How to build the best Economy Planet

Hmm. I'm no expert, but I usually try to have at least three industrial type sectors, one "Power plant" type to help increase production, One starport and the rest being "bank" type plots (plus one devoted to an economic capital). Try to build all your freighters at this world, then send them out to the furthest reaches of other civilizations. Build multiple economic starbases capitalizing on trade, and you have a planet that becomes a fairly important economic powerhouse.

An alternative is to research up to the "Economic Capital" improvement, then trade it to all the minor races within your sphere of influence. Assuming they begin building one, immediately go to war with them and land the ground troops to take it over. Then switch all the unecessary buildings that minor race was building to "bank" type sectors. Repeat as necessary, and you end up with a good number (current game has roughly five worlds with "Economic Capital" improvements) of cash planets.

Of course other factors come into play, such as government type, influence and standings with other civs, but that seems to work for me.

Hmm. What I do is I build one factory and 1 or two farms and and depending on the amount of farms 2 or 4 entertainment centres, though take into account your moral and all that. Then I have te rest banks and an economic capital if I haven't used it and voila! A beutiful cash planet that is self-reliant. No need to use trade and your sphere of influence increases with the population which increases tourism. The only reason though that I have my economy self-reliant is because I go to war with allot of people.

Over half my empire is usually economy worlds.
These almost always have

2x farms( or equivelant due to bonuses)

3x Morale ( or equivelant)

Stock markets from here on out.

Occasionally I'll get a planet with either high PQ, and/or Multiple morale bonuses. I've been known to run these up in to the 40B range on pop. They also end up producing in excess of 1500BC/turn . My tax rate after the colony rush on never goes below 59% with approval of 90%+ .

I will take that half and add another 30%!

Bonus tiles aside, the most efficient economy planet has 1 farm, 1 morale building and the rest stock markets, No starbase.

This game is very very stingy economically, i have described before the economy in galciv as being tighter than microsofts copywright policy! As such by the end of most of my games, at least 80% of my worlds will be dedicated to economy only.... thats how insanely tight assed this game is economically!!!!

Hmm Ive run about 25% econ with heavy research; I usually run a deficit and sell tons of old tech to the Minor races, letting them finance my empire. Granted since last patch my strategy ahs suffered to the extreme, its no longer possible to be such a research whore.

Im in process of hammering out new strats, hence the post.

I do like the idea of pumping out a planet that can put out 1500 BC...s

WIll give a try, thnx for the advice all

Mystic, your viewpoint is what I used to think. However, since I've played the Korath, I've seen that you can just steamroll your way to victory, without worrying about econ. Now, this doesn't work with most civs. But if you can take planet after planet, turn after turn, then your economy will somehow keep up. I know it's against common sense, but it does work.

But you're right that you need a strong econ for most civs to make any conquest work. If you don't have a few econ resources to mine, then you have to devote a significant amount of planets to straight econ. On at least one planet I'd build just econ buildings, and one entertainment building (of course the numbers of planets like this needed depends entirely upon map size and habitable planet abundance). No factories. Just focus on social building, and you can build the econ and entertainment buildings without any factories, especially if you can point some astroids towards the planet you're trying to develop. In fact, astroids can help this to a great degree. Many people don't understand how powerful astroid mining can be for planets that don't have factories (tech planets or econ planets). The AI is not so stupid for putting so much value on mining techs!!!

Yeah, the makeup of an economy planet depends on a lot of factors. What is your morale bonus? What morale do you want your pop to have? Tax rate? How far will you research down the farming line?

There is a very fine balance between these that can make a huge difference. If you want high morale and are going to stick to a 49% tax rate - there are optimal build patterns. If all you need is a 60% morale and you want a 79% tax rate, there is a different planet makeup that works best.

Also realize that morale penalties really kick in after 16 billion, after 18 billion, and after 20 billion through 25 billion, and then it levels out. Just start by thinking about the number of farms.
Level 1 = +3 billion
Level 2 = +5 billion
Level 3 = +6 billion
Level 4 = +7 billion

With a pop 12 billion world you probably only want to build one farm, because then your cap is only 19 billion if you research all farm techs, which is under the additional 20 billion morale hit. If you have a world with 6 billion starting, you need to decide how many people you want. If you are OK with "only" 13 billion people, you can get away with building one farm and no morale buildings (assuming empire morale bonus of 100% or higher, in DA you can't get higher than 100%). If you want an easy time, build two level 2s which will limit you to 16b. With one morale building at this level you can get a 60% morale at 79% tax. With two morale buildings you can get 100% morale with 69% tax. Etc. etc. etc. If you want to go to 18 billion per world, then maybe three morale buildings, depends on tax rate and happiness you are looking for.

And yeah, the rest should be stock markets, and probably a factory or two to get the whole thing running. Hope that makes sense.

This is a decent cash planet from my current game. Of course not all planets are PQ32 (wish they were) but pretty much 3/4 of all of my planets PQ11 and above are built out like this. To put this in context I have 6 fully mined economic resources and 6 fully mined morale resources. Also I am currently experiencing the 'Prosperity event'. All of this has to do with the absolute value of the income that I'm getting from the planet at the moment but very little to do with how it's populated (with exception of the morale resources).

I remember the economic workings of Galciv1, in that game you can really push trade income through the roof. As a result of that, you could avoid hitting your head on the economic glass cealing that is so overwhealmingly prevelant now.

In case the above picture isn't legible that's 8347 bc/week and the useless wonder is a Hyperion Shipyard that an AI wasted a tile on before I captured the planet. Regretably my economic capital is elsewhere but it's really only a double Stock Market, it's doesn't double the planets total income as a manufacturing capital would double the planets total production.

ahem... excuse me while i recover from spitting my coffee all over the table while falling backwards off my chair and down the stairs!!!! lol

Mumblefratz, is that a DL screenshot? Getting a 73% approval rating with only two VR centers on an 18.5 billion population requires a stupidly low tax rate in DA. Do you recommend such a low tax percentage?

Also, DL stock markets were 30%, and the base tax rate was different (higher). DA stock markets are 25%. It is much trickier, in my experience, to thoughtlessly build template economy worlds in DA. You really need to know where you are going as an empire to make the most of every tile - in DA.

Anyway, good luck all.

That SS is from Dread Lords. The stock markets all provide a 5% morale bonus and 30% economic bonus, which makes economy a piece of cake in DL.

For my economic worlds, I just put 1 farm and the rest stock markets. I haven't really bothered to see if more farms (and morale buildings) would be better. But hey, 1 farm and all stock markets are the simplest and easiest way.

Yes the screenshot is from DL v1.4 but the 5% morale benefit is gone from the Stock Markets and they only provide a 25% econ bonus in v1.4. My tax rate is 79%.

What makes it easier in DL are the 6 morale resources that give me a total 234% morale bonus. The end result is that I can keep low PQ planets to a pop of 13B at a 84% approval rate with no morale buildings. All my PQ11 and above planets have two farms for a total pop of 20B and 2 VRC's. Since 18.5B is the max pop I currently have I'm not sure what the approval will bottom out at when I reach 20B, but I really don't care as long as it stays above the 41% approval rate required for pop growth (I still need to be able to take transports off). When an election comes around (you can see when its coming in your civ manager) I just lower my tax rate for a turn.

Anyway the point is it really doesn't matter if it's DA, DL or what rev, an economic planet has only economic buildings, farms and whatever morale buildings to keep people happy. If it starts to get to be too many tiles dedicated to farms and morale your better off just keeping your pop lower and cut out all the crap buildings. You don't want research, production, wonders or even a Starport on an economic planet. I keep a Starport on about 10% of all my planets which are all production worlds. Everything else is a money world that funds the development of everything else.


This is probably the most dependable way to go but you shouldn't be afraid to allow your approval dip to the 40% mark, you just need to keep an eye on the upcoming election and cut the tax rate for a turn. At the 20B pop (which is a base approval of 40%) the effective benefit of the 40% VRC is only an approval increase of 16% so it's likely that I'll be able to build another stock market over one of the VRC's once my pop top's out. When you start out it's tough to know exactly where you'll end up so I start out safe and then adjust if I can.

How many factories do you guys usually get on an economy worlds while building the economy buildings, and once you've got rid of the factories, how do you go about upgrading to the next level of economy building without it taking forever? Or do you always just play with abundant asteroids so you don't have to get factories?

Well if you set your focus on social production, you generally don't need factories on econ worlds, because those buildings in general take far less shields to construct.

In some games I don't have but one or no factories on planets and I have super breeder with the 40% pop bonus of 'dont ask' and I can get 18billion like no one's business, which with a little infulence like embasies and some entertainment, can actually but you on the path to infulence victories without a lot of production.

Pluse the money they generate through infulence (toursim) is ually enough to buy most low level fighters to defend with and with overlapping military bases *another thing you can easily afford in this type of game* then you can defend your boarders very very well and the captured planets through influence become your manufacuring hive for aggresive fleets to worlds who don't see 'your point of view' (evil laugh)

I'm still playing DL so I can't answer for DA. But I really don't go into the extreme specialization of economy planets until I have Stock Market to begin with.

In my colonization phase I pretty much exclusively build production planets. I basically go for a Starport and all factories. If the planet is larger than PQ14 then I stop at 12 factories and fill it up with whatever the best econ building I have at the time. I don't build any farms or morale improvements on any planet at this point and I pull 500 colonists off of my home planet every other turn to keep the pop down. Half of the time I use the pop to build up colonized planets instead of colonizing new planets. I let the AI's colonize far more planets than I do but I make sure the planets I do colonize are production powerhouses.

I generally don't build any research buildings and get research focused from production (sometimes I build dedicated research planets but that's a different story).

Once the colony rush ends I probably have half the planets the suicidal AI has but all are pumping out a decent fighter in 8 turns or less. It really doesn't take too much of this to be able to take out your first customer. All the AI planets that I conquer or receive as part of the peace settlement get converted to 100% economy planets. This is usually the hardest phase because it does take awhile to get them setup and generating good income. However, once you've done this the first time you now have the excess cash to simply rush buy any building you want on any planet, you really don't need production any more to build buildings, but you still need production for building up fleets of dreadnoughts.

You ain't kid'n. Even with Altarians, who have a 30% economic bonus, with another 30% economic bonus from customization, +10 from Planetary Improvements tech, +10 from Xeno Economy... and it's still not enough. Most of my economic planets are 3 factories, one farm, one morale and one influence tile (to fight against cultural flips), the rest stock markets. After all buildings are done I upgrade the factories to stock markets too. The most I've gotten from a planet is probably 300+ BC per turn. That is rather pathetic, all things considered. Without Altarians I go broke, it's so pathetic.

Go evil and build the Mind Control Center for another 100% global economic bonus, but forget about any planets flipping to you, the MCC actually stops you from getting any planets by influence but the 100% economic bonus is well worth it. I'm not in front of my current game at the moment but with 6 economic resources my total economic bonus is a bit greater than 400%.

That's another benefit of not colonizing every planet that you can get to, it gives you the time to go for the early resources. Sometimes it's tough to keep hold of them through the early wars but I'd rather have an 'extra' economic resource to mine then 20 'extra' planets (on a gigantic galaxy anyway).

Yeah, but that's assuming you get *any* economic resources. I usually end up with tech resources or military. Actually out of all my games so far (about 7), I've only seen one economic resource. It needs to be tweaked, just my opinion. Which carries next to no weight. Like the value of my life. I should just be killed.

Actually both tech and military resources are good. Getting an early military resource is just as good as getting an early economic resource in my mind, it can make a big difference in that first all-important war. To me it's the influence resources that are useless, I don't even bother with them. It seems most gigantic galaxies (in DL anyway) give you 6 each of economic, military and research resources but often 9 influence resources.

If you want more resources in the galaxy go with abundant anomalies. I guess DA must have cut down on resources as well. I have to admit that everything that I've heard about DA doesn't make me want to be in any kind of rush to play it. I'll give it a try when I finish my current game, but at this point I may as well wait for v1.6.


Sounds like someone needs a good swift kick in the @$$. That or some valium, probably both. As my dead godmother would say as she was about to apply the board of education to the seat of learning, "Wake up and smell the coffee". BTW if you figure out what the hell that means please let me know.   

Sir, I think you were missing my point. What you are saying here is exactly right, but what I'm trying to say is that getting that mix of buildings is much more complicated and requires a lot more planning in DA. Just one farm and the rest stock markets (which others are advocating) is NOT the best setup... just look at the numbers:
Say we have a PQ 10... so after the colony we can deal with 1 farm and 8 stock markets...

max of 13b people with 200% econ bonus

But if we replace a stock market with a farm, you get

max of 20b people with 175% econ bonus, which is a lot more money.

Only, you won't be able to keep those people happy. Which is why you need to start deciding how many people you want and what tax rate and approval you are looking for. How many farms and VR centers are worth the tradeoff in stock markets? It depends on a lot of variables.

To get the most out of your economy in DA (not to be confusing apples with oranges, I completely agree with you on DL) - especially with the 100% morale cap - requires more work than just 1 farm and all stock markets. I can't even give you a template world without a lot more data about what variables you want to be at what points.

Hope I'm making sense.

Actually, I'm not totally disagreeing with you. The real information needed to be able to calculate this is not well known. We do know that tax revenue increases with the square root of population whereas tax revenue increases linearly with the number of stock markets. That fact alone virtually guarantees that its never (economically) right to replace stock markets with morale buildings and farms to get bigger populations. However, the 'constants' of proportionality are not known as well so it could be close.

In my case on DL I can trade three tiles (one farm and 2 VRC's) for an extra 7B pop. Is it more or less total income to do this? I haven't graphed it out because I'd have to make the changes and wait for the pop to stabilize out but this might be something I'll do once I finish my game just so I'll know.

I suspect that in the end there's not that big a difference in the two results. I get more income from the pop but give up the number of stock markets I have. But I also get the benefits of a higher population which is what sways the opinion in my book. The benefits of a higher pop are that my planets are more impervious to attack and I have a better source of pop for my transports. Taken as a whole I prefer the 20B over the 13B planet assuming I'm not losing too much income by doing it.

Now for the case in DA, we have the same tradeoffs but now we have this infamous morale 'cap'. It's not totally clear to me what's going on with the cap but I suspect it's a bit more complex than people make it out to be. Take a look at my posts towards the end of the NLC's and Industrial Sectors broke my economy thread to see what I'm talking about.

Pulling soldiers for transports from an economy planet is something to be avoided, in my mind. Sometimes the situation calls for it, but there should be plenty of other planets hitting the farm barrier you can pull from. Why pull from the one that has all the stock markets?

Why not? They grow right back. Maybe I don't actually pull them off my PQ32.    But I have stock markets on every planet. If I'm going to source transports they're coming off planets with stock markets because towards the end of the game I don't have any other kind of planet.