My Economy Tanked and I Cannot Fix it

[The Boy]

So, I got this game about a year ago, and played it a bit (~60hrs) to get the hang of things, but not super well. About a week ago, I picked it up again and started expanding a bunch, when my economy dipped. I was at about -300 consumer goods -600 food, and -300 energy. While I was able to fix my problem with consumer goods through some policies, but i am still loosing hundreds of food and energy and have run out of options. I kinda screwed myself since I never researched robots and have the xenophilic trait, meaning that I cannot purge some of my pops. I think that my massive population is the problem here, since I have 918 pops on 27 planets. Many of my planets have low stability due do low amenities or unemployment. I do have quite a few ships, with about 162 ships. I can provide more specific information regarding these things as well. One of the solutions I have been considering has been turning some of my city sectors that cost a lot of energy and food, but I feel like this is more of a band-aid solution to a larger problem.

Any help would be great at this point

[DiscoShark]

Create a monthly trade and sell off some of your excess strategic resources and alloys. It can be useful for propping up your economy before you've started creating Megastructures (if you have the Utopia DLC)

[pipo.p]

Originally posted by Shmi The Tea Lizard:

So, I got this game about a year ago, and played it a bit (~60hrs) to get the hang of things, but not super well. About a week ago, I picked it up again and started expanding a bunch, when my economy dipped.

Did you _really_ pick up an old save?! (Base game has changed in the meanwhile)

If you didn't pick up an old saved game, although balancing economy is tricky, you can't be that off with food if you build farm districts, or if unlucky with your worlds, hydroponics buildings. As for energy, your ships and buildings have a maintenance cost in energy, so you have to refrain from building too many of them until you get the energy from tech and building upgrades. It's the same for buildings. Also, don't upgrade all your buildings on all your planets (or all your ships in all your fleets) at the same time! For example, if you build only one 5-credit maintenance building on 20 planets, you get a -100 energy drain when they all come on-line at the same time...

In short, don't build anything as soon as you get the resources. Wait until you can maintain them too.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Check your planets to see their state. Do you have a bunch of empty farm jobs? That would explain your food shortage. You might need to shut off some jobs (mining jobs, possibly) to shuffle workers back to making food. As new pops grow you can reopen closed jobs one-at-a-time for them to fill.

If you don't have any empty farming jobs, but you have planets with available farming districts, then you might need to make more farming districts (possibly demolishing some other districts to free up district slots on the planet).

As for the consumer goods, if you have a lot of researchers then you might need to remove some research jobs in favor of manufacturing jobs. To do this you would demolish a research building and then build a manufacturing building in its place. Take care that you do not build a manufacturing building and then demolish a research building, as this will create a mess. (Workers will promote to specialists to fill the manufacturing jobs, and then the specialists from the demolished research buildings will not switch to manufacturing but instead will be unemployed and grumpy. Meanwhile, unless you had unemployed workers on the planet you will have empty worker jobs, which will hurt your output in some way.)

If you can't get your food and consumer goods positive before your economy collapses then you may need to start a new game and learn from this unfortunate situation. Try to anticipate the needs of each planet and your empire as a whole, and plan ahead to meet those needs as your primary focus. Other considerations, such as fleet size, alloy production, and research output - while certainly important - have to take a back seat to the fundamentals because they can only help you if your empire can support itself.

Another key point is to not build buildings until you have unemployed pops to fill those jobs. If you don't have unemployed workers then your employed workers will leave their jobs and go to work in the better jobs, and your economy will suffer. I know that I effectively mentioned this twice; it is that important.

[The Silver Santana]

Without seeing what your planets look like we can't really tell you whats wrong. For instance, did you build a bunch of mineral producing districts and are your pops all manning those instead of energy and food producing buildings? Do you have too many starbases over your limit?

[Cryten]

Sounds like you need to concentrate on building additional planet like structures such as habitats, ring worlds and ecumenopoli to put all your excess pop to work. You should have forced migration on and pushing all you unemployed onto new jobs. You can also issue planetary decisions to limit growth but TBH that should only be done when you cannot keep up with your pop growth by force migrating them on.

[The Silver Santana]

Originally posted by Cryten:

sounds like you need to concentrate on building additional planet like structures such as habitats, ring worlds and ecumenopoli to put all your excess pop to work.

In general, making megastructures to deal with economic collapse is pretty hard given the initial cost. He needs to figure out what's wrong first and then fix it.

One thought-dropping living standards will tank stability and such, but unhappy people also leave. You're likely dealing with huge population mismanagement issues due to overpopulation, which can be mitigated by forcing people to move elsewhere in your empire.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

I will point out that 918 pops on 27 planets is only 34 pops per planet, average, which is not that many pops. Even a size 8 planet can support more than 34 pops if it is developed properly. I suspect that overpopulation is not the problem, but rather underdevelopment.

[coolman552]

I couldnt even ruin my economy that much even if i tried how the hell did you manage that lmao?

[GeneralVeers]

Originally posted by i love dogs中国第一:

I couldnt even ruin my economy that much even if i tried how the hell did you manage that lmao?

I think I can make a guess how:

Originally posted by Shmi The Tea Lizard:

One of the solutions I have been considering has been turning some of my city sectors

Sooooo.......how many of your pops are working Clerk jobs?? Hopefully zero. But I have a sneaking suspicion your answer will be "a lot". If so, you need to move clerks to other jobs.

Food first. Do you have any planets that can support more Agri zones? If so, build some and turn some clerks into farmers. Energy next. It's probably a good idea to max out your energy districts. Once you break even on energy, you may be able to make up other shortages on the market.

While doing the above, set your Planet Specializations. Turn your biggest food-producing planet into an Agriculture planet so it produces even more (meaning you need fewer agri districts on other planets). Look for a planet with lots of energy districts that you can set as a Generator World. Then look for some leaders specializing in agriculture. Also look for buildings that increase food and energy production; build those on your biggest food and energy planets for +15%.


That should solve the worst of your shortages.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by GeneralVeers:

Sooooo.......how many of your pops are working Clerk jobs?? Hopefully zero. But I have a sneaking suspicion your answer will be "a lot". If so, you need to move clerks to other jobs.

trade worlds can be a good source of energy and consumer goods(or unity if you so desire)


as for op's problems, how exactly did you expand? was it through a mass colonization effort or conquest? if colonization, how habitable were the worlds for your species'? if conquest you need to sort out the worlds you took over to provide the basics and stabilize them a bit. for amenities most worlds can go quite a while with just one holo theater or gene clinic providing for their needs. food/energy/minerals you pretty much solve by building more of those districts, specializing worlds if you're able to and using the production boost buildings on them.

[The Boy]

I expanded through conquest, and quite fast. I would say that less than a third of the worlds are ones that I colonized, and I did not really have the time to sort out the poorly managed worlds built by the AI, where city and mining districts seem to have been prioritized. As far as farming jobs, they are all filled so that is not the issue, but I also can't seem to find any more habitable worlds with a good amount (over 3) of farming tiles. I do have 3 devoted agri worlds, but they each only have about 7 available farming district tiles all of which have been filled. Is it worth trying to use other planets that have a few farming districts with an other focus to help. Or should I demolish the districts on planets that have a fair number of food tiles that are being wasted?

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Making agri-worlds is efficient, and if you have opportunities to turn some of your conquests into agri-worlds then that might be a good idea. However, with your food production in its current state, you may not have the time to wait on efficiency. You should consider building farming districts even on planets that only have one or two, and you should consider demolishing non-farming districts that you don't need in order to replace them with farming districts. Just be careful not to over-correct. If you end up with housing shortages or a mineral deficit then you'll just be trading one problem for another.

Also, with regard to your energy deficit, if you are over your cap on star bases or fleet capacity then it might be a good idea to downgrade/scrap in order to get back under your cap so that you are not wasting energy on elevated maintenance costs.