Getting trade was fairly easy as it is an early tech whose prereqs were very low in cost and totally necessary if you wanted to speak to the AI, besides you also got several other bonuses and abilities (like Econ Cap improvement...) or you simply took it from the Korx. 

Besides, your (valid) point was that the game poses several initial economic problems, and if we're talking this + how to overcome this, then anything that's positively contributing to making money like

- Trade Routes

- racial bonuses to Popgrowth, Moral, Economics, Diplomatics etc

- getting new techs to broker away

- surveying more + faster anomalies

- getting better buildings for Popgrowth, Moral, Economics etc

will naturally make it very topnotch at your priority list. Ofc it'll individually differ from game to game, but one thing is clear if you don't have a positive economic balance then making money is the single most important thing; because the general loss of power becomes enormous if you have to reduce the global spending slider.

As a crude example, to produce a colonyship costs around 100 credits, whereas when you want to buy it you'll have to raise 10 times these credits. Now if I'm unable to bring my economy into balance + have to reduce my global spending slider to say, 50%, resulting in a loss of 1000 production, then I would have to raise 10.000 credits if I wanted to re-complete this loss via a quickbuy in later turns.

In contrast, if you already make surplus credits, money looses alot of worth and at this point it's usually better to invest into increasing production. I think you already know these correlations fully well, but I just keep asking myself why then you post a total overgeneralized nonsense like "There were better things to research" within the consensus of the discussion...

The game isn't black 'n' white like you seem to describe it. The loss of popgrowth in the grey zone from 99% to 39% approval is marginal. Example: Starting homeworld 8.000 people w/o any related bonuses:

Approval 1% = Taxes 62bcs, PopGain -800; zone rangeing from 1% - 19%

Approval 23% =  Taxes 38bcs, PopGain +-0; from 20% - 38%

Approval 45% = Taxes 31bcs, PopGain +75; from 39% - 75%

Approval 76% = Taxes 16bcs, PopGain +93; from 76% - 99%

Approval 100% = Taxes 0bcs, PopGain +150; only at 100%

As you can see there are 5 different zones which define how much population growth is achieved.

In short, during the colony rush set taxes so that planetary approval is above - but as close as can be - of 39%. Promoting excessive pop growth is contraindicative if your still struggling to get these colonies in the first place. 

Once the colony rush has ended, and you can do it, set approval to 100% on most planets in order to get your planet to capped pop so you can set taxes to maximum while still maintaining, at least, +20% approval per planet. Except Breeder - skip the first part.

Besides, producing stuff doesn't have to mean you'll have to raise taxes at all - because you could produce stuff that might help you in that region. Things that don't cost maint, or at least, not much, and providing economic (NOT productive) bonuses...

I don't wanna lecture you too much but this is really not the optimum, or even a mediocre, breeder strat. At 0% tax you'll have 0 credits tax income. There is also no reason why one should set taxes at a fix 60%.

First off, if you don't wanna adjust taxes every turn you always go in 5% steps beginning at 4%, 9%, 14%, 19% and so on, because every time you cross 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% etc it triggers an extra moral penalty that you don't want.

Secondly, logically, you adjust taxes in accordance to what population growth zone you aim for (see above 5 lines). Breeder obviously needs 100% approval as long as planets aren't near-max. Aim for that around 4/5th of all (new) planets stay at 100% and don't let the rest (already outgrown planets) take your taxrate further down. Needless to say, Breeder is so strong you can *easily* stay at 100% approval on most planets throughout most parts of the game while completely ignoreing other economic routes. Although it would be unwise to not build Freighters or to not jack up taxes once planets reach maxpop etc...

Nowhere did I post that building factories could help you economically - when obviously the exact opposite is the case.

What your primary source of income is depends really on your map-setup. You'll be surprised to what limits you can push the game if you focus to other regions. Draths WarProfiteering + full enemy setup is OP. Korx tradeing on a medium map + all common setting can be your #1 spot of income. Generally Tourism-income on smaller maps seems completely OP if coupled with influence bonuses (+250 bcs right on turn1). Under a low planet count no taxes will beat this. Excessive techbrokering to max enemies under low planet count when you play all-lab enables you to basically drain all 9 enemies + 9 Minors of ALL their income every 4 turns. Then, the 5000bcs anomalies. You can play games in which you've already did collect 100k bcs via anomalies while still being under a total of 1000 bcs taxes.

Nevertheless I agree that taxes are the best and most important source of income - but only if sufficient habitable planets are on the map + from midgame on.

You're compareing apples and oranges. From GC2 economy to GC3 production-stats overkill. How do these things compare? Not at all.

Reading your second-last sentence actually makes me wonder if you somehow logically intermingle the meaning of the words "economy" & "production".

Don't take these comments for personal attacks. Instead, most of these people are actually trying to be helpful to you. Your posts actually display alot of evidence of an abscene of reflection. Such personalities usually face problems in matureing. Now I'm not saying you should always listen to what others say to you, or to not formulate your own standpoint, but if several different and unrelated people are constantly pointing out the same there's a huge chance that there's some merrit to what they're saying.

EDIT: 

If 100% planetary approval could be achieved with 24-25% taxes then 2. will be superior. But if it does this is based on alot of factors that will influence your planetary approval. To name a few, picking +30 racial moral bonus, Torians have +10 moral bonus base, getting moral bonuses from techs, anomalies, improvements, resource bases.... As you can see there is absolutely no reason to reduce taxes to 0% at all.

As for your upper tax setting, once a game hits a certain development you could even increase it much further and still be at 100% approval. Torians for example have exceptionally strong moral improvements.

And believe me, Breeder is so strong that there really is never the need to jack up taxes. You can fully support a 100% production at all times with taxes so low that most of planets have 100% moral. Sure, you could jack up taxes if you desperate for the extra cash on the next turn, but to my experience it doesn't pay off. Just go with maxing your pop this'll net your much more, and in comparison it's so much more front-end money than what all the other economic models could do for you or the other races.

The only time where you need to let go of this 100% moral setting is when planets have already grown large in population. That turning point is also dependant on your moral bonuses. Usually around 16b ppl it's getting tough, and above 20b it's next to impossible.

So what you do is every turn you go into the planets list and sort it on approval, afterwards adjust your taxes so all your planets you plan to rise via Breeder shall have 100% moral. Usually every second or third turn you adjust -5% tax. At some point, some planets will become impossible to keep at 100% without getting into negative balance, just accept this. Over time, more & more planets will enter this region below 100% moral.

At some point, it might be more than 50%. Here, (or any other point you deem okay) you abandon the Breeder strat and jack up taxes so that most planets are just above 39% approval. Usually a few turns after the colony rush did end. At that point you'll make an enormous amount of surplus credits where non-Breeder players are still struggling to establish an economy (and most their planets are still below 1b pop)

A time later most your planets pop growth will come to halt at 39% approval. You then again increase taxes so most your planets are around (but not under) 20% approval.

Your thinking error lies within your approach: You plan around a tax-setting - when you should plan around planetary moral & just use the tax sliders to adjust this very moral.

The main difference is that in Civ IV you could only build ONE library per city.  And that library was freaking expensive to build.  You could get like 2 horse archers for it instead and go all Mongol on the other civilizations.  

After that you couldn't build any other %research modifier building until much, much later in the game.  

Gal Civ III? You can build the equivalent of 10 libraries on each world.  All pretty cheap, and they provide adjacency bonuses to one another.

This system doesn't work.  

Two things - I actually do agree with Marigoldran on the bonuses being OP (just not the idea that the returns are exponential - they aren't. Planetary output growth to cap is actually considerably better than exponential presently), because it's something I've been saying for about a month and a half. Marigold is developing something of a tendency to 'popularize' my ideas by starting umpteen threads with titles suspiciously like something I said in a recent post. This would be flattering if it weren't for his antics drawing more attention to himself than to the idea.

And secondly 'exponential' is not a word which is open to linguistic evolution. It is a formal mathematical term. These do not evolve over time, largely because the entire point of having them is to have an agreed meaning that remains the same throughout time - that's why many are in dead languages. Exponential means exactly the same thing now that it did when it was first formally defined.

Nah, the system's fine. It's the inputs that are wrong. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with W*X*Y*Z as the basic economic equation, provided those variables are not allowed to get out of hand - which they have in GC3. 

There is a difference between YOU getting attention, and YOUR IDEAS getting attention. I pay attention to my 3 year old niece. I do not pay attention to her suggestions.

Your tactic is effective only for the former. It is deeply ineffective at the latter. People ignore the meat of what you're saying because they are too busy thinking you're a child crying for attention rather than someone with something valid to add to the discussion. Once again, you do have some useful contributions to make; you have a talent for spotting imbalances and flaws and I've made great use of your feedback for balancing my mod. It is a shame that many of your salient points on balance for the main game are missed or argued against by the devs and wider community based on the fact that it's you making them, and your approach to posting is akin to a small child screaming for attention, any attention, rather than a well-reasoned and effectively argued point.

Your approach is counter-productive, and actually acts to stifle debate rather than encourage it.

Quoting sjaminei,

reply 33

It is both a mathematical term and a linguistic one. If this was a mathematical paper, there would be no questioning what the definition was just as you said. The confusion comes from this forum somehow being part of both worlds. The linguistic one is up to the people soeaking English to decide, Mathematics has no monopoly on the word exponential. There is no reason why it can't have two or more meanings depending on context, no matter how confusing that might be. As I pointed out in my example "literally" has caused a lot of headache because it has recently evolved to mean both it's original meaning and the opposite. There is no reasoning with the general population, stuff just changes over time beyond our control and definitions

If you title your thread with and acusation of people not understanding maths, then it behooves you to use the correct mathematical terminology.

deleted - misread

Periods of turning the tax setting really low followed by tax settings really high is optimum for Breeder.  The exact number varies, but you want to alternate between 100% morale and 40% morale.  

What you don't want is planets with 60-70% morale.