Loosing economy in later stages of game.

Have you checked your morale status?

If you increase taxes the population get angry and you get less....

So if you go for improvements that increase morale, you can get higher taxes, since you wont piss em off quite that easy.

I would like to know more about what the ideal tax rate and spending rates should be.

I also find when I get the the Federation level and build social and miltary projects on all my planets. The Tax rate has to be 50% but the spending is only around 25%. If I try to increase the spending I lose money every turn.

I guess some things will never change we lose half or money to taxes now and do not seem to get the return in spending and when we colonize several planets why should things change

The ideal tax- and spending-rates depends among other things on your morale-status. As long you keep them happy you can increase taxes.

Forget about the rates and focus on the actual numbers!
Look at the top left numbers. When changing from government type to another the tax collected will greatly increase (check the number). Your spending will also greatly increase (check your military, social, research and maintenance numbers). You then need to rebalance your collection and spending RATES to keep you in profit. When you do this you should see that the new numbers are still higher than the old numbers.

The reason for this is that changing a government allows the planets to produce more social, military and research. Each planet can therefore take much more money (producing much more) despite the spending slider remaining at the same level. At higher levels you will want to build moral improvements on ALL planets. This will allow you set higher tax rates while keeping the population happy.

Paul.

Guess what. It is all a very neatly established vicious cycle.

The more population the more tax revenue you get for the same tax rate and the more production you get from the planet. The more population a planet has the poorer the planet's morale. The poorer the planet's morale the less tax revenue and production you get from it and the less population growth the planet experiences.

So, 1) Boost morale by; a) build morale boosting improvements, research morale improving techs, c) build planet class improvements, d) Reduce tax rate.
2) Colonize or capture more planets.
3) Reduce a planet's population - move them to a planet that has a low population and high morale or use them to conquer another player's planet.
4) Look for other factors that can impact you and learn how to adjust your strategy to compensate.
!!! 5) Above all, make sure your treasury does NOT go into the RED.

Also, establish trade routes to increase your revenue.

Don't forget, when you make peace with another player you have the option of demanding cash reparations. This can give you a temporary boost to your treasury that will allow you to increase your spending rate or reduce your tax rate for a while.

Remember! This game is NOT a no-brainer. If you want to beat this game you must learn how the game plays. Start easy and build up.

How well you learn to balance the above will determine how well you succede with the game.

Cheers,
Jack

I make a LOT of money late in the game by selling my trade goods around. In fact, the current game I'm playing has got so much trade in it that there are no wars. Not only that, I can, if I want, lower taxation to nothing and still do OK. But I did implement a version of the Excalibur, as best I could remember it from the OS/2 game. If I recall correctly, it embodies the best replication tech to make a cheap (to maintain, not to buy), fast, powerful warship so you end up with a much more practical but powerful military late in the game.

This will come, I think, when all of the game's hardware is implemented....

As I recall the Excalibur in the OS2 game was cheaper to produce than the Ranger or Avatar. I can't remember the values but if the Avatar cost 800 shields to build then the Excallibur cost 500 shields to build (or something like that).

Cheers,
Jack