Jeydra

Join Date 02/2009

Getting thumped by economy with AllLabs

Some general settings which I play on ...

Twilight of the Arnor
Map size: medium and smaller - I hate micro, so don't play larger maps.
Number of planets / stars / habitable planets etc: occasional. I think it's because it was first set up this way and I never bothered changing. If I increase this I'll probably play a smaller map.
Number of anomalies: Abundant
Tech rate: depends. My last game was "very slow".
As many majors and minor races as possible.
I use +40% economy and +40% research, with Altarians as default race choice and Technologists as default party (I love tech!).

The basic problem is a crippling lack of gold. I start deficit spending on day one and it takes ages upon ages upon ages to get out of it (for this game, 2-3 game years). The deficit usually runs into -2xx bcs pretty soon, and might go even higher (up to -6xx). If it weren't because I usually enable tech trading I'd be a goner already; the only way I avoid going completely broke is by selling tech. This is of course risky, since sometimes races are too busy to meet and other times they're broke as well, when my entire production can collapse. My games are a struggle with $$$ from the word go, but by the time the struggles end I usually have a game-winning advantage.

What am I doing wrong?

1. Am I leasing too many Labs to start with? I normally lease the homeworld full of Labs, except for two spots (for Tech Capitol and Social Matrix). This game I leased 2-3 and then eventually the Technological Capital, but I still had to sell tech to stay alive.

2. Am I colony-rushing wrong? Usually I lease buy 2-3 Colonizers, depending on how many worlds I see, and I might lease more if I see high PQ planets about.

3. Am I mishandling trade? This game I upgraded one of my Colonizers to Freighter after it became apparent there were no more worlds left, and I spent some time building a couple more (delaying tech).

4. Am I researching the wrong techs? I prioritize the techs that give universal bonus to something (eg. Planetary Improvements). Diplomacy techs I get all of them, although I usually delay Expert Diplomacy / Majesty / Total Majesty until I finish advancing government. Research tech I get when my labs finish upgrading, whenever that might be. Military tech I rush Planetary Invasion with some weapon theories just so I can invade someone quickly. While building a Transport I might get some Soldiering tech. Sometimes I have to research morale out of desperation so I can use higher tax rates. Other times I have to research influence out of desperation so I get more tourism income. Miniaturization, bank buildings (aside from Xeno Economics with +5 economics), Life Support, Advanced Hulls, farming etc. I leave for later.

5. Am I developing planets wrong? Typically the homeworld gets crammed full with Labs, with one spot for the Technological Capital and the Social Matrix. Other worlds I colonize get nothing built except Recruiting Center when it comes along; otherwise they just sit there accumulating population.

6. Am I mishandling tax rate? Usually I stick to 100% morale until I can't maintain 100% morale even with 0% tax rate, then I raise taxes to whatever leaves me with reasonable morale. Still, even with high tax rate early I usually still deficit spend.

7. Am I mishandling resources? If there's some nearby I lease Constructors to grab them, but because of money problems I usually don't upgrade.

8. Am I going to war too early? I notice normally when I seize planets my debt gets worse ... high spending, low population, and I have to build the Transport + fund an invasion tactic.

9. Am I mishandling treaties? I usually try to get all the treaties (both Research and Economic) from all major races as fast as possible. I don't get treaties from minor races since they're the ones I invade first all the time. Getting the treaties is usually pretty easy since I've got more than enough tech to offer an attractive package. The problem though is I don't know precisely when the AI gets willing to trade though, so sometimes I miss a couple of treaties, and worst of all, the AI generally doesn't want to trade for well over a year, all the while during which my economy is burning.

10. Am I simply using the wrong strategy? Perhaps AllLabs doesn't work in ToA, or perhaps it doesn't work on the particular map settings I use? Or maybe selling tech is something to expect with AllLabs? If so, it'll just get worse when I move to higher difficulty then because I'd have to sell my Diplomacy and weapons techs too ... and it means I can't turn tech trading off.

Please help

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Well, remember that all that research costs money. And the research buildings cost maintenance. I'm a big fan of building NOTHING on newly colonized planets until the population gets high enough to make some money via taxes. Credit goes to Mumblefratz for this crazy-sounding-yet-definitely-helpful technique. The initial colony generates 14rp I think, which is not too shabby. Try building nothing on new planets. Your ecomony will be much easier to manage.

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Like KrazyDock said, don't build anything on new colonies until they reach at least a positive income, perferably only once they reach max population. Set those to focus on research until then (while they have no buildings). This strategy, among others I picked up from Mumblefratz, makes even suicidal difficulty seem like child's play.

I would build mostly economy buildings on the homeworld to start with. The more BC you make, the more research you can fund. I think the Alterian's first spamable real econ building is the Adv. Market Center, which you need to research Xeno Economics to get. Once your economy is stablized, then you can start building more research buildings. Don't forget to make a few econ-centric worlds to fund all the research though.

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'Scuse me while I trim and fiddle with this...

-What Difficulty are you playing on?

Number of anomalies: Abundant

-So you are getting additional sources of exploration out there right? To increase the rate of $$$ anomolies. (Not sure on the size limitations as to how many are effective unfortunately)

I use +40% economy and +40% research, with Altarians as default race choice and Technologists as default party (I love tech!).

-IIRC, increasing your tech bonus simply allows you to spend more than normal on tech, it doesn't actually give you a bonus, though I'm pretty fuzzy on this. You would do well to either wait for someone who knows what they are talking about to answer, or have a quick search of the forums for some of the excellent stuff others have put up about it.

-You might have touched on something already, how do you start to balance your income/spending? You must eventually balance it after a few turns, otherwise you would rapidly end up thousands in debt.

What am I doing wrong?

1. Am I leasing too many Labs to start with? I normally lease the homeworld full of Labs, except for two spots (for Tech Capitol and Social Matrix). This game I leased 2-3 and then eventually the Technological Capital, but I still had to sell tech to stay alive.

-Yes. Remember you are now putting your empires FULL capacity to work. Whatever you usually start off with building-wise in a "normal" mixed Fact/labs approach, try 1/2 that many labs.

Also, while I'm not a guru on all labs strats, I'm linking Lease & money trouble for a large portion of the problem here.

2. Am I colony-rushing wrong? Usually I lease buy 2-3 Colonizers, depending on how many worlds I see, and I might lease more if I see high PQ planets about.

-Again with the leasing, I would wager very strongly that this is where your problems are.

-Trade is worth very little in monetary terms, it's best use is to make other civ's like you. I doubt that pretty much any amount of trade would help you.

-Anything with Pop growth or +econ would be highly recommended, obviously don't sell your diplo techs to the AI, and there are some techs the AI values much more than others, though it you are taking the shirt off their back anyway, I doubt it will matter much. As you mentioned, the Goverments will probably be a good thing. I have always considered the morale techs to be vital, as as you pointed out, they allow for much more taxes, and taxes account for a large portion of your income.

-Seems good, though I think you might be a bit hasty on how many labs you have early. Also handy to get some Econ on your HW as it will by default have a good size pop, or any other large pop world. Though the nothing on early planets thing is a definate goer.

-Depends on what you call reasonable morale, but other than that, the only thing to mention is that morale is a world by world thing, once you can no longer maintain 100% on all, consider which world need it and plan some +morale improvements (especially the nice 1BC for +20% or better ones if you can get them early)

7. Am I mishandling resources? If there's some nearby I lease Constructors to grab them, but because of money problems I usually don't upgrade.

-There's that L word again. If you see any resource, I would grab it, if only to ensure someone else doesn't, but I would definately fully develop an Econ or morale resource.

8. Am I going to war too early? I notice normally when I seize planets my debt gets worse ... high spending, low population, and I have to build the Transport + fund an invasion tactic.

-This one is difficult, it's more of a timing thing and depends greatly on the situation at the time, but war is often an expensive excersize. I tend to prefer a slightly later war than many here, but for you at the moment, I would advise you hold off until you are more stable economically. After all, someone you are at war with is someone you can't tech whore yourself out to.

-I have found that the MASSIVE asking price for the AI treaties inside the 1st year is not even close to worth it. I would suggest putting this off until later, but if you have 30+ techs and they have no money, then yeah, grab that econ treaty.

-I would suggest that tech selling is something to expect early with an all labs strat, though as mentioned earlier, I'm not an expert.

Overall, I think you may just be pushing your tech too hard too fast in combination with leasing (which, IMHO, should only be done either when you expect to win so soon, the cost per turn of leasing would work out better than buying, or when you simply must have that project/ship/whatever next turn or face significant losses.)

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I do not play TA and do little of the ALL Labs strat. There was a thread discussion I had recently with Mumblefratz and some others on beating it at Suicidal that touched on several of your items. Nonetheless, some aspects should be common to both DA and TA.

First, apparently there is a limit on the number of techs you can gain by research in a turn. IIRC, it is N+1 where N is the number of planets you own. Thus, early in tech trees, when the research points per level are smaller, you may "waste" resources. That is, if you shift to, say, engine tech after several turns of building labs, you may advance only 2 levels when - if you had 3 planets - you would have advanced 4 levels. The point is, that you may need to fine tune your research budget every turn. The second point here is that a heavy research approach would seem to require at least some minimal expansion. The simplest approach to this is to use the initial colonizer quickly and to convert the miner to a colonizer and use that quickly, also. The micromanagement can get high here, very high. For example, you could SAVE before hitting the Turn button, then experiment and iterate with the sliders until you found the precise settings that got you the tech advancement you wanted, with no excess. Once found, go forward, then hit SAVE before the next Turn, rinse and repeat.

Second, tax revenues grow directly with population, but maintenance costs are a constant. Thus, a low pop colony will not generate enough funds to balance its own budget. Thus, any building you put on a low pop world will be a drain on your budget, so choose carefully if you build anything there at all. Note, that any world you invade will have a low pop and still have all its pre-invasion buildings and their maintenance charges. Thus, almost every invasion produces a budget hit until that world's pop rises a lot, by natural growth or pop transfers.

Third, one quick help is to run quickly through Translator-Diplomacy-Trade just to get the Economic Capital and build it on your high pop homeworld. You'll want those techs anyway, to build the Translator good for the Diplo bonus (and to deprive all others of it), but also to be able to sell Trade as soon as possible to other AIs, especially Minors. Let them set up the Trade routes to you. Yes, they get more BCs out of them than you do, but it's still free BCs for you and their money is what you will be selling those techs to them to get back! So, the more BCs the minors have the better!

Fourth, if you rely extensively on leasing, then you may need either to win early or grow a huge economy to support it. The latter would seem to be tough if you get past the early game and Medium or larger warships begin to appear.

Fifth, I think the Purple mining base bonuses to Research do not consume resources. I could be wrong but - if true - then you may want them and their upgrades to get a higher priority. Certainly, the Green Economy ones should always be sought and upgraded. I've not seen much gain from the Yellow Morale ones in taxes. That is, the morale seems to approve some with each, but I've had little luck in raising taxes from them. Instead, I'll see the morale from my current tax level go up then, if I push up the tax rate even one more unit, the drop off is where the old drop off had been after that same one unit increase. YMMV, but that seems to be what I've seen.

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Quoting LTjim,

reply 4

Are you sure? It would surprise me if the bonus is free. Most "bonus" points, whether research or production, are charged at 50%. I've never heard/read anywhere that resource mines would be any different.

I just did an experiment which suggests that this bonus is NOT free. I loaded an old save where I was spending 1388 bc on research and 1730 bc on "bonus production/research". I destroyed two of my own mining starbases on reserach mines (not fully developed; I think they were +14 and +34). On the same turn, I checked the numbers and they were unchanged. Knowing that this might simply be a case where the numbers are not updated right away, I hit the turn button and the new numbers were: reserach spending 1388 bc (unchanged) and bonus production/research was down to just over 1000. A big drop. I was paying for all of that bonus research.

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I've been going without building on colonized worlds for a while, although it alone doesn't do much good. Instead I realized in my last game something I can do to solve half my problems: instead of simply reseaching the Shrine of the Mithrilar, I build it on my homeworld, which lets me pump my tax rate by ~50% and although I'm still deficit spending I deficit spend a lot less. This lets me balance my budget with comparatively little tech trading. Now I'll probably mass more leases, just to put my new-found $$$ to use.

I've been a bit reluctant to sell the Trade tech. Yes it nets money and the AI thinks quite a bit of it, but it does give Diplomacy. Still worth it? What about the trade good ... with All Labs those usually take so long to build I just lease it from the day it's available and burn a big hole in my economy. Regarding upgrading resources ... to do that, I have to either lease Constructors, or put focus on Militay (= no Social). It's a bit dubious. Still worth it?

I started playing at Beginner (was the first time I played GalCiv too, won that game without even building a single warship @_@), then cranked the difficulty up gradually. My last game was Masochistic; I think I still have a chance of winning although my computer burned out so I can't play right now.

To cope with the AI's improved powers at higher difficulty I might need to go to war sooner, economy not withstanding. War would be best before the AI builds its first combat ship,but just declaring war is hard because even with AllLabs it's still ~16 turns to research Planetary Invasion and then another ~7 turns to build a Transport while my labs churn through the different invasion tactics, and then even more turns for the Transports to get to their targets, all the while during which the AI might just build a couple of cheap ships and thwart the invasion

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ok one major flaw in your strategy is leasing. I NEVER lease, expecially early on because this absolutly KILLS your economy.

Also, i too am a tech player, however, its much better to have economy first off. Building labs at the begining is ok, however too many wont do you any good. I build maybe 1-2 labs, but i first buy a few factories, and then start to build colony ships.

Also, early on u dont need 100 percent morale. i usually have 60-70 percent. This keeps population growth high, and i get money in. So, i say build more factories on ur homeworld than labs. I usually build some research worlds AFTER my eco is bringing in more than 500 plus after its working at 100 percent effciency

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