I don't understand this game anymore. Need help with the new Economy.

[magickware99]

@Surimi

Your point regarding higher consumer goods is well taken, but there is one detail you have not taken into account: You only need one POP on a planet for that planet to create its growth; You can resettle all the others away.

There is nothing to prevent a player from colonizing a bunch of low habitality planets as well as all the medium-high habilitability planets in his vicinity and then resettling excess from the hellholes to the good worlds.

Okay, nothing except whether a) the player has resettling enabled, b) is willing to pay the energy cost, and c) is willing to pay the increased micromanagement price and threat to his sanity.

So you'll be paying the increased food and CG costs for one person per feeder planet until such time as you finally get some POPs that like the climate, improve its habitability, or your economy is in a good enough shape you feel you can afford to build up these hellhole planets.

I'm not saying that this is an optimal strategy in all cases or anything silly like that, but it is a very real option; Given that a player like me already considers it economic after a few years to pay 300 energy to get rid of the tileblocker on the home planet that grants +1 POP, paying 150 energy resettling cost per excess POP generated by the base 1.5 growth (+modifiers) and the nearly doubled upkeep for one feeder POP per hellhole is a price I am willing to pay. (And if you manage to get a slave race to colonize with, t is only 50 energy per POP, but you don't always luck out that way with one available to conquer early.)

Bonus points for doing this with expansion tradition such that you gain an extra POP to transfer to somewhere more hospitably as soon as your colonization succeeds.

But this is dependent on the empire/ethic you're playing, so I don't think it can work as general advice.

Based on my personal experience so far, you need to avoid colonizing 11-12 tile planets early game (especially if they're low habitability) because they'll be a huge drain on your resources in the long run- they have too few district to generate meaningful amounts of resources and the low habitability means that they consume a significant amount of resources.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

That's kind of an inside baseball optimization - not necessarily the first advice I'd give someone figuring out the new system.

Right you are.

Which is why I only give an answer such as this one to show a counterexample to a position staked out by somebody else, that the opposite holds true, not as the first advice to somebody figuring out the new system. Where my advice was this.

Still, I guess that post of mine you quoted could need a disclaimer, since it is moving into more advanced territory.

 

[Wewius]

There is nothing to prevent a player from colonizing a bunch of low habitality planets as well as all the medium-high habilitability planets in his vicinity and then resettling excess from the hellholes to the good worlds.

That is by far the most unethical advice I've gotten here...ever. Thank you.

 

[Eldoran]

That is by far the most unethical advice I've gotten here...ever. Thank you.

OT: it would be even more unethical the other way around

 

[Wewius]

There is always the possibility of eating slaves as more unethical.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

There is always the possibility of eating slaves as more unethical.

In appears that membership of PEEP (People for the Ethical Eating of People) is a required condition for selecting sentient races as livestock in Stellaris, from which it follows that doing so is not unethical.

Except, possibly, by the ethics of the people being eaten, I guess, but there's no pleasing everybody.

 

[AlanC9]

Suddenly I want to mod in an "Enjoys being eaten" trait so we can bio-engineer ethical people-eating.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

I think the -50% Growth for starter colonies is probably supposed to be the discouragement to have single-inhabitant 'population farms'. Whether it succeeds or not is up in the air. I think if you have enough 'feeder worlds' it can work but having just 1 or 2 doesn't add a ton of pop growth and it has a fairly high overall cost (particularly in drawing Emigration from your primary world(s) ).

 

[TheTam]

do you specialize worlds? As in one for mining, one for food and maybe one for energy and one big city planet with all the labs and industry?

 

[artemis667]

Suddenly I want to mod in an "Enjoys being eaten" trait so we can bio-engineer ethical people-eating.

Like a 'Dish of the Day' in Hitchhiker's Guide.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I think the -50% Growth for starter colonies is probably supposed to be the discouragement to have single-inhabitant 'population farms'. Whether it succeeds or not is up in the air. I think if you have enough 'feeder worlds' it can work but having just 1 or 2 doesn't add a ton of pop growth and it has a fairly high overall cost (particularly in drawing Emigration from your primary world(s) ).

Yeah, I can see the designer thinking that the draw of emigration from primary worlds would be seen by players as a high cost discouraging abuse.

He'd be wrong, or rather, while it may discourage some, it will only discourage the easily discouraged, for the point remains that so long as you get more total growth from the primary worlds + growing worlds than you would get total growth otherwise, and so long as this does not come at any excessive opportunity cost to a) build extra colony ships, b) resettle POPs, and c) pay upkeep of feeder world population, it is a no-brainer mathematically speaking, since if you can't think of anywhere ELSE to resettle POPs, you can always resettle them to the primary worlds suffering emigration.

Bonus points for making fun of the designer by having a trait or civic giving bonus growth from immigration, aka. growth from nowhere.

Of course those opportunity costs mentioned above do exist, which is why I am not claiming just settling everything you can as fast as you can as an optimal strategy - if you pursue such an all out approach, it is always at the cost of not doing something else with the initial resources.

But it is something to keep in mind that there's no reason to stop colonizing merely because the remaining targets have low habitability.

 

[artemis667]

It disappoints me in some senses that population growth is so linear... it's crying out to be exponential in some way, and that would avoid the ludicrous design issue where you could settle multiple unviable worlds for no reason other than to grow your population more rapidly.

e.g. Biological growth rate = 0.5 (Base) + ((pop/5) * 4/(4+Overcrowding+Amenity Shortage))

An example of what I mean:
if your home world has 50 pops, it will grow at 10.5. This means an extra pop every 9 months roughly, however if your planet developed a shortage of housing or amenities, this would
rapidly slow down, eventually reaching the base level.

A new colony would grow slowly but immigration would help it get up there. You could even remove the -50% penalty to growth because the mechanics above are achieving the same effect but in a smoother way.

 

[evilcat]

It would be more interesting if population frowth was more a function of amenity, habitatability, free houses, free jobs, crime, stability.
If you can stack all positive the grow is higher.
If result growth would be negative instead we are growing death skull, once it reach full size the least happy pop dies.

 

[Wewius]

do you specialize worlds? As in one for mining, one for food and maybe one for energy and one big city planet with all the labs and industry?

No, should I do that? I usually try to use as many farming/energy/mining districts as I can and use city districts only if I need more housing/amenities to keep the pops happy.

 

[_Chrysippus_]

Would you clarify this comment? I'm still in my first game, and I found Gene Labs to be the answer to "How the heck do I provide a decent amount of amenities for my new colonies?". The population boost is just bonus gravy.

It's the opposite for me. I need the pop growth, the amenities are just the cherry on top.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

No, should I do that? I usually try to use as many farming/energy/mining districts as I can and use city districts only if I need more housing/amenities to keep the pops happy.

Given that planets are awarded distinct POP bonuses based on districts and buildings, yes, you should for optimal play.

Note, however, that the bonus from specialization isn't so large as to be dominant and moreover, there are two fallback types of worlds for those that really mix up districts and buildings that also provide bonuses, so one way or the other each world is going to be assigned a type that is of some use to it.

The capital world always get a fixed bonus for being the capital world, but other worlds are assigned a type - and a specific bonus - once they start taking on characteristics.

Farming: +5% farmer output. Req: farm districts, hydroponic farm buildings, etc.
Generator: +5% technician output. Req: generator districts, energy grid
Mining: +5% miner output. Req: mine destricts and crystal mines

Forgeworld: +5% metallurgist output. Req: alloy forges
Refinery planet: +5% to chemists, translucers, refiners. Req: Refineries, crystal plants, chemical plants

The fallbacks:
Rural: +2.5% all worker output. Req. farming, generator, mining districts but not enough dominance of one type
Urban: +2.5% all specialist output. Req: city districts

 

[Wewius]

Thanks for clarification.

 

[TheTam]

No, should I do that? I usually try to use as many farming/energy/mining districts as I can and use city districts only if I need more housing/amenities to keep the pops happy.

Mine was a general question, not one directed at you. But I see the confusion now

 

[Delthor]

The game feels like a snail. Progress, especially on planets, is hardly made. Pops take ages to grow and now that a planet can easily have 70~100 Pops it takes horrendously long to "finish" a Planet.

Not every planet needs 70-100 pops. If you have a world that's super high on minerals, and that's all you really need from it, fill in the mineral districts and then stop building districts. You can keep housing low to maintain 4-6 overcrowding to reduce growth and add emmigration push. Then you can resettle unemployed pops to where they're needed, either another mining colony or your industry worlds. Make sure your growth is in the place where it will be most powerful.

Seriously. All I'm doing the whole game long is trying to keep my economy in check. It's like balancing on a razor sharp edge. Resources from systems are laughably few. Also: Every time I have to build a building to keep my planets in check (like for housing, amenities and so on) Pops who previously worked mineral or energy jobs "rise up" into the new "better jobs" and leave the worker job they had.

To some extent, the economy being more fragile is part of the new play. It's supposed to take more thought to manage than before. But there are some big picture decisions you can do to help; you don't need to micro. Maintaining a strong worker base is a big one, so that you don't hurt so badly when you make specialist jobs that get filled by workers. I also try to adjust the ratio of worker jobs; they like to fill them up to roughly even percentages unless one is way above the others, then it'll leave that one a bit more empty. Don't build a new building every time a slot opens up; wait until you need the building. Keeping a solid stockpile helps, too, and actually make use of the stockpiles by letting things dip negative for a time, putting those resources elsewhere. Consumer goods is a common one; I'm constantly going through cycles of my stockpile growing when I've just expanded the civilian factories and shrinking when I'm not.

System resources are definitely weak. It used to be that a small mining station provided as many minerals as a planet-side mining station. Now, a 2-mineral mining outpost provides 1/4th of the base value of a mining district and costs 1/3 to build. So by all means, take the time to fill up systems with mining and research stations, but if in conflict, districts and buildilngs should take precedence.

Ignore admin cap for the most part. People treat it like a big, scary number when it's not. By and large, as long as anything you add to your empire gives you more power than it costs in empire size, you're coming out ahead. Systems aren't very good at this, but you still need to take them. Colonies are weak early, but will start to pay for themselves reasonably quickly. New districts that build planets upwards is the most effective way to do this, but is limited by population growth. Wide still works, but you'll lose a bit of your early tech edge until your colonies have all come online, but then you should easily be more powerful than any empire with a smaller empire size, and you should be on par with a taller empire that has a similar empire size. The more districts you have, the less space empire size will affect you.

Hopefully all this helps.

 

[Makinus]

Some observations on my first experiences with the new economy:

1. As others said, do not rush to fill the building slots of planets, that is a sure way to tank your economy - only build new building as you have pops enough to man them without taking workers from resource districts. A good way to know when you should build something is when the first unemployed pop shows up.

2. The most important districts are farming and mining, only build city districts as you need to keep amenities and housing positive and generator districts should only be built if you are negative in the energy generation or does not have anything better to build. Mid-late game, as your trade value increases, you should replace most of your generator districts to more useful farming and mining ones.

3. Agrarian Idyll (spelling?) is very strong now, if you pick it build farming districts until the max the planet allows and only them start building other districts - with agrarian Idyll you do not need city districts anymore for amenities or housing.

4. Be careful when upgrading some buildings, beyond the basic version research, alloys and consumer goods buildings start needing special resources, if you do not have a good supply of these resources you will start needing to buy from the market and the market prices are not worth it - normally you would have more than enough building slots unfilled until late game, so prefer to build 2 of the basic version of the building you need instead of upgrading a single building to the next tier - you should only consider upgrading research, alloy and consumer goods buildings when you start running out of building space on planets - and that will take a long time to happen. The only bulding that is worth it to upgrade asap is the gene clinics, as the increased growth rate is worth buying the needed resources from the market.

5. The best traditions now are prosperity and expansion (in that order) - diplomacy is good for the market discount perk as it will make easier for you to use the market to fill any deficiencies, specially in special resources.

6. Be careful before colonizing low-habitability planets, the increased costs can tank you economy. Migration controls are a must now to stop pop-types moving to low-habitability planets for their species - individual traits from the pops are a minor concern now , but pops moving to low-hab planets for their species can quickly kill your economy because of the increased costs.

7. Trade is very strong now, and by mid-late game should be your main source of energy. You should build two types of starbases to maximize trade: first a trade hub base with trade modules to collect the trade from nearby systems and second a pirate hunting base with defensive modules to patrol the trade routes to you capital as patrolling ships are too inefficient past the early-game. As you increase the stations sizes you will be needing less trade hubs and should be able to dedicate stations for other purposes, but remember that the patrol bonuses from pirate hunting stations stack with each other, so you may want to keep more defensive stations for the stacking effect.

8. Pop growth is the most important "resource" now, you should always maximize it in all your planets - always keep the planetary decision that increases pop growth up, enact and keep the pop growth edict (Healthcare?), and build Gene Clinics asap on all planets (Normally it is my second building built, after the robot factories).

9. Robots are good to quickly get more pops to work districts faster - all your planets should have robot factories built in them (it is the first building i create on new planets), even if they do not have districts for the robots to work on as you can resettle the produced robots to more useful planets. The most important trait now for robots is the one that decreases their production time (Mass-Produced) as it will increase the number of yuor robots.

10. Unity is easier to produce now and you should not rush to unity producing buldings, give preference to growth buildings first (robot factories and gene clinics) and only after you should think about building unity buildings - depending in your situation your research, alloy and consumer goods buildings are better investments - I like to alternate between a research/production building and a unity one.