"In the perfect 4X game, whether set in a hobbity shire or in the spaces between the stars, you always feel that there are several valid options at the start of each turn." (review of Galactic Civlisations 3 by "Rock, Paper, Shotgun")
For me, apart from the very early game and a few special cases, choice in planetary management is basically non-existent. Build what matches the tile, (almost) every planet gets a processing plant, and energy grid; space stations get solar panels, orbital farm, almost always observatory.
For me, this is the product of a few key problems:
For me, apart from the very early game and a few special cases, choice in planetary management is basically non-existent. Build what matches the tile, (almost) every planet gets a processing plant, and energy grid; space stations get solar panels, orbital farm, almost always observatory.
For me, this is the product of a few key problems:
- Tile ressources dictate building choice. Almost all planetary bonuses, player-created or otherwise, are in the range of 5-10%. Matching the tile resource is a bonus of 20-100%. As a first step, I would propose simply increasing the average number of empty tiles per planet.
- Planets are mostly interchangeable. At the moment, the most important planetary bonus is its size. IMO there should be far more planetary bonuses in the range of 20-50%. To increase flavor without making the game too luck-based, you could couple positive bonuses with negative ones -- making the rare planet with only positive bonuses something actually worth fighting over.
- Planetary unique buildings are either spamable, or useless. The one building that I feel actually gets it right at the moment is the fleet academy -- hefty investment, but good bonus, and it feels like a real choice. Energy grid, observatory and processing plant should IMO roughly both double or triple their price (and maintenance) and bonus. Clone vats and especially military academy are in dire need of a better bonus to make them worth it at all -- and IMO virtual combat arena and hyper-entertainment-forum should be brought back following the same principle, i.e. worth it on a large, developed planet, but not otherwise.
- Planetary edicts need tweaking. ATM my use of planetary edicts is: Maybe Infrastructure projects in the beginning, and spam when I have too much influence. Without upgrades, a planetary edict costs more than a global one (150 influence for ten years vs 120 influence in ten years) with quickly much smaller benefits. Compare a 15% increase in minerals/energy on one planet vs an effective 10% increase in research in the whole empire with "x research grants". More planetary specialization would buff edicts indirectly, but the ability to toggle them on and off for a continuous cost would IMO already be a huge improvement, and at least some increase in the effects (30-40% bonuses), as well as a stronger reduction in cost via technology, are also needed.