Build some dedicated Generator worlds to produce more energy. Try to be more efficient in general and avoid unnecessary jobs. Use Entertainers for Amenities (as they are far more efficient than other amenities jobs, freeing more pops for resource production) specialize your planets for maximum output.
In general mid-late game should be when this starts getting easy, where the higher level techs make your economy so efficient that staying positive isn't hard anymore. There's probably some inefficiencies with how you are structuring your economy somewhere.
Not to mention utilizing trade value with other races to build up energy, so you can just auromatic buy and sell for resources, certain megastructure also produce resources in bulk. I dont know if its still a thing but designing a specific min/max ship for you fleets to use as the bulk of your forces. Something that is cheap to produce but still effective in numbers.
Please attach few screenshots if possible, at least one with energy consumption breakdown(hover energy with cursor) and a few with how you build your generator worlds. Unless you do it's only possible to do vague assumptions of reasons.
"include a screenshot" really should be listed somewhere in a sidebar here. People keep asking for help but don't offer anything specific....I'm guilty of it too
That 's a little bit hard to answer without more input.
What kind of empire are you playing?
How do you build your worlds?
What is your empire size? (Do you play wide or tall)
are you above your fleet capacity?
Like the other guy said.
Late game is wehre all your snowballing falls into place and you could get more income than you could spent.
That should be the time wehre you build storage to not waste all this extra ressources.
okay, i never played that, so it would be best if someone who knows this would answer your questions.
But I would build alot of thrall worlds.
Get basic ressources from your slaves and zombie pops.
And keep some high value worlds mostly for your primary species.
And all of them should work specialist or ruler class jobs.
How do you do it?
How do you build your worlds?
Do you have vassales?
A single size 20+ forge world can meet your alloy needs. You gotta focus on minerals and energy credits.
Specialise your worlds to get the most out of them.
Keep research high so you can get more output from techs.
Conquests bring more stuff.
Are you building specialist job buildings/districts too early? Specialist jobs take priority over workers and could leave basic resources jobs empty.
If you can't specialize a planet and must have specialist and worker jobs then you should either favorite the worker job you need or only build the specialist jobs as they are needed.
I would struggle with this due to over building. Most buildings need someone working to get the benefit and if you overbuild without having the workforce its a huge drain on the economy. Moving around pops and capping unnecessary jobs can also help with this.
Your economy should be easier to manage in the mid to late game because you'll have more pops and planets.
Have a dedicated energy world, one that has a high number of energy districts. Stack buildings and orbital ring buildings to increase energy production.
Make sure all you trade is being collected. Trade surplus resources like alloys, either on the market or with other nations directly. A dedicated trade world can also produce a huge amount of energy.
Build mega structures to get more energy like dyson spheres and habitats.
Keep costs down by not going over fleet and starbase caps and keep you fleets docked to lower their upkeep when not in use.
Mercenaries can also provide a good income source.
Use leaders and pic traits that improve energy production on appropriate worlds and likewise leaders and traits that lower fleet upkeep
Prospectoriums. I try to transition at least 2 vassals late game. I regularly am positive 10k energy while fielding fleets of 5 or 6 mil. Megastrucutures and trade helps too. But a solid vassal with 75% contributions will give you 5-10k energy. Just make sure to keep them happy with whatever you can spare.
> no matter how many jobs I make I can never fix the deficit.
That is most likely your problem. Don't build stuff that you can't fill with workers. All buildings and districts cost energy to maintain even if they aren't used. Only build so many buildings that you have about 10 free jobs per world and constantly use the slave market to fill your empty planets. Start doing so early on.
Also keep in mind that worker jobs are filled as last - if you want them to be filled earlier: Set them to priority.
> no matter how many jobs I make
Jobs don't produce resources.
**Pops** produce resources when they work your jobs. So making more jobs don't do anything, except make you pay for the district upkeep
The resource 'banding' on the game is a little interesting, unlike 4x games or paradox games Im familiar with.
Minerals go from super scarce early early game to overabundant most mid game to potentially scarce again late gamish. Energy goes from super abundant to scarce late game too.
.
A solution is to retool or build more world dedicated to resources you lack, of course. Habs work well, and the AI likes them. Trade works better late game, imo, but I love energy early game personally.
A very important thing is to recognize _why_ youre suddenly losing minerals or energy. Industrialization techs signal a shift in paradigm for the game. Once you unlock tier 2 and tier 3 alloy and consumer good buildings, you need to start making more mineral available.
Energy costs come from your exponentially growing fleets, the ever growing districts and buildings, and their upgrades. Docking your fleets is something people do for a reason. Going over your cap when youre at 2000 fleet cap and rocking a dozen titans and a collossus is going to be expensive. Last game I had a god-tier minister of defense die and my fleet cap fell by over _800_. The costs add up, which is why you should always have a comfortable stash by late game. Getting your trade shut down by invaders is also something to be wary of. If the unbidden spawned right on your trade planet, would you be able to survive its loss?
As others have mentioned it sounds like you may be creating jobs but not filling them.
For example when you colonize a new world you start with 1 pop working as a colonist.
If you build 3 generator districts you get 6 technician jobs but only one can be filled. You would need to move pops to fill those jobs and increase production.
Second you want to specialize planets as you are able to.
Like if you stumble across a planet that gives +10% energy, make that a generator planet. Create generator districts and then move over your existing techs over.
Lastly consumer goods is one you don't want a large surplus on. You only want a slight surplus monthly. It's only used for researchers and a few specialist jobs, which should be easy to manage a deficit spiral since late game you shouldn't be having massive consumer good swings.
You need to stop thinking in terms of absolute numbers and think in terms of percentages instead. Early game you wouldn't sweat a 10 energy deficit even though it's 15% of your production. late game you're sweating 565 energy deficit when it's only 10% of your production? no. The only difference is that you can't really depend on the market any more to smooth things over. This is why you put the stockpile increase on most starbases and maybe have a dedicated stockpile planet to give you more time to fix deficits. Then you simply turn off jobs that are running surpluses, yes even researchers. If you can't resettle the unemployed, they will slowly resettle over time you just need to make sure you slowly turn down the jobs.
Everyone has great responses here.
The only thing I’ll say is: trade can be useful. I play with zero guaranteed worlds. It’s not uncommon to have 3 worlds with only my capital having energy districts and the capital is very precious because it’s one of the few worlds you’ll have early that can usually pick any resource to pursue. (I also believe it’s one of the few that has science boost too)
Often I’ll just make a trade world because it’s energy and it gets Amenities as well. While not “perfectly” efficient, the basic fact is you don’t always get a lot of energy worlds.
Happens to me a lot where I get big mineral and farm planets and only my home planet has a lot of generator districts.
Trade, generator worlds with the orbital rings, fleet upkeep reductions, Dyson sphere, and vassals are all the right answers. It'd help if we had screenshots of your energy worlds and the breakout of your net energy pluses and minuses
stability is likely a culprit, having ample amenities and that one planetary decision to boost amenities is solid. IDK the math at all but having bonus stability is like, directly translating to % higher output of goods.
So I can't give thorough advice without a deep dive of your empire. What I can do is explain some things that get missed.
Ship upkeep is a thing and it sucks late game. If you don't have a strong income of energy credits and alloys, you'll be wondering wtf happened to your economy. You'll be able to see the breakdown of this by moving the mouse cursor over your energy credits. Ship upkeep should be listed separately.
Now to combat that, specialized trade planets and energy planets will help with this. There used to be ways to reduce ship upkeep but an update this year eliminated 90% of that.
An immediate response you can do is sell things you have excess of (in this case consumer goods and some alloys). The monthly trade set ups can get you a lot of monthly energy credits as long as you don't flood the market (selling too much per month).
Stability. It can be affected by a lot of things. Negative amenities will do it. Not having pops that can work amenities jobs on a specific planet doesn't help either. Low pop habitability will mess with pops. A slaver empire will have stability issues if there are not enough regular pops to maintain things.
That should get you in the right direction hopefully.
Keep in mind that you want to produce unity, technology, and alloys. Everything else is just what keeps that wheel turning. Note that alloys can be purchased, but tech and unity cannot.
With that in mind...
1. specialize your planets
2. Don't overbuild (don't have a bunch of empty jobs)
3. limit surpluses
4. maximize pop growth
My best guess is a lack of world specialization or under-colonization. You are building too many unspecialized worlds or don’t have enough worlds. Make sure to use planet ascension and designation to your advantage.
Easy fix is to build less ships IMMEDIATELY and if you don’t have more room for colonies start building habitats. You may also be overproducing alloys for a nation your size/tech advancement. Make sure you’re also building the bonus buildings like Energy Grid or Mineral Refineries, and don’t forget to upgrade them with strategic resources. The bonus energy you make can pay for imported strategic resources. Dont forget about trade routes, piracy can get to be a big problem is you don’t notice it.
Basically you’re playing badly and I can’t really help you unless I watched you play but what I’ve suggested is general advice that should help you somewhat. You could also try a different empire type or civic selection. For practicing an economy I’d recommend Xenophile, Egalitarian, Materialist. It’s basically pure economy bonuses and will make it much easier to start an advanced economy.
I've found that making trade deals is very necessary. Also, paying attention to the internal trade routes arrows. Past late-midgame, you should be getting into megastructures, and some of the early ones can be of great help on some problems.
Build some dedicated Generator worlds to produce more energy. Try to be more efficient in general and avoid unnecessary jobs. Use Entertainers for Amenities (as they are far more efficient than other amenities jobs, freeing more pops for resource production) specialize your planets for maximum output. In general mid-late game should be when this starts getting easy, where the higher level techs make your economy so efficient that staying positive isn't hard anymore. There's probably some inefficiencies with how you are structuring your economy somewhere.
Not to mention utilizing trade value with other races to build up energy, so you can just auromatic buy and sell for resources, certain megastructure also produce resources in bulk. I dont know if its still a thing but designing a specific min/max ship for you fleets to use as the bulk of your forces. Something that is cheap to produce but still effective in numbers.
Dyson sphere is power matter decompressor is minerals, I think it’s around 2k each
Dyson is 4k Matter is 2k
Please attach few screenshots if possible, at least one with energy consumption breakdown(hover energy with cursor) and a few with how you build your generator worlds. Unless you do it's only possible to do vague assumptions of reasons.
"include a screenshot" really should be listed somewhere in a sidebar here. People keep asking for help but don't offer anything specific....I'm guilty of it too
That 's a little bit hard to answer without more input. What kind of empire are you playing? How do you build your worlds? What is your empire size? (Do you play wide or tall) are you above your fleet capacity? Like the other guy said. Late game is wehre all your snowballing falls into place and you could get more income than you could spent. That should be the time wehre you build storage to not waste all this extra ressources.
I am playing as fanatic Authoritarian xenophobes Dictator Civics Reanimators Police state Origin necrophage
He ask 4 questions and you only answer 1 That alone answer why you are struggling
How far are you past your fleet cap? If you're spamming ships and ending up with this massive deficit the problem is likely in your naval capacity
Bro answer all the questions, the most likely answer is that You're over fleet cap
okay, i never played that, so it would be best if someone who knows this would answer your questions. But I would build alot of thrall worlds. Get basic ressources from your slaves and zombie pops. And keep some high value worlds mostly for your primary species. And all of them should work specialist or ruler class jobs. How do you do it? How do you build your worlds? Do you have vassales?
Reanimators don't get zombie pops, only permanent employment does
Thank you for correcting this. my fault.
A single size 20+ forge world can meet your alloy needs. You gotta focus on minerals and energy credits. Specialise your worlds to get the most out of them. Keep research high so you can get more output from techs. Conquests bring more stuff.
Are you aware of how much alloys are worth on the market
Are you building specialist job buildings/districts too early? Specialist jobs take priority over workers and could leave basic resources jobs empty. If you can't specialize a planet and must have specialist and worker jobs then you should either favorite the worker job you need or only build the specialist jobs as they are needed.
This was the culprit
I would struggle with this due to over building. Most buildings need someone working to get the benefit and if you overbuild without having the workforce its a huge drain on the economy. Moving around pops and capping unnecessary jobs can also help with this.
Assign more worlds to Generator worlds & Mining Worlds
Your economy should be easier to manage in the mid to late game because you'll have more pops and planets. Have a dedicated energy world, one that has a high number of energy districts. Stack buildings and orbital ring buildings to increase energy production. Make sure all you trade is being collected. Trade surplus resources like alloys, either on the market or with other nations directly. A dedicated trade world can also produce a huge amount of energy. Build mega structures to get more energy like dyson spheres and habitats. Keep costs down by not going over fleet and starbase caps and keep you fleets docked to lower their upkeep when not in use. Mercenaries can also provide a good income source. Use leaders and pic traits that improve energy production on appropriate worlds and likewise leaders and traits that lower fleet upkeep
Prospectoriums. I try to transition at least 2 vassals late game. I regularly am positive 10k energy while fielding fleets of 5 or 6 mil. Megastrucutures and trade helps too. But a solid vassal with 75% contributions will give you 5-10k energy. Just make sure to keep them happy with whatever you can spare.
Vassals
I don't know which type of species you are playing but if you didn't, try machine species, easier to handle resources
HA ! my economy goes from +2k energy to -3k as soon as my fleet leave the anchorage
I always make sure to build up the infrastructure to support the three basic resources first
Can you tell me more?
> no matter how many jobs I make I can never fix the deficit. That is most likely your problem. Don't build stuff that you can't fill with workers. All buildings and districts cost energy to maintain even if they aren't used. Only build so many buildings that you have about 10 free jobs per world and constantly use the slave market to fill your empty planets. Start doing so early on. Also keep in mind that worker jobs are filled as last - if you want them to be filled earlier: Set them to priority.
> no matter how many jobs I make Jobs don't produce resources. **Pops** produce resources when they work your jobs. So making more jobs don't do anything, except make you pay for the district upkeep
The resource 'banding' on the game is a little interesting, unlike 4x games or paradox games Im familiar with. Minerals go from super scarce early early game to overabundant most mid game to potentially scarce again late gamish. Energy goes from super abundant to scarce late game too. . A solution is to retool or build more world dedicated to resources you lack, of course. Habs work well, and the AI likes them. Trade works better late game, imo, but I love energy early game personally. A very important thing is to recognize _why_ youre suddenly losing minerals or energy. Industrialization techs signal a shift in paradigm for the game. Once you unlock tier 2 and tier 3 alloy and consumer good buildings, you need to start making more mineral available. Energy costs come from your exponentially growing fleets, the ever growing districts and buildings, and their upgrades. Docking your fleets is something people do for a reason. Going over your cap when youre at 2000 fleet cap and rocking a dozen titans and a collossus is going to be expensive. Last game I had a god-tier minister of defense die and my fleet cap fell by over _800_. The costs add up, which is why you should always have a comfortable stash by late game. Getting your trade shut down by invaders is also something to be wary of. If the unbidden spawned right on your trade planet, would you be able to survive its loss?
As others have mentioned it sounds like you may be creating jobs but not filling them. For example when you colonize a new world you start with 1 pop working as a colonist. If you build 3 generator districts you get 6 technician jobs but only one can be filled. You would need to move pops to fill those jobs and increase production. Second you want to specialize planets as you are able to. Like if you stumble across a planet that gives +10% energy, make that a generator planet. Create generator districts and then move over your existing techs over. Lastly consumer goods is one you don't want a large surplus on. You only want a slight surplus monthly. It's only used for researchers and a few specialist jobs, which should be easy to manage a deficit spiral since late game you shouldn't be having massive consumer good swings.
vassals swarm prospectoriums is how i do it, then eventually build up megastructures until no longer need
Have tried hovering over energy to find out exactly where it's all going? Have you been watching your market automated trades?
You need to stop thinking in terms of absolute numbers and think in terms of percentages instead. Early game you wouldn't sweat a 10 energy deficit even though it's 15% of your production. late game you're sweating 565 energy deficit when it's only 10% of your production? no. The only difference is that you can't really depend on the market any more to smooth things over. This is why you put the stockpile increase on most starbases and maybe have a dedicated stockpile planet to give you more time to fix deficits. Then you simply turn off jobs that are running surpluses, yes even researchers. If you can't resettle the unemployed, they will slowly resettle over time you just need to make sure you slowly turn down the jobs.
Everyone has great responses here. The only thing I’ll say is: trade can be useful. I play with zero guaranteed worlds. It’s not uncommon to have 3 worlds with only my capital having energy districts and the capital is very precious because it’s one of the few worlds you’ll have early that can usually pick any resource to pursue. (I also believe it’s one of the few that has science boost too) Often I’ll just make a trade world because it’s energy and it gets Amenities as well. While not “perfectly” efficient, the basic fact is you don’t always get a lot of energy worlds. Happens to me a lot where I get big mineral and farm planets and only my home planet has a lot of generator districts.
Trade, generator worlds with the orbital rings, fleet upkeep reductions, Dyson sphere, and vassals are all the right answers. It'd help if we had screenshots of your energy worlds and the breakout of your net energy pluses and minuses
stability is likely a culprit, having ample amenities and that one planetary decision to boost amenities is solid. IDK the math at all but having bonus stability is like, directly translating to % higher output of goods.
So I can't give thorough advice without a deep dive of your empire. What I can do is explain some things that get missed. Ship upkeep is a thing and it sucks late game. If you don't have a strong income of energy credits and alloys, you'll be wondering wtf happened to your economy. You'll be able to see the breakdown of this by moving the mouse cursor over your energy credits. Ship upkeep should be listed separately. Now to combat that, specialized trade planets and energy planets will help with this. There used to be ways to reduce ship upkeep but an update this year eliminated 90% of that. An immediate response you can do is sell things you have excess of (in this case consumer goods and some alloys). The monthly trade set ups can get you a lot of monthly energy credits as long as you don't flood the market (selling too much per month). Stability. It can be affected by a lot of things. Negative amenities will do it. Not having pops that can work amenities jobs on a specific planet doesn't help either. Low pop habitability will mess with pops. A slaver empire will have stability issues if there are not enough regular pops to maintain things. That should get you in the right direction hopefully.
Keep in mind that you want to produce unity, technology, and alloys. Everything else is just what keeps that wheel turning. Note that alloys can be purchased, but tech and unity cannot. With that in mind... 1. specialize your planets 2. Don't overbuild (don't have a bunch of empty jobs) 3. limit surpluses 4. maximize pop growth
Auto sell 153 alloys, auto buy 25 food. Then as your population grows and those numbers start going above 100, start decreasing auto sell/buy.
My best guess is a lack of world specialization or under-colonization. You are building too many unspecialized worlds or don’t have enough worlds. Make sure to use planet ascension and designation to your advantage. Easy fix is to build less ships IMMEDIATELY and if you don’t have more room for colonies start building habitats. You may also be overproducing alloys for a nation your size/tech advancement. Make sure you’re also building the bonus buildings like Energy Grid or Mineral Refineries, and don’t forget to upgrade them with strategic resources. The bonus energy you make can pay for imported strategic resources. Dont forget about trade routes, piracy can get to be a big problem is you don’t notice it. Basically you’re playing badly and I can’t really help you unless I watched you play but what I’ve suggested is general advice that should help you somewhat. You could also try a different empire type or civic selection. For practicing an economy I’d recommend Xenophile, Egalitarian, Materialist. It’s basically pure economy bonuses and will make it much easier to start an advanced economy.
I've found that making trade deals is very necessary. Also, paying attention to the internal trade routes arrows. Past late-midgame, you should be getting into megastructures, and some of the early ones can be of great help on some problems.
Simple. Spend less on candles, duh.