Building Strategies, Spending Management, Economic Drains, Maximizing your Planet

[ZTrooper]

Just wrapped up some VERY long games, and I'm trying to do a little brainstorming.

For most of the game, I found myself with a couple planets that were going like gangbusters and I could do no wrong with them, and other planets, I could do nothing right. They were pathetic and pointless.

I had planets with over 100 sheilds in Military and Social production, and I could flip them to research specialty and get fabulous results. I could crank out huge hulled ships in 4 turns or less with ease. Other planets were an unimitigated disaster.

Couple basic questions:

1) How do you figure out the population cap for a given planet?

2) Which improvments stack or don't? (I.e. multiple stock markets? multiple starports? (I only ever put up a single starport on a planet), Multiple culture or influence mods? Planetary defense mods?

3) What role does total population play in the speed at which you can build your improvements? Or, is your population solely a source of tax revenue and soldiers?

4) What's the best means of maximizing economic output for a planet? I.e. how in gods name do you generate enough cash to support your fleets of half a dozen 3 and 4 capital ship fleets when each blasted ship sucks down 25bc a week in mantenance fees? (I had ship maintenance costs of over 800bc a turn. I couldn't sustain fleets for any length of time, and ended up having to destroy my less experienced capital ships for the decomission cash and reduction in maint fees)

5) Ongoing economic management. . I was playing the Thalans, and was constantly having to fiddle with the taxation and production amounts to stay in the green on budget. I even had to start fiddling my spending around to cut back on most of the military spending and focus on research as I was going for a tech victory (though, I won a culture victory when I was 2 techs from the tech victory). I literally had to drop my military spending to sub 10% and social to sub 5% in order to maintain a positive cash flow and keep moving forward. (considering I had to come back from a tech rating of 40 as compared to the rest, I think I did pretty well)

What I have found is that in 2 planet systems, economic starbases are a must if you want to maintain any size of fleet. (Now, that being said.. if you have a single planet in the area of affect of 2 econ starbases, do the bonuses become cumulative?) Also, dear god, controlling an economic mining resource is a HUGE factor in keeping taxes low, and getting production output to 100%.

How do you best optimize a planet for production or research? Is it a matter of slapping down labs or factories and then plopping down a manufacturing or tech capital? (had a planet with a pair of 300% research tiles.. slapped down something like 8 labs and a tech capital... zoom!) Had a planet with 9-ish factories and a manufacturing capital. Had more production than I knew what to do with. (Btw.... if you don't have anything building on your social build order, but have social sheilds, are they just wasted? or are they turned into cash for that turn?)

For an econ capital, do you just want to find the planet with the highest population, and throw down some farms and the econ capital to maximize tax revenue?


What about early build strategies? So far, every game I've played with normal level AI, I fall behind quickly in the research game, despite my best efforts to get things rolling as quickly as possible. (I appear to have a late game peak.. slow to start, but wow, once I get going, I can produce entire fleets of warships and transports in 10 turns or less, and just as quickly flip it all back to monsterous research once the wars are over... but it takes a lot of fiddling with the spending and production focus to keep it all on track)

Victories... which ones give the highest points? Sure, I can crush the computer with troops, but I seem to win culturally more often than not... also... what sort of level of military do you have to maintain in order to keep opportunistic computer opponents from randomly declaring war on you? (this last game, in order to keep taxes down, and the research flowing, I ended up scrapping 80% of my capital ships after peace was made, just to keep from drowning in maintenance costs... of course, once the ships were gone, it was only a matter of time before I'd get attacked by the computer, and have to quick produce 8-10 new capital ships to give the computer a bloody nose and kill off several of it's fleets, fend off opportunistic troop ship deployments, and sieze of couple of the computer's planets to convince it that he should accept my peace offer, and fork over 1-2k cash. (Most of my wars, I'm in deficit spending and a war of attrition would probably ruin me)

I've had a lot of fun with the game so far... playing freewheeling and seat of the pants, I've beaten normal level AI players pretty handily.. (though, it annoys me that the 'random' placement of planets usually ends up with me being in the WORST starting positions ever.. 1 star system, maybe 2 in my sphere of influence, and the computer players routinely havine 3 or 4 star systems to start with, and all the damn computer players between me, and the rest of the unclaimed stars. I literally have to by default colony ships for the first 4-6 turns, and launch them blind toward other star systems if I am going to have any hope of having a decent number of systems to start my empire from... is it just me, or does the game purposely give you crappy starts and give the PC an edge??

Anyway.. lots for people to chew on.. looking forward to seeing the replies.

-Cj

[Kinjiru]

Lots of very good questions. I have many of the same!

Let's see if my observations can move some of the discussion forward...

"3) What role does total population play in the speed at which you can build your improvements? Or, is your population solely a source of tax revenue and soldiers?"

From what I can tell, including in the manual, population is only relavant as a source of tax revenue and a source of unhappiness. Build times seem strickly dependant on the total amount of production on a planet times any starbase bonuses times your empire wide slider settings. I have had tiny planets with very little pop crank out massive production (when manufacturing bonuses are present) and I have had very large planets take ages to build anything.


"4) What's the best means of maximizing economic output for a planet? "

A few thoughts here, but these are really on an empire-scale, not an individual planet...

One, build influence starbases, over econ ones. The higher your influence, the more 'tourism' cash you bring in.

Two, go to war and use your ships! Or, build fewer fleets. I have two offensive fleets cruising around in peacetime. I then stock my planet with defensive ships, assembling them into fleets as needed. My defensive ships have lots of defense (specialized of course) but pretty small offense. I rely on a military starbase in the sector to provide offensive bonus to my assembled defensive fleet.

Three, make sure you are building some econ improvements here and there. Perhaps even consider making an Econ Planet or two.


That's about all I can offer at the moment.

[bovine cannibal]

Eh... I haven't tried my tactics on the more competitive difficulty levels yet. The highest I've gone is Normal, but most of my games are in beginner.

I alternate early game strategies between purchasing early colony ships and a 100-100 strategy. I haven't settled on a routine yet, but on the smaller galaxies I tend to go with purchasing.

When I don't want to bother with debt, I set my social production to 100% on the first turn. I start building factories until I reach around 50~60 SP. The first takes 2 turns, and I put up the next two to four in a single turn each. Any more is just too large a drain on my economy with diminishing returns. I then switch to 100% military, and churn out either 1 scout per turn or 1 colony ship every two turns. It depends on my galaxy settings, but I tend to produce 3 scouts then three colony ships, then drop my military production. If I pump out enough scouts, and I'm not crowded, I ignore stellar cartography. If I am purchasing my colony ships, however, I make stellar cartography a priority.

To note, the default colony ship may be useless. For a few more credits you can design your own faster one with three, maybe four speed.

A few answers:

3). As far as I know, population doesn't play a role in production. I've heard a couple comments to the contrary, but I haven't investigated yet.

4). Early game economic strategy- colonize, colonize, tax & farm. Has its downsides such as moral, but this works best for me so far. A planet with a population of one billion people and a 50% tax rate can easily produce 20BC. It easily beats a 10% economic upgrade. Mars unimproved can produce 36BC with the Federalist government when fully populated. Your capital, and again 50% tax, can easily produce 50 BC of income without any farms. If you can get enough population, a colony can easily cover the weekly payments of the 4th purchase option, Mitrosoft, though I still prefer to purchase outright. If you need to use it to grab that one planet, go for it.

(Btw.... if you don't have anything building on your social build order, but have social sheilds, are they just wasted? or are they turned into cash for that turn?)

I won't vouch for this, but if the number is coming up in parentheses, then (10) MP is equivalent to 0 MP. You don't technically turn those into credits, but the credits aren't spent in the first place, so the end result is the same.

A few questions:
Does a high morale have other bonuses, such as a plus to production and research?

How much do you worry about your approval ratings?

How much do you worry about a compact empire?

If there is a nice planet on the opposite side of an alien civ, do you go for it?

Do you find it necessary to limit the size of your empire to manage travel times and ease defense?

[ZTrooper]

I'm not actually playing the campaign at the moment. I jumped right into the metaverse.

As far as I'm concerned, any planet that is colonizable is a must grab, even if the distance is insane. (I have been playing the Thalans, as a universalist).

As far as taxes, 50% is fine, until you get a democratic government. Now, this might be considered cheese, but I'll crank the taxes way up until a couple of turns before the election, then drop it to get my approval numbers up, and then right after the election, just jack them back up high again. Essentially, my approval hovers in the 40% range until later in the game, or right before an election, in which case, it's more like 60% or more.

[tetley]

I've had little problem on Normal level, and what I do is 49% tax--not 50%. There seems to be a big delta in morale from 49% to 50%. In the beginning, though, I'm around 13% tax, 100% spending, to get 100% approval and quick expansion. It's really just like Galciv1, except now it makes sense to purchase basic stuff outright. Like if I get manufacturing bonus tiles, I'll buy the factory outright; otherwise my starting money is going to buying colony ships outright, until I get down to ~1000bc. Also I'll purchase anything that's about done anyway. It's all about land-grabbing, cranking up manufacturing capacity, and pop growth. If I have a nearby neighbor I go colonize past him. Grab anything...anything...MINE, MINE. Because whatever you don't get now, you'll have to wait till planetary invasion or later to get. Sometimes I'll pass up a low PQ planet, IF I see something better out there. I can culture flip low PQ's later on.

Somewhere in the middle I'm researching key techs, like planetary improvements (more capacity), space militarization (yet more capacity), and later ion drive (speed for my colony ships/constructors). If the tech helps my expansion, I want it now. Gimme gimme.... Also the Xeno's--Xeno Research, Xeno Farming, Xeno Entertainment, Xeno Economics. Because those are what's going to turn my economy around.

About the time the planetary expansion is over, my economy should be hovering around the -500bc mark. That's where the Xeno's come in--particularly, Xeno Economics and Xeno Entertainment. I bypass the Entertainment Centers and build Multimedia Centers directly. With those up and the pop on all my planets hovering around 3 billion, I can switch to 49% taxes. If they're 100% approval rating, that's nice, but I can blow that off now. Just stay above 40% on all the planets so you're still growing. It's around that time I'm dealing with the 5-million food ceiling. That's where Xeno Farming comes in--generally, I bypass the Basic Farms unless I have a bonus food file & need it. Just make sure the planets are always growing.

Another trick I've found for turning my economy around is focusing on research. Since I focused on upping manufacturing capacity early on, my research lags somewhat, and I tend to run a surplus when I go 100% research. It's kind of an efficient way to "lower your spending rate"--if I want to stay out of the -500bc hole (or get into the positive altogether to improve morale)--I'll just research something I need.

The next stage--and this overlaps the previous two somewhat--is the shameless grab for the starbase mining resources. All things equal, I grab the green and yellow ones first, because, again, those help turn my economy around into a surplus. More yellow means more population and more taxes. The blues mean more tourism, but that doesn't amount to much. Since I'm military spending so much anyway, I try to have Trade researched and put a few planets on Freighters while I'm at it.

Once my trade routes are established, I'm pretty much swimming in gold. That's what I'm struggling with now--when you have games where you're running 30000bc and nothing to do with it, you're doing something wrong. I'll have my techno capital up and my research situation long since fixed by then. Hopefully I've got some star sectors with >3 planets (or at least 2 really good ones), and I can plunk down economic starbases to expand the industrial capacity.

[Pseudonatural]

1) How do you figure out the population cap for a given planet?
I believe all planets have a 5 billion population limit, which is then increased by farms.

2) Which improvments stack or don't? (I.e. multiple stock markets? multiple starports? (I only ever put up a single starport on a planet), Multiple culture or influence mods? Planetary defense mods?
Most things stack as far as I know. Of the ones listed, I think they all stack, except maybe stock markets. Haven't played a normal game yet though, so I don't know whether you can even build more than one on a planet. You definitely can't build more than 1 starport on a planet though. You wouldn't want to anyways, it does nothing except letting you actually put your military production into making ships.

3) What role does total population play in the speed at which you can build your improvements? Or, is your population solely a source of tax revenue and soldiers?
Population is solely a source of money from taxes, soldiers, colonists, and people that whine at you that you have to make happy for that coming election .

4) What's the best means of maximizing economic output for a planet? I.e. how in gods name do you generate enough cash to support your fleets of half a dozen 3 and 4 capital ship fleets when each blasted ship sucks down 25bc a week in mantenance fees? (I had ship maintenance costs of over 800bc a turn. I couldn't sustain fleets for any length of time, and ended up having to destroy my less experienced capital ships for the decomission cash and reduction in maint fees)
Well, you could use those fleets to take some planets to help fuel it, not to mention wear it down a little. Not really sure how to make a planet be money based yet. Either just fill it up with farms and enough approval buildings to make sure the planet doesn't revolt, and just rake in the tax cash, or build fewer farms and replace them with increased economy buildings. Second one probably would work better for high quality planets, as 15% more to your economy on a planet means a lot more when there's 10 billion more people that are just as happy. Trade routes + Starbases in 2 or more planet systems will also help the cash problem.

How do you best optimize a planet for production or research? Is it a matter of slapping down labs or factories and then plopping down a manufacturing or tech capital? (had a planet with a pair of 300% research tiles.. slapped down something like 8 labs and a tech capital... zoom!) Had a planet with 9-ish factories and a manufacturing capital. Had more production than I knew what to do with. (Btw.... if you don't have anything building on your social build order, but have social sheilds, are they just wasted? or are they turned into cash for that turn?)
Pretty much just slap down the buildings. Remember that population doesn't affect them, so you don't really need to build farms that will just take up space and possibly lower approval low enough to suck up another spot to satisfying them. Social shields are wasted if there's nothing for them to work on, but neither do you pay for them. I heard from the GalCiv2 forums that in the planet screen, for each section (military, social, researching) there is a button to make the planet concentrate on that area. I had assumed it was for when you put a governor in charge, but some people said it'll help the planet divert it's funds into that area more without you needing to change the empire wide speding distribution.

Something I was wondering... what's the point in Influence Starbases? Heck, what's the point in Influence at all? I assume it's used for a cultural victory, but I have no idea how, especially sinc eyou can trade influence points in the trade screen. Is that giving them more of your influence (culture), making it easier to take them, or literally just increasing theirs at the cost of yours with no benefits?

[ZTrooper]

Influence and you...

Something I was wondering... what's the point in Influence Starbases? Heck, what's the point in Influence at all? I assume it's used for a cultural victory, but I have no idea how, especially sinc eyou can trade influence points in the trade screen. Is that giving them more of your influence (culture), making it easier to take them, or literally just increasing theirs at the cost of yours with no benefits?

In a nutshell, influence allows you to do three things, the first of which is to extend your sphere of culture influence farther than you would with just your planet. Secondly, influence starbases can help you culture flip hostile planets to be under your control without firing a shot. The computer player does not like influence starbases near his planets or in his territory, and if you put enough of them down, you'll likely incite the computer to declare war on you. Third, if you can extend your culture influence to over 75% of the map and sustain it for at least 10 turns, you'll win a culture victory.

[Kinjiru]

Re: Influence and you...

Influence is also directly related to tourism income.

Originally posted by ZTrooper
Something I was wondering... what's the point in Influence Starbases? Heck, what's the point in Influence at all? I assume it's used for a cultural victory, but I have no idea how, especially sinc eyou can trade influence points in the trade screen. Is that giving them more of your influence (culture), making it easier to take them, or literally just increasing theirs at the cost of yours with no benefits?

In a nutshell, influence allows you to do three things, the first of which is to extend your sphere of culture influence farther than you would with just your planet. Secondly, influence starbases can help you culture flip hostile planets to be under your control without firing a shot. The computer player does not like influence starbases near his planets or in his territory, and if you put enough of them down, you'll likely incite the computer to declare war on you. Third, if you can extend your culture influence to over 75% of the map and sustain it for at least 10 turns, you'll win a culture victory.

[bovine cannibal]

Fourth, influence is directly related to your power in the United Planets. Every turn, some amount, possibly all, of your influence goes into a vote pool. If you aren't able or willing to buy votes via diplomacy, simply make more politicians with embassies and the like.

[bovine cannibal]

Edit: I was mistaken. My claim is false.

Originally posted by Pseudonatural
I believe all planets have a 5 billion population limit, which is then increased by farms.

Not quite. Don't forget your capital has a 10 billion population limit due to it producing 10 mt of food. Has anyone here actually moved their capital?
I assume if you've got this class 26 planet you want to exploit 120%, you may want to move it, but I haven't ever actually done it yet. I'll toy around with it.

Is it instant? Does it take some time? Does it cost something?

[tetley]

You raise a good point. Moving your capital is probably a good idea more often than it gets credit for. I wonder if it has influence ramifications?

[Pseudonatural]

Originally posted by bovine cannibal


Not quite. Don't forget your capital has a 10 billion population limit due to it producing 10 mt of food. Has anyone here actually moved their capital?
I assume if you've got this class 26 planet you want to exploit 120%, you may want to move it, but I haven't ever actually done it yet. I'll toy around with it.

Is it instant? Does it take some time? Does it cost something?

I didn't realize you could move your capital. Is it like Civ 4 where you just build a capital building on another planet that isn't your current capital?

[bovine cannibal]

I just may be delusional on that move the capital bit. I would have sworn I saw the option, but I can't find it now.

Update:
You can instantly change your 'homeworld' through the planet details screen. As far as I know, this only affects the descriptive text and nothing else. I can't imagine this being so useless, though. Anybody know if changing your homeworld achieves anything practical?

[Gufnork]

Here's my take on things:

1) How do you figure out the population cap for a given planet?

It's based on how much food you produce. Your capital produce enough to support 10 billion. A colony produce enough to support 5 billion. Each farm produce an amount based on how advanced it is, the base farm produce enough to support 4 billion I think, but I may be wrong. This number is of course modified by the squares food bonus if any.

3) What role does total population play in the speed at which you can build your improvements? Or, is your population solely a source of tax revenue and soldiers?
It has no effect on reasearch, military or social production. The pay taxes, defend the planet, produce influence and lower your approval rating. This means that border planets are by far the best planets for high population, but it's much easier to keep your population happy if you spread it out. I like keeping one farm per planet.

4) What's the best means of maximizing economic output for a planet? I.e. how in gods name do you generate enough cash to support your fleets of half a dozen 3 and 4 capital ship fleets when each blasted ship sucks down 25bc a week in mantenance fees? (I had ship maintenance costs of over 800bc a turn. I couldn't sustain fleets for any length of time, and ended up having to destroy my less experienced capital ships for the decomission cash and reduction in maint fees)

First of all I like to build one farm, one entertainment center and one economic centre on each planet.
Second, there's trading. I have yet to master this (haven't tried much), but my theory is to have your economic capital (thus your planet with highest population) spam freighters and send to other civilizations (send them to civs you want to be friendly with). Then build economic starbases where it catches the most freight lines and build tax modules.
Third, there's diplomacy. Minor races tends to be an almost endless source of money. In fact, diplomacy is totally unbalanced in this game. If you need cash, sell a tech. Need to catch up in the tech race? Get a tech noone else has then trade it with all other races. Start with the ones with the fewest techs to offer.
Four, don't have an unnecessary navy. Which includes pretty much your entire navy. Get a few ships hovering above a spin control center to show you have a military. If you just completed a war and aim for a period of peace, disband any unexperienced vessels. Or if you're feeling cheesy, give any small ships away to a minor race, declare war then destroy them. Free exp for you.

What about early build strategies?
I set my social production to 100%, my productivity to 100% and tax rate to 49% (the games is bugged so it ignores any birth rate bonuses, including the doubling from 100% approval rating). I generally buy the first factory to speed things up and I also buy a scout with the best engine technology available (I prefer races that start with Ion Drive technology on larger maps). Once I have enough factories to produce a scout in one turn with 100% military production, I do so, enough scouts to fit my purposes (I often use my flagship to scout with as well). Then continue producing factories until I can build fast colony ships (modified for maximum speed and possibly some range) in one turn each. Then I churn them out. Send each one to a pre-scouted planet or just take my chances based on other civs influence areas. I want the planets closest to other civs borders. The key is to grab the contested border planets before anyone else. Even if other civs grab planets inside your perimeter, the dumb AI will have a hard time preventing them from flipping. After all planets are colonized, I set my economy to social production. I try to get my planets to complete production as simultaneously as possible, by emphasizing research (or military if it has a star port) on the colonies that will finish production early. Once most of my colonies have completed building I switch to 100% research and have the planets that still needs to build emphasize social production. Then I go from there.

If I pump out enough scouts, and I'm not crowded, I ignore stellar cartography.

Stellar Cartography is completly useless. All stars have the same amount of planets and since you see the stars without the technology...

Does a high morale have other bonuses, such as a plus to production and research?
None whatsoever. It only determines growth rates and election results.

How much do you worry about your approval ratings?

Once I switch government I make pretty darn sure to keep the total above 55% as to not lose the election. The penalties are quite severe. I also try to make sure that all colonies keep approval rating above 40% until they've grown to max capacity. Other than that I ignore it completly. I don't bother with lowering the tax for election day though.

How much do you worry about a compact empire?
All planets are good, even if you only get to keep them for a little while, especially since the pop growth formula is so stupid (+200 million on each colony, all the time). If you can't defend it, then you'll lose it when you go to war. No biggie.

what I do is 49% tax--not 50%
That goes across the scale. Always keep your tax rate at x9%. The math formulas in this game are laughable, to say the least.

Much of it is probably repeats, but that just helps reaffirm the strategy, right? Anyway, I hope it helps someone atleast.

[bovine cannibal]

If I pump out enough scouts, and I'm not crowded, I ignore stellar cartography.

Stellar Cartography is completly useless. All stars have the same amount of planets and since you see the stars without the technology...

At the very least, half false. I've never seen a game where all stars have the same amount of planets. Here. Start a large map, Abundant PQ, Rare Planets, Abundant Stars. Stellar cartography becomes considerably more valuable for such a cheap tech.