ORIGINAL: jscott991
I did not mean to imply that nothing would be done to address the economy in the future; only that it seemed that prior to my purchasing the game, it had been decided to reduce player revenues and that it seemed unlikely that a return to 1.03's economic situation would occur. And after playing some games on 1.03 and then playing on 1.04, I definitely felt nerfed.
The economy in 1.0.4 is much more like the pre-release economy before the economy "broke" and then was "fixed" to the point that it became extremely easy to make money.
My experience does not mirror your's at all, but I don't make it to the mid-game, because I go red in the early game and abandon it.
Three tests, with the following settings:
Human monarchy, 1000 star galaxy, research to normal, only 4 AI players all set to average or distant (I never encountered any), aggressiveness to normal, alien populations rare, no independents rising to empires, homeworld to agreeable, and everything else to default.
In terms of automation, ship construction was set to suggest, agents were taken off automatic, colonization was set to suggest, ship design automation was turned off, and everything else was set to automation.
My empire hits the red within 5-6 years. I run out of cash by that time as well. Most of my costs are associated with construction ships. I declined almost all military ship construction and I stopped building construction ships when I had 4-5 each time. I generally colonized every planet that I could, but I allowed the AI to handle mine construction, with the occasional suggestion (no more than 2-3 in any one game) to build a mine near an empire or galactic prioritized resource.
Thank you for the feedback on this.
How much in the red were you? If you abandon the game when you go red, you may be making a mistake and not giving your economy time to grow and become more profitable.
Good luck.