Jeeves
Posts: 940
Joined: 9/28/2010
From: Arlington TN U.S.A
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How about a teaser from my upcoming strategy guide? I have not yet edited this portion for clarity, so readers beware...
**** EDIT **** replaced all of the text with the latest revision, some sentence changes, same information
Colony characteristics / rating worlds
Colony population begins with your colonizer population plus any independent colony population at the world. The population growth rate depends upon the race basic reproduction rate, the number of luxuries available at the colony (which increase cultural development level), and the happiness of the population. You can improve the happiness by :
1) Cut taxes down to 0% if your empire balance sheet is in good shape. Based upon my experience, it takes 8-12 years for a small independent population colony to reach 20k revenue. There is not much point to raising taxes above 0% on such colonies. I have never played a game where the colonies which I planted on raw worlds (with no independent population) ever justified taxes above 0%.
2) Build a spaceport with medical and recreation centers. If your colony is too small to build anything useful (in a reasonable amount of time) when its first spaceport completes, then build a resort base (with just one passenger compartment) with extractors to mine that colony's resources. After that you will want an upgraded spaceport using your latest designs. I have not yet played a game where any world besides the home world did a second spaceport upgrade.
3) Improve your empire's reputation by destroying pirate ships and bases. For your typical race (humans), this contributes up to 9 points of happiness to your total, plus an additional point of bonus from the Garden of Arcadia if you have colonized it.
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4) Improve the supply of luxuries available at your colonies by colonizing worlds to provide a VARIETY (*NOTE 1*) of luxuries, rather than just focusing upon those luxuries with high prices. Whenever possible (in the late game) colonize ALL (*NOTE 2*) habitable worlds in each of your systems, giving priority to those systems which already have an active spaceport. By the late game you should have colonized just about every desirable system with at least one colony. Leave the crumbs for the 19 AI empires to colonize. Furthermore the AI empires get really disturbed if you colonize much more than 100 of the 1400 systems…
(*NOTE 1* A colony provided with a sufficient VARIETY of luxuries progresses at a maximum rate of 18 cultural development points of increase per year once luxuries are provided. The maximum contribution to development level for normal luxuries is 50 points. If any of the three super luxuries Loros Fruit, Korobbian Spice, or Zentabia fluid is in the cargo bay of the colony, then an immediate bonus of 30 points of development level is added.)
(*NOTE 2* By colonizing EVERY habitable planet regardless of quality level, you prevent any AI empire from trying to colonize in your system. Colonies planted on raw worlds in the end game will never have much revenue one way or the other when compared to older well established ones. In a particular system, you will probably prefer to colonize first where there is no mine built by your civilians, deferring those till later.)
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5) By cutting taxes you also increase the cash-flow of the civilians, allowing them to finance the purchase and maintenance of more freighters, mining ships, and passenger ships. The lost tax revenue comes back to your empire coffers as spaceport income, both for civilian ship construction (*NOTE 1*) and transaction fees (*NOTE 2*) on the movement of resources. With more freighters able to move goods, each of your colonies will be ABLE to increase its cultural development level due to an influx of luxuries. (* NOTE 3*) An increased development level results in higher empire revenue, and so the economy spirals upward at an astounding rate. I have experienced 29% per year empire revenue increases from population growth on medium reproduction rate empires, not including jumps of about 30% in revenue at every colony which acquires one of the super luxuries. For large independent colonies of fast breeding races with no taxes collected, the strategic value / revenue of a colony can increase by 75% per year until the maximum development level is reached, at which point the increase drops to "only" about 45% per year. The civilian cash box fills to overflowing as money pours in faster than ship yards can build ships. Once the civilians have acquired a year or two worth of cash cushion, I often smash the economy down (by raising taxes to a level which makes the civilians only happy +20 or so on my top ten revenue colonies) for a year or so to get the ships in queue built. When I find it necessary to build an empire managed ship at a spaceport, then I use the "move up" button to put it at the head of the build queue, jumping my priority ahead of those civilian ships.
(NOTE 1- If you stop building things at your colonies, then the civilians will slow (and eventually nearly stop) their purchasing of ships. Your CONSUMPTION of resources is the driving force behind the civilian shipbuilding economy, CAUSING the freighters to move resources between mines and colonies (not forgetting foreign trade). By doing useful projects at your colonies, you can encourage the civilians to buy new ships. HOWEVER that might become a problem due to strategic resource consumption which exceeds both your own supply and the excess readily available from foreign trade. You might see that happen when examining the expansion planner list of strategic resources, with galactic shortages causing the price of a resource to spiral upwards. Most commonly there will from time to time be shortages of fuel in particular.
Before a galactic shortage becomes critical, you must throttle back on your new empire projects so that the civilians will (PLEASE) stop BUYING ships! (An unpleasant consequence of poor management is when the civilians' own shipbuilding causes a shortage, which the civilians attempt to remedy by the purchase of still MORE ships, especially mining ships.) If you followed my advice above regarding very low tax rates, then you can also discourage ship purchases by grinding the civilian balance sheet down with very HIGH taxes. As you gain experience with managing the economy, you will find that you have learned the warning signs, and will not need to resort to THAT.
For raw colonies I always buy a spaceport as a first project. For large independent colonies, I usually buy two colony ships, then a spaceport when those are built. Since I build a spaceport at every colony eventually, the civilians have a CHOICE of where to buy their ships. This diminishes (but does not necessarily prevent) the problem of local resource shortages caused by the civilians queueing up too many ships at the same spaceport. Given a CHOICE, I have found that the civilians will usually buy ships where there are already sufficient resources to build them. The only exception to that observation is the initial purchase of ships at a spaceport when its yard components are added. In that case the civilians can be excused, because until SOME project is ordered which requires the six resources not provided at colony planting, no order is placed to request them.)
(NOTE 2- The technological level of the commerce center component will improve as the game progresses, providing more profit on the movement of resources. Unless you upgrade the really old spaceports, you will lose an enormous potential income (from higher bonus transaction fees) due to obsolete commerce centers at those spaceports.)
(NOTE 3 - The development level of a new colony is its population in millions divided by ten, up to a maximum of 50. This discussion assumes a colony with no independent population. The colony population begins with orders for luxuries which will get it 25 cultural development points - five different luxuries. Until the colony grows to respectable population levels, the people there will be content with just five different luxuries, stalling cultural development for a while. Be patient - eventually they will order an increased variety of luxuries. I suspect that this is done so that new colonies do not divert luxuries away from large population colonies, where those luxuries can be consumed to keep the development level high with far greater potential revenue profit.)
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6) Assigning world scores
World quality determines how much you will be able to earn from a colony in revenue. Your colony revenue is determined by :
Revenue = colony population * cultural development level * (1- fractional corruption percentage) * (world quality - 50) / scaling factor
< Message edited by Jeeves -- 11/16/2010 2:21:06 AM >
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ship maitanance costs question - 
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