LOL
that's really funny
there is a very very very simple workaround for this "issue"

just stop building any social building & any ship
end of money problems
(money not used in military & social are returned to your treasury if you are not building anything)

or else if you don't want to micromanage this planet & can't afford the awesome production, just scrap or change the building type from factory to anything else

another idea is to focus this particular planet on money:
-do enough morale improvement for 100% morale (for pop growth)
-or/and bring some more colony/transport ship to improve the pop
-build enough farms but not too much
-build a lot of tax improvements
-when the rest of your planets can finally handle this planet money deficit, you can then upgrade buildings to all factories if you ever want to increase its productivity

So it was game over, huh.
Guess you haven't found out that you can demolish buildings yet

Seriously, if you get one of those early, like on your homeplanet for example, it's game over. You have won.

I have to agree with Whismerhill. In my current game, I found not one, not two, but four 700 bonus tiles on my first five planets and bought factories for all of them. All of a sudden, my economy was going downhill in a hurry, losing 375 bc per turn less than 50 turns into the game. I simply shut those planets down (they had already built everything I assigned to them) and watched my economy recover for a few turns. Then, when I started getting money back (thank you to anomalies and high pop planets), I turned them back on one at a time and started rush building constructors. I captured 11 resources and have almost completely maxed them out with weapons, armor, and mining, plus have econ starbases helping out at home. My only problem now is that I'm trapped in the bottom corner and the closest star system beyond the ten that surround me is 6 sectors away. Talk about a lopsided map!

yep. those tiles normally give me enough of an edge to win just about any game. but you didn't play your cards right.

i usually have only 1 or 2 heavy production planets. they allow me to crank out military vessels like there's no tomorrow. the rest of my planets are usually all research and economy. 1 farm, 1 morale, and 1 bank for every 3 research centers or so. any planet between about 8-12 or smaller ones with mineral bonuses, they also gets a starport and 2-4 factories, but those planets are almost continuously producing constructors.

building influece bases around your colonies will improve tourism income. eco bases with trade centers will improve trade income. personally i usually opt for eco bases, but influence points seem to also have a slightly positive affect on morale.

after that, if you're power-gaming, it's about grabbing resources. station a constructor near every resource. the AI scraps them from time to time for no good reason, so look around occassionally. either way, once they go to war the resource will probably be yours. the eco and morale resources will really help your economy if you develop them fully.

bottom line, when you get a precursor mine, you should be thrilled. honestly, my hardest games are the ones where i don't have a planet with a major industry bonus. to be totally honest, if a precursor mine did that to your economy, even early on, it sounds like it was headed for stagnation anyway.

but the other players here are right as well: sometimes it's better to develop a planet in one way early on, and then re-develop it later for newer needs. i find myself doing that with research/econ planets often, since without some industry early on it takes them forever to develop.

1 last point of advise: i'd advise you to be more cautious about food bonus tiles. 1 farm + 1 morale center of comprable tech should keep your citizens pretty happy even at a high tax rate. after that it becomes exponentially more difficult to keep citizens happy. when i get a large planet with a number of food bonuses, i usually turn it into my econ capital, and it's usually the 1 planet in my empire dragging down my otherwise 80-100% approval level. last game i was playing, my eco capital was a PQ 17 (after terraforming) with 1 +100% food tile, and 2 +300% food tiles. after maxing out farm tech, its max pop was 100 billion. i had to haul citizen to that planet consistently to get it's population up, but its economic output accounted for aabout a third of my gross income, and that was with control of about 20 colonies.

anyway, i don't think the game was ever designed to have a perfect way of developing your planets. that's the whole point of the PQ aspect, i think. but there are certain things to do when your empire is lagging in one respect or another, and a big part of that is re-developing planets when the need arises. that's something even the AI does on maso difficulty.

so yeah, good luck and happy hunting

with 25 billion population planets, 4-5 moral boosters,

Okay, now I gotta ask this. I get a planet with 25 population centers and the rotten little cretins drop their moral to 50% or less even when I have built nothing but morale boosters. I check the morale tool tip and it shows that, while the negatives for population have grown, the bonuses from morale boosters has actually dropped, despite 2 upgrades and a total of 7. (My entertainment centers are usually 2 levels above my farms). Anyone got an idea of how I can handle this? Or what I can do to keep the morale boosters from losing value?

Oh, and cash is no longer a problem. My mining starbases are almost exactly halfway between me and the rest of the galaxy and with a trader ship with 17 moves per turn with only warp drive, I've got money falling out of every orifice. I just really suck at the conquest part of the game. Tactically-minded tribble is a good example of my abilities of war.

Thanks for the info, mikeswi. Will give it a try and see what's what.

Hi!

@ eravenheart Pick an ethical alignment and then build "Harmoney Crystals" somewhere. Picking "Neutral" provides its own morale boost. Research all the morale techs and build the trade goods that come with them. Also research Xeno Cultural Trends to get "Frictionless Clothing"...

All you've mentioned would be good, if the high pop wouldn't lower the base morale,. All those bonuses & wonders & buildings & resources increase base morale. At 25B pop you base morale is only 20%, and everything you have there to increase morale (but 10% planet quality bonus) has only 20% effect.
The more pop you have above 15B, the more problems you got to keep them happy. The "1 farm (without bonuses) & 1 entertaiment" is a very good rule.

BR, Iztok