Depression Planets

[Hydro]

Around turn 250 I noticed I was getting messages of planets scrapping buildings for lack of maintenance (I'd gotten them before, but had ignored them). Looking further, I found that there were a half dozen or more planets in my 250+ planet empire that had maintenance that was twice their taxes, and no planetary grants (my empire split is 40 grants, 40 military, 20 research). There were chronic shortfalls. The result is that there was zero building (even on the planet with 14 industry DEAs), infrastructure improvements, terraforming – nothing. Nothing, that is, but a merciless slide to the bottom. What was strange is that these worlds had no real rhyme or reason. One was a captured human world with 100B pop, and another I can recall was a settled world deep in my territory.

I tried upping my grant budget, which did no good. The planet still wasn’t getting any grants (according to the eco summary, at least). Then I switched my empire budget from balanced to savings. This whacked my economic output, but did the depression planets no good (likely because they had no money to start with). Increasing planetary taxes came nowhere near making up for their shortfall, with 3500 maintenance and ~1800 economy (and that was on a 100B planet!). Then I took drastic measures and scrapped mining DEAs (it was a very poor world – the Human AI empire set that up, obviously). This did not good, either, except cleaning up something I should have done when I conquered the planet ages ago.

So my questions:
* It is my understanding that income is derived from economic activity, like mining and production, and trade. Anything else? These depression planets lack production. Because they aren’t making anything, they have no income. Rinse, repleat.
* What do you pay maintenance on? I looked under the DEA, improvements, and other items descriptions and I can find nothing that tells me what costs what.
* Why do these planets fall into this death spiral? Other planets with similar pop have economies 100,000+, yet these poor blighted planets have economies of 1800. What gives?
* Are there certain key structures that need to be built? Some (but not all) of the worlds lacked space ports for some reason. They could have been scrapped before I noted, but I’m not sure.
* Has anyone else seen this? If so, what did you do? Any ideas on how to reverse the death spiral?

[Whoha]

Check if you have really large standing armies at the planet, that will kill you.

[Whoha]

Also industrial production = gdp so put atleast 3 industrial deas at the start of the game, and then rip out mines and farms later on when you can to put more industry and research deas.

Check the planetary economy screen to see where the money is going. Pollution,maintainence(what happens when you invade a planet with 4 armies and just leave them there, disband them immediately),gifts to empire,etc are all killers. Also check and see if you are spending too much on production, supposedly you can overdrive to 8x and more, but it doesn't get you anything except a waste in money.

[Whoha]

Infact, from reading your post thats what it sounds like. You conquered the human empire, and just left a huge standing army on the planet.

[Hydro]

I'll check, but I almost always disband an invading army so they get cycled back into the pool. Maybe I forgot this time. But, what about my interior worlds?

I've already eliminated the mines and the farms. All that's left (that the AI didn't disband because of maintenance problems) are gov, military, and industry.

With no budget to terraforming the planet has been slipping, and population emegrating. Farms are now on Toxic. Bad news, and an even better reason to remove them.

[Kloreep]

While bio and mines (and spaceports) are probably the best source of income, industry DEAs should be giving you a decent economy too - enough to pay maintenance, anyway.

Do these planets have specials like Rapid Rot, Hostile Gases, etc? Specials like those can realy drive up maintenance costs. And, worst of all, I don't think Rapid Rot can be terraformed away with any technologies. (Hostile Gases can.)

[Whoha]

wow thats fairly weird, never had that happen in a game outside of having tons of troops at the planet. Maybe system ships and orbitals are eating up maintenence.

Also for whatever reason I don't have to continue to fund terraforming after it is finished, I have the long live leaders mod, no spy mod, and encyclopedia mod, any idea on where that is coming from?

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Whoha
Also for whatever reason I don't have to continue to fund terraforming after it is finished, I have the long live leaders mod, no spy mod, and encyclopedia mod, any idea on where that is coming from?

Terraforming maintenance is automatically added to your maintenance expense figure. The terraforming slider is only for the initial investment in the change (the most costly part).

Unless you mean the maintenance cost doesn't rise after terraforming? I've never actually watched it.

[Whoha]

ah, thanks Kloreep, thought you had to keep the slider set.

[Hydro]

I looked into my worst planet:

Troops - none
Terraforming maintenance - none (it had reverted, or was reverting)
No specials that impact maintenance, other than being Red 2 (which is very hard on humans and causes 2x maintenance cost) with nasty gravity (which depresses production, and therefore income)

After some TLC it looks like the planet is pulling out of the depression. I can't pin it on one thing since I did many.

One startling event: my empire income increased 2x in about 5 years. This impacts research and military, and also grants to planets. I think this was the key - there was more money to spread around, and that helped it get over the maintenance hump so it could start making things.

How did this happen? I switched from Balanced to Savings. Initially this hammered my empire budget (a decrease of ~10%). Then, it started jumping by huge amounts. I'm thinking that as planets 'saved' their surpluses grew, then they granted this income back to the empire. Therefore, my galactic budget grew by huge amounts (from 30M to 85M!) in about 5 years. There may be other explanations for this, such as a new tech that increased $$ (the only one I can think of is one that mitigated gravity effects, which would increase production and therefore income).

This suggests a new tactic for mature economies - switch to Savings.

Hydro

[bakalov]

Heh, 1800 economy is too small for 100B planet. There must be something wrong with it .... no government? unrest? I don't know .... I usually play with 0 imperial, 0 system taxes, and the planets are ~37%. The empire gains its money from internal trade (about 500k / turn at turn 250). I looked at my capital and its income is ~470K which is more than its GDP. It is true that there was a government DEA with +102% Economy -65 Unrest, but I still wonder how the tax income may be > than the GDP.

The trade income is unsignificantly small when compared to the tax income - about 5% or even less. May be this is a thing that should be tuned too ...

[Whoha]

I think income vs gdp is screwed up right now.

[bakalov]

May be they multiply the tax income by some kind of variable; they should have multiplied the GDP with the same one ..... This way it would be more realistic.

[BenRipped]

The problem is in the CODE! The MORONS at QSI set a limit of only 10 planets per turn to receive GRANT monies and its even worse when you colonize a new planet(s) in a turn... ALL of the GRANT money goes to the NEWLY COLONIZED planet(s)! The code will cycle thru the planets and the ten in most dire need get grant money... except when a new planet is colonized.

To work around this I've started colonizing up to eight to ten planets in a turn once I have about 75 planets and then wait for at least five to ten more turns before colonizing more planets. Also build up your ECONOMIC boosting buildings like RESEARCH, & STOCK facilities. Watch your pollution and keep it less than 1/2 of your building & maint budget per planet... A little Micro Management goes a long way.

Change your payout distribution to ~30% Research, 60+% Grant & what is needed to keep your planets happy... out of revolt makes up the rest.

Also check your TAX levels. They should be as high as possible without causing a revolt condition... check in the Planetary screen per planet and look in DEMOGRAPHIC/UNREST and keep it at or very near ZERO.

Also watch your LEADERS! Some of them cause UNREST! (Unrest + 5% BAD! Unrest - 5% GOOD! ) FIRE the BAD LEADERS!

[Stormhound]

Yeah, I'd have to agree that whoever made the "top 10" decision...which wasn't made until very late in development...wasn't firing on all cylinders that day. It definitely would've been better left as some sort of player decision on how to spread the money, or else spread to some percentage of worlds rather than just 10.

[Hydro]

Ah, that explains why truly needy but 'developed' planets are starving, and a newly colonized planet is getting 500K in grant monies (as I've seen in my later games wehn my economy is huge, and newly colonized planets small). I can see it now: "Greetings from the Emperor - Congratulations on founding the colony Po Dunk Two! Here's a half million dollars. Spend it wisely!"

This means that setting Imperial grant budget to very large percent of your total budget in mid and late game is completely pointless since it makes the planet econ AI go into the deep red. Basically, it can't spend the money even if it wanted to because the economy can't utilize that kind of cash.

Early in the game I always set my grants at 60% or more to goose my early development. Of course, I'm dealing with relatively small amounts of $$, so the AI can't waste it to the same degree. Now I'll back off to target at total allotment of +50K/planet for 10 planets (total 500K) or less.

[Whoha]

How does additional research spending work?

[BenRipped]

Also UNCHECK the PAY BACK to the EMPIRE BOX!

Late in the game set your planetary build sliders to just hit the light Yellow. This leaves money in the planet's bank for future use instead of blowing all of it on POLLUTION management.

[WhiteCrow]

does it worth that micromanaging economy of 100+ planets? I think not.

After all, I can't tell if the slider is yellow or red if it's at 2% or 3%

[bakalov]

I currently have ~260 planets. They all do very well. I use imperial and system tax at 0%, and most of the planets are at ~37%. The only micromanagement I use is to keep the spending on the 10 richest planets (with largest income) at 1% building and 1% science, so they have their banks overflown and are giving the excess money to the empire. This way my empire treasury is filled with ~5M AUs each turn so there is a lot of money to be used by the developing planets. This way my developing planets can use all of their income (not paying imperial or system tax) and some are getting pretty good grants too.

[bakalov]

Hydro, later in the game I found it more efficient to colonize with colonial armadas (12 colony ships with many colony pods each). A big empire can afford it and in result it will have a functional colony for a few turns rather than a puny colony struggling for life. This way the planet will be directly full of pop, having a good starting economy. Of course you can want your new colonies half full, or 1/4 full - just colonize them with the proper amount of ships.

In the previous MoO it was allowed to build "housing" in order to increase pop faster. Here is almost the same - you spend production and in result you get more pop. The difference is that it is not the same planet which is spending the production.

[WhiteCrow]

That makes sense -- I'll try it right now. By chance I'm just planning to crush my neighbor Ithkul empire...

[Hydro]

Bakalov, later in the game I've found that by colonizing with one pod then setting migration I get a huge influx of people from my overpopulated worlds at the core. This can be destabilizing since it raises unemployment, and if I have no or little ship garrison then pirate attacks run rampant. So, I'm not sure I like your massive colonization idea since the extra population doesn't produce much except for the intrinsic (but minimal) industrial capacity of a population.

That said, I'll try it just to be sure!

[bakalov]

Hm, the industrial capacity may be quite good with the apropriate techs - the last "antaran x" tech; the imperial university gives influence at once; neural implants give a boost from the start too. You can start with several hundreds of industry.
Other benefit is that the planet can be fully terraformed in 1-2 turns; you can choose the race that will live there (of course, I like most my own) .... Your way may bring several races to the planet, and this may lead to the inefficiency of the planet later.

Probably I can bring several more reasons but of course, there is much truth in your words too. I completely agree with the need of garrisoning. Probably both of the colonization ways have their plusses and minuses.