You probably should have more dedicated economic planets. You need at least 1 economy planet for each non economy planet, more if you want to have an effective military and build many ships at once.

i would say cut down on the amount of ships but increase the firepower of the remaining ships

to answer the research question I'm up to stock exchange and multimedia center. I control one morale resource that's maxed. I don't remember any anomoly bonuses.

thanks for the replies. I can live with not being good at the game, but lack of understanding bugs me.

I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if its bad race design or not. I wasn't going for maximum effect, just a theme. I think its fun to incorporate my imagination into it.

If the consensus is that you "need" econ bonuses to make an empire work, then that means (to me) they didn't do as good a job with the game as they could of. I should be able to pick any area of focus and make it work.

I still think its fun. i'll continue to go with themes. I don't mind losing if i'm playing bad, its the lack of knowledge that bugs me.


thanks for the help.

Economic Capital on Howeworld is a great asset since the maxed out population in the early turns will spoon-fed the entire pool of planets with fresh income, clear & tax-free!

If you can, try not to glue yourself with (LEASES)... these drain a whole pane of "active BCs" for too long to be considered any efficient even short/term.

It is always better to have a core region where highly populated planets gives a steady output of money (even if only with markets or influence/tourism stuff!) while having a grid of well located Eco-Starbases to supplement these numbers gradually... than it is, to have wide spread tiny outposts without reasonably useful assets which actually takes big chunks of negative BCs right out the global values.

Manufacturing top-of-tech-edge attack forces needs a steadily profitable framework. Otherwise, the maintenance costs outweighs the turn-base pattern of taxation sliders even if increased to compensate.

Then there is also the "dedicated" worlds tactic which puts a focused improving path to any type of planets; namely, the many-factories type, the laboratory/researchs style, etc.

One important thing to me is influence since it provides some welcome extra cash for almost peanuts. And, Trade -- fully developped, active, maxed out.

Oh, and never ever fall behind in the tech-race. Getting "Planetary improvements" first, for example, can drop (for awhile!) the enemies' ratio at more than 35/to/50% lower than yours for the colony-rush phase alone.

That's the essential, for me. Still plenty more to handle in the long run, but the basics, i guess, are above.

- Zyxpsilon.

understanding econ base placement has helped me a bunch in my current game. That has made me a better player for sure.

i mean seriously do you really *have* to have an econ bonus? what about morale bonuses that allow you to handle higher populations or let you put in one less morale building for one more econ building.

Or what about insane soldiering bonuses? You can't handle a large amount of planets but you could reduce them to rubble and wipe out the AI...couldn't you? (maybe that wouldn't work as well on a huge or bigger map).

Its really a shame if that's so. Money was a hefty advantage in civ4 but it wasn't the end-all, must-have trait. The way Iztok is going on about it it sounds like its the *only* viable approach for a race in this game. That's pretty sad if its true.

Is it the same in ToA? I own it but am waiting to play it until they've finished it.