Scarce basic resources?

[Kryndude]

So I've been playing Stellaris a lot lately and after making it into the late game 2 times now I've noticed that mineral/food production slows down my empire growth more than other resources. Alloy and comsumer goods require building slots but mineral and food require planet district, and unless I'm endlessly expanding the later seems to be a lot more limited than the former. This is why next game I'm planning on making that size 24 mineral/food rich super planet into a rural world instead of an industry world because I didn't even need that many fully upgraded civilian industry buildings to meet the needs of my empire. On the other hand I was always starving for minerals and I had to exploit every single mineral district I could find on my planets and that still wasn't enough to power my secondary industry into its full potential. Or I'm thinking maybe I can go all in on alloy and become a trading state, but I'm not sure if it'd be a viable strategy since market price would change accordingly. Your thoughts?

edit: maybe rushing Colossus and creating mineral deposits on the galaxy map can be an actual strategy?

 

[evilcat]

There is a couple things you can do:

• use civics like Mining Guilds, Functional Architecture, Enviromentalist
• Change food policy to either balanced or rationalisation
• Set trade policy to consumer goods
• If needed lower spiecies living standard especially species you do not like
• Grab the techs giving bonus resources when you roll some.
  
• Space stations farms module
• Many tradition trees discount some discount or bonus to rare resources.
  
• Avoid traits like wastegful.

Generally the start of the game need to be cautious, but situation improves over time as you collect various bonuses.
But there may be some other factor which creates struggle for you. I do not have much problems with balancing just start is a bit slower.

 

[Derp]

alloy selling is viable for sure

if you want to remain autarkic though you need to be judicious with your development. don't build for the sake of building and don't be afraid to hit the local population control decision when a planet has matured in its designated role

keep in mind a single highly specialized world (eg, one dedicated to alloys/labs/CG) can consume a shocking amount of raw or secondary materials. a large, fully developed ecu can end up costing 1000+ minerals a month by itself. even a standard forgeworld with T3 foundries can be up in the mid-to-high hundreds

it's tricky since raw resources peak early - you just need to fill out the basic districts and throw down a +15%/+25% building - while secondary/tertiary resources take much longer to realize their full outputs and costs. you need to plan for the long term more than you had to in previous versions

edit: also, clerks are a terrible job. clerks should ideally only ever exist in your empire when unavoidable or as a temporary unemployment soak.

edit 2: also, rare resource refineries (not mines) can add up fast with that 10 mineral upkeep. don't overproduce rare resources, and if you absolutely have to, sell off the excess so that you're at least getting something back out of it

 

[Losttruppen]

maybe rushing Colossus and creating mineral deposits on the galaxy map can be an actual strategy?

I've tried this and unfortunately it requires far too much RNG for the tech choices to appear and too much focus on research at the expense of alloy production to last through the late mid-game even on 5x habitable worlds. The output is also considerably less than just colonizing them, even with poor mineral worlds or increased station output techs. Same problem with Matter decompressors, just a bit too late to fill the gap after you run out of planets to colonize. Tech increases to station production also come too little too late. Before 2.2 you could bridge the gap with space based production but now those have been nerfed on top of having mineral-equivalent prices for ships and defenses increased to almost double their old values.

I really don't like colonizing and managing a lot of worlds and favoured a tall, research focused empire that only used high quality core worlds in pre-2.2 but this is no longer viable into the late game as the bulk of your minerals must necessarily come from districts. If we had seen the pop and job based economy applied to station resources (which some planet modifiers like gas-giant moons and carbon worlds imply was considered) we might be able to go super tall with fewer colonies and spread our pops off-world, but in the current economy colonization and maximizing populations is the only truly viable option on harder difficulties.

 

[Derp]

I've tried this and unfortunately it requires far too much RNG for the tech choices to appear and too much focus on research at the expense of alloy production to last through the late mid-game even on 5x habitable worlds. The output is also considerably less than just colonizing them, even with poor mineral worlds or increased station output techs. Same problem with Matter decompressors, just a bit too late to fill the gap after you run out of planets to colonize. Tech increases to station production also come too little too late. Before 2.2 you could bridge the gap with space based production but now those have been nerfed on top of having mineral-equivalent prices for ships and defenses increased to almost double their old values.

I really don't like colonizing and managing a lot of worlds and favoured a tall, research focused empire that only used high quality core worlds in pre-2.2 but this is no longer viable into the late game as the bulk of your minerals must necessarily come from districts. If we had seen the pop and job based economy applied to station resources (which some planet modifiers like gas-giant moons and carbon worlds imply was considered) we might be able to go super tall with fewer colonies and spread our pops off-world, but in the current economy colonization and maximizing populations is the only truly viable option on harder difficulties.

you can still do tall but it requires importing minerals and exporting higher tier resources

 

[TheGrouch91]

The main limiting resource remains minerals. I have yet to have a game where I haven't used up all my mining districts while leaving hundreds of potential generators and farms open. Even with a fully operating Megastructure a mid-lategame empire can run out of minerals very quickly. Problem here (and energy) is that there are almost no buildings that improve the output or create jobs. There are farming buildings (even if inefficient) but food never seems to be a problem anyway because of its insane base production.

 

[Bouchart]

Lean on the galactic market to handle shortfalls. You might have a lot of dark matter you can't make any use of until late game and that's always good to sell.

I always prioritize any research that increases raw resource output, including the repeatable techs.

Livestock slavery on a xeno is generally better than farming, and more so if you go Biological Ascension and give them the Delicious, Agrarian, Very Strong and Never Stapled traits. You can easily make 15+ food per pop and it'll also benefit from some planetary modifiers like Lush and from the farming techs.

 

[permeakra]

food require planet district, and unless I'm endlessly expanding the later seems to be a lot more limited than the former.

Food is available from hydroponic farm planet building which grants two farmer jobs. Not perfect, but not terrible either and doesn't require planetary feature.

On the other hand I was always starving for minerals and I had to exploit every single mineral district I could find on my planets and that still wasn't enough to power my secondary industry into its full potential.

With trade policy set to consumer benefits clerks provide consumer goods from thin air and also produce amenities otherwise requiring spending CG. A worker-heavy economy can break even on CG with them if one doesn't run something like utopian abudance as only living standards.
Other than ruler pops the largest consumer of CG is research facilities (and some amenities/culture buildings). Surprisingly, a ruler-class science director is more CG-efficient research producer then specialist researcher. Unfortunately, science directors are very rare. Also, some worlds have bonuses to research and thus should be used exactly for that.

 

[Masoz]

alloy selling is viable for sure

edit: also, clerks are a terrible job. clerks should ideally only ever exist in your empire when unavoidable or as a temporary unemployment soak.

Are they really though? I found them to be pretty dang amazing, but granted in my last game I enslaved my home species and had the Thrifty trait. That plus all the slave bonuses stacked with a slave governor meant tons of credits without needing to build generator districts, and they were still a good supplement to generator worlds when they ran out of yellow squares. I don't necessarily want to blow consumer goods on a mining colony with entertainment jobs either.

They are also pretty much your only option on city worlds if you have slavery on as no matter what, 40% of the population is permanently stuck in the worker strata.

 

[Derp]

hmm... i suppose as a slaver they'd be more useful, if only out of necessity. but even if you're stacking bonuses i still think you'd be better off filling other jobs first.

i have a strong suspicion that one of the main reasons the AI is so economically feeble is it overvalues clerks; i'll conquer AI planets that have 2-3 resource districts built but multiple clerk buildings