How do you manage your planets?

[nuyu]

I'm curious on how you guys do your planet management. Because I constantly replace my district/buildings to fit my empire needs.

I also wish to have few tips.

 

[Livigy]

Depends on what is available in terms of planetary features etc. Generally I specialise planets to have one output focus. So a world where I have 8+ mining districts I just fill the planet with those districts add maybe one or two city districts then if I need more power or food I only add a district or two to not jeopordise the planet speciality. With the buildings on the planet for a specialised world it will be the typical culture, pop growth boosting buildings, a basic amenities building, robotic facility and if I have spare room refineries or hydroponics. Any agriworld will be mostly filled with hydroponics as they effectively provide a district worth of food without admin cap impacts.

Some planets with very limited districts will still specialise but they generally end up becoming pop farms. I don't want to grow them more than necessary, I want them to be exporting pops to an ecumonopolis. I want them building robots for exporting I want them to remain small but they remain relevant for continual growth. The ecumonopolis should also be building robots but exporting them to your smaller worlds.

Also if you specialise your planets moving around specialised robots is a bit easier, they may still fill specialist roles but they wont go on a generator if they are specialised for mining if there is no generators available for them.

I typically let the ecumonopoli handle secondary resource production - first league home world is really great to sort out the early game. It will gather all those excess pops and put them to use. I also fill the planet with research to take advantage of the bio pop density and ecumonolpolis bonus.

Also droids are great for your smaller planets as they have half amenity requirements and half housing so they are a lower burden on the planets while still providing the pop count for unlocking building slots. In the early game I like to stay under the admin cap so I avoid the housing districts where I can. If you end up replacing most of your pops with droids on small planets you will break your setup if you get synthetics. It is not worth it as the housing and amenities requirement double for the 10% upgrade. You will still need bio pops for your leader roles on smaller worlds. Unless you are after synthetic ascension I would avoid researching synthetics.

I am not really a fan of habitats in general. The districts don't quite work how I would want them to with no housing for the specialised districts you are forced into building housing districts. The limited district count is also confining and it is challenging to get requisite building slots. But if you do get a decent amount of building slot some key buildings are missing so there isn't really a point. Maybe if you just treat them as an additional robot and pop generator with no other resource expectations they would be decent but it would be quite literally a planet with just pop supporting buildings and limited to the one housing district. Maybe they would work great as a general pop generator but I would rather planets producing base resources for that.

 

[WhapXI]

In my first game I had my capital develop into my primary alloy planet, my second planet be consumer goods central, and my third be ultra-tech wonderland. All three would eventually become ecumenopoli. After that, any planets I would settle would be fully rural, with all possible districts built before a single city district. Building slots would go on unity and silos, and also to occasionally cover any consumer goods or rare resource deficit.

 

[Bezborg]

In my first game I had my capital develop into my primary alloy planet, my second planet be consumer goods central, and my third be ultra-tech wonderland. All three would eventually become ecumenopoli. After that, any planets I would settle would be fully rural, with all possible districts built before a single city district. Building slots would go on unity and silos, and also to occasionally cover any consumer goods or rare resource deficit.

May I ask what is your amenities policy? And do you have a “standard buildings” personal rule for all planets? Like “every planet gets a gene clinic and holo theatres, only then do tjey specialize”, stuff like that?

 

[WhapXI]

May I ask what is your amenities policy? And do you have a “standard buildings” personal rule for all planets? Like “every planet gets a gene clinic and holo theatres, only then do tjey specialize”, stuff like that?

I found amenities to be an issue early on in a colony's lifecycle but it didn't really have a significant effect. They generally hovered just shy of zero. Eventually the clerks from silos would bump them up into the dozens positive. On my city planets the clerks from housing districts would leave me with hundreds of amenities. I also had a massive xeno-slave population, so stuck most of them on domestic servitude, which makes unemployed slaves provide amenities as well. I didn't micro it particularly hard but I could easily have spread servant pops across the empire to maximise amenity. The only time I actually needed a holo-theatre was when conquering a hostile alien homeworld.

In terms of standard buildings, as soon as a colony would hit 10 pops and the ship shelter was upgraded I would build a monument and a bureaucracy station (the byzantine bureaucracy special building, which is actually incredible). After them I would generally build a ministry of culture, galactic stock exchange, and numistic shrine. So many ruler jobs so early on planets. Such stability as you've never seen.

I didn't bother with gene clinics or clone vats either. I had nutritional plentitude on all game, and would distribute surplus food pretty much every chance I got. After a certain point I couldn't resettle/house/employ all the pops I had. I had to stick all my slave species on population controls.

 

[nuyu]

Oh it seemed most of you do specialized the planets, I tried to put all type of buildings at one planet.

 

[Mitusonator]

I actually quite like habitats, when you hit their carrying capacity you can still resettle pops to ecumenopolis or any other planet.
Also if you choose to play spiritualist don't forget to build temples they are incredibly useful!

 

[Piotrzeci]

I think it's best not to think about developing planets too much and instead make them grow naturally and in kind of an easy going way.
The empire seems to really come out nicely, if you just look at planets and if they have any possible growth (building or unemployment) just build what you feel like it, without putting too much thought into why.
In my current game I had a planet colonized pretty late compared to the others and it had no special resources, modifiers nor many features (so little of each resource) and I thought, that it can just be a city planet... I loved how it turned out. On the other side I had one with huge number of possible Mining Districts and even though I were a MegaCorp I just decided, that it can be an underdeveloped world with lots of miners and Civilian Industries.
I would say no plan is the best plan. Just think of some general theme you want for a planet (or if you don't have one, then just let it come to you over time) and then forget about it until you see, that it can be developed again; then you will remember "oh it is this planet over here" and there will be no problem deciding what to put on it.

(plays "Let it Grow")

 

[Xendance]

I only have one rule that I try to follow:

* High habitability planets will have city districts and lots of buildings

* Low habitability planets will not have city districts and only basic production districts.

This is because pops on low habitability planets cost significantly more amenities and upkeep so you want to keep the numbers low on bad planets. Those bad planets will be my mining worlds, agri worlds and generator worlds. Bonus points for preventing growth on those planets when all the districts are in use.

High habitability planets will have city districts and greater numbers of buildings, like research labs, forges and fabricators and such.

 

[Leylos]

I do change buildings ever so often but in my experience (unless it is the early game) taking things slow when deciding what to build is more often then not the right choice.

If you are in the late game and you have 20 or more planets, just randomly building something because you spotted that one unemployed pop while other things are building elsewhere can destabilize your economy quickly.

I always take a step back (roll my chair a few centimeters backwards) and look at what my economy needs and how much it will cost me to address that.

It can be very easy to see your rare crystal income going red, freak out, build crystal plants and then realize that you are running out of minerals now.

Any immediate problems can usually be covered by trade deals until you can fix them properly yourself.

 

[sterrius]

capital on first years.

-> Sell all food and consumer goods and buy 200 minerals.
-> Start a mining district. (Use clerks to fill them).
-> Alloys factory. (natural growth + last clerk).
-> Energy district. (Usually needed to finance expansion). (2 nat growth)
-> Second alloy factory with POP (Close 1 factory before completion so you don´t lose workers, only open when the POP is rdy).

That means i usually can keep a nice income of 30+ minerals with capital planet and also keep a good surplus of energy.
With food and consumer goods being the only things i need to go for.

Colonys.
-> Food or Energy district, depends what i need. The other for pops 5 and 6.
-> Pops 7-8 go for Energy/minerals. 9-10 i finally use the building slot for something and try to get the city district up.


I see little reason to specialize before mid game. Rural World gives 2% Worker production and that means +2% for Food/Minerals/Energy. The main things i need from colonys at least on the first decades.

This also makes sure every planet is kind of Self sustaining themselves. (Except capital). Meaning its very hard for me to destroy my economy by building something wrong.


And take care for planets with low habitability. Every planet makes a profit now but low Hab planets can really push your consumer goods and food if you're not careful. More reason to go slow and have plenty of food/energy.

 

[Dorian Ertymexx]

I focus all my planets on minerals, energy as secondary and food and housing only if necessary. Farming idyll is a gold perk in that respect.

My home planet is my research center, with Three research Buildings, boosted to max as soon as possible, and locally built industries for amenities, rare Resources and resource enhances (Energy nexus and the like) to improve output.

All other planets instead focus om alloy production, but otherwise the same, making all planets as self-sufficient as possible.