Whats the current wisdom on colonization vs habitability?

[OnyxAbussos]

I've been out of the game for 5 or 6 months cuz I was bingeing on Imperator Rome, so now I'm like...

So with the combined pop growth mechanics and the way that habitability currently works, is the general wisdom still "Colonize everything nmw cuz pops rule everything," or is it better to be picky?

My hope is that this will be less of a thread of "here are 100 pages of ALL the maths," and more of a summary of what you learned from those maths and your experience thus far.

 

[DukeLeto42]

From experience only, I went for "colonize only yellow-coded habitability worlds" for my latest run (hive mind, so take it as you will when it comes to regular empires). Felt pretty good.

 

[SpaceViking]

If you are going to go for the biological ascension route then colonize everything you can as later you can always just bioengineer your people to fit the planets. Also possibly if you are going to terraform everything later. The last one especially if you have the tree of life!

 

[aroddo]

Colonize everything.
Merchant jobs don't care.
And eventually you'll get pops that like that planet.

 

[guiskj]

I am just playing through a Life-Seeded Agrarian Idyll Catalytic Processing on Commodore and I was really "lucky" to have ~10 planets all within 10 jumps.

I colonized everything, all with 0% habitability. Those planets work clerk, merchant, admin and soldier jobs until I can Terraform everything to Gaia.

To me, they are all a boon rather than a problem and once I can terraform, my economy will skyrocket.

This is why Terraforming and Habitability is in such a bad place. It is always better to colonize, regardless of habitability. Specially after 3.0 when the value of a single pop has increased dramatically.

At the very worst, colonize everything with the Expansion tradition that nets you 2 pops on colony completion, move the extra one to another world and let that low habitability just slowly become a breeder planet while working jobs not affected by habitability.

If colonization at least cost a pop to make the colony ship, there would be a discussion of opportunity cost with colonizing low habitability worlds. But as it stand, no matter what, it is "free" two pops per planet colonized.

 

[SpaceViking]

Colonize everything.
Merchant jobs don't care.
And eventually you'll get pops that like that planet.

This is a good point. You can end up with some interesting new pops via the "the harsh conditions forced them to self modify" events.

 

[Tsavong]

I colonize everything. Starting with 100% down to 0%. When I'm colonizing the red ones i often already have robot tech. i build a robot assembly there, then close the 2 colonists jobs and let the robots produce some basic ressources there.
Later I terraform the planets, get other pops or gene-mod pops to use the planet fully.

 

[Ryika]

Even if you don't do anything with it, a 0 Habitability planet still produces Pops at 50% the normal base rate while only costing you a bit of Admin Cap + the initial Colony Ship.
That's extremely valuable during the first half of the game.

 

[Casko]

This is a good point. You can end up with some interesting new pops via the "the harsh conditions forced them to self modify" events.

This can however lead to some annoyance of where every few years you get random event about how "humans hate humans, and humans are causing tension between humans" due to this self modify event chain.

......
Which if you think about is just Monday for humans.

 

[legionof1]

post 3.0 all the planets. Pops too valuable. That said i usually put off reds until later on with most builds due to how badly it will impact the amenities>happy>stability, once the base colony designation expires. And red growth is so low that it's unlikely to have the pops to spare for entertainers and such.

 

[aroddo]

post 3.0 all the planets. Pops too valuable. That said i usually put off reds until later on with most builds due to how badly it will impact the amenities>happy>stability, once the base colony designation expires. And red growth is so low that it's unlikely to have the pops to spare for entertainers and such.

you don't need entertainers.
Get the Mercantile tradition Commercial Enterprise, colonize 0% planet, build a Commercial Zone and your 1 pop on that planet becomes a Merchant that produces +12 trade and +5 amenities with zero job upkeep.
Then ignore that planet until you can put it to good use eventually.
Occasionally build another CZ after pop growth.

 

[majikero]

Colonize everything. Merchants, bureaucrats and soldiers don't care about habitability.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I've been out of the game for 5 or 6 months cuz I was bingeing on Imperator Rome, so now I'm like...

So with the combined pop growth mechanics and the way that habitability currently works, is the general wisdom still "Colonize everything nmw cuz pops rule everything," or is it better to be picky?

My hope is that this will be less of a thread of "here are 100 pages of ALL the maths," and more of a summary of what you learned from those maths and your experience thus far.

It's still useful to colonize everything. The new question is- is it better meta to take rapid breeders, or adaptive?

My money is that, over time, 'ALL the maths' would side on Adaptive. While rapid breeders still has the net 5% growth rate vis-a-vis the growth penalty mitigation of adaptive, the post 3.0 changes to pop growth mean that you get a significantly higher growth boost from other growth mechanics. A (net) 5% growth boost on the old base 3 growth is +0.15 growth per month over just adaptive, but the new capacity/housing growth bonus can be +1.5 to your base growth before the modifiers (ie, from 3 to 4.5 base growth). Add in breeder worlds, where you let new pops grow and then auto-migrate in your empire, and the old pop growth factor of rapid breeders is dwarfed by other mechanics.

At which point, it's just a trade off of how much benefit you get for how long. Rapid Breeders is only useful for the pop that's growing while it's growing, but it does nothing for pops already born and it's completely obsolete for better biome species, where 20% habitability advantage is 10% growth already. Whereas habitability is a 5% growth boon in the growth phase, and a 5% job output bonus even when other species are the ones growing. It can go obsolete in the time until you get 100% habitability through special worlds, tech, and terraforming, but that's to say the first- and most decisive- century of the game. At which point, how many more pops are you expecting to get from Rapid Breeders in the opening decades, and will they make up the pop output difference for the first century?

 

[legionof1]

you don't need entertainers.
Get the Mercantile tradition Commercial Enterprise, colonize 0% planet, build a Commercial Zone and your 1 pop on that planet becomes a Merchant that produces +12 trade and +5 amenities with zero job upkeep.
Then ignore that planet until you can put it to good use eventually.
Occasionally build another CZ after pop growth.

As i mentioned it depends on the build, not every build has the means to utilize a red at all times. Mercantile might not be picked, or a later tradition for many reasons.

As for the other habitability proof jobs, you only need so many pencil pushers and soldiers before the end game, and every pop counts against your growth empire wide. There is a line where it's better to not seed a red world for a handful of jobs that don't produce anything you need atm.

More pops is generally correct but there are some cases where it's not the optimal choice at a given time in play.

 

[Franton]

Colonize everything. Merchants, bureaucrats and soldiers don't care about habitability.

This. And Robots too.

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Reds are best held off until you've got a bureaucrat planet mostly up and running, except for the first one, which will be your bureaucrat planet, because they don't care about habitability. Nothing like a Tomb World for those pencil pushers to suffer on while you shove people onto less hostile hellholes.