Well, instead of building farms first off, you want entertainment zones and markets. You can boost your population later when you get more advanced economy buildings, or nab a morale bonus with a constructor.

Research Trade early if possible. That helps too. Spread your trade routes, to minimize the damage in case of a sudden war. Don't bother to set up routes with people you might want to fight.

It'll take some time for your worlds to develop. Until then you'll probably want to concentrate on building up one or two planets until you can make some more money. Others might disagree, but I think it's better to have a couple of planets with excellent production, than half a dozen with mediocre production.

Research New Propulsion Techniques at least, even if you're not going all the way to Impulse Drive. That'll allow you to design a slightly faster colony ship if nothing else.

You're right that too many worlds will result in high maintenance, so get the high class planets first to be more efficient. If you need to build more markets, don't be afraid to adjust the sliders to give yourself 100% Social Production. After you've built a few you can put it back to the way it was, and you'll probably be better off.

Yea, there's an economic hump you have to get over that's dependent on tax level, population, and morale. To get over it faster, I use the 70% population bonus obtained during race setup. Also, factories and other buildings cost money to build and maintain so you can't fully develop every planet you claim right away. Your costs will surpass your ability to make money. The main thing it to grab as many planets as you can and build only as many as your economy will support. Once you get over that economic hump, things will move along much faster. Anomolies are very helpful in floating your economy until then. Put your flagship in auto-survey right away and build a few survey ships as soon as possible. You need the first "Sensors" tech for the survey module.

Have fun!

If you want to make it easy play Custom Race and change the abilites. Put moral on 10% Planet quality on 10% and reproduction rates on 70%.

Start a game and look at your home world to see what bonuses you have. If you have any research bonuses, build a research building there immeadiately. Regardless, queue up 3 factories, or if you have a 300% industrial bonus queue up 5 factories.

Now change production to 100%, leave tax where it is and slide research to 100%. First research, planetary improvments, followed by engine tech up to impulse drive.

While doing this early research - which should take about 6 weeks - buy 3 or 4 factories on your homeworld, set your survey ship off and colonise the other planet. Once impulse drive has been completed, go into ship builder and make a colony ship with a speed of at least 5, then set your home world to build this ship. Change the military slider to the position where it takes exactly 2 weeks to build, or if you had a 300% industrial bonus slide it to where it takes 1 week to build. The remaining production should be with research.

Select Space Militarization to research as this will make the ship building 10% faster which will allow you to adjust the sliders even more in favour of research. Then when that is done, research impulse 2 and upgrade your colony ship design to a speed of about 7.

The important thing is to not send colony ships off with 500 people because you will then deplete your home world population which is important for tax. Therefore, if you are sending colony ships every 2 weeks, send them out with 300 people, if it's every week, send them with 150 people.

Once your money gets down to 1000 turn taxes up so that moral is ~50%. Also, queue up planets as you colonise them as you wish but don't start social production until after the colony rush.

That's it!

To answer the original question, the economic slowdown is a normal and expected condition. At some point in the game, you'll have more construction projects underway than you have the money to pay for. The key is to be careful with money, and selective with which projects you start, to minimize the downtime.

The fast way out of the economic slowdown is trade, so research to get it and build a few freighters once you do have it, which should close the gap nicely. Also, natural population growth will help out.

I need to point out that the strategies posted by other players above are primarily for very large maps, where there are a very large number of planets per player to colonize. On smaller and more crowded maps, waiting to build colony ships until you can get your production set up on your homeworld will leave you with colony ships wandering around wondering how the Torians managed to get everywhere first.

If you're on a crowded map, you'll need to speed-build a few colony ships right off to make sure you get the prime planets. I usually allow for two turns or so of production to reduce the price tag on a speed build, but you need to get them out fast, so that's where nearly all of your money is going to go. I usually do NOT colonize the other planet in the starting system, but send that colony ship right off (sometimes upgrading it to a faster ship first) to improve my chances of getting a prime world. Absolutely no reason to colonize a pq4 planet when there's a good chance you can grab a pq10+ planet with the same ship. Only after you've taken everything worth picking up should you colonize the local wasteland planet.

I tend to run giant games and my answer to the eco slump is quite different. I have a 3 part strategy.
First I balance my tax rate so that it is on the highest 9(59,69,79 etc.) that will give me a 75%+ morale rating empire wide. I then adjust my production slider so that I have jut above 0 in taxes every turn.

Secondly I set my flagship to auto-survey and have each planet build one scout or survey ship as their first production. As each planet goes over 1 Billion in population I start it building colony ships. As each ship gets online I send it to the highest PQ planet I can find. This often means that I NEVER colonize PQ 5-8 planets at all. These small planets are colonised by my rivals and will eventually flip to me due to influence, saving me the time and expense of colonising them myself. Survey ships tend to keep money coming in from anomolies. I build constructors only when I find a resource or I am out of colonisable worlds.

On the planets themselves, The first improvements I build are a factory, starport, tax revenue (market, bank etc) and another factory. I always buy the first factory as soon as I can without bankrupting myself. (after that I build a farm, a morale building, another factory, research center, influence building, another factory, planetary defence improvements, another factory and then alternate between research and influence buildings.

This gives me a good economic base to build from, and allows me to expand in the most efficient maner that makes me strongest in the long run.

Scintor@aol.com

Here's what I do. First, I use the starting money to buy my first factory and my second colony ship, 'cause I hate waiting. I send my colony ship to the closest habitable planet, which I usually name "Trash Hole" because that's about what it qualifies as. My other colony ship goes to the next star, and if I'm lucky there's a class 12 or something there. (This one tends to get called New Trash Hole, but not for any real reason)

I focus my research on new engines, 'cause I really hate waiting. I usually design new colony ships with only a single colony module but lots of engines because, hey, I hate waiting. All of my colonies have the same exact build order: Factory (Usually purchased) then labs, then maybe a farm. Or another lab.

I keep up this pattern for a while until I realize I'm almost out of money, at which point I chill everything down and hope that my colony population comes up enough to start making money for me. I usually panic and shift my research to the ecconomic tree.

When I finally get out of the red, I start building new colony ships again until I run into the other races. When I notice how much better than me they're doing in every single graph, I get disheartened and quit.


So there ya' go! Hope that helps ya'!

It's not until you starting trying to write strategies down that you realise just how many variables need to be considered! Although I disagree with Z42, there is absolutely no need to buy colony ships even on a Tiny map. In fact I play Tiny and Small most of the time because my PC isn't really good enough! (See my other post above for my starting strategy in full, but..)

Say you have 11 tiles on your home world and no bonuses. You start with a star port. In week 1 buy a research building, week 2 a factory, week 3 a factory, week 4 a factory. Now queue up a farm and the rest market centres. So buy week 4 you have a home world capable of building your custom colony ship with Impulse drive in 2 weeks. However, it will take about 6 weeks to research up to Impulse Drive with the research path... Planet Quality -> (up to) Impulse Drive. So at week 6 you start building a fast colony ship and by week 8 your colony rush begins.

If you are playing a Tiny map it's probably best to ensure that you pick the right map to begin with. The ideal map would put you in the middle of a large cluster of stars. Definitely don't play maps that block you into a corner surrounded by other players! Also when you start the colony rush, send your ships as far out as possible, preferably close to or even beyond the boarders of other races and work your way back to your home world. You have to be sensitive to the fact that other races are rushing too and as someone else said, just leave low PQ planets below PQ7, especially low PQ planets in the predicted centre of your territory as these will turn due to influence.

The best thing is trade and capturing bonuses is unnecessary but try and research the diplomacy branch early in the game to prevent war. Also I don’t even bother researching weapons or defences until war is declared on me.

My research guide would be something like this.
Weeks 1-20: Planet Quality, up to Impulse Drive, Space Militarization, Impulse DriveII
Weeks 21-40: Xeno Research, up to Enhanced Militarization (get Micro Repair Bots), Basic Logistics, Advanced Hulls (get Hull Plating), up to Xeno Ethics (select Neutral)
Weeks 41+: Diplomacy (get Diplomatic Translators), Trade (get Economic Capital – build on home world replacing star port), Trade Centres, Entertainment, Basic Farming, up to Habitat Improvement (build Aphrodisiac). More of the Diplomacy Branch up to Majesty, entire Planetary Invasion branches (get TriQuan Training), Basic and Advanced Planetary defence.
Weeks++: Now the fun starts! Up to Industrial Sector, then up to Stock Market, then up to Neutrality Learning centre. At the same time Miniaturization, Logistics and up to Hull Plating although avoid Massive Scale building. Then when someone declares war, whatever defence I need and whatever weapon I feel like killing them with.

I usually just pummel my enemy with Medium Sized hulls, with Doom Rays and plenty of logistics! After I’ve built only two or three of these ships, most of the other races are begging for peace.