Unification Wars Guide - Economy

In a previous article on the internet game Unification Wars, I suggested that tax income was the best way to go for two reasons. Firstly, it was passive income that does not come at the expense of turns devoted to it. And secondly, a high population gives you empire levels and empire levels are necessary to gain access to various projects.

The way to maximize the economy is focus and specialization. This means finding the best system for your choice of economy leveled to the maximum X, putting all your research infrastructure levels into one type rather than spreading it around and putting a minister on that system with level 999 on that economic trait. In terms of choice of main system, if you're doing tax, it should be an Eden, Orion, Titan or Parthenon. For agriculture, Farm, Urania or Parthenon. For commercial, Capital, Urania or Archeron. Industry-wise, it is the Heavy, Titan or Archeron. And Miners would want a Rich or a Titan.

Suppose you want to go against the grain of conventional thought and go your own way, and you further decide that to hell with the empire levels and the access to nice projects, what could you do as alternatives? The Unification Wars manual has a comparison of various races' economic ability put into a series of tables. The last table in the page is the one to read.

Agriculture
At first glance farming seems to be the way to get richest. especially since this table is still probably based on the days when food was capped at 15 credits instead of 20. So here's the top tip. If you want to get rich, farming is the way to go, right? Well, not always. As long as you stay at lower pr levels, farming is certainly very viable. First you sell your food, wait anything between ten minutes to half an hour for your food to sell and the credits to arrive, then you go out with your guns blazing. Five trillion credits will go a long way for most races depending on how you use it. Then, keep selling food as you run out down your credits, bearing in mind the lag times. Unless you're Marauder, that works perfectly fine up to probably two billion pr or maybe even a little more. Similarly, you first sell your food and then you build up outpost reinforcements or keep going at it. The trick to this is anticipation. However, this is a perfectly happy scenario as long as you stay at the lower pr levels and not rise higher. If you do rise higher, you will find that selling food will not keep you maintained for long and it eventually becomes a drag and you mess up somewhere along the line and become a sitting duck with no credits to rebuild your fleet when you get hit. In short, this is pretty good as long as you stay at the lower pr levels. And as seen from the table, Terrans, Marauders, Collectives and Virals are great at farming.

Commercial
From the numbers, commercial income clearly seems to be the poorest economic choice to make. And it is. But on the plus side, compared to tax income, you do not need to spend turns to increase population and then spend even more turns to reward the population to increase their loyalty. But over time, the initial up-front investment in turns in population pay off. And unlike industry, mining and agriculture, you do not need to depend on the market's vagaries to sell product for credits. Or devote planets elsewhere to create an economic link. In addition, mining require you to actually spend turns on mining to get income. So, effectively, it is actually a decent choice if you want to go off the beaten track. All races may try this except perhaps Guardians.

Industry
Strictly on the number in the table, industry looks like a sensible contender to tax income. Unfortunately, industry-based economies need a steady supply of raw materials to keep moving and a shopping-mad populace to consume the goods if you do not want to wait for the goods to sell in the market. All this diverts planets away from your primary income source and these planets aren't working at their best either, since you cannot put in much infrastructure research levels to either. So its for the brave and those that love juggling. All races can try this although Terrans, Miners and Marauders would do this slightly better.

Mining
One of my least favourite ways to start although it is a great way (according to others who tried) to get rich so that you can level your ministers and get a quick leg up on your empire if you do not have a rich lord to fund you. My only grouse is to make money from mining, you have to use turns. Best done as Terrans and Miners.

Tax
Enough has been said and this is the most popular choice of economy. And whatever the numbers say, all races tend to choose tax income as their main economic driver.

In Unification Wars, empire income source is best summarized into a simple chart with active/passive on one axis and direct/indirect on the other axis. Active income sources require you to actually spend turns to generate the income, whereas passive income does not. Passive income gets generated even when you spend the turns on other actions. Direct income sources put credits directly into your current credit total, whereas indirect income sources require you to actually sell the economic products before you gain the credits. Indirect income sources make you dependent on the speed of the market to deliver the credits to your account.



Note: This is a revised post from my original article in Tinker's Sojourn