Do you think gene clinic and holo theater upgrades are worth their cost?

[strangebloke]

Holo Theaters are not usually worth it. Too many things create amenities.

This about it this way: A holo-theater requires 2 pops. Since the entertainers are specialists, together they require 2 food, 1 consumer goods, as well as housing and ammenities. That job specifically uses 2 consumer goods as well, and then the building consumes 2 energy.

....But they produce a lot of amenities, right, so it all evens out, right?

5 consumer goods = 10 energy
2 food = 2 energy
2 energy = 2 energy

so that's 14 energy cost per building, for 20 amenities, minus whatever housing and amenities the pops require. If that doesn't seem bad, well... it probably should.

The issue is that there are already too many things that create amenities in the game. At a minimum, your capital is going to be generation somewhere between 8 and 30 amenities, your city districts are going to be generating 2-4 amenities for every district of housing, the luxury housing option produces amenities, the gene clinic produces amenities, the temple produces amenities... Additionally, the game causes the number of amenities required relative to population to go down over time rather than up. The number of times where you need 20 amenities all at once is rare indeed. The number of times where you have an exotic gas that you want to spend on 40 amenities is even rarer.

So I'd consider it a niche building overall.

Gene clinics are also generally not worth it.

I do use them, occasionally. I like stacking loads of pop growth bonuses on top of each other on my homeworld or on an ecuemenopolis. Cloning vats+cyto center+nutritional plentitude+encourage+xenophobe for allll the babies.

But really outside of such silliness I don't really see the point. It's two specialists and a building slot for a pop every 33 months. That's pretty underwhelming

 

[Kryndude]

Interesting, I didn't expect T1 gene clinic to be questioned when writing this thread. Glad I did.

 

[trojan1234]

Holo Theaters are not usually worth it. Too many things create amenities.

This about it this way: A holo-theater requires 2 pops. Since the entertainers are specialists, together they require 2 food, 1 consumer goods, as well as housing and ammenities. That job specifically uses 2 consumer goods as well, and then the building consumes 2 energy.

....But they produce a lot of amenities, right, so it all evens out, right?

5 consumer goods = 10 energy
2 food = 2 energy
2 energy = 2 energy

so that's 14 energy cost per building, for 20 amenities, minus whatever housing and amenities the pops require. If that doesn't seem bad, well... it probably should.

The issue is that there are already too many things that create amenities in the game. At a minimum, your capital is going to be generation somewhere between 8 and 30 amenities, your city districts are going to be generating 2-4 amenities for every district of housing, the luxury housing option produces amenities, the gene clinic produces amenities, the temple produces amenities... Additionally, the game causes the number of amenities required relative to population to go down over time rather than up. The number of times where you need 20 amenities all at once is rare indeed. The number of times where you have an exotic gas that you want to spend on 40 amenities is even rarer.

So I'd consider it a niche building overall.

Gene clinics are also generally not worth it.

I do use them, occasionally. I like stacking loads of pop growth bonuses on top of each other on my homeworld or on an ecuemenopolis. Cloning vats+cyto center+nutritional plentitude+encourage+xenophobe for allll the babies.

But really outside of such silliness I don't really see the point. It's two specialists and a building slot for a pop every 33 months. That's pretty underwhelming

Theater isn't only for amenities. I build it to boost unity to unlock traditions and perks, amenities are bonus. I think your arguement is for spiritualist, but non-spiritual regular empire have culture worker instead of priest which is worse than entertainer in terms of unity per cg upkeep.

 

[permeakra]

The gene clinic is worth it in the initial phase, but loses value towards the mid game. Holo temple is a constant feature of my planets.

Gene Clinics have payoff time about 100 years in terms of pop growth. Launching one colony earlier is usually better. That said, gene clinics can be built on habitats, so if you don't want leisure districts, they could be useful. Another similar building is temple.

Now obviously tier 1 gene clininc and holo theater are great. They give you amenities while also providing other useful resources. But are the higher tier versions worth their rare resource cost, pop dedicated to work those jobs, and tech cost in researching them? I personally never even research the techs but it came to me that I may be playing sub-optimally here. What's your opinion?

If you have no temples, holotheater upgrade are probably worth it. If your temple isn't enough for you ecumenopolist, any bit of amenities count.

 

[permeakra]

Theater isn't only for amenities. I build it to boost unity to unlock traditions and perks, amenities are bonus. I think your arguement is for spiritualist, but non-spiritual regular empire have culture worker instead of priest which is worse than entertainer in terms of unity per cg upkeep.

Non-spiritualists can and should invest into alternative source of unity and amenities. Merchant Guilds, Technocrasy, Bureaucracy and other useful civics allow additional sources of unity and provide nice bonuses overall.

 

[strangebloke]

Theater isn't only for amenities. I build it to boost unity to unlock traditions and perks, amenities are bonus. I think your arguement is for spiritualist, but non-spiritual regular empire have culture worker instead of priest which is worse than entertainer in terms of unity per cg upkeep.

While it is true that per unity the entertainer is more efficient wrt to consumer goods, the atocthon momunment is much more efficient wrt to space, pops, and total energy cost, especially when looking at the advanced buildings.

The heritage site produces 12 unity with 4 specialists, 8 consumer goods, and 2 energy.
The Hyper Entertainment forums produce 8 unity with 4 specialists, 4 consumer goods, 2 energy, and 1 rare gas.

That rare gas is expensive, to the point that the Heritage site is actually cheaper if you can get the CG, and produces 50% more unity and gives you research instead of amenities, which is IMO an improvement.

Of course, CG come with an opportunity cost; in a game where you're strapped for minerals, you might rather be making alloys than consumer goods.

If you have no temples, holotheater upgrade are probably worth it. If your temple isn't enough for you ecumenopolist, any bit of amenities count.

They're definitely a lot more worth it but I typically don't bother.

And for city planets, its reaaally hard to beat those leisure districts.

Non-spiritualists can and should invest into alternative source of unity and amenities. Merchant Guilds, Technocrasy, Bureaucracy and other useful civics allow additional sources of unity and provide nice bonuses overall.

Aye, Efficient Bureaucracy and Byzantine Bureaucracy are both absolutely stellar civics that boost your unity production.

Byzantine is particularly good for getting your trade income up.

Perhaps I'm biased against holotheatres because I barely ever do a run without one of those two civics.

 

[th3freakie]

I always build holo theatres because godamit men culture is important.

 

[Chilango2]

Once you see that lots of bonus amenities are not really worth bang for the buck, then holo-theatres aren't worth it. I'm going to disagree with the general consensus so far on gene clinics, I think looking at the bonus by itself sells it short. In general, I feel at the early game trying to get pop growth as much as possible, so you're stacking bonuses, and it eventually adds up: nutritional plenitude, plus gene clinics, plus cloning, plus some other early tech bonuses means you can pretty easily hit +50% or so growth in the early game, at that rate, I find that my pops are growing at 5.5 or so per month, which builds up quickly after a bit.

Once you hit the mid game, your emphasis will start to change as your pop grows large enough and has enough different "sources" that the bonus is no longer meaningful, sure. But having 20-30 more pops than the AI by 2250's is a meaningful economic boon that helps in ways that are meaningful in research, military production and your ability to economic support and create a fleet to defend what you have and take what you want as the early game "empty space" expansion phase ends and you start thinking about your first few wars.