How to best manage administrative cap?

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The obvious solution is to embrace the power of Fanatic Pacifism.

 

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Why? The few more admin cap it gives don't do much as seen in the tables. However the fan. pacifist drawbacks on (war) diplomacy are severe. Can we actually win by score points as a fan. pacifist nowadays?

I mean outside of the fact that Fanatic Pacifism is the bestestest ethic (because I like it, and that is obviously the only reason necessary ), it also provides you with the admin cap when you want it most. Tech and Unity cost isn't all that high during the early game, but production values for them are at their lowest during the first 30 years or so, so any cost increase will hurt quite a bit. The cap is also pretty useful if you want to rush for costly techs (like Mega Engineering).

The drawback is there, but if you are playing SP, there is really no necessity to wage any wars at all. With Habitats and Ringworlds, you can easily outperform other AI empires. If you look at the dev clash (which, granted, is not cut-throat in terms of play style), I have been doing quite well there by befriending my neighbors. The fact that I didn't have to invest into military all that much allowed me to focus heavily on mega structures, and while I will lose my #1 spot to the Cyber-Equestrians in the near future, I will definitely remain among the galactic super powers for the rest of the game.

 

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[...] 20 Habitats > 1 Ringworld, influence cost aside, plus can be built w/o slowing other mega constructions.

I mean, Habitats are great to obtain extra building slots, but the trade-off there is that you'll pay 100 alloys per month for those Habitats and they don't come with unlimited Food or Energy districts.

Meanwhile, the Social tech tree doesn't have any vital military repeatables, so you can spend most of your time grabbing the extra admin cap tech to slowly increase your cap past current usage.

While I'd certainly argue that you are better off to start with a few Habitats and get a Science Nexus or Matter Decompressor as your first Megastructure, Ringworlds aren't really THAT bad in the long term when it comes to admin cap use.