Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares/Money matters

Especially when you don't have enough, either in the early game or when you're conquering the galaxy.

What happens if you run out of money?
The game software decides which items to scrap in order to raise cash and maintenance costs, and it's seldom what you would have considered the least painful thing to scrap.

How your finances work
Your citizens (but not Androids or Natives) pay tax into your Treasury, and that's the bulk of your income. Note that Non-Lithovores usually have a slight food surplus, and Lithovores may have one if they have colonies with Natives; surpluses are automatically sold at the end of each turn, for 0.5 BC per unit of food.

A very few colonies provide "special incomes" - 5 BC per turn from gold deposits or 10 BC per turn from gem deposits, irrespective of the population (which must be at least one if there's a colony). Unfortunately many of these are guarded by Space Monsters, and the rest are likely to be fought over by empires that are within range.

Various racial / empire traits can increase your income from these sources - or decrease them if you chose -0.5 BC.

Your main expenses are:
 * Maintenance costs of buildings, usually early in the game when you'd like have Automated Factories at even the smallest colonies. Population growth usually cures that problem by increasing the number of taxpayers. That's one of the reasons why growing your population is so important.
 * Moving colonists around in the early game to speed up your population growth. You need to manage this carefully until your population grows to a size where the number of colonists in transit is a small percentage of the total.
 * Spies' salaries, in the early game. This is another problem which diminishes as population growth increases your income.
 * Having a fleet that requires more command points (CP) than your empire generates, which costs 10 BC for each CP of the deficit. This problem is most likely to arise when you move from defense to attack. Since it's fairly complex and the answer involves military strategy as well as good economic management, it's best to deal with it in the military parts of this guide.
 * The need to build up as quickly as possible colonies that you have invaded, which generally involves buying quite a lot of buildings. This will also be dealt with in the military part of this guide.

But in order to have the problems of mounting an effective attack you first have to manage your finances so that you can afford the industrial and research buildings you will need in order to produce an effective fleet, and that's what the rest of this page is about.

Curbing costs
You have to do this in the early stages, because at that time you don't have the production and research capacity to increase your income quickly. Generally the least painful way to reduce costs is to avoid unncessary costs.

Running costs of fleets
In a medium or larger galaxy there's no need to build warships at all before about turn 40, because would-be blitzers are too far away to strike quickly. But stockpile production form then on so that you can quickly produce either stationary defenses or a small defensive fleet if necessary.

Reducing maintenance costs of buildings
A colony's ] tells you the standard maintenance charge for each building, but maintenance is higher on some "hostile" planets: Toxic planets cannot be improved in any way and only Subterranean or Tolerant traces wil be able to build large populations there - and feeding these colonists will be a burden if they are not Lithovores. Most other races should avoid them unless they offer very clear advantages, either because they have gold / gem deposits (extra income) or they are Rich or Ultra-rich and may be good places at which to build ships. In that case, it's usually best to avoid building much there in the early game and just use them as Population 1 Housing colonies. The same is true for Radiated planets and, to a lesser extent, Barren planets, because terraforming them up to good population capacities is so expensive.
 * Toxic: 50% higher, i.e. 150% of normal
 * Radiated: 25% higher, i.e. 125%
 * Desert: 25% higher, i.e. 125%

Don't buy buildings if your reserves are static or falling.

From a financial point of view it's best to develop one planet at a time in the early game and use the rest as "baby factories"; this minimizes maintenance costs and maximizes the number of people whose productivy is enhanced by the buildings you produce.

Don't produce defensive buildings earlier than necessary, but stockpile production where possible so that you can produce defenses quickly if needed.

Running costs of spies
Spies can be a very dangerous weapon in the early game, as some races with espionage, financial or production advantages will use espionage or sabotage to weaken you long before they attack. It's prudent to stockpile production and then produce 4 spies immediately you make contact with another empire. Unfortunately spies cost money, but that burden is less serious than having technologies stolen or buildings sabotaged.

Later you can reduce the amount you need to spend on maintaining spies by researching technologies that improve your spies' effectiveness. But in the earliest stages you just have to put up with the expense of running spies without making so many that you cripple yourself. Watch out for end-of-turn messages like "A defending spy was mysteriously assassinated" and produce 2 spies for every one that is killed. That will give a reasonable degree of security without crippling your economy.

Cost of moving population
You'll need to move people from "baby factories" to where you need extra population, so you just have to bear this cost.

Trade goods, taxes and surplus food
At the very beginning the only way to raise extra money is to turn production or food into cash, at 0.5 BC per unit of production or food. Raising taxes is seldom a good idea because it reduces effective production at all your colonies and thus reduces the rate at which your "baby factories" produce population and the rate at which growing colonies develop. It's better to produce Trade Goods than to raise taxes because you can choose which colonie sbear this burden - preferably colonies that have a reasonable amount of stockpiled production so that they can build new buildings quickly (especially income boosters such as Spaceports).

Non-Lithovores will usually have a small food surplus (usually only 1-4 food), which will produce a small income. Lithovores will only have a food surplus if they colonize planets with Natives; but then it's usually 6-10 food, which yields 3-5 BC. It's seldom worthwhile to increase food production to raise money: even on a Terran planet an early-game farmer produces only 2 food (worth 1 BC), while an industrial worker produces 3 units (worth 1.5 BC as Trade Goods) even without an Automated Factory. But if you have to produce Trade Goods at such a I hit rate that you have large losses due to pollution: (a) you've really messed up your economy; (b) try produciong some Trade Goods elsewher, or try producing surplus food, and see which produces the larger income.

Scrapping unwanted buildings
One the very first turn Unification and Democracy governments often scrap the Marine Barracks on their homeworlds to reduce maintenance and raise 30 BC to help buy things (usually Colony Bases or Automated Factories) - these governments suffer no morale penalty for not having a Barracks. Some players even think a Unification empire should scrap the homeworld's Starbase for the same reasons.

Spaceports and Stock Exchanges
A Spaceport (80 PP; maintenance 1 BC) adds 50% of the base income on a colony (basic tax, excluding income from: higher taxes; Trade Goods; sale of surplus food; income from gold and gems) and a Stock Exchange (150 PP; maintenance 2 BC) adds 100% - 3-5 Stock Exchanges on colonies with large populations will usually banish money worries.

Happiness buys money
Yes, the happier your people are, the more taxes they pay (must be working overtime). Feudalisms and Dictatorships start knowing how to build one morale-booster, Marine Barracks (60 PP; maintenance 1 BC; raises morale by 25% if the colony has no barracks). Democracy also knows Marine Barracks but gets no morale boost from it. The next morale-booster is Holo Simulator (120 PP; maintenance 1 BC; raises morale by 20%), which does work for Democracies. Even the late-game Pleasure Dome (250 PP; maintenance 1 BC; raises morale by 30%) pays for itself immediately if the colony's population exceeds 10 and makes a profit with higher populations. Unification never gets morale boosters.

Build income boosters only where they make a profit
Buildings that boost income have maintenance costs. There's no point in building Spaceports and Stock Exchanges where they lose money, as making money is their only function. You make want to build morale boosters in loss-making locations for other reasons.

The extra income from a Spaceport or Stock exchange depnds only on the colony's population. On a normal planet a Spaceport needs at least 4 people for it to make a profit and so does a Stock Exchange. On Toxic, Radiated and Desert planets both need at least 5 people to make a profit.