I'm playing RFC with Babylon and despite having been able to run 100% research with a positive income for the vast majority of the game (including right now), my economy rating has tanked down to 1 star and I'm now listed as "Collapsing" (even though all other ratings are 3 stars).
What's going on? How is my economy terrible and my empire about to collapse when I am able to run 100% research and have like 1600 gold?
I had been running a pretty small empire, just trying to survive against the Arabs but then the Turks showed up and that really helped me because I got them to declare on the Arabs, and I let both of them exhaust their armies against each other and then I got rifling and took out both of them.
But now that I have such a huge empire (went from 2-3 cities to 11) my economy rating has dropped off considerably. I don't understand why.
There were a few turns where I was running 100% and getting -20 per turn, but I didn't think it was a big deal since I had so much gold. I could easily drop to like 80% to have it be positive again, but even when I did that my rating was still terrible. However, now I'm back to running 100% and getting like +1 per turn but my economy rating is still 1 star with a down arrow...
The only other thing I can think of is that I'm running Mercantilism (to get the free specialist to use with representation) but that shouldn't completely ruin the economy rating, should it?
So, can someone help me and explain what I need to do to improve my rating so that I don't have a civil war or something? I've been doing really good in this game - Persia, India, Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Ethiopia have all been destroyed, and Greece is my best bud (defensive pact and all), so I basically have no hostile neighbors any more. I've been in the tech lead the whole game and am first place on the scoreboard now as well. Would suck to lose all of a sudden just because of this rating that I can't figure out.
What's going on? How is my economy terrible and my empire about to collapse when I am able to run 100% research and have like 1600 gold?
I had been running a pretty small empire, just trying to survive against the Arabs but then the Turks showed up and that really helped me because I got them to declare on the Arabs, and I let both of them exhaust their armies against each other and then I got rifling and took out both of them.
But now that I have such a huge empire (went from 2-3 cities to 11) my economy rating has dropped off considerably. I don't understand why.
There were a few turns where I was running 100% and getting -20 per turn, but I didn't think it was a big deal since I had so much gold. I could easily drop to like 80% to have it be positive again, but even when I did that my rating was still terrible. However, now I'm back to running 100% and getting like +1 per turn but my economy rating is still 1 star with a down arrow...
The only other thing I can think of is that I'm running Mercantilism (to get the free specialist to use with representation) but that shouldn't completely ruin the economy rating, should it?
So, can someone help me and explain what I need to do to improve my rating so that I don't have a civil war or something? I've been doing really good in this game - Persia, India, Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Ethiopia have all been destroyed, and Greece is my best bud (defensive pact and all), so I basically have no hostile neighbors any more. I've been in the tech lead the whole game and am first place on the scoreboard now as well. Would suck to lose all of a sudden just because of this rating that I can't figure out.