I think the economic bonuses are very useful, and I generally pick then now that I'm playing higher difficulty levels, but I played lots of games of DL without economic bonuses and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too hard to win at painful. My current game is masochistic huge without tech trading, so they have some pretty serious built-in economic bonuses over me, and I can't make cash by tech trading. If you play a race with military production, hitpoints, soldiering, etc, you can get by with fewer production worlds. So you then dedicate more worlds to generating cash.

Actually, I have found that everything isn't dependant on economy. I played one game where my whole goal was to get a civil war withen my empire, so I basially ran my approval around 0%, which quickly crashed my economy. After turn 40 or so, i no longer was able to produce anythig do to debt for the rest of the game. The game lasted about four or five years, but I managed to win by diplomacy.

So I would saythat no single bonus is necesary to win, but certain ones do make it easier.

I agree that economy, morale, and population growth are pretty much the best abilities to pick, especially on settings where you'll be able to colonize/conquer a lot of planets. Like estafazero said, everything depends on economy in the long run. Money is needed for military production, social production, research, espionage, purchasing, upgrading, fleet maintenance, colony maintenance, improvement maintenance, founding starbases, adding some modules to starbases, invasion tactics, and trading during diplomacy. And the earliest and primary method of gaining money is taxing your population. So a 20% bonus to most of your income is worth way more than a 40% bonus to one of many possible expenditures.

On the other hand, those settings estafazero listed should still be winnable. Build some survey ships early on so that you can make some money from anomalies. Put points into diplomacy and tech trade a lot to get most of your tech and earn money. And of course emphasize techs and resources that add to your economy, morale, and population growth.

I think up through "tough" difficulty its pretty easy to win with any set of bonuses youd like. The harder you set the game though, the more difficult it becomes, and the more mandatory the economic bonus is. I dont personally believe you can run at 100% production the entrie game without it.

Though a good economy is a bit harder in DA than it was in DL, its not impossible to have a good economy in DA without the bonus, but youd have to devote quite a bit of effort to doing so (building almost nothing but moneymaking planets).

Keep in mind that Morale and Economy bonus are two sides of the same coin, and you can make a lot of money by having a really high morale bonus too.

I play Suicidal and I never take economic bonuses . I just don't see the point.

Economics swing wildly in my games, it starts hard, and then gets extremely easy. But the amount of revenue that a bonus will really generate in those first 6 months doesn't seem worth the points.

In my games I never have enough BC in the first 1 to 2 years, and then after that I have more BC then I know what to do with.

I always take either planitary quality bonuses or moral bonuses or population growth bonuses.

In the early game my planets are generating tiny amounts of revenue. Is a 10% economic bonus really going to do a lot? Maybe I get a few hundred BC over the course of those first 6 months. That doesn't seem worth it.

I say take bonues that can't be generated in game, which is why I almost always take planet quality.

The early game is always hard. Just go slow, and don't try to expand too quickly. Concentrate on building up your core planets... I used to try to out colonize the AI, but not anymore. Now I just get what I need and then I push straight to invasion. Let them spend their BC building your worlds... plus you will get some free tech. Sometimes you will even get lucky and you can start invading a close neighbor before they build any military ships.

And don't be afraid to borrow BC if you need to. I often borrow BC to finish buildings that will get me short term assitance. A lot of the time the game ends before the loans are fully re-paid making the long term loans a decent investment. Interest payments are often irrelevant after the 2nd year when I often find myself swimming in BC.

- Livonya

I remember the olden days when everyone would choose War Party just for the hit point bonus, but the HP bonus is junk now. Military production is a different story--I pick that even more often than I pick Economy (unless I'm Thalan).