It's gotten tougher to keep finances out of the red for me. I keep ending up having to put some of my top producers into building dust, which is a major loss, especially at war. Trade routes seem weak and are way too unstable anyway. So what is everyone's methods for keeping your cash reserves fluid? Are there any key technologies you go for (particularly at low levels)? Do you really need to have a large number of planets exploiting dust? Is colony distance a major factor? Is a hero with wit good for anything other than trade routes?

The latest patch adjusted the AI governor so that it only builds Dust production improvements if there will be a profit so that should make streamlining Dust production a lot easier. Also I find it helps to replace any food production exploitations for Dust ones once the pop is full, as long as the food production is positive you do not need too much surplus.

Stay lean. Only build the improvements you need, and only colonize the most interesting systems. Avoid +influence and +visibility improvements except in systems you know for sure will stay your border for a long time. Avoid +Xp/HP to ship improvements except in 1 or 2 shipbuilding systems, preferably those with the most population and production. Only built food improvements in systems with serious food problem, 5-6 turns to growth isn't slow.



Also, Economy improvements aren't always worth it. Xenotourism (whatever the name) gives +1 Dust per population on some planet types, yet costs 3 Dusts to maintain. Having 4 pop points benefiting from that isn't enough, since revenue is reduced by low tax rates, yet improvement maintenance costs stay the same.

Yeah, I've noticed that there seem to be very few economic technologies that are worth anything. The very high level ones are very strong, but the only thing in between are a smattering of exploit improvements and lots of trade route junk. Colony rights isn't terrible if you can keep people happy.

do not build/remove improvements that will not help your system, eg: food improvements when you're maxed, trade route improvements when your system is not trading etc.

Well I start building only science and industry improvements I need,... hunting for the approval buildings fast and then the taxes are going upwards :evil:



Until I got well balanced approval / taxes I always balance my systems that are currently idle (no improvement/ship to build) between ind->dust and ind->science conversion.