¶ Finances
The Finances view (under Government → Finances) is your empire's balance sheet. It's a read-only dashboard — every income source, every expense line, your current credit balance, and a history of the weekly net for the last several weeks.
You don't control anything from this view directly (per-planet tax is set on each planet itself), but it's where you go to understand why your credits did what they did last week.
¶ What the view shows
The Finances view draws your empire's weekly credits as a flow:
- Treasury balance — your
credit total right now. - The credit flow — coins fall from your planets each week, each expense row peels off its share on the way down, and whatever survives lands in the treasury. When expenses outrun income, the difference climbs out of your reserves instead. Every expense row fans out portraits of what it's made of (ministers, spies, ships, buildings); hover a row to isolate its stream, and click it to open the full breakdown.
- Balance history — the weekly net (income minus expenses) over the recent past, one click away, so you can spot a trend.
¶ The categories
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Planets | The income side, where the coins fall from: your tax take plus every building across your empire that generates credits — Financial Hubs, AI Economic Hub, etc. |
| Buildings | Every building with a credit upkeep — the Portal Gate and the Praetorium (−100/week each) stand out. Its breakdown also lets you demolish one building of a chosen type (on a random planet) to cut the bill. |
| Ministers | Per-week salaries of every minister you've appointed. See Cabinet & ministries. |
| Ore Trade | Every active ore conversion you've set up in Resources. Each one costs quantity × the target ore's trade conversion cost per week — higher-tier ores convert at a much higher credit rate. |
| Ship Maintenance | The per-week cost of every ship in your empire, broken down by ship design. Shows ships in production separately from ships in use, so you can see what a new wave will cost when it lands. |
| Spies | Salaries of your active offensive spies. Counter-spy missions are free — only spies you've sent out cost credits. See Spies. |
| Command Hierarchy | Empire-wide overhead based on your total ship count — how they're grouped into fleets makes no difference. At 250 ships or fewer this is zero. Above 250 it ramps up quadratically — at 500 total ships it's 277 credits/week of "command overhead", and the curve gets very steep above that. There's an interactive chart in the detail view that shows the curve. |
¶ Taxes
Tax is set per planet from each planet's population panel (not from the Finances view). Each planet has its own tax rate, 0–100% in 10% steps. Newly settled and captured planets start at 10%.
Tax generates credits roughly proportional to the planet's population:
credits/week ≈ ceil(population ÷ (100 ÷ tax%))
So a planet of 1,000 population at 50% tax earns 500 credits/week.
¶ The 10% threshold
Tax above 10% isn't free — it shaves a proportional cut off both production and science on that planet:
| Tax | Production penalty | Science penalty | Tax income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–10% | 0% | 0% | Light |
| 20% | −20% | −20% | Moderate |
| 33% | −33% | −33% | Steady |
| 50% | −50% | −50% | High |
| 80%+ | Crushing | Crushing | Maximum |
It's a deliberate trade-off: the more you tax, the more you collect and the slower the planet builds, researches, and scales. Sitting at 0–10% gives you a small income with no growth penalty, which is what most healthy planets should do most of the time.
Raise tax temporarily to recover from negative credits or fund a one-off expense — don't leave the whole empire at 80% out of habit.
¶ Starting credits and limits
- Players start with 0 credits. Your first week's income — mostly taxes on your starting population — is your initial float.
- There is no upper cap on credits. You can stockpile freely.
- Going below −100 credits triggers bankruptcy penalties (random building / ship / population destruction each week until you climb back out). See Resources → Going negative.
¶ Tips
- Watch the Ship Maintenance line first. It's almost always your biggest expense. A 100-ship empire pays 100× per week — multiply that by your weeks-of-game and ship maintenance is the dominant drain.
- The 250-ship cliff is real — and empire-wide. At 240 total ships you pay nothing in command overhead; at 300 a noticeable line appears. It counts all your ships regardless of fleet, so splitting a big fleet into smaller ones changes nothing — the only lever is owning fewer ships.
- New colonies start at 10% tax — the no-penalty sweet spot. Leave them there while they grow, then bump tax up later when the planet is mature.
- Don't over-trade ore. Each conversion rule costs credits weekly, and higher-tier ore conversions are expensive. Set up only the trades you actually need.
- Use the history chart. If your weekly net is sliding red, the bar chart shows it before bankruptcy hits — fix the leak (turn off a minister, raise tax, scrap idle ships) before the penalty system catches you.
¶ Related
- Resources — full credit income/expense list and the bankruptcy penalty rules.
- Cabinet & ministries — appointed minister salaries.
- Spies — offensive vs counter-spy cost.
- Fleets — fleet mechanics (note: command overhead depends on your total ship count, not on fleet sizes).
- Production — how tax above 10% interacts with the planet's build rate.
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