Top Tips Wanted!
from 
Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
#1: "Buy in lump sums ... sell in leases that run 50-100 turns."
Buying in lump sums forces you to manage your cash flow better. Selling in long leases helps to ensure that you'll have a reliable cash stream throughout the game (and also helps keep you from getting too much cash on hand to blow through too early).
Exceptions abound, of course: What if you absolutely must by those techs or ships just to keep pace or stay alive? Sure, in cases like that, buy on a lease plan ... but obviously this should be avoided when possible.
#2: "Freighter Queue"
You'll want to establish trade routes that are less likely to get killed off when war starts, and keep in mind that you can have all trade routes going to one planet! So an ideal situation is to have a minor civ 'behind' you in the corner running all your trade routes back and forth.
But often times you'll have to trade across dangerous bits of space, and no doubt you'll eventually begin to lose freighters if war breaks out ... so: Freighter Queue!
For each trade route you have, produce an extra freighter and send it in a direction opposite to that of your core routes. You'll get the message that you have maximum trade routes, but that's o.k. Just park the freighters outside those planets and should you lose a route or two, you've now immediately got routes back up and running as opposed to having build more freighters during war and waiting for them to go across the galaxy when you desperately need the routes running.
Buying in lump sums forces you to manage your cash flow better. Selling in long leases helps to ensure that you'll have a reliable cash stream throughout the game (and also helps keep you from getting too much cash on hand to blow through too early).
Exceptions abound, of course: What if you absolutely must by those techs or ships just to keep pace or stay alive? Sure, in cases like that, buy on a lease plan ... but obviously this should be avoided when possible.
#2: "Freighter Queue"
You'll want to establish trade routes that are less likely to get killed off when war starts, and keep in mind that you can have all trade routes going to one planet! So an ideal situation is to have a minor civ 'behind' you in the corner running all your trade routes back and forth.
But often times you'll have to trade across dangerous bits of space, and no doubt you'll eventually begin to lose freighters if war breaks out ... so: Freighter Queue!
For each trade route you have, produce an extra freighter and send it in a direction opposite to that of your core routes. You'll get the message that you have maximum trade routes, but that's o.k. Just park the freighters outside those planets and should you lose a route or two, you've now immediately got routes back up and running as opposed to having build more freighters during war and waiting for them to go across the galaxy when you desperately need the routes running.