UC: 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 then log off; log on periodically until it's bought and with the money buy some food.
Remember than under the current code/bugs, not only the population's taxes will be reduced but also most other incomes includig commercial
Not disbanding scouts
This puts new players into bankruptcy pretty quick, and remember you need only about 80 scouts for early terran missions not 1600!
Don't forget to disband unneeded scouts. If you'll need scouting again, scouts are pretty cheap to rebuild.
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 :
-Ask your lord for money. Most lords are happy to earn their bonus planets for empire level with only a billion or two occasionally!
-Ask people in your federation to send you money.
-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 debt at all, you will have to restart your empire, and to be careful not to let that happen again. Consider not playing turns for a day and receiving money if desperate to save an empire with many planets (those rarely go bankrupt except for ship upkeep being paid well into the negative during a desesperate war)
Being stuck with a bad lord
Non-specialization
Following the missions and the mission's suggestions (and other causes) lead to incomplete specialization, which goes against your ability to make the maximum income possible as it slows further research in your speciality.
You have a chance to shuffle your infrastructure levels around when your empire built the i-node project, but that's a one time only thing (some say two times only, unverified). Choose well!
Asking for which system is empty when someone is offering free planets
This often is a trick to get you out of damage protection and hit you when you didn't had the time to build more than a few turn's ships. Don't fall for it. Besides planet transer is cheating and accounts have been suspended for it.
Also offering free planets yourself will make your federation and lord lose outposts needlessly.
Buying attack ships while not having a decent defense
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 (start starbases so you don't get out of DP yet) or have a really good lord/fed member who gives you exactly the maximum protection he's allowed to give you (current limit, 25% of your PR per stack).
If you don't defend first you might get away with it, but you'll be really sorry if you don't!
Losing too many planets in the system that makes the most money
This happens frequently if you don't have enough buffer colonies for the purpose of +% defense and also offering weaker easy planets for low level players to take so you get damage protection faster.
Having many defenses in that money system also helps a lot, and using a minister with many defensive traits until you're back in DP helps.
You can also opt to have two cash-specialized ministers so attackers can only take half the planets per attack than if they were in the same system.
Lousy stacking
Stacking can be complex, and even if spamming works most of the time when it won't you will be sorry! Learn to stack from same-race experienced players in your federation.
For example a trillion attack ships with a trillion attack ships of another kind can be stopped by a single thor and a single strafez queen if you don't have a third stack.
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 kalzul play dirty tricks on the whole universe, or an artifact attack
Problem depends on the special event in question but never underestimate the possibility of a last minute code change or bug...
For possibilities see food shortage, bankruptcy, losing too many planets, 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 and a few minerals and something to sell if your money gets all desintegrated or something.
Being in damage protection just before it blows up helps immensely to have some time to figure out a good recovery strategy...
