Something seriously wrong with Economics

i believe that the explanation is that more citizens are avoiding taxes and as such your tax income goes down at higher tax rates... the manual says that you have to find the "sweet spot"

~SDC~

I don't understand the funding equation either, but it looks like this:
You have N production units. Each production unit, thanks to various improvements, provides a given output at a given cost. For example, with a research lab, 1 unit will get 1.25 research output. Thus you can have more research output than military or social output. Since output costs money (except for the free part), the different output means different cost.
I believe the UI could be changed to make this easier to manage, but it's not very important IMO. You can get used to it.

When you set military or social to 100% is every planet you own producing a ship or social project?

~SDC~

No.

Further problem is that this occurs at the Republic government level. If I change to Star Democracy the deficit triples! If I change to Federation the deficit quintuples! I thought it was supposed to be more efficient, not less.

I really think there is a balance problem in the maintenance cost of improvements vs the benefit gained. As it stands right now, when you reach the end-game your empire slowly crumbles.


~SDC~

The reason is that your +research is a lot more than your +social and +military.

Suppose your "full funding level" is 1000 BC.

You have +200% research, +100% of which is free (made up numbers). So, if you fund research at 100%, you're spending 2000BC to get 3000 BC worth of research. (I.e., 2000+1000 is what you would see if all your production was on one planet.)

You have +50% social, +25% is freee. So, if you fund social at 100%, you're spending 1250BC to get 1500BC worth of social. (I.e., 1250+250 is what you would see if all your production was on one planet.)

It's a lot easier to get +research than it is to get +social or +military. So, funding research more tends to spend more cash. It's not that you're losing money; it's that you're allowed to spend more money on research.

Also regarding the deficit being much higher when you change government types:

make sure you look at the actual spending amounts. You will see that as you change to the better govt types, your whole economy goes up one notch.
So assume you've got income of 100 and expense of 110.
If you go up one level, you'd get something like income of 120 and expense of 132 (+20% on both counts).

That makes your deficit "grow" from 10 to 12 and you freak out
All you need to do in this case is lower your spending a little, and you'll get back to your original deficit, but you'll still be generating and spending more!
You'd go from:

100 - 110 = -10

to something like:

120 - 130 = -10

But you'll have increased your spending by 18% or so.

First off, I'm surprised that people are still surprised that increasing taxes (past a certain point) actually *reduces* revenue! This may be a bit counter-intuitive, but it's the way the real world works, as has been demonstrated more than a few times in the past half century.

There is a famous graph called the 'Laffer Curve'. It charts revenue against tax rates in a free economy. Revenue ramps up nicely to a peak at about 40%, then drops off as the rates get higher.

GalCiv uses this in its economics engine, and apparently modifies the location of the "knee" (the high spot on the Laffer Curve) according to government type. The Empire is the most restrictive form of govt, so the knee is higher (about 57%). Star Federation is the most free and has the highest overall curve, but the kneee is lowest (about 40%). Most players have found that the sweet spot is 36-39% overall. I will tax higher in the Empire phase, during which rapid expansion occurs, then drop back to 37% as soon as I get Republic.

Your first problem is that your taxes are too high. Change to Star Federation. Drop your taxes to 35%, set your sliders equal, then pull back your spending until you have a slight surplus. Spending rates may be a low as 15% at this point, but that's okay. Watch as your revenues increase over the next year. And don't be surprised if 17% spending as all you can manage late in the game.

Also, you (and most everyone else) seem to misinterpret the meaning of the % range on the spending type sliders. Spending 100% on (e.g.) Research does not mean that you are spending 100% of your revenue. It means that you are spending 100% of what you *can* spend, and that may be way more than you can afford.



~SDC~

Problem for me personally is the "instant" gratifcation....

Lets see: You adjust the tax levels lowerinmg or increasing them and instantly you can see the new morale values all over your planets...

Wouldn´t it be nicer that that morale adapts more slowly? Raising taxes for example morale drops rapidtly in a few turns and is adjusting slowly to the néw number of tax payers... Lowering taxes should take much longer time to improve morale (people tend to get angry fast if you take away somthing but take a long time to feel grateful)
It would elimate the cheesy voting system you only can loose an election if you forget to check when is the next election and you would have to plan ahead your tax levels.

Wes
What you are seeing is right and proper, although I agree it is not very intuitive until you have a degree in empire management the GalCiv way. What is happening to your empire is a function of how you manage your game, so I would expect you to see it game after game (until you learn to do things differently). My empires do not "crumble" in a similiar game situation. Most of the info you need has come out on this thread already - if it is not clear, say so and I will give you a consolidated summary - BTW, I feel for ya: I spent ages figuring ths stuff out.

~SDC~
[Message Edited]

#8 - brilliant. Put it on a 'suggestions' thread to make sure someone from Stardock sees it.

Regarding changing your tax rate immediately before the election:

I always thought it was cheesy that you could win the election by dropping taxes immediately beforehand. (not that it never happens in the real world) I always thought that the election outcome should be based on your average morale since the prior election, not just on the last turn. There probably should be more weight given to recent months, rather than making it a straight average.

It would be interesting if the Senate had a little AI behind it. If you control the Senate, you're likely to be able to do what you want - but not always. Like the pre-election Morale cheese.

If you lose the Senate, it might give you a hard time about changing spending levels...

Hmmm.
:notsure:

~SDC~

I don't have anything to add to people's comments on why your economy is tanking, Wes. I think they have pretty much covered it. Your taxes are too high for your government type, plus your research capacity is much higher than your social or military.

I did want to respond to a couple of things other folks said (sorry if I'm hijacking your new thread Wes). In some thread awhile back Frogboy said that tweaking your taxes around too often will drag your morale down. This is supposed to punish you for yanking people's chains to win elections.

DMF, you mention how just about everybody seems to misinterpret the spending percentages. I am one of them. Well, to be hoenst I'd never really worried about exactly how they worked. But if what you are saying is correct (and I don't doubt it), then of course everyone is getting confused.

If the three spending sliders are supposed to be "percentage of maximum total spending in category X" then they should be independent of each other, right? If, for example, your maximum tech spending in each category is 1000, then you ought to be able to spend 1000 in each of them by setting EACH slider to 100%. Or if you only wanted to spend 2500 you could set two sliders to 100% and one slider to 50%, etc., etc.

Of course the game doesn't allow you to do this. It links the sliders together such that they always total 100%. This, I suspect, is one of the main reasons that people assume the sliders are adjusting the percentage of their income devoted to each category. It is the only obvious interpretation of the sliders being linked. In fact it is the only reason for linking the sliders that I can think of, which, since it is false, makes me wonder: Why ARE the sliders linked together in the game? Anyone know?

Vynd, what DMF said about the sliders is literally true: they are the proportion of what you can spend. Hence the total across the 3 sliders is always 100% - you can only spend what you have.

The unintuitive bit is that when you spend as much as you can, you are actually spending more than your income (due to bonus production), and producing even more than that (due to additional free production). To make it even more horrible to describe (or understand), the bonuses in the 3 categories are normally very different, meaning that moving 10% from military to research may cost you a lot more (or a lot less)!

Pls see if the description of this in the new manual is more understandable...

Re-reading DMF's comments I can see how I misinterpreted them. Thanks Raleigh.