Economic Model Broken

[Bulldog61]

I have 8 colonies now As Population and Culture grows my tax revenue shrinks. What is going on. Is it broke or am I missing something?

[gargoil]

You will need to support fledgling colonies for quite a while before they are self-sufficient. Your homeworld, and colonies with substantial populations already in place that you colonize or invade, will already be able to pay you some taxes.

If you manage to take an enemy homeworld, you will be rolling in bucks. You own fledgling colonies will grow (if of good quality). There main early value is for their resources and there location as fueling and building locations.

[historyis]

I will confirm both those things. I am playing my first game ever of this, and I ended up in a situation where I was the top colonizer of all the civilizations in the game... I picked up a lot of different independent species on more than a few planets, so I could colonize a lot of different biomes and because I was so aggressive in my policies, I was running a deficit for much of what is now the middle phase of my game.

And then I took over a one planet civilization with a few mining stations and I went from deficits to having 80K coming in.

So again, both of the things Gargoil has told you are indeed true from my limited experience.

[Strat_84]

It could also have something to do with ressource prices. I've noticed some ressources like steel now have a price that explodes at a certain state with Shadows. This can nearly double the maintenance costs of what you had built when the steel (and lead, and others) were cheap.

What I don't really understand though, is that some of those prices climb to the maximum while I still have a supply far superior to my demand. Even at the galaxy level the supply massively outweighs outstanding requests. But the amount of goods in transit is also massive so it must be related.

[Ob1ivion]

I would also like to add that rapidly expanding brings a bunch of maintenance costs. You have to factor in defense fleets, if any; new spaceports costs, if any; troops that aren't doing anything on a planet you just took, setting up mining stations in the systems you took, etc. Rapidly expanding isn't always the correct choice of action.

[FerretStyle]

Don't built troops on new colonies unless you invaded it, then dismiss them once they stop being mad about the takeover.

Use a small defense fleet to protect a large area.

Don't build ports on new colonies, except for a bare-bones small port with maybe a medical + recreational to boost happiness. It doesn't need anything else (you probably won't have the resources for it anyway).

Lots of ways to keep costs down.

[turtlefang]

You have to match your expansion plans to the game setting. If your playing with a lot of pirates nearby and an agressive setting, then any new planet than you settle will end up an invasion magnate. Either pirates will raid and invade or hostile races will attack. You can't just expand and put minimum effort and expect them to survive. So you will have to have:

1) defending troops
2) a spaceport than can defend itself

Defensive fleet setting aren't working that well as discussed elsewhere in the forum. A small fleet not going to defend multiple colonies effectively. It usually takes either 2 or 3 medium size ships or one large ship per colony if on the edge or where pirates can get to it.

On less aggressive settings, you can expand rapidly and get away with it.

So you have to decide what is the proper strategy from the start.

Look at your income sources. Building mining stations increases the private economy and ultimately your income. But you have to balance how many to build versus the resources and resource price.

[Plant]

Each starting colony costs -1k each year.
If your population is growing as well as your culture, that should be more than enough to offset it.
Post screen shots comparing two different times please, including your clony screen with tax rate and tax income, and your empire budget screen.

As for colonising aggressively or not, since your only colonising ship production is likely to only be the homeworld, your rate of colonisation is limited at the start.

[paShadoWn]

Wot i think is to scrap the money althogether. It is redundant and superficial. It is supposed to somehow make civilian population useful. Well heres a shocking revelation: it isnt. Civilians are like animals, a natural resource you can harvest and train into something useful like expendables aka ground troops. In times of total war - in proper DW game 'all' times - money doesnt get to exist. Everyone gets what he needs and does what he can. So leaving ppl solely for draft purposes and largely excluding them from game which is about space battles would do good.

Maintenance costs? Superficial and cheesy. Who gets paid these? Nothing. Because repairs are free on spaceports. Purchase costs? Same. What do you purchase when all resources are harvested and carried for free and manufacture is free as well? The most reasonable explanation is that these are actually wages to crew but why they linked to resource costs? Nonsense. And why they ever require wages if they spend their whole existence in space?

The money is here to force player to bloat civilian population and cater about its needs. Thing is, there is no reason. Civilian support? When you can glass a planet it is irrelevant. Labor and manpower is what population provides, and in DW labor is automated. Adding actual pop requirements for ships and bases to be drafted from planets will replace money in a sensible manner.

[Shark7]

Prior to shadows, the compaint was too much money. Now it is too little.

What is truly happening is your resources are very, very important now, since colonies MUST have resources and they are used up to grow their economies. Right now my economy is in the tank because I have resource shortages. I really have to work to find adequate minerals in shadows and I prefer it this way. The resources matter.

[Plant]

Ah, the tax revenue shrinks because the true cost for each colony is included under Colony Tax Revenue, but is not displayed in the Revenue table in the Colonies Screen.
Select each Colony and look at the Tax part under the Info screen to find the cost for that colony.

tm.asp?m=3338649