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Money is an essential feature of civilization. As the 'trade' system in SE IV currently works you have to scrounge around for things that your trading partner might want. And if you can't find something in your possession that the party with the goods you want is interested in, you're stuck. It's like being a primitive tribal trader with nothing but raw goods to offer.
The 'technology' called money was invented many thousands of years ago to solve this problem, and there's no good reason to assume that advanced space-faring races, even very alien races, couldn't think of the same solution to the trade problem that our relatively crude and unsophisticated ancestors did. There really does need to be some sort of money in the SE universe. It doesn't require fancy accounting or banking systems. We can 'aasume' that just like we assume the trade routes and freighters moving our resources. But yes, money is essential for dealing between nations and empires just as it is between individuals. Even today the US Government pays money to other governments for various purposes, and also receives money from other governments.
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Yes, but say I give you a check for 1 million galaxy Credits (Good in all empires in the galaxy
)to help you. What are you going to spend it on. Will you buy resources or ships I, or another ally, could have given you, or will you use the check to buy stuff from your own people which as Emperor you could just take anyway. Money isn't just a piece of paper (or electronic credit) we all agree is worth something. Money is a guarantee that the piece of paper etc is worth part of the governments wealth. In the olden days (things were better then
) the standard was gold, and what is gold but a mineral resource. Why introduce an unnecesary element?.
Edit: The actual purpose of money, at least originally, was that you could give the guy in town 3 gold pieces instead of having to carry 3 cows, 2 sheep and a pig to market to pay for the clothes he is selling. A few coins is more convenient to carry, but we don't need to carry stuff we can just gift each other 300,000 resources.
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Meanwhile with all this talk of being dictator of your state, why not introduce the ability to modify empire settings as needed. This is one of the few good things from MOO3 (at least to me). Are your subjects dissenting?, send in the troops. Is your neighbour sending lots of spies at you, then use agents to root them all out. Also with all those AI populations you conquered, why not institute forced labour. With the benefits could of course come drawbacks like perhaps empire unhappiness at being spied on by their government all the time, unless they are the sort of people to understand the necessity of all this.