What is your experience with districts?

[Stadtpark]

As I didn't have a plan in my first game since "Le Guin", I tried to keep my planet POPs growing, and the employment positions with it. I ended up using the first building slots for Gene Clinic, Culture Site and Holo Theaters so that I would get additional growth and unity and amenities, and to be able to get to 15 POPs (for those first 3 buildings) I think I put down a city district and 2-3 random other districts - mainly looking at what I was in need of most: usually food, or whichever kind of production would receive some bonus from the planet, or what slots there were most available, so that I would be able to do some specialization later on.

What I wanted to discuss here is the jobs gap I ended up with between "Planetary Administration" (POP-Need 10+) and "Planetary Capital" (POP-Need 40+). Since my first 3 or 4 buildings did not provide enough jobs to get to 40 POP with just City Districts, that is the time when I simply had to jam Agricultural, Generator or Mining Districts - there was no other way to keep people employed. - Maybe later on when I have one or two more building slots and have special resources for upgrading buildings I can go back to spamming specialists and city districts for housing, but in the POP range 15-35 I find myself always in need of around 6 - 8 yellow / red / green districts.

While there is nothing wrong with this per se (- I actually like it from a roleplay point of view), I found that at my Capital (Planet size 16) I ended up demolishing those normal districts again later on for more city districts / housing.

Since I don't want to reproduce this process on my other grown planets, I thought I might ask here for others players experiences on how many "normal" districts to build.

As my expansion into the galaxy ended when I reached my neighbours borders, I also found it useful to have this kind of internal growth mid-game: usually I would hesitate to build ressources on planets and rather focus on unity buildings and consumer goods and alloys, and just the required amount of food, but to be honest: there is a growing need for minerals and energy as well, so I ended up with a little bit of everything.

( Edit: As a thought for the developers: maybe give the districts 2 housing and 3 jobs each? That would reduce the amount of normal districts needed in the POP 10-40 area, until you can upgrade your Admin Building to Planetary Capital. Or maybe change the amounts of POPs required for Planetary Capital to 30? (The thing why I keep talking about Planetary Capital is, that it is needed for upgrading buildings to employ more specialists (provided you have the special ressources in the first place, but I take that as a given.) - Or is your advice for other first three buildings? Are there ones with more jobs, that still are as useful as unity and growth and happiness?)

Edit2: After reading comments and playing some more and thinking some more I conclude it pretty much works as intended and doesn't need a buff to early jobs: I just failed to build a Commercial Zone instead of / before the Holo Theater...

 

[Matoro_TBS]

I feel like this is how it's supposed to works. It's all about urbanization. You start with pretty basic production but eventually you build your farms full of cities to give space for advanced tech and service industry. It gives a nice feeling of change, and for me at least I don't find it that much of a hassle.
I do it very similarly on how you describe your process, expect I min-max a little bit more. If planet has a lot of some particular district type, I completely ignore all other deposits and just build a mining world with 12 mining districts, all mineral buffing buildings and just enough cities to supply enough housing. I'm not going to make my every world a city, and it's resource-wise to specialize your base production planets.

You could also kick-start a city by resettling enough pops to newly founded colony to build planetary capital. Even though you'll have jobless, homeless people for few years, you can build the colony up very quickly. Of course to do this you need huge surplus of cheap workers to resettle in this way.

 

[Dëzaël]

My experience is the same. When I got that there was a bonus to hyperspecialization of planets, I tried getting them layed out as soon as possible. I tried several approaches, but now I come to the conclusion that, mass resettlement aside, you have to put rural districts on them, acting at least as a job hub for new pops waiting for means or techs to give them higher level jobs.

That means planets start roughly the same, swiss-knife like economies, then comes a point your tech enables you to give up rurality for some planets while you will strengthen output for those that stay rural, completed by the use of better habitability techs to further feed your growing urban centers.

Usually I first colonize planets with few district slots and huge size that will become my research/factory planets, keeping high one type district count planets for last. That way my urban centers have more pops sooner, are able to perform some industry while rurals are not able to fully sustain them, and later I can drop their swiss-knife side while the heavy rurals' economy takes off. Avoiding the unemployment gap.

I go for :
Capital --> Alloys
First Colony --> Consumer's goods
Second Colony --> Research
Third Colony --> Food
Fourth Colony --> Generator
Fifth Colony --> Minerals

Swiss-kniving the first three combined to orbital resources allows for enough industry for a start while you farm pops on the last three until you're able to drop districts on your urbans without tanking your economy. Ideally production techs obtention meets demographics and all goes smoothly. This is to adapt to planet availability ofc. Just I find Unity buildings to be mineral hungry at first, I save them for when I make the switch.

My only gripe is with reffinery planets and their one-job buildings. First I did lay them on small planets with few districts, but it's hell there. Now I seek for reasonably sized planets with mixed district types in good amounts, to easily suck away 4/5 pops and still get the bonus.

Later with the higher techs you can just colonize a planet and go straight urban. Buildings give enough jobs by then.

 

[TheBromgrev]

After a few games, I came to have the same experience. Fill out resource districts to get raw materials to send back to the homeworld for manufacturing, then slowly specialize my colonies. Oldest colonies end up being focused on consumer goods, alloys, or research, then specialize the rural colonies based on rural districts available. I never used to play pacifist nations in previous games, but I've become a big fan of agrarian idyll in this version.

Oddly enough, I've found that Agrarian Idyll pairs perfectly with an Ecumenopolis. You have to swap out the Agrariain Idyll civic to something else (or pick it as your 3rd civic) in order to build convert a planet to an ecumenopolis, or spawn in an area where the First League precursor exists, but it's totally worth it. Your regular planets will feed the Ecumenopolis's alloy and consumer goods industries, you avoid the situation of having lots of housing on your planets and no jobs, and can also specialize your excess pops to research or refineries.

 

[Acheron]

I got the impression that not having enough housing is okay later on. It dents population growth by increasing emigration, but when the world becomes full, this is okay. So, housing for everyone only as long as the world is too grow substantially.

 

[Todie]

I dont see the problem op is looking to outline and suggests a fix for in the edit...

If you use your first few building slots for utility buildings that offer few jobs, you can compensate with rural districts. I think this is intended design. Its good that therr is an oportunity cost in doing this (the cost of re/building many districts)

The obvious alternative is to skimp on some of the early utility buildings, for high density job commersial zones.

It seems to me that traits, enviroment and external / empire wide factors plays big parts in deciding approach for building a d district priorities on a panet, witch is very good.

 

[Less2]

Get some -housing bonuses and never build city districts again. Except when you want Ecumenopolis, obviously.

 

[Stadtpark]

Are housing bonuses alone enough to get over 40?

I mean it obviously depends on the size of the planet: what is the minimum size for a planet you consider worth settling?

In my current playthrough I have a system with 3 planets in it - all around size 12 or so (and arctic): individually they look pretty bad, but once I settled all the larger ones, i also settled those - and as I'm going for unity buildings first, i think it probably helps with unity a lot to have all those buildings x3 by only settling one system. Also collecting trade from 3 small planets is nice. - Hm. maybe you are right, and I don't need specialists on all planets, thus I don't need to reach 40 on each and every small planet and just take them for what they are.

 

[Mavkiel]

I am getting to be the opinion that any world is worth settling. Just think about those building slots, it should easily overcome any penalties. Also some of those events that happen on worlds are seriously fun. Hell dimension penal colony here I come!

 

[AmpsterMan]

My first building is usually a robot factory. My second is an Autocthon monument. Once my colonies become full blown planets, I stick the production focused sector on them and check on them every so often. World's with more size than planetary features tend to become urban worlds.

 

[Namfuak]

Hive mind districts are +2 housing, +3 jobs since their upkeep uses raw resources instead of consumer goods. It's a huge boon to their raw resource production, and it's partially offset by not getting any jobs from hive districts (their version of city districts). It would be a huge buff for regular empires to get an extra job there, since it would effectively increase their raw resource production cap by 33%. I don't really think that's necessary. As others have said, the current system intends for planets to start out by exploiting natural resources until they've developed enough to support more advanced production. By the midgame, you'll probably have enough resources to colonize a planet and force enough cities and resettlement to skip this phase, but that also seems like it's intended - your empire starts out grasping at the stars and providing support for their pioneers is expensive, but as they settle into a true spacefaring empire they can plan and execute specialized colonization at a very rapid pace.

 

[Stadtpark]

The obvious alternative is to skimp on some of the early utility buildings, for high density job commersial zones.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Will add one Commercial Zone to each planet - should have seen the obvious myself: 5 jobs and all that added trade from the very start: - depending on trade policy I can even switch around if I want it to be some consumer goods or unity etc.

 

[Less2]

Are housing bonuses alone enough to get over 40?

I mean it obviously depends on the size of the planet: what is the minimum size for a planet you consider worth settling?

In my current playthrough I have a system with 3 planets in it - all around size 12 or so (and arctic): individually they look pretty bad, but once I settled all the larger ones, i also settled those - and as I'm going for unity buildings first, i think it probably helps with unity a lot to have all those buildings x3 by only settling one system. Also collecting trade from 3 small planets is nice. - Hm. maybe you are right, and I don't need specialists on all planets, thus I don't need to reach 40 on each and every small planet and just take them for what they are.

Robots are .5 housing, slaves are .75 (except foodstock and the amenities one which are .25). Also consider throwing down someluxury housing in your building spots.

Basically I beeline for an Ecumenpolis and as soon as I get it I go on a rampage resettling every alloy and CG producer there, which frees up ridiculous amounts of building slots. When the only thing you really need to put on your planets is research labs and rare resource creation you can easily stuff a luxury housing or two. Even my smallest planets I try to get to 75 pops, and I settle everything.

 

[Acheron]

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Will add one Commercial Zone to each planet - should have seen the obvious myself: 5 jobs and all that added trade from the very start: - depending on trade policy I can even switch around if I want it to be some consumer goods or unity etc.

Research Labs and CIvFacs and AllFous also provide jobs, only marginally less so. Currently, I would advise specializing your planets, as there are buildings that boost the output of research, production or commerce, but each takes up a building slot.

 

[EvilTom]

Maybe you're thinking slightly wrong? (only slightly though).

It doesn't matter a huge amount of not all your population is housed or employed. Unemployment and lack of housing causes emmigration to your planets which have spaces and jobs, so is one mechanic you can use to manipulate population growth.

Also I usually wait until I have one or two unemployed workers before building a job that gives specialised jobs so that my primary resources are not compromised as populations will normally move "up" in jobs, even at the risk of starving themselves.

Also remember if you have social welfare or utopian abundance living conditions the unemployed are just as happy and produce unity. I assume this is a proxy for "artists" or other jobs that are not formally simulated within the game.

 

[Stadtpark]

Robots are .5 housing, slaves are .75 (except foodstock and the amenities one which are .25). Also consider throwing down someluxury housing in your building spots.

Basically I beeline for an Ecumenpolis and as soon as I get it I go on a rampage resettling every alloy and CG producer there, which frees up ridiculous amounts of building slots. When the only thing you really need to put on your planets is research labs and rare resource creation you can easily stuff a luxury housing or two. Even my smallest planets I try to get to 75 pops, and I settle everything.

Ok - so you get to 40 pops easier by using robots or slaves. Maybe next game: this time I'm fanatic xenophile / egalitarian going for biologic ascension / gene editing... - so no slaves and robots for me this time... - currently it is 150 years in on a medium galaxy and I have a dozen species living in my empire (1050 pops in 31 colonies) - and I gene edited much of them to need 0.1 less housing and 0.1 less consumer goods. While "Empire sprawl" is substantial (I'm using "Corporate"-Authority) I still get the feeling that I'm beginning to reach that snowballing stage again (all other empires are "pathetic" / uneligible for being my rivals...) - I think it's just in time for some midgame stuff: I still need to kill that Dragon, I haven't dealt with the Star Tribes, not even speaking of Fallen Empires or Crisis - but I have 200 years to go...). So comparing to other games I had in Stellaris before the latest DLC / patch, I'd say it is relatively balanced / comparable / very playable / not anymore broken than usual. - I probably had an easier Galaxy to start with since I forced the inclusion of other self-designed Empires - and I tend to design ones that are good for diplomacy.

 

[Stadtpark]

Maybe you're thinking slightly wrong? (only slightly though).

It doesn't matter a huge amount of not all your population is housed or employed. Unemployment and lack of housing causes emmigration to your planets which have spaces and jobs, so is one mechanic you can use to manipulate population growth.

Also I usually wait until I have one or two unemployed workers before building a job that gives specialised jobs so that my primary resources are not compromised as populations will normally move "up" in jobs, even at the risk of starving themselves.

Also remember if you have social welfare or utopian abundance living conditions the unemployed are just as happy and produce unity. I assume this is a proxy for "artists" or other jobs that are not formally simulated within the game.

You are probably right. - But I'm the type of player that played Victoria 2 not for unification of Germany or the American Civil War, or for grabbing colonies in Africa, or leading Opium Wars in China and stuff, but for liberal and social reforms and turning a middle-age artisan / guild economy into a modern industrialised welfare-state... - so providing housing and jobs in Stellaris and tinkering with policies / making factions happy is half the fun for me^^ -- man I need to play Victoria 2 again: the times when I was a major exporter of Radios as Switzerland...