with economy, I start up the war machine.... Again I play with medium maps, the impression i get is most of you guys play with much bigger maps

I think the best improvement is obvious, yet taken for granted how powerful it is, and how dead you'd be if you couldn't build it


Starports

Why the heck do you need tax rates to be so high at 69%?

You need to build up your economy, I recommend going for Star federation, you will be rolling in dough, even with amazingly low tax rates.

Just a quick question...Almost no one mentioned Research Buildings, why is that? Are they just mediocre or is there something wrong with them? I tend to build about 2 on a PQ 12 planet. I'll dedicate some of the PQ5 planets to pure research also.

Maybe I'm shortchanging my enonomy (sorry for the pun) by doing this?

Larger maps I think are easier to player for the human player. Because you have more space to develop slowly, consolidate and put your plan into play.

In one of Frogboy's journals, he remarked that the AI did better when it had more planets to work with (so he was stressing the AI by playing a smaller map with few planets). So I'd presume that a large map would typically have more habitable planets, which should benefit the AI.

Why the heck do you need tax rates to be so high at 69%? You need to build up your economy, I recommend going for Star federation, you will be rolling in dough, even with amazingly low tax rates.

The reason I go with such high tax rates is twofold:

1) Lower PQ and population colonies pretty much always have 100% approval. I crank up the tax rate to maximize the revenue:approval ratio of each planet. If 90% of my planets are at 100% approval, in effect, I am creating wasted morale with a lower tax rate. I milk every penny I can from colonies and keep them happy.

2) I do use the higher government types ASAP. Coupled with the increased economy bonus from the better government, I can amass a huge pool of reserve cash. Using this pool, when I decide to make my offensive actions, I can easily and quickly create cutting edge fleets in short amounts of time by simply buying the newly designed ships by the dozen.

When I am in the middle of my colony rush, I am usually looking at an incredible surplus of money. This allows me to either continue to expand, and buy lots of techs from other races, or simply start pooling up my money. The extra cash flow also aids in quickening my social project buildup by at least a few weeks.

It's also nice to be able to flat out buy trade goods and super projects, rather than spending the weeks and production points to build them, and instead use them to either solidify my economy, or start/continue military production.

This additional revenue also helps me maintain larger fleets. With 20 or so colonies at 15B pop a piece, generating on average 350BC per turn at 69% tax rate, my tax income alone is 7k BC. Add in trade and tourism and I'm sitting around 7.5-8k. If I nab economy resources... well, then my economy just really takes off.

As far as I can tell, tax rates are not linear; i.e. 20B people will not generate twice the amount of tax revenue that 10B generate. I'm am still investigating this, as there is no mouse-hover summary of tax income per planet.

To me, I find I have a much stronger and stable economy by keeping tax rates high, not wasting tiles on morale buildings. Instead, I take those tiles (which I would have used morale buildings) and use stock exchanges (which also serve as weak morale buildings themselves). 6 Stock exchanges are as good as 1 VR center as far as morale is concerned. But in addition, I get a 180% bonus to my base tax revunue, and 30% to my influence. On high PQ planets I can an income upwards of 600+ BC per turn for a single planet.