Something Buggy Happened With My Economy

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was playing a game with the Drath legion with economy set to 30+, trade 10+ and research 30+ (or so). The map size was gigantic with stars set to abundant and I was playing with 9 other civs.

Anyway I played the game as I have always played the game but something rather strange happened. My economy was absolutely crap even though I had whole planets dedicated to my economy. On top of all this, I had upgraded economy starbases in quite a few locations. I had at least 2 adv. market places on every one of my planets. This has never happened before, and the only thing that I have done different in this game compared to the rest is the following: A few defensive ships early on and I started all planets by building 2 factorys.

My taxation rate was high and my economy was losing money rather than gaining. I tryed setting up my military, research and social spending with many different combinations but absolutely nothing worked.

Thats when something bizzare happened to me. I recieved a messege "Your civilization is experiancing an economy boom." I suppose it was due to the fact that I had trade centres and advanced market centres EVERYWHERE. My economy shot through the roof as i collected 500 bc per turn compared to having -50 previously. I decided to spend alot of my money on upgrading all of my planets and improving my economy starbases rather than pumping ships.

Everything was good until 30 minuets later when I was told "The economy boom has ended." In an instant my whole civilization destroyed itself. My income was at -100! Half of my planets instantly rebelled against me and formed a entire new civilization all together! On my HOME planet it used to take me just a few turns to build a ship, now it was taking 100+ turns to build a ship! I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that it would take 80 weeks to research intersteller governments! I had the most powerful race instantly declare war on me and everything was in ruins. I couldn't even build a ship.

But it doesn't end there. As i'm trying to fix the chaos I recieve over 10 000 bc and I have absolutely no idea where the hell this money came from. A few turns ago my money was at -2000+. I quickly spent all of this money building my economy up even more. After spending all of this money it hardly made an impact. My income seemed to level itself out at around 30+ bc per turn. Pretty much all of my 20 (I used to have around 35 before half my civilization wen't to the shit house and rebelled) planets where dedicated to my economy.

I owned hardly any more of the map as the influences of all the other civs completly dominated me. I ended being a little speck on the map. Can anyone tell me why this happened? For the record the other civilizations where set to beginer, with 2 civilizations set to normal.
economics
23,869 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


I can actually see why all this happened but it is very hard to explain so bear with me. I will try to follow it by stages.

What happened at the start was you probably had a lot of Manufacturing resources that were seriously draining your money. If I see a 700% manufacturing tile, I take stock of my economy before I drop a factory straight down as the cost is equal to 7 factories to run that thing. Next, you have to take into consideration your population. If you build infrastructure too early, your pop isnt large enough to provide a high level of tax and you will run into defecit spending. Build your spending infrastructure more sparingly at first and work on getting your pop up.

Add into that Economy bases. It's a bit of a misnomer really as they are more enhancers. Your manufacturing and research expenses will go up with economy bases affecting high spend planets. Basically, Econ bases are for when you are rich and want to spend more money on production and research and you have a high population to gain the economic-side benefit from.

Clearly, the economic worlds you had running were not enough to counter the expenses of the higher spending planets..... coupled with maybe the cost of maintenance, ship maintenance and maybe espionage.

The economic boom you received had nothing to do with numbers of banks.... it's entirely random. It's a useful way to put some money aside for late game but you need to keep tabs on what you are doing. Cranking out a load of powerful ships with higher maintenance will mean you going into the red when the boom tails off.

Next you had another event totally unconnected to anything you did (unless your morale was REALLY low). The new civilization that formed could have happened by random or they could have happened due to overpopulation and high taxes.... hard to tell from your description and without seeing the game.

Next your economy red-lined. Once you hit -2k bc you can automatically no longer spend on anything until your economy re-asserts itself. Thus you were not spending on research and manufacturing and therefore it was showing you the expected time based upon that.

Once your economy sorted itself out, spending started again automatically. You had probably lowered your spending trying to counteract what you saw and over a few turns you had netted 10k.


Basically there's no one thing anyone can say to tell you what you did wrong. I would say that the lessons learned would be something like:

1) If you get a lot of bonus tiles, take your time building them - there's no rush!
2) Be careful in the early game about dropping your manufacturing capital if your economy isnt strong enough to handle it.
3) If you start losing money dont panic. Cut your spending if you need to but dont be afraid to defecit spend. Take a look at your expenditures on your Home screen and see where your money is going then work on that.
4) Population matters. Tax is a far more stable income than trade so make sure you have a decent population to tax. High population is better than high tax.
5) Spread your economy around. It's good to have econ worlds but make sure that most of your planets are running in the black. Get banks on every world even if they only cut a little of the defecit in that planets econ.
6) Use Economy Starbases once you have stabilised your economy or you will keep spiking your econ up and down.
7) Try to build up a treasury for unexpected ocurrences - that Boom could just as easily have been a Bust event!
8) Watch what happens when you do things - it seems a lot of this happened to you without you fully understanding the relationship between the cause and effect. Learn what causes it and then rebuild your strategy to make sure it doesn't happen again.

I am sure there's more but without seeing the game, this is all I could come up with!
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
All Spearthrower said is very good advice (although he did say he upgraded his starbase), and yet I find it very odd that your 35 planet empire gained a net of 530BC with an economic boom and you said you have lots of econ planets. Usually I can pump out over 2000BC per week during events like that, and I never play on gigantic (takes too long), so I only have around 20-30 planets max. The only thing I can think of is why the heck are you using advance marketplace. Generally I rush stock exchanges really fast. I mean you have 35 planets, you should have had plenty of time for that, if not that, at least trade or banking centers... if only for the econ bonus the tech gives alone.

That aside, I'm pretty sure whenever your planets rebel, they give you 10K. It's like a "hey, thanks for keeping us alive til now, we don't really like you, but here's 10k, please don't kill us" fund. That's why you have money. Unlike Spearthrower, I don't think your poor economy could have pulled out 10k in a few turns. I also don't think it was a random event. This seems to be a low morale situation. Whenever you're in the red (in debt with negative treasury), you suffer a morale and production penalty. The longer you stay in the red, the more this penalty applies, until when you reach -2000BC, where your economy stops completely. EVERYTHING, research, production will say "never" when you have -2000BC. This will last until you have positive money again.

Oh, and that +10 trade ability is a complete waste. I often get more out of tourism than I do with all 10 trade routes going at once. It seems like trade REALLY needs a boost. Back in GC1, I remember trade was so important, I couldn't afford to go to war with people. Now, it's such a trivial matter, the only reason to trade is to keep relations up with people you don't want to fight just yet.

Because trade is worthless, economy starbases actually doesn't HELP your economy any. Insteady, economy starbases only help production which means it costs you money. So before you go around sticking economy starbases everywhere, keep that in mind. The only places you should put these things is around your manufacturing centers. The most I would put anywhere else is 1 to help them build their improvements and lower the amount of factories that you have to build.

So give what Spearthrower said a try, but if all else fails, and you just CAN'T keep your money up, use the cheap strategy, buy/trade for techs, and sell it to everyone else that doesn't have it. You'll be filthy rich in no time. Although it might not be so fun anymore.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
(although he did say he upgraded his starbase),


Yeah, I meant the same point as you made later:

economy starbases actually doesn't HELP your economy any


That was what I was indicating, if I worded it a bit poorly! I meant they enhance whats there so it actually costs you rather than being truly an "economic" base.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That aside, I'm pretty sure whenever your planets rebel, they give you 10K. It's like a "hey, thanks for keeping us alive til now, we don't really like you, but here's 10k, please don't kill us" fund.


Ooops! Missed replying to that...... I didn't know that happened never having had a planet rebel, so if that's the case then that seems like the 10k boost. I was just assuming that he had tried to counter his loss by setting his spending low.... still hitting the -2k limit then his economy correcting itself and making a lot of money over a few turns thanks to his no spending slider.

Your suggestion seems more valid!
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There is a bust event? I guess I'm lucky I haven't run into that. I've had the boom event like 8 times.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I had both the bust event and the alien culture being strong event last nearly a whole game once. That was not easy!
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There is no bust evvent AFAIK, just when the boom event stops, and your economy is back to what it was.
I once had my home planet with a total of +1000% manufacturing. I knew it was a big risk to take, especially since habitable planets were rare, and tech was very slow, meaning I would have a tough time catching up with myself. I built them.

As a result, I started to go into the red, and was kept alive for two reasons. 1: I was lucky enough to get 4 2500bc anomalies, and a statistical 30 factories on my homeworld, (manu capital doubled production), meant I could churn out massive ships very quickly. The price I paid was, until later when I had stock markets, EVERY planet was economy. Economy planets. all (thankfully) above PQ 12, with nothing but farms, entertainment, and economy, and until trade was invented I was still in the red. Then I hit an economic boom, and pretty much used it to use culture to capture some planets, boost my economy more on some, and get my research into high gear.

Moral is: No matter what level, you MUST have a very strong economy to cope. Planets for just economy are a good idea, especially when you have big bonuses. And be very wary of economic booms.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There is no bust evvent AFAIK,


There is - didn't you read my 2 posts where I said there was!

I didn't just make it up for a laugh