Making money is extremely difficult

On the other hand, in my last three games I've had my tax rate around 60% and my spending at 100% for most of the game, and made an average of 100bc per turn. I think you experiment a bit, because making money IS possible. Some thoughts:

Trade: in Small galaxies, I've been getting 100-200bc per turn from trade revenue alone, and that's without building SBs with trade modules.

Tribute: I sell tech to the minor races for money. The more tech and the more valuable, the more money I get from them.

Morale: you might WANT to build those buildings. Higher morale = higher pop growth = more people to pay taxes. I think the cost of those buildings will be more than offset by the extra people.

Tax rate: set it where you need it to make money. The economy and your people will adjust to it over time.

- Ash

~SDC~

1. Do you have as many trade routes as you are allowed up and running?
2. If you have trade routes, do you have starbases with trade enhancing modules at least in the sector where the route start/finishes?
3. How much are you paying in "Leases" for rush bought equipment?
4. Are your tax rates *TOO* high? Lower levels will sometimes provide a better return.

~SDC~

yes I have noticed that if I bump up the tax-slider all the planet morales drop to 30's and 40's. But if I wait it out a few turns all of a sudden the morales jump back over 50 and everything is okay. The people seem to get mad for a few months, but then like in real life, they get used to the extra taxes and carry on with their work.

~SDC~

I research all the trade options first thing and even playing as evil I'm able to have 52% happiness and a 40 tax rate with 5000+ in the bank. I just nudge the slider once in awhile to keep a 10+ flow. Meanwhile I'm killing everything that moves LOL except my "dear" trade partner.

Honor,
Check your population after you raise taxes. It might not be that they got over it but that they left. Morale has an inverse relationship to population. As Asharak said, raising population raises income, sometimes even if the tax rate is lower. Raising the tax rate sometimes lowers income as the population drops and less people pay tax.

"Raising the tax rate sometimes lowers income as the population drops and less people pay tax. " Wow! that may explain why my pop. is so low. Hmmm, maybe I'll try low taxes and see how fast I can grow the planets.

my pop would drop by tiny amounts after I raised the taxes, not significantly though. but my morale would all of a sudden jump from the low 40's to the 70's in a single turn. I thought maybe it was a bug.

~SDC~

What I do that may be of some use to the original poster:

I research a lot of techs that allow greater trade routes and faster speeds. For income flow, trade is a must. I filter my map for the biggest production/home systems, and throw my freighters at 'em. This usually means trading with minor races (they have wicked slick systems), but about half of the time I also trade with the other major races for political reasons.

I also try to keep my income between -300 bc to 300 bc... I tend to not hoard cash as other races often threaten me for money (and I'm such a coward). To this end I play with my tax rate and production percentages often. If I'm in the green I set my income to negative percentage, vice versa when I'm in the red.

I build quite a bit of facilities with econ bonuses. I build the economic capital on my system with the greatest income (at the time). After the first few colony ships are built to grab the nearby systems I usually crank out constructors and go after resources. I upgrade those starbases with the mining options first, going after ability modules (e.g., +n% econ ability), because that bonus is empire-wide.

I usually don't have many military ships outside of the freebies I get from surveying (see coward comment above LOL ). I only ramp up if I know within 1 year or so that I will smack someone upside the head.

One thing I haven't done, though, is research to go to democracy. Supposedly the higher the government is, i.e., imperial > republic > democracy, etc., the more efficient (or greater) your economy (and production) is. I've always kept it at republic.

Theres a big boost for government from Republic to Democracy (like from 800 in taxes to 900 in taxes immediately upon making the switch) but I noticed a much lesser boost to Federation. I *THINK* the Federation level actually boosts production rather than economy. At least I did not notice a commensurate increase in Econ when I upgraded to that.

Something that isn't intuitively obvious is how the mil/soc/research sliders impact your economy depending on what you are currently producing.

For instance if every single one of your colonies is producing an overlord, and your military production slider is set to 100%, you will see serious cash flow problems. Whereas if your sliders are split evenly and you have half your colonies producing nothing you will notice a big difference in cash flow.

Also notice if you cut down your social and military spending to 0 your income per turn will go negative quickly. I think because money spent on research is used 100%, where as the money spent on military and social production actually depends on what you are building at the time.

Make sense?

Making money is not very difficult. Ways to increase money flow:

1) Increase trade.
2) Increase/decrease taxes. If taxes are too high, you will get less money.
3) Reduce spending on government.
4) Sell/Kill/Disband your military units.
5) Research/build +economy improvements.
6) Upgrade governments.
7) Build trading starbases between you and your trading partner.
8) Sell tech to other races.
9) Increase your population.

With government upgrades and population increases you will get more tax income, but are able to spend more as well (usually you will need to reduce your government sliders) due to increased production/research capacity.

Starbases are addative in their bonuses. Having two maxed out trade starbases in a sector will double the trade income from a mini-freighter while it is in that sector.

Things that cost you money:
1) Building maintenence
2) Military maintenence
3) Production/Research (nothing still costs money)
4) Production/Research bonuses

Building starbases/buildings that increase production/research gives some free production and some paid production/research. The ratios of free/paid vary.

To Experts and Expert wannabes -

What is your usual game settings ?
How much is your average Taxation Rate %?
How much is your average tax income in BCs?
How much is your average trade income in BCs?

This will give people like me some figures to compare against as the game progresses and try some tweaks to improve the economy.