I think economics improvements are better than farms. You'll spend too much on moral improvements to make a high populated planet worthwhile. But with one, maybe two farms,you can get enough population that doesn't need lots of moral boost, leaving tiles for eco.

You'll need a boost of population. Higher population means :
- More taxes
- More resistance to invasions
- More influence
- More tousism (=> more money), but i'm not sure of this

So yep, you're doing right

I build one farm per planet only. That way i never have to build any morale structures and have all those extra tiles for stock exchanges. With 13billion people (typical planet with one maxed farm). you can have a good morale with taxes in the 70%'s with trade goods and yellow resources. when i get a planet bnear 13b I ship off 3b onto transports to fight for their new home, so I don't generally need more that one farm.  Economic capital planet is different and will either be on a home planet (16 b with no farm) or a planet with a bonus tile for farms. The PQ of the planet that your economic capital is on doesn't matter. Its not like th eother 2 capitals that multiply the effects of other structures. The economic capital only works with that planet's tax revenue. You don't need any other structures to take full advantage of the economic capital.

I also have 'one farm per world' as a rule of thumb. I tend to hold off building farms on class 9 and smaller until I have some progress down the morale tech branch and/or morale resource mines. For DL and DA, I almost never used farm bonus tiles.

With TA's unique tech trees and my bad Thalan fixation, I've started to occasionally use a 300% farm tile b/c it is very unlikely that I'll ever have more than the Xeno Farms I bought from someone early in the game. And I'll sometimes build two or three Xeno Farms on a very high PQ world, especially if there's a morale bonus tile. Proximity to a potential combat zone also makes me more inclined to heavy farm use. I think a few high-pop worlds are a good thing to have in the bank if you suddenly need a bunch of new transports.

The average planet, with the average race, I will build one Intensive Farm and cap off the pop at 14b.  If I've got some good yellow starbases, I will upgrade the Intensive Farms to Advanced Farms.  If the planet has some farm bonus tiles, I will use one of them (preferably a 300%) and let the population grow as it may.  I can afford a few planets to go to 31% approval.   I use all my approval bonus tiles.

If I'm Iconians, I build two Robotic Farms, unless I manage to trade for some good Xeno Farm tech (which is not very often).  Robotic is better than basic Xeno Farm I.  If I'm Yor, two Charging Stalks per planet.  If I've got a Farm bonus tile, I go back down to 1 Robotic Farm/Charging Stalk.  If I'm Yor and have approval bonus tiles, those automatically get Charging Stalks, and I figure out the rest from there.

In terms of Economic Structures, I do the Recruiting Center.  The Iconians build their Precursor Archive and Merchant Emporium on every planet.  Other than that, I almost never build markets, unless I'm going for Influence victory (then I'll do some Stock markets).

yeah, you start getting some hefty morale penalties at higher populations, and eventually it reaches a point where you the penalty cannot be offset in any economical manner (that is, yes you can have a very high population world but you would have to have a very low, if any, taxes, almost all morale boosting structures on the planet(s), and all the various morale techs.)  Needless to say, this would be poor strategy just to get a high pop world.

Yes, but also no.

A DL/DA colony is 6B pop.  Because tax is based on the square root of your population, to make twice as much money you need four times as much population.  So to make twice as much money as 6B population, you need 24B population-or 18B population limit from farms alone (3 farms-3 stock markets would net you 75% more income).

A TA colony is 8B pop.  Following from the above, you'd need 32B pop, or 24B more pop, or 4 farms, to double your income-whereas 4 stock markets will do the same.

With these "low" numbers in mind, it is largely due to morale penalties for higher population that one would prefer to build stock markets, as ignoring that mechanic they are close to equal.

If you build a single farm (which most people do, as it's worthwhile both for influence via tourism and UP voting as well as to support and stave off invasions), in DL/DA you're looking at 12B pop, whereas in TA you're looking at 14B pop.  To double your income you'd need 48B pop or 56B pop, which would be 6 more farms or 7 more farms.

Even without accounting for morale, it is obvious at this point that stock markets are superior.

Therefore, the only time you'd want to build more than one farm per planet is if your strategy involves influence, tourism, UP votes, etc, as opposed to a taxation-driven economy.

That strategy is completely up to you. I build all of my planets to have at least 13billion people. I put 3000 million on my transports (enough to take a 6 billion AI planet with enough population left over). I try not to buiuld those transports until the planet has like 11 billion. But needs may change that, its game / galaxy specific.

I've read a few posts where people have had some very high population worlds just for filling transports. The idea would be to have a transport  built at the same rate that there's enough population to fill it. These planets would probably have fertility clinics (i build on a lot of planets and keep untill all other tiles are filled) and morale structues. I can't get into managing like that so I don't. But i do see the great potential for it.

For what it's worth, population has almost no bearing on population growth rate-at least as far as transports are concerned.  Whether a planet has no farms or eight farms, it's still going to grow population at the same rate-in fact, it's probably going to grow population faster with no farms simply due to being at a higher approval rating.

So scrap your plan for farms and just fill a planet or three with fertility clinics to fill your transports.

(This doesn't apply during the colony rush, but that is to my knowledge not what we're talking about here.)

Yea i tried having a good production planet buiuld ships to be filled on another world, like my tech capital that had full population but no starport. The thing is I launched with the minimum crew (1 million) and must have lost it in transit because a few turns later I invaded a planet of 6 billion with just i million soldiers.   I've learned my lesson since.

And its correct that you don't need a high population world to fill transports, its just that I like to keep my planets making money so I'd like to have at least 7 billion people left. I've never had a dedicated planet though. I just build war ships until i see a high population and then i switch that planet to build a transport. I tend to get a pretty steady stream.

I thought that the higher populations did mean faster growth. Barring a trip over the morale threshold of course. That a population of say 1 million would GROW slower than a population of 1 billion. That the formula for new population per turn used the existing population number somehow. ???? yay / nay?  I play but don't generally get into the numbers. My general rules are... factories build things faster, labs teach you things faster, banks and population mean money, money is good.

To expand on that a little more...

Base growth is capped at 75M/wk.  Default (and common) growth rate is 3%, therefore base growth normally caps at 2.5B.  For a custom race, base growth is 4% (IIRC), so base growth caps at 1875M, rather than the standard 2500M.  For the Torians, who have previously had a base growth of 7% (didn't verify this in TA but it exists in DL+DA), base growth caps at >1071M.

After base growth, you apply population growth bonuses and then the approval growth bonus.

I usually just stick a starport on a few dozen econ planets. If left alone, even the minimal output of the colony building will build one over time, and it's a convenient spot to throw money if you have to spend some at the end of the turn.

My understanding from Mumblefratz is that your civ econ bonus multiplies with the planet's income.  At least, for DL.   In other words, planet income is computed first (stock markets & all), then it is all multiplied by your civ bonus.   If true (and I think it is), that changes a few things.

So the civ-wide bonus does multiply again, that's good to know. I don't think it changes much though, it just means that civ-wide bonuses are really powerful and that it's only the planet's econ bonus (basically the number of existing econ buildings) that should count in terms of the stock market vs farms balance.