GC: big time blunders, bankruptcy, and how to recover
From BluWiki
Food shortage
Don't forget to buy food - or your population will not be too happy about it!
If you lack $, just put something on sale on the market long enough for someone to buy it and then log off, log on, and buy the food.
Not disbanding scouts
This puts new players into bankruptcy pretty quick, and usually occurs just after they put all their money into ore and then new planet infrastructure!
Don't forget to disband unneeded scouts. If you'll need scouting again, you might want to disband your scouts before you plunder anything, especially if you can rebuild the scouts in 3 turns or less.
Bankruptcy
If your credit reserves are dropping low, the first thing to do is to disband your ships, so you don't have to pay upkeep for them.
If dept is coming soon (but you're not in negative credits yet) you might want to play the market for a while (buy low, sell high but don't use turns yet). If your income is negative even when you don't have any ship, then this generally means that you are not managing your planets well.
If you are already in dept, your income (click on the 'income' link on top left of the page) after you have disbanded your ships. You will notice you have to pay dept interests.
- If your income is still positive, using turns will progressively clear your dept. - If your income is negative, using turns will only put you deeper in dept. So stop using turns, sell things on the market and wait until someone buys them. The money you get thanks to this should help clear your dept.
There are two other ways that may help you : - if you have a slave master, ask him to reward you - ask people to use artifacts that give money on you. Be aware that you will never be able to get more than a few hundreds of thousands credits through this way.
If you are unable to repay your dept, you will have to restart your empire, and to be careful not to let that happen again.
Having a bad slave master who won't protect you or is extra bossy
So you asked nicely in the chat for someone to take away an X planet to save you from losing really good planets to clustering. Or you gave away a planet that would really interest another race. Or you lost a battle. Tough luck, you got enslaved!
So you asking nicely to let you and he won't. You offered a time capsule or two for freedom and he refused or accepted the capsules without letting you go. Tough luck.
You can't raise your PR or lower his by having your friends attack him repeatedly, really though luck!
Try to get enslaved by someone more powerful and more respectable instead...
Some races might be able not to care much about the loyalty-lowering punitions the master uses and not lose too much income (food, goods, and ore/mineral producers don't give much money away as they don't produce money directly) - you might want to tolerate a bad slave master for a while or even forever.
Ultimately you might be under an evil slavemaster who will make outrageous demands and punish your frequently if you don't obey, and lead your tax-based empire into quick bankruptcy. I haven't seen it happen, but you have been warned...
Keeping unwanted X class planets, making unwanted X clusters
You get those from attacking someone who said in the chat "freebie U.something good planet! Come and get it!". Rarely enough you'll explore and find one.
Most race can't plunder X class planets and you certainly shouldn't continue to explore for good planets before getting rid of it.
X class planets should be used as buffer colonies and "given away" to the enemy who will probably be as annoyed as you at the X. This is where you go into the chat and try to give it to someone else...
Also if you're not sacrificing too many good planets you can cluster X-planets and then you can plunder the cluster if you like (assuming you didn't pick the X planet when choosing the planet who will determine the mineral type of the cluster - that makes an X cluster).
Hint: X-C3 clusters cannot be plundered at all by humans. This makes sure you can capture your C3 cluster back if you are quick enough... it sometimes may be worth having a single lousy planet in your C3 cluster and being stuck with the mineral it produced for your entire cluter to make sure it can't be plundered. Not that many Not-X-plundering capable races would plunder your C3, but you never know who is into strip-mining above all other activities or have plenty of better C3s!
Non-specialization
Following the missions and the mission's suggestions (and other causes) lead to incomplete specialization, which is permanently harmful to your ability to make the maximum income possible as it slows further research in your speciality.
If your empire is really new and has no really cool U.something planets, restart it. If it's only a point or two (typically housing level 2) then you might want to live with it anyways (it will force you to use a calculator when creating just enough housing to have a worker for each land).
Having Lousy C3 clusters
Having a lousy C2 or C3 cluster is a bad tactic on the long term. It raises your PR a lot more than it is useful to your economy and paralyzes your exploration as scouting is really slow when you have too many planets. You soon become a target of empires who can afford much more ships for their PR ratio and they will attack and win.
Take my advice. Stockpile money for a long while then plunder it. Start over and be more picky on planets you accept and use a ton of gordo artifacts on the last planet you put in the C3 cluster - a really land-heavy C3 cluster gives you much more economic usefulness per PR which is really good for preying on the weak.
Only an A. miner would want those clusters (for 1 million $ or so in minerals per turn times mining lever +%, plus any ore, and plunder just before damage protection ends. Rinse and repeat).
Buying attack ships while not having a decent border
Especially in the realtime server, buying a decent number of attack ships take enough minutes for someone to attack you while you're not quite ready.
Get some defenses up (starbases) first or have a really good slavemaster who give tons of protection. Then you may distribute mayhem and devastation a bit more safely.
If you don't you might get away with it, but you'll be really sorry if you don't - see "having all the important colonies conquered away" for why.
Having all the important colonies conquered away
This happens if you don't have enough buffer colonies. Generally you cannot lose more than 3 colonies before getting Damage Protection. If you lose less than 40% of your fleet on the first hit but lose the battle, you will lose 1 colony but won't get DP. However the system will prevent you from losing more than 1 - 2 colonies on the next hits, and that as long as you don't rebuild any ship. This means your important colonies should be safe if you have at least 3 borders.
In one particular case you can lose more than 3 colonies before getting DP : when two different empires attack you at the same time, the system will sometimes let both attacks go through. This is however a very rare event (the attacks have to be quasi simulatenous). If this happens to you, you can ask an admin to compensate you for the colonies you lost.
Lousy stacking
If you have plenty of very powerful ships who only attack with missiles, someone may attack with an ECM-quasi-immune ship like the Strafez queen and wipe your fleet.
This is only the tip of the "Learn stacking or else!" iceberg.
Beware of federations who are smart enough to share your current stack information with all their members after each attack and keep track of any predictability in your stacking habits - the second attack of the day might humiliate you by beating you with exactly the right number of inexpensive ships they needed!
Getting hit by someone or a federation with a large artifact stash
1 historia each time you get 40 turns and a dozen tracione and a few goods/food/money reducers can really ruin your day. This is one of the reason the universe-blowing weapon is rarely developped as 10 artifact-heavy federations are worse than one!
Not being ready when the universe blows up
See food shortage, bankruptcy, losing all important colonies (the federation of the empire who used the ultimate weapon won't be hit as hard and will be in a conquest mood just like everyone who were well prepared), having a bad slave master, and consider that the market prices might be maximum-price-only for a long while - if there is anything at all to buy! Plus your ships will be mostly wiped out by the blast.
Prepare for disaster by stashing tons of food (or whatever you'll need) in large quantities as you'll lose 90% if it blows up. By a strange twist of fate ultimate weapon users might have some overpriced food/stuff on the market just after activating the 48 hours countdown, hoping himself to be stopped at the last minute but making a ridiculously high profit.
Being in damage protection just before it blows up helps immensely to have some time to figure out a good recovery strategy...
