Taxes or Population?

I've often wondered this myself, but I haven't tried it yet. I might have a go later and see if it makes any difference. There are several ways to do it: one is to do all the maths and work it out on paper, another is to test it in game.

i.e. Start a new game on the biggest map, with one opponent. Save the game to preserve the world, and then rush buy farms and entertainment centres (building nothing else). Fast forward to turn 50 or so and check your economy. Then, reload the game and build market centres, fast forward again and compare.

Hmmm, I tend to have the morale racial bonus's so once I settle a few planets I usually up my a approval rating from 50% to 75% so I can get them producing people faster, I'll usually alternated that every once and a while to help my colonization waves (not really waves but w/e) up their populations and keep my economy afloat.

If you go for pop you will also get an influence boost, and if you drop your taxes for the first few turns you get more people faster who can then pay taxes later on buy their morale buildings which then further increases their happiness allowing a higher tax rate so you can buy more... etc

I go with the diplomacy and social production bonuses, but the last game I played I ended up with 100% moral on every planet and 1000BC surplus per a turn. I don't have an active militry though, its purchased when I need it. Most of the cash comes from my best planet, which is just economy centers, economy capital, mind control center (for 100% extra economy) and a farm or two.

Heres a good rule of thumb: Never build farms.


Ok, want something more specific?

Unless your planet is at or above 12, don't build a single farm.

Oh yeah, and just take the maximum allowed bonus to economics and morale, and you will be able to have the spending slider alllll the way over to the right, AND get away with taxing your people unto oblivion. And once you start getting certain techs/galactic resources, you'll find that you can tax them to their very limit and still have a very high approval rating.

MUA HA HA HA HAAA .

To snatch a quote from a magic card:

"The peasants labor for my benefit. I approve."

Ah now, I disagree, I always build at least one farm on every planet, and several on larger planets. Having a big population is a huge benefit to economy, plus you get much harder to invade, and get a lot more influence. Morale isn't normally too much of a problem if you build all the morale trade goods, research the morale techs, and ideally grab a morale resource or two. The lots-of-farms technique has worked winning on Suicidal.

Alex, are you talking about 1.0X or the beta? With taxes being switched to the square root of the population, farms are never worth the cost of a tile unless you've got a big bonus tile to put one on. And then, only build one. Building more than that doesn't mean you'll lose the game, but it does mean you get less revenue than you would if you build economics improvements.

When taxes were directly proportionate to your population, I always built a farm on each planet. Income worlds would have a mix of farms with morale and economics bonuses. Now, farms just suck. Don't build them under normal circumstances.

Saying that farms sucks now is silly.
Taxes never were directly proportionate to the population, in any version of the game.
I usually build at least one farm+morale+economy-buildings at pq-10 or better planets in 1.1-beta. Works fine for me.
Ain't it nice that it's possible to play in different ways?

I always start with lots of taxes (59%), and lower them slowly along the game. A good mix of morale buildings and farm on everyone of your planets contribute a lot to your influence, money and invasion capabilities.

And if someone says "But you loose 3 factories(or research) because of your farm and entertainment", I'd say the tradeoff in money/influence/defense is worth it.

Now I always take "population growth bonus", since the 1.1

This might be considered as na exploit ( atleast i feel its not right) i always set the tax so that my approval rating is 100% at the start of every game, then rush to ION DRIVE and sensors techs buy 9speed surveys ( i buy only 1 colony ship a start) and get all the sweet cash anomalies, i usually get 10000 just from anomalies ( + all other bonuses ) before the first council meeting. Remember 100% gives a big boost to your population growth so you get more money and later in the game when you mine all those morale resources or build some galactic wonders you can still have an approval of 100% with the max. tax rate ( 80%?).

I prefer a lower tax rate, with a higher population.

You have more people to defend against invasions, and to fill up your own transports. 5k planets are easy to take with one transport, I find.

Influence is partly a function of population as well. So get money and influence.

Also, if you really need cash fast, you can crank up your tax rate for a short term boost. If you had gone high tax low pop, you can't do that. So high pop low tax gives you more flexibility, imo.

My current game (as slightly modified Terrans, gigantic galaxy - I control about 40% of it) I'm running 4k surplus with a 30% tax rate and a 93% approval rating. I could easily pull in 15k a turn if need be.

Get that economy up and running fast. Without gold pressed whatever, you can not finance your military or research. A farm changes your pop cap on colonies from 5 billion, to 11 billion people or more. double your pop, double your tax income, increase your influence, increases your tourism income....that farm is worth billions of gold pressed whatever. Find and mine a moral resource, and happiness is not a problem. Having the 25% population growth at 75% approval really helps early in the game, and even late in the game, when I am build troop transports with 3 billion troops. Run that approval up to 100%, and never have a population problem, from cranking out troops.

I play most of my games achieving 80% capped taxes, and all of my manufacturing/reseaching running at 100% failrly quickly. I use farms when my approval is at 100% on planets.

Yes I use a lot of entertainment buildings/upgrades, but I find that its a solid backbone to branch off of when things start heating up mid game.

More pop gets you more money/influence and soldiers. When I send a beefy transpot with 5 Adv Transport moduals on it into the galaxy, I need to get those guys somewhere.

Its all playstyle. Farms certainly fill a role in my playstyle.

I will agree with lower your taxes to get the bonuses is the best! i use to try to balance max tax vs max effeciency in my production. and i was having issues with my planets flipping. After reading about this on the forums i tried out dropping my tax from 70 to 30 percent... at first i didnt see the point i was strapped for cash my production went south but my peons where happy But about 10 to 20 rounds later i was rolling in the dough my effeciency was max and i was cranking out both social and military stuff Ez!

Happy cows make good milk!

Plus as stated above if i was really pressed i could whip out the max tax and pull in godly amounts of money to buy those troop transports / constructors to rush my enemies! DIE TORIANS DIE!!!

On the other hand, if you tax them unto oblivion but then use that tax money to rush-build harmony crystals and the like, the net effect is one of high taxation AND high happiness.

Dead cows make good steak!

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I'm finding that in Beta3 its a lot easier to "Max" your economy. Meaning that I have a 95+% avg approval rating, 100% spending (all 3 sliders still set to 33%, however), and I'm still getting hundreds of bc's per turn in surplus. Kinda surprising really, especially since it happened really early in my latest game (around when I got medium hulls).

I'm High tax, low pop. I play on small maps common-abundant, and with only 5 billion (10 on capital) per planet, i usually have 300-500 surplus AND i have 100% morale with 80% tax. High population just makes thinsg very messy as you need to build a lot of morale buildings to keep 'em happy. I'd rather build stock markets to boost my ecnomy, rather than farms.

When I started playing I went high tax/low pop, but I found that after the early game my economy would REALLY be lagging. There was definitely a bit of a learning curve involved, but dropping a couple of farms on each planet of any appreciable size (9-10+) let me get the money flowing. It doesn't really matter if that farm takes up a slot that a factory could be on if you don't have your production maxed out. If you're only producing at 65%, then you're just screwing yourself by building more factories that you can't afford instead of economic upgrades like farms/stock markets, etc.

p.s. In 1.0x, btw. I have no idea how farms work in the beta.

Both methods can effectively generate a surplus for your economy, however.

If you want to win miliarily, it's handy to have transports with troops on board...
...and you can't buy population.

I like farms

I think that you generally do much better if you have at least one farm on decently large planets, which for me is any planet with about 8 or 9 Planet rating.

First, I do not put a starport on every planet. In the games I play, I have not needed it. It may be wise early if you want to put cheap defending ships on every planet. But by mid game, its pretty stupid to worry about having a starport on every planet when you cannot even use it to build reasonably useful constructors.

To that end, the only decent uses of any square on any planet are super projects, trade goods, research centers, and economic buildings. I tend to designate any given planet as either an economic center or a research center. Economic centers only increase economy by a given percentage of the tax income. So building 1 farm has a much greater effect then just one more stock market will.

Anyway, I like to have at least 2 factories on a planet, so that upgrades happen in a reasonable time frame. Its simply retarded to have a farm and no morale structure. So you will need at least 4 or more squares. Now, a planet wtih 1 morale structure, a farm, and 2 factories, is just stupid. If your going to build a farm, its best to do so on planets with at least 7 squares. Also worth considering is that Embassies also work with populations to increase influence, assuming you care to use them.

Population has the benefits of extra invasion defense, increased influence, and more impact on the United Planets. It gives you something to fill your transports with when you decide you like your neighbors planets, and would like to have them.

The only negative effect of large populations is that they may adversely affect your approval rating when you crank up the tax rate, and that they force you to either research the morale tech, or grab morale mines, or morale trade goods. The benefits outweigh the problems.

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