Why all the social projects if you cant even use them?

Question 2. Does your planets profit go into your empire spending at all or is that just taxes trade and tribute?

Some social projects are for special circumstances, like if a planet is under influence attack and needs to boost its resistance. But I agree that some social projects need help, I never build them, as the bonuses they provide are far too small for the maintenance they require. Some I find out of line:

Galactic research center, 400 cost and 5 maintenance for 10% star influence and 45% research. But the huge maintenance cost forces you to reduce spending overall significantly thus greatly reducing the net +research benefit. I need to get some numbers on this to see if this building is actually worth it at all.

Info Net, 300 cost and 4 maintenance for 5% econ, 1% star influence (probably meant to be 10%), and 10% research. Not even close to worth it, even on a huge planet, under any circumstances I know of. Make it +25% research and +10% influence and then it would be worthy of consideration.

Medical Center, 100 cost and 2 maintenance for 5% morale, 5% research, and 5% ships. Just not worth the effort. Doubt I'd even build it for 1 maintenance, it needs to be more effective at -something-. Try +10% pop growth, +10% morale, +10% research, and +5% ships and it would look a lot more attractive for 2 maintenance.

Orbital Hospital, 200 cost and 3 maintenance for 10% morale, 5% star influence, and 5% research. Too much maintenance for what you get, 1 maintenance would be more in line with the benefits, 2 at most. I doubt I'd build it if it was 2 maintenance, to be honest.

Virtual Reality Center, 400 cost and 5 maintenance for +20% morale, way too much maintenance, totally out of line with the other +morale projects, should be about 2 maintenance.

The beauty of those is the bonus they give really jacks up your scores when combined with others of its ilk.

A for-instance is the Med Center, which really shines when you combine it with shipyards, quality centers, etc.

M

No, it doesn't, 5% is 5%, and not worth it at that cost. Their maintenance is a cancer eating away at your otherwise much healthier economy. If you start thinking that these piddling bonuses are worth it then you'll way overbuild your planets and end up with far less -real- power where it counts: your military, social, and research sliders. Here is my core set of builds that go on every planet I have, in pretty much the order I build them:

Soil Enrichment
Habitat Improvement
Bank
Research Center
Fusion Plant
Manufacturing Center
Entertainment Network (placement depends on morale)
Anti-matter Plant
Transporters
Stockmarket
Economic Exchange
Research Center
Neural Net
Stadium
Terraforming
Shipyard
Advanced Quality Control
Starship Foundry
Multimedia Center
Harmony Generator

Since I focus on infrastructure the shipyard stuff is at the bottom of the list, but if often gets built sooner as I use it as a 'sink' for my excess production when other planets are building the 'main' stuff. And the morale goes in where it's needed, though the placement I gave here usually works well for me.

The early focus on manufacturing allows me the flexibility to do most anything I need (crank out ships, or constructors, or social projects, or combinations of the above). The next three (transporters, stock market, exchange) take your economy to the moon, together they give a total bonus in the morale/economy area of +73% economy and +35% morale for a total of 3 maintenance. After that comes the +research buildings and you are ready to tackle the heavy parts of the tech tree.

I gave too short an answer above about the +5% ships for the medical center, let me answer better:

Advanced quality + shipyard + foundry = +50% ship bonus for 4 maintenance total. Medical center gives 5% morale/research/ships for 2 maintenance. You can see the cost/benefit ratio sucks for the medical center. It's just a drag on your economy, taking money that you could use to fund an efficient structure like one of the ones in my list given above.

Well, I can see your point if you build a bazillion social projects like you do. I only select one system to have shipyards, etc. I definitely build the med center for that one. If the total bonuses give you +25 hp or something, that extra five percent adds up.

M

I don't think the shipyards and other +ship bonuses add to hps, I think they just add to attack/defense. In that case the important issue is breakpoints (i.e. when going up a % results in +1 to ship attack and/or defense). This is why sometimes you'll see big jumps in your military power while doing research, if you have 60 starfighters out there and you go from 3 attack to 4 because of 1D Phasing or something then your military power will skyrocket.

If you don't see any other +attack/defense techs coming along any time soon, and that +5% will take your fleet over a breakpoint, I'd agree that it's worth it.

From what I've heard, all the +ship quality bonuses are bugged and don't actually work. I haven't actually looked to check this, but apparently they stop working after you reload.
I normally take HP + as a starting bonus and keep way ahead on miltary techs/resources, so I really don't need them.

Good points from Vorlin and they are especially valid in the mid-game. I would add that while ROI type analysis on social projects is valid in most situations there is also times when a lop-sided economy allows you to fund everything you want to. In my experience you can achieve a massive budget surplus through trade and tribute even at 100% spending at which time you can then build Galactic Research Center etc and still fund at 100%.

I build everything I can get the blueprints for.
All you really have to do is ensure that if you DO go under -500BC that when all military/social/research spending is cut off, you can turn a profit. Otherwise you will be stuck without being able to build anything until you can get a positive cashflow again.

I'm probably not playing "optimally" or in the most efficient or "uber" manner, but it works just fine for me, leaving me free to concentrate on.. you know.. having fun.

~SDC~

The shipyard and such bonus bug should be fixed now, that was what was meant in the history text about ships remembering what world made them. A ship's bonus is tied into the world that made it, before it forgot this on a reload and thus forgot the bonus, it should remember now.

The bonuses can make a huge difference in your military power (shipyard + advanced + foundry = 50% more) and that is good even if you are a defensive player, because it means you can keep the AIs at bay with far fewer ships and thus far less maintenance (and less time using your military project time for ships vs. constructors).

It's also good to run on a lower level of infrastructure investment if the dreaded recession comes along. These can end quick, but they can also go on for years, and if you've overbuilt then you'll really suffer when this happens.

Actually, all those "useless" social improvements can be useful in the right situation, under the right strategy. If you puruse an economic race, you can easily find that even at spending of 100%, you make money. Creating a few high-capacity research or influence worlds can be a big benefit in this case.

Build all the + to influence projects and create a few culture palaces around a PQ 30 or higher world, and watch your influece in that sector jump to 100,000+ on bigger maps. It's enough to flip planets 3 sectors away.

That's the point of the game. It's reality. Can the U.S. government afford every single social project it "can" do? No. It forces you to specialize or just plain do without some things. That's economic reality. That is one way this differs from the civ series. You could usually build nearly everything in every city and never truly face the economic problem. Civ3 cheesily used corruption to try and remedy this. It didn't work. I think this is one area these guys got it absolutely right.

And particularly since constructors are more $ now, Here's what I've been doing. I try to get a sector with multiplanets, I'll boku production and ship yard update that sector doing only as many morale boosters As I need. I'll also do the production bonus starbase modules. Result: I can produce all the ships I need in one spot, decrease my military spending ratio and still churn em out, and focus the rest of the planets on science and influence.

My first game I sort of ran into the lets be balanced and build everything everywhere problem. I was just starting to nerf the less useful things when luckily an economic boom hit. Rather than use up the money, I banked it and didn't have to worry much about deficit spending again. But had It not hit, I'd have (and quite frankly should have) faced the same problem. I'm still trying to break out of the build everything in its turn mold. Difficult for me as I'm a civ junkie.

There are a few common things I build everywhere. (all the zero maintenence Pq and econ booster) The Entertainment network, and a few of the cheaper morale boosters (I play Populists alot to get the +20% eliminating the need to build all that many)

And the items that give cultural resistance are in fact useless in culturally safe sectors. If you've built them and it's 600 for you vs 50 for everyone else nerf em, you won't need em.
Hope this helps.

Oh and pay attention and remember where you chose to for example kill the dome citizens and make space for your erector set......You'd want that to be a science specialty system, etc. I always write it down on a notepad or I forget.

What build did the ship reload bug get fixed in? I'm only getting the major patch fixes, so I'm wondering if I'm still dealing with that here.

With the morale tweak,are the moral boosting specials really that important unless your being destabilized?Isnt the mean morale now 55%?And how effective is it to specialize on planets{except for border colonies that need cultural influence benefits), when you can only build one of each type of special.I cant build two research labs for instance,only when I go further up the tech tree which takes some time to get a higher level special can I then build something that will increase my research.It really doesnt make planet specialization real attractive.Combine this with the fact that all planets are generic in terms of research,production,etc.This is another strike against specialization.I mean dont you think realistically that some planets are more mineral rich while some may naturally increase moral by their environment?

You don't see as much specialization in GalCiv as in some other 4X games, but it is still useful in some areas. I especially like a specialized production planet for speed-building wonders, it's also good to have your one-of-a-kind bonus tech/economy structures on your largest population world.

Morale and max population are directly related, and population is directly tied to your planets research/industry/military production and its economy. So whenever a planet starts dropping below 100 morale that means it's soon heading towards 50-52 morale which means pop growth freezes. This is when it's valuable to plop down a +morale building so that planet can grow to the next level. Ideally you should build them on a planet to planet basis, but I prefer to avoid that much micro so I keep an eye on global morale, when it drops below a certain point then I globally build the next level in morale structures.

The problem isn't the social structures versus economy... it's the cost of too many people.

Late game, you'll be running 500 on expenses on a planet, because of all the people.

For the economy boosters, most of the minor guys, (+5% Economy for 4 Maintence), I don't build until the planet has an income that will pay for itself in gained economy. Unless it is a manufacturing increaser. I like having Manu capability, so those get dropped in regardless.

You need to also remember... 5% bonus means 1 more of whatever, at 20. Less then 20, and you aren't getting any bennie out of it. Which means you are just paying for nothing...

Specialization still works wonders. Certain things (cultureal resistance) aren't needed at all in safe sectors. You can virtually ignore them. Build them only in border sectors and only when influence is farely close. Toward the end of the game if you are out culturing everyone, you don't need em either as their colonies are revolting to you. As to % do they round or truncate? For example do they count a bonus that produces 2.6 more units of something a 2 (truncating the .6) or a 3 (rounding up to the nearest whole unit? If they truncate, the 5% doesn't do a lick of good untill you already have 20. (anything less than one truncates to zero) If they round it gets you 1 more at 10 (.5 rounds to 1)

From what Frogboy/Brad says, they truncate.

Yeah, all those bonuses sound good, but the +5% and stuff is useless early on when the numbers (be it attack, defense, hp, or what-have-you) are still low. Later on, you'll notice those little bonuses. Now, get a bunch of low bonus items, they'll add up (the +1% bonuses that the survey ship finds aren't worth it... but find lots of those anomalies, and it becomes useful).


~SDC~