Right. I’m toying with a game where economy is much harder to get, and banking is the main source of income. Suggestions for settings to make this work?
If you really want to maximise the Banking vs Economy difference. i.e. Make economy very bad. I would do something like:
Starting Infrastructure: 0 Economy.
Development Cost: Expensive Economy, Standard Industry, Cheap Science
Research Costs: Cheap Banking, Expensive [Everything Else] (or Crazy Expensive)
Resources: Plentiful (to stop the Expensive research costs slowing the game down too much)
Stars per Player: Medium or lower. (so empire wide bonuses, experimentation/banking get boosted)
Cheap trades? Gates?
Gates would be personal preference? I cannot see how they effect finance balance. Cheap trades would be good.
If it’s turn based game you want production to be out of sync with the turn counter. That is, you want to encourage trading Banking before productions.
My opinion: banking research at regular research cost but economy is expensive and resources are sparse. set a high starting economy and industry base to make the homeworld an irreplaceable asset (cause 20-30 economy is hard to replace with these settings) if you like that dynamic.
Something like that could be a very interesting type of game. It definitely would change combat tactics quite a bit since raiding enemies to pilfer their Economy wouldn’t be as potent.