Dealing with RECESSION

from Stardock Forums
I got a recession that not only didn't end, it was race-specific.

Actually, the "recession ended" panel did appear, but I never could get anywhere near the pre-recession production afterwards.

First, this is my first Galciv game since the OS/2 version. Doing well and staying in front of the Altarians (barely). Built up a nice treasury (6000+). Star Federation and first in Influence, Economy, Tech, and Military. Got the "recession" warning screen but blithely ignored it until I hit -800 negative treasury. All my worlds went bad on Morale, but I had remembered to build Transports at all systems so I was able to keep up morale by reducing the population.

There's two issues here. First, f you drew a line down the middle of the galaxy, all races with HQs on one side were unaffected. Production did not drop at all. All races on the other side tanked - Terrans, Drengin, a couple of minors. What is this, an optical illusion?

I waited out the recession (the Drengin didn't make it), but production never did come back up to previous levels. Post-recession, overall Morale was okay - about 48%. Tried various tax and spend ratios. Nothing worked. After a couple years the Altaraians attacked an ate my lunch.

Obviously one trick is to moderate spending before going negative. But having recovered to a positive Treasure, what could be affecting output?? How does one deal with a recession, and especially, how does one recover?


~SDC~
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Gotta tuff it out. You can't do anything AFAIK to encourage it to end. I always cut back maintenance, etc etc - all the normal economy stuff.

WRT recession only affecting half the galaxy - that sounds like a bug. If you still have save(s) showing this, I think you should send them to Brad - I believe he has an ongoing "show me the economy not working right" challenge out.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
The other quick fix is to remove all your production based items (like manufacturing center) on your back-end worlds. This allows your production points (actually, your money) to be more focused on your most effective worlds, so even with low spending levels some of your planets will still produce reasonably well while your other planets will not be wasting money on their production efforts.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
As soon as I am warned about the recession. I like to see if I can trade for some cash and then lower my spending rate.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I just increase tax rates when a recession hits.
That lowers my morale a bit but I usually cna handle it.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
The one thing I'm good at in this game is economy. If you don't want to throw your economy out of whack during recession, dropping research to allow for more military and social spending usually helps a little.

It seems to yield a little more loot per month, I guess research is more expensive. IF YOU CAN, I'd lower military as well. Keep the social spending going and go for those economy bonuses.

My tax rate is NEVER over 35% and NEVER under 25%. During recession, it's up at 35%. After that, it's down to 30%.

The drop in taxes seems to bring up the population, and the money levels off (more people paying less taxes). In other words...same loot per month, higher morale.

Alz
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Where you evil in that game? Maybe it was an 'evil recession' event, since it hit the Drengin as well?

I've heard that negative balances can hurt your overall morale, that might be what got your people so upset. I'm a compulsive net gain watcher, I rarely go two turns without checking my finances, once past the early expansion phase of the game I never go into the red if I can help it (for one thing it can screw you if you need to insta-purchase something).

What I do during a recession is pick one area and focus on it, reducing my spending in the other two areas to zero or close to it. This gives me the most bang for my limited bucks in the area that matters most to me. If the recession is one of those ones that just doesn't end then I'll switch my focus when appropriate but I'll still almost always have one slider maxxed and the others bottomed out. I'd rather make decent progress in one area than minimal progress in three.

I also do what Technician said, start shopping around immediately for some heavy trade action. Got to do it quick before the AIs run out of cash as well. I look for deals in the high teens of months, an influx of cash over a long period of time can really help buffer the effects of a recession.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Hey Alz...why is your tax rate so low. I routines have mine up at 70-80% and usually don't have any trouble keeping approval up...
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
It could be that your economy never recovered because you drained off so much of your population trying to counteract the negative morale that came from being so deeply in debt. If you reduced your population too much, too fast, then your income may have dropped to the point that you couldn't work your way out of debt.

To put it another way: If you lower population pressure, morale generally improves. But lower population means less taxes. If you are in debt, your morale suffers. If you lower population while you are in debt, your morale should improve. But since your income suffers, you stay in debt longer, and your morale continues to suffer for it. So the changes may negate each other, or you may even put yourself in a vicious cycle in whcih you can never generate enough money to restore your economy and thus your morale.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Tax rates above 50% will reduce your maximum potential revenue by restricting population growth. I've tested this with tax rates from 60% down to 25% and 50% is the sweet spot for maximum revenue. But, there is more to strength then just revenue. Lowering the tax rate below 50% gives you more population, which means more resistance to invasion, better ability to invade with transports, better production/research for that planet, etc. Taking that into account I've found that 40% is the best tax rate, it's only a -tiny- bit less revenue then the 50% rate and you get a whole lot more population to work with.

The way I tested this was to create a new game, pick a tax rate, then hit next turn until the population stabilized, then check out revenue. I tested it for sizes 16, 17, 19, and 20. Below 40% always resulted in a loss of revenue, above 50% as well. And since the difference between 50% and 40% was so small (revenue-wise) it seems to me that 40% is the 'ideal' tax rate for maximising both revenue and planet production/population.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
To clarify, the 'below 40% always resulted in a loss of revenue' I should have written 'below 40% always resulted in less revenue'. It didn't put you in the red. :)