Hopefully someone responds, as I'm running into the same problem. I've tried sticking to my home planet plus one other colony, and I can't even keep THOSE in the green. When I quickly expanded to 5 or 6 planets, despite my playing with the sliders and market places being built (and upgraded!), I was losing 50bc per turn.

Oh, also quickly expanding and building lots of very small colonies will hurt you too. Usually (there may be tech tree exceptions) the initial colony maintenance cost is pretty high. At least it was in DL. So if you have alot of little colonies that are doing nothing but draining your income, with pop too small to compensate, that'll hurt.

Just look around the forum, especially in the strategy-section there are so many threads dedicated to the economy issue. What I do, and that works pretty much for every civ (even for the Yor, in this case you have to try and obtain eco-techs via tech-trading early on) is to focus my research on economy, morale, population growth, research and (for civs like the Terrans) diplomacy. Plus, I spam as many colony ships as possible.

I don't recommend neglecting your colony expansion just because you have to struggle with your income early-game. You will need as many planets as possible in order to become a galactic power an be capable of competing with other races. I personally play immense galaxies with tight clusters and always try to colonize at least the star systems in my cluster and other worthwile planets in range of my ships.

So what's paramount is getting a sound economy going asap. On my homeworld, I usually rush-buy a factory, build a second one, then a building for research, eco, and morale respectively. I have my flagship exploring the nearest systems and send my colony ships to the best planets first. I don't rush-buy anything on these new colonies but just set their production tree to factory, eco, research, morale, farm (if available) - in this order. Your new colonies won't finish anything for a long while, and in the meantime your population grows. This by the way is the major reason why you hardly make any money initially - you don't have any taxpayers filling up your coffers. So let nature take its course and eventually your population will be big enough to support your economy. Pop-growth bonus techs and buildings like the recruitment center (or a naturally frisky population for that matter) help of course.

As mentioned above, first have your flagship explore the area you would like to colonize and of course take every anomaly you come across on the way, later just set your flagship to auto-explore and have it find anomalies on its own, which can be a big economy booster early game. If you manage to acquire a couple of thousand bc from anomalies it will make your life a lot easier obviously.

Notice that I check back to my domestic stats almost every turn in the early phase of the game. From the money you start with I'd only buy a factory on your homeworld to get things going. I usually leave the sliders for military, production and research the way the they are initially (later I tend to focus on research, for example 30:30:40) and set my tax slider so to keep morale above around 70% (to get the pop-growth bonus). What you will have to cut back on and adjust amlost every turn is your spending slider.
In my expansion phase this slider is sometimes down to 15-20%, meaning you don't really produce/research anything. If you played your cards right though, say you have 5-10 prospering colonies, 1-2 eco-techs available, find some nice anomalies etc., you will be able to increase your spending every turn a little bit as your population grows and the colonies start making some money.

By the time your economy consolidates, you have usually made contact to other civs and started establishing trade lanes. A good stragey is to build freighters on just one planet - usually it's my homeworld - to have all trade lanes focussed on this planet. Build 1-2 economy starbases around it and max out your trade collectors. Also, don't underestimate the power of resources - especially keep your eyes peeled for those green resources that give a huge boost for your economy.

As soon as your economy is out of the red, I would start researching military techs and pump out warships, otherwise the other civs will be tempted to kick your ass because you are virtually defenseless.

Thanks for reading this Wall o' Text, I hope this helps some of you eco-crashers.

I have realized that in TA, when you're doing the initial colony rush, many times it's best to build nothing until the population gets to like 3 or 4 billion, that way the spending and maintenance costs are offset by the tax revenue. This wasn't as much of an issue in DL or DA, but in TA it's big.

Also being Torians is great cuz you keep your approval at 100% and the population EXPLOOOOODES. It's frickin great. You fill your 8bil populations so damn fast and have lots of tasty tax revenue to max out research and or build structures and ships. I used to think it was stupid til I tried it. Now I'm hooked.

With only a few exceptions (recruiting center, fertility clinic, aphrodisiacs trade good) the buildings you have do not affect population growth.

My usual pattern is to load the planet on colonization, too. But I front load it with some long build time buildings - maintenance doesn't apply until the building is finished.

The production slider should, in fact, be taken out of the game and set to the 100% equivalent underneath the hood so to speak. It's just confusing for new players, and only the very worst players would ever need to move that thing back down below 100%.

Well, researching Interstellar Warfare followed by Space Weapons as first two techs works well for me. Recruitment Centers are cheap to build and their +10% economy and +20% pop growth are extremely useful in early stages of the game. Build one on every colonized planet and wait till colony get positive cash flow. Start building structures afterward.

In initial colony rush it's really hard to keep your spendings at 100% all the time. Initial colonies upkeep is just too expensive. Even Torian with their Superior Breeder ability got problems keeping morale high enough with income being positive at the same time, so their growth is not as high as one would imagine.

If you want bit easier game, play Torians. Put 4 points in economy, 3 in sensors and 1 in morale, plus pick populists as a party. With initial +30% morale it's possible to keep approval at 100% on most planets till pop is up to very reasonable size. And people=taxes=money. Economy is self explaining and high sensor value is useful for picking juicy planets and finding resources earlier.

At some point even PQ4 planets become useful. They can support pop high enough to give you money and they add to influence. Plus constructor once in awhile isn't bad at all.

Another way to earn money is by selling techs. Good diplomacy is useful for this, or you'll be robbed blind. Research a tech and sell it to as many minors/majors as you want, with strategical techs being more expensive. Selling one tech to 9 majors and 8 minors can bring tons of money, enough to support your economy for several/many turns.

Very interesting way to earn money, albeit bit hard for novice, is by playing Drath and starting wars between other civs. It may boost income significantly. F.ex. on Large map with abundant planets all major civs (with exception of Drath of course) fighting one another can bring around 1000bc per turn in late early game. That is huge boost to economy, and much easier to achieve than 1000bc income from trade.

There are many ways to get positive cash flow but there's almost no way to avoid at least slight negative cash flow in the early game. Live with that. Just try to get even before you hit -500bc. After all, money are there to spend. Huge treasury is pointless if not used.

Yeah I rarely use it, but it should stay in. I put it to 100% as soon as I start a game and leave it there. Sometimes I need a boost of emergency cash, and I drop it to zero for a turn to fill my coffers. usually when I'm broke and need funds for invasion spending. Also helps occasionally in ZYW, but that lowers my scores so I try to avoid it if possible.

No, I mean the Production Capacity slider, as I said. Well, that's what I like to call it, anyway, because- you know- that's what its label says.

I was wrong, though, it's at the top of the others, right under taxation, not at the bottom like I claimed.

What do you guys think about building planetary improvements first? That leads to +10 in extra production, military, and research right away. And especially right in the beginning, you need all of them and pretty badly. Is the recruiting center's boost to population -- which could amount to, what, 20% improved growth rate of almost NO population in the first place on a new planet, really a better bargain?

I see what you're saying... why not tech to a good passive bonus (planetary imp) rather than a limited active bonus (recruiting center)?

Well, first, those +10 to mil/social/research are computed on base levels, which are not very high on an undeveloped colony.

Also keep in mind that economy is the primary limiting factor in the game ... not your manufacturing or research capacity. It doesn't matter if you have 10 worlds full of factories and research centers if you can't pay to run them.

So, how to pay for them? Taxes from increasing number of citizens enhanced by econ structures. The recruiting center improves both sides of the equation.

And 20% pop growth is nothing to sneeze at! I once forgot to build a recruiting center in an early colony. I compared this to a nearly identical colony that had a recruiting center. The colony without had 0.95 billion, the colony with sheltered nearly 2.5 billion. More importantly, the recruiting center colony was almost breaking even, while the other was losing about 20BC/month.

The thing is, to get to planetary improvement, you have to do artificial gravity which gives +5 to population growth too. And I can do that in I think 5 or 6 turns from the start of the game.

Would perhaps the ideal sequence then be Artificial Gravity, Galactic Warfare, and then Space Militarization? That way you are racing for both improvements to population growth. Cost is 50 + 100 + 200.