When is it worth it to terraform a planet?

[Olterin]

Imo that also depends. New colonies get massive immigration bonuses, which is a huge drag on the growth of your core worlds for anyone without migration controls(-10% happiness) on their main species.
That really screws with a large portion of the types of Civs that have to worry about Habitability in the first place.

This is already covered by my post, but I'll be extra-clear: yes, settling a new colony is a drag on your core planets ... for a short time. Exactly the time it takes to reach 10 pops and upgrade the planet capital. If you are running a setup where you can resettle pops, which was one of my two criteria, then you can quite easily wait for the new colony to reach 10 pops (or even better, resettle pops there to get it to 10), upgrade the capital building to stop it having huge immigration pull, and resettle all the pops back to your core planets, leaving the new planet with ridiculously low habitability as an empty hellhole nursery.

(I never said it wasn't a huge micromanagement headache )

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Of course, colonizing those planets immediately would have improved your economy too. You miss ten years of development on every planet. (Well, not ten since colonizing without running the Terraforming Gases edict is nuts.)

I did colonize them xD

(Technically, I conquered most of them, kicked off the natives, and gene-engineered their slaves to have the correct habitability while the terraforming ran so they could stick around)

My point was more that, having a bunch of colonies with the wrong hab type, my economy shot right up once I used terraforming to correct that.

 

[Urza1234]

This is already covered by my post, but I'll be extra-clear: yes, settling a new colony is a drag on your core planets ... for a short time. Exactly the time it takes to reach 10 pops and upgrade the planet capital. If you are running a setup where you can resettle pops, which was one of my two criteria, then you can quite easily wait for the new colony to reach 10 pops (or even better, resettle pops there to get it to 10), upgrade the capital building to stop it having huge immigration pull, and resettle all the pops back to your core planets, leaving the new planet with ridiculously low habitability as an empty hellhole nursery.

(I never said it wasn't a huge micromanagement headache )

That does leave you with the cost of resettling those 8-9 pops twice, but yeah I can see that being viable for certain Civs, I actually do have a setup like that. It does also still leave you with the cost of investing the energy and minerals on an inefficient planet, since you still have to babysit it until you do terraform it, and then I believe the increased cost of terraforming an inhabited planet vs an empty one, and the admin penalty on the inefficient pops and districts.
What you get in return is really just 2 planets of pop growth vs 1 planet.

IMO what it really comes down to, ignoring the Civs actually optimized for low-hab colonization(which is its own opportunity cost), is trading tech for pops.
Not to lecture you specifically Olterin but:

A. Your low-hab pops consume more of your empire wide CG, and more amenities.
B. Consuming more amenities means you have to build up to double the amenities buildings on that planet. On a full 75 pop planet thats 75 more amenities you need, or if we convert into the most efficient building for the purpose, up to an extra 3.5 of your 24 building slots are taken up by Holo theatres early on.
C. You're also consuming up to double the CG, which means your empire needs to spend the building slots and minerals for extra civ industries.
D. You then also need to pay all the energy and minerals upkeep for those extra buildings
E. All those pops you need to staff the extra entertainment, CG, energy, and mining buildings have to be fed, which costs more districts and energy.
F. All of those extra districts you're using to support this undertaking are now penalizing your tech.

Its an investment, eventually you do get pops out the other end that can profitably contribute to your actual progression resources (tech, unity, alloy), but you could also just cut to the chase and build those tech, unity, and alloy buildings on your high-hab planets until you run out of room.

If you colonize low-hab planets, you do get more pops faster, but your entire empire can spend ages investing in actually making those extra pops worth progression resources. However, until your low-hab planet gets reeally big most of that growth is going to nothing but maintenance, its not profitable for quite a while.
If you wait to colonize you still get those pops, but you get the tech and alloys which were your main goal in the first place much faster.

Its 100% possible to play around all of that, but imo people should at least be aware of it.
How fast can you actually make your low-hab pops worth the extra resource investment vs just spending those resources on your high-hab planets.

There's a freakin reason that the 'Extremely Adaptive' trait costs 4 points, Paradox valued it correctly.

 

[icon41gimp]

There's a freakin reason that the 'Extremely Adaptive' trait costs 4 points, Paradox valued it correctly.

I don't know that I agree with most of your post as much that additional investment in low hab worlds is only proportionate to the pops that are there; it's not a large upfront capital investment but a series of small investments that is made over time as production increases alongside it. However, this quote in particular is not a good argument. That trait has been worth 4 points since the game was released while the effects of habitability have changed wildly over time. It's extremely likely that the relative value of all traits have gone up or down significantly over that period of time and they have typically not been rebalanced.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

Imo that also depends. New colonies get massive immigration bonuses, which is a huge drag on the growth of your core worlds for anyone without migration controls(-10% happiness) on their main species.
That really screws with a large portion of the types of Civs that have to worry about Habitability in the first place.

If you have resettlement this is a bit irrelevant because getting these planets to 10 ASAP increases your *overall* pop growth which you can redirect back to your core worlds.

Furthermore, don't forget to boost your pop growth on your core worlds, especially your capitol for the first few colonies, as it boosts the amount of immigration those colonies receive.

 

[Urza1234]

That trait has been worth 4 points since the game was released while the effects of habitability have changed wildly over time. It's extremely likely that the relative value of all traits have gone up or down significantly over that period of time and they have typically not been rebalanced.

Fair enough about Ex Adaptive I guess, though my point about its current worth is relevant in the wake of all the people who suddenly think that habitability no longer exists.

I don't know that I agree with most of your post as much that additional investment in low hab worlds is only proportionate to the pops that are there; it's not a large upfront capital investment but a series of small investments that is made over time as production increases alongside it.

It doesnt matter whether you look at the cost all at once or incrementally, really. Consider how many minerals and energy it takes for you to get a low-hab world to self-sufficiently run even a single research facility. All the minerals, energy, pops, and districts required for that. Now consider how much more value those resources would have gotten if invested at the exact same time on a high-hab world.
The point isnt that that low-hab worlds are unprofitable, its that they're considerably less profitable than high-hab worlds relative to investment. Opportunity cost.

If you're sitting on a huge surplus of minerals and energy, and have no available investment for it on high-hab worlds then sure low-hab worlds can be a good investment, but for a lot of Civs that had better be a pretty big surplus.

 

[Longprao]

How do you terraform machine world? I conquered it from a machine empire and it's 0% habitablity and pops can't grow. The terraform panel shows 0% habitablity for all planet types.

 

[Azhcristokos]

How do you terraform machine world? I conquered it from a machine empire and it's 0% habitablity and pops can't grow. The terraform panel shows 0% habitablity for all planet types.

Try terraforming it into a normal world; the 0% habitability you're seeing on that menu might be a display bug/oversight.

-

Terraforming is useful for empires that are not willing to genetically modify their species or import species with different preferences due to ethics or the currently wonky and weird pop growth system. Otherwise you are probably better off just genemodding the colonists.

 

[AlanC9]

I did colonize them xD

(Technically, I conquered most of them, kicked off the natives, and gene-engineered their slaves to have the correct habitability while the terraforming ran so they could stick around)

My point was more that, having a bunch of colonies with the wrong hab type, my economy shot right up once I used terraforming to correct that.

Ah, gotcha. I thought we were discussing the merits of waiting to terraform before colonization, but you weren't doing that.

 

[Incompetent]

Even with a one-species empire that hasn't been tombed by Horizon Signal, I find it's often quicker and cheaper to mod the species to fit the planets than the other way around.

 

[Urza1234]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rdKZHFtkoj71WcupSk2tmL5Qs4lhxg-gs8HBerK2qME/edit?usp=sharing

Here, feel free to download to w/e spreadsheet program you use. It calculates the ins and outs of each basic job and their associated building, modeling a planet with a set habitability penalty, assuming no bonuses from happiness, traits, techs etc. Just comparing straight habitability.
Adds up mineral costs and districts used.

Honestly, I dont think its actually possible to make a low-hab planet profitable without all those bonuses, not on normal sized planets anyway.
Really shows how exponential of a penalty habitability is.
Play around with it, have fun.

 

[AlanC9]

It doesnt matter whether you look at the cost all at once or incrementally, really. Consider how many minerals and energy it takes for you to get a low-hab world to self-sufficiently run even a single research facility. All the minerals, energy, pops, and districts required for that. Now consider how much more value those resources would have gotten if invested at the exact same time on a high-hab world.

If the high-hab world actually has anyplace to invest.

And it's not like I'm investing pops in new colonies; the point of new planets is to grow new pops

 

[Urza1234]

If the high-hab world actually has anyplace to invest.

And it's not like I'm investing pops in new colonies; the point of new planets is to grow new pops

Depends, a lot of people put extra resources into growing their pops that apply only on a per-planet basis, like 'Encourage Planetary Growth', roboticists, gene clinics, in addition to the direct migration of the new colony, and the resettlement some people do. You do get net-pops out of the planet, but a lot of people do directly invest pops and tons of resources into those pops first. It was worth including in the list.

I agree though, that that is a big if. If you dont have good high-hab worlds or slots, and your stockpile is getting too big, yes investing in lower-hab worlds can make sense. Though, frankly by that time I think a lot of people will already have terraforming, or gene editing etc, which makes the point somewhat void.

 

[Masoz]

If you get the tech that lets you terraform an occupied planet, then it's a no-brainer to use excess energy to make pops happier on crappy worlds so I can demolish some amenities buildings.

Terraforming before then is questionable at best since 100% of the time I want to colonize first to get pops growing.

 

[C0ldSn4p]

Since it wasn't discussed yet. Terraforming to gaia or hive/machine world also give you a 10% increased output as well. So this could be a good enough incentive to terraform everything

Hive worlds and machine worlds also have no base resource district limit so that's another incentive to terraform to get fully specialized planets with the extra +5% bonus from the specialization (instead of the +2 from rural world) and easy pop genetic min maxing (e.g. put the miner template on all the pop on a mine planet). It also make you world unattractive to opponent that aren't your type. Finally Machine world seem to give you a reduced housing usage bonus from what I read in the game files

Gaia terraforming was a bit buggy and I don't know if it was fixed so it may not be worth the ascension perk but it also give extra hapiness to bio pop. Hive and machine world are alwaysgreat if you play ME/HE

 

[Roddo]

With the current growth distribution for pops... it's meaningless. They just pop up wherever, why even bother?

I just do it on late game to create specially designed colonies, like an arid world for a "generator only" colony (because of certain species traits), but by the time the planet is completely developed it's nowhere near what you'd consider a generator world, and the pop spread is all over the place.

IMO, terraforming should be a ascention perk locked feature, to make it a REAL decision again and not just a mindless click in a forgotten tiny UI button (do you even wonder why the UI for this action is so tiny?...).
It's sad to see what happens to cool features when you bury them under a ton of new overpowered ones.

 

[Masoz]

With the current growth distribution for pops... it's meaningless. They just pop up wherever, why even bother?

I just do it on late game to create specially designed colonies, like an arid world for a "generator only" colony (because of certain species traits), but by the time the planet is completely developed it's nowhere near what you'd consider a generator world, and the pop spread is all over the place.

IMO, terraforming should be a ascention perk locked feature, to make it a REAL decision again and not just a mindless click in a forgotten tiny UI button (do you even wonder why the UI for this action is so tiny?...).
It's sad to see what happens to cool features when you bury them under a ton of new overpowered ones.

Both Machine and Gaia Worlds are already locked behind ascension perks. No need to make them even worse by requiring two.

 

[Roddo]

Terraforming should be a titanic task, you are telling me changing the entire biome of a 25 size planet is less challenging than building a huge ass building in orbit of a planet?
And there's no reason for it to end up worse, ascension perks are somewhat unbalanced right now and could use a redo, yet again.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Terraforming should be a titanic task, you are telling me changing the entire biome of a 25 size planet is less challenging than building a huge ass building in orbit of a planet?
And there's no reason for it to end up worse, ascension perks are somewhat unbalanced right now and could use a redo, yet again.

Terraforming is an alternative to alien immigration, robots, or gene modding.

No reason to lock it like that.

 

[BigPony]

I must have *all* the planets terraformed lol. But seriously, by the time you are terraforming, energy is not an issue in ant fashion.