Buffed Gaia worlds

[Archael90]

For now, gaia worlds are extremally weak, not only much weaker compared to other ascension worlds in the same line (hive and machine worlds) but also weaker to any other special worlds (ecumenopolis, ringworlds), and takin Hydrocentric ascension perk is much better than taking world shaper, which is weird.
Gaia worlds needs drastic buff to be worth of ascension perk.
I have few ideas here:
1. Increase gaia world max dristics by fixed amount, or make them all being 25 size worlds.
2. Buff world shaper perk on its own, like allowing players to choose some special features of terraformed planets.
3. Remove basic resource districts limits on planets terraformed by world shaper or on gaia worlds.
4. Add special, rare resource extracting jobs in exchage for one miner in mining districts on gaia worlds

 

[苏白@夢璃花]

Ecumenopolis should probably be the opposite, incredibly urban planets should be a population sink.

That’s really wrong term use of population sink, it’s been called of that because rural population is aging at a much faster rate than those in the urban centres, which tend to attract younger families. I think just remove the 50% pop growth rate and we already have +50% automatic resettlement chance.

 

[NotAYakk]

Gaia:
+0.5 housing per pop (who needs shelter? The weather is that nice.) or -50% housing usage or +1 housing per planet size and +1 housing per rural district.
+0.5 amenities per pop (did you know that the tree squirrel creatures will massage your back for you?)
+1 food per pop (food is just everywhere, you don't really need to farm)

This is all "garden of eden" stuff; the place is so insanely nice to live in.

 

[NotAYakk]

That’s really wrong term use of population sink, it’s been called of that because rural population is aging at a much faster rate than those in the urban centres, which tend to attract younger families. I think just remove the 50% pop growth rate and we already have +50% automatic resettlement chance.

Urban populations have under-bred rural populations for 1000s of years.

Back in the day it was because of disease, today it is still somewhat because of crowding; having *space* to have a kid in the city is harder than in a rural area.

 

[Mcgan]

So, as a start, how about something like that for Gaia:

Bonuses for organics only (almost)

And for Ecu:

Bonus Growth but only from immigration, and higher immigration

 

[ApocalipsA]

I agree that the idylic bloom is useless civic for swarm.

 

[Stupid_Dragon]

Gaia Worlds certainly need a buff and it's a topic that is brought up on reddit fairly regularly.

Current issues:
1) Due to ability to spawn naturally, it is probably not feasible to make Gaia into "endgame" world type like Ecumenopolis, Ringworld, Machine or Hive World.
2) Out of all possible ways to acquire a Gaia World, the World Shaper just comes too late into play. At the very least the tech requirement on World Shaper should be changed to just Terrestial Sculpting.
3) IIRC you can get three Gaias before 2230 with dedicated Idyllic Bloom build. It's still not worth it. Meritocracy + Adaptive is better than Idyllic Bloom + Inorganic Breath. Even worse if you go Syncretic Evolution instead of a proper origin. That's how bad Gaias are.
4) It's worse for hives for some reason and you can't even get World Shaper if you're a hive. But Idyllic Bloom is still an option.
5) Life Seeded isn't great in general but for Hives in particular it's straight up a challenging origin.

 

[XCodes]

Gaia Worlds do not need a buff. Sure, Gestalt worlds are slightly better, but Gestalts (except Rogue Servitor) can't use Ecu's effectively. The primary upside to Gaia worlds is that their districts do not require strategic resources, making them the ideal feeder worlds to support Ecu's and Ring Worlds.

Are they worth an AP or permanent Civic? I don't know, depends on the build. One thing I can tell you for damn sure is that Hydrocentric is trash because you can't do Oceans AND Ecus effectively that way.

 

[Stupid_Dragon]

Gaia Worlds do not need a buff. Sure, Gestalt worlds are slightly better, but Gestalts (except Rogue Servitor) can't use Ecu's effectively. The primary upside to Gaia worlds is that their districts do not require strategic resources, making them the ideal feeder worlds to support Ecu's and Ring Worlds.

Are they worth an AP or permanent Civic? I don't know, depends on the build. One thing I can tell you for damn sure is that Hydrocentric is trash because you can't do Oceans AND Ecus effectively that way.

Gestalt worlds aren't slightly better, Gestalt worlds come with uncapped districts, unlocked building slots and +1 to Spawning Drone or Replicator on top of Gaia World bonuses. They don't require resources for districts either.

Unfortunalely whether they worth an AP or permanent civic is exactly what this is about.

 

[NotAYakk]

Gaia:
+0.5 housing per pop (who needs shelter? The weather is that nice.) or -50% housing usage or +1 housing per planet size and +1 housing per rural district.
+0.5 amenities per pop (did you know that the tree squirrel creatures will massage your back for you?)
+1 food per pop (food is just everywhere, you don't really need to farm)

This is all "garden of eden" stuff; the place is so insanely nice to live in.

I'm rethinking. A simple:

+1 housing per planet size
+1 amenity per planet size
+1 food per planet size

Basically, the first (planet size) pops are free; their needs are taken care of. Or you can export the easy to find food. Whatever.

It does make it less useful for lithoid and machine empires. Machines it makes perfect sense. And lithoids, well, they really should have a different "Gaia" than organics.

On the other hand, this doesn't scale well towards the endgame. So the APs still aren't great.

I am struggling with finding an idea that doesn't result in hugely overpopulated Gaia worlds. If you add any per-pop effect that is definitely a result.

What if Gaia rural districts produced only 1 job, but had +100% output? Not +6 energy, but +100% energy. That would be great in the early game and in the late game, and wouldn't encourage massive overpopulation. In the late game, it is about maximizing efficiency of empire size; in the early game, it is about the higher output with fewer pops.

(+100% doesn't stack as well with tech as +6 would.)

 

[civ_v_freak]

Out of all possible ways to acquire a Gaia World, the World Shaper just comes too late into play. At the very least the tech requirement on World Shaper should be changed to just Terrestial Sculpting.

I can see this being a thing with an added requirement of having two spent AP points already or something.

 

[Archael90]

For me, the problem is "world shaper" which makes nothing particular. Finding gaia world in wild is nice, not gamebraking, but nice. But choosing "world shaper" to specifically turn all planets into gaia is waste of resourcess, especially that most (all?) planet will become ecumenopolises feeded by ringworlds (which also has to be buffed, since those are inferior to ecus).
World shaper should have additional effects or Gaia worlds made by world shaper should have additional effects.
Or
Gaia world become a subclass of a planet, or special feature adding gaia world bonusses to any planet touched by it. It may not seem big, it just make arid world 100% habitability with some minor bonuses, but this could apply also to ringwords and ecumenopolises.

 

[Stupid_Dragon]

I can see this being a thing with an added requirement of having two spent AP points already or something.

World Shaper already requires one ascension perk taken, and I think this is as high as it should go. Gaias aren't good enough to push them towards later game.

For me, the problem is "world shaper" which makes nothing particular. Finding gaia world in wild is nice, not gamebraking, but nice. But choosing "world shaper" to specifically turn all planets into gaia is waste of resourcess, especially that most (all?) planet will become ecumenopolises feeded by ringworlds (which also has to be buffed, since those are inferior to ecus).
World shaper should have additional effects or Gaia worlds made by world shaper should have additional effects.
Or
Gaia world become a subclass of a planet, or special feature adding gaia world bonusses to any planet touched by it. It may not seem big, it just make arid world 100% habitability with some minor bonuses, but this could apply also to ringwords and ecumenopolises.

Making World Shaper do something on the side is one way to do it, but it still leaves problem with Idyllic Bloom and Life Seeded. Ofcourse you can tune them as well, but personally I'd rather have Gaias to be a bit more impactful baseline, ones found in the wild be damned. Then it probably won't be necessary to touch Idyllic Bloom, and World Shaper won't need something as complex as you describe to be viable.

 

[Cosmic Fishering Fleet]

I think that Gaia-tier worlds (Gaia, Hive, Machine) shouldn't be locked by AP at all, they should be a rare technology after or parallel to Climate Restoration instead. However, its terraforming cost should be increased (it sometimes costs less to make Gaia World (or Machine World, or Hive World) then terraform the world to your preference type). Making -10% housing usage and unlocking all building slots would be enough then to even them out with Hive and Machine worlds.

 

[EulersApprentice]

I think the best way to improve Gaias relative to Ecus is to make Gaias available earlier in the game. The defining feature of Gaias is 100% habitability for everyone; but that's necessarily true of Ecus as well, because it'd be too unwieldy to have Ecu variants for every planet type. So the best niche for Gaias that doesn't completely change their nature would be having them available earlier in the game than Ecus.

Someone else mentioned locking World Shaper behind Terrestrial Sculpting instead of Climate Restoration, and I think that'd fix it up quite nicely.

 

[civ_v_freak]

World Shaper already requires one ascension perk taken, and I think this is as high as it should go. Gaias aren't good enough to push them towards later game.

I might have changed my mind. I think it could be reasonable to only require 1 ascension perk taken already, but the issue with that is it would come in contention with picking the ascension perk for bio/psi/cyborg ascension most of the time. Would it be too extreme if you could pick it without any ascension perks already taken? The problem with that is you usually don't get Terrestrial Sculpting for a bit...

 

[EulersApprentice]

I might have changed my mind. I think it could be reasonable to only require 1 ascension perk taken already, but the issue with that is it would come in contention with picking the ascension perk for bio/psi/cyborg ascension most of the time. Would it be too extreme if you could pick it without any ascension perks already taken? The problem with that is you usually don't get Terrestrial Sculpting for a bit...

It's not always essential to take an Ascension Perk as soon as you unlock its slot. You could leave your first slot open while you wait for Terrestrial Sculpting.

 

[civ_v_freak]

It's not always essential to take an Ascension Perk as soon as you unlock its slot. You could leave your first slot open while you wait for Terrestrial Sculpting.

Fair enough. Now... the terraforming cost reduction from the AP, should it maybe be moved over to the Climate Restoration tech instead then?

EDIT: I just remembered the World Shaper AP also needs at least one AP taken already at the moment, so the part about saving the first perk pick doesn't really work... either we could just accept that World Shaper OR the ascension path should logically be picked as a third AP, or the 1 AP-requirement could just be removed.

 

[Stupid_Dragon]

I don't see any particular problem even with World Shaper being allowed to be picked as first AP given how bad Gaias currently are.

 

[XCodes]

I don't see any particular problem even with World Shaper being allowed to be picked as first AP given how bad Gaias currently are.

That would make World Shaper the only Tier 0 AP that gives a strict economy bonus with the only other one that gives any kind of real economy bonus at all being One Vision.

 

[Stupid_Dragon]

That would make World Shaper the only Tier 0 AP that gives a strict economy bonus with the only other one that gives any kind of real economy bonus at all being One Vision.

Interesting point, but I think you've missplelled Executive Vigor here.

Having to spend 10 years and 7.5k energy per planet as well as still needing Ecological Adaptation to terraform your most developed planets isn't a "strict" economy bonus in my book. In fact counting out Detox and the likes it would be the only Tier 0 AP with straight up delayed effect.