Why too many upgraded buildings will destroy your economy.

[Zenopath]

I am going to try to keep this as simple as possible, but its going to be mathy.
The TL,DR version is, upgraded buildings cost too much to maintain because their special resource costs.
But to help explain the problem I am going to talk about a nice research world.

At first, your world had research labs, and you had a good thing going.
Your 2 scientists could work happily in a 360 material cost building that had 4 energy upkeep, and the science was good.

Scientist job costs = (360/2) 180 mats upfront,
Upkeep per scientist = (4/2) 2 energy per month.

But then the scientists came up with a new technology, the Reseach Complex. Well this was a lot more expensive, but you said, sure, why not, and upgraded them. The upgrade was 540 and 45 exotic gases, with a 5 energy and 1 gas upkeep for 5 scientists.

New Scientist job costs = (540/3) 180 mats amd (45/3) 15 exotic gas upfront.
Average upkeep per scientist = (1/3) 0.333 exotic gas, and (1/3) 0.333 energy per month.

Later, the scientists came along and said, lets go for Advanced Research complexes, which added another 3 jobs, and cost an extra 720 materials and 90 exotic gas to upgrade. This would bring the total cost for the building to 900+720 = 1620 mats, and (90+45) 135 exotic gases, and upkeep would be 6 energy and 2 exotic gases.

New Scientist job costs = (720/3) 240 mats and (90/3) 30 exotic gas upfront.
Average upkeep per new scientist = (1/3) 0.333 exotic gas, and (1/3) 0.333 energy per month.

Now on the surface this doesnt look too bad. after all, who cares about gas, if you need more you could always buy it on the market for 13 energy each. Well, that seems a bit expensive, since that means that each extra scientist job you add is going to be costing you more than 4.5 energy per month. You are going to need a full time technician to pay for that. If you buy a lot off the market you will see prices continue to go up and up.

So obviously, you need to mine some gas. Well if you have a lot of scientists, and you probably do, that wont be enough. You will need to make your own gas, breaking bad style.

And here is the problem.

Every 2 gas you make, Walter White style, will require a chemical plant. These bad boys take up a building slot, so every advanced research lab will basically need to be paired up a chemical plant, which means that its not as space saving as you might think. You could fit 2 normal reseach labs for 4 jobs in the space of 1 advanced research center and a chemical plant which gives 8 scientist jobs and a chemist job. The chemist does nothing but produce gas for the advanced research lab, so he is basically bonus maintence for your advanced research lab.

His lab takes 450 mats to build, and upkeeps 3 energy and 10 mats per month. He personally takes 1 food, .5 consumer goods, and a housing unit to keep happy, so the total upkeep for 1 chemist is:
3 energy 10 mats, 1 food, .5 consumer goods, a housing unit and an anemity,
but to keep things simple, lets translate all that to a "value" of 16. This means that it costs you about 8 "value" to make each exotic gas, i will translate that to mats to make upfront costs easier to see, and energy to make upkeep easier to see.

This means that the real costs of adding 6 jobs to your research lab is = (540 + 900) 1440 mats + (130 exotic gas x 8) 1040 bonus mats + 450 mats (from chemical plant) = 2930 mats total

And the extra upkeep for those 6 jobs is = 2 from building energy + 16 extra energy from chemist = 18

So each new scientist job at an advanced research center will cost you =
(2930/6) 488.3 mats up front and (18/6) 3 extra energy per month.

Compare that to basic research labs which give you scientists jobs which cost you =
180 mats upfront and 2 energy per month.

This, btw, is true of all the max upgraded buildings, they all require the right synthetic production facility to operate, and because it, have much higher upkeep costs than you might think.

Obviously, the extra space does allow you to fit in some productive buildings, reducing 4 basic buildings down to a double upgraded building and attached resource producer gives 2 more spaces, but, just be aware, that unless you really have to, because you have no more room, you should try to avoid upgrading as much as you can.

 

[Belhedler]

Sorry I don't get this point:

Every 2 gas you make, Walter White style, will require a chemical plant. These bad boys take up a building slot, so every advanced research lab will basically need to be paired up a chemical plant, which means that its not as space saving as you might think. You could fit 2 normal reseach labs for 4 jobs in the space of 1 advanced research center and a chemical plant which gives 8 scientist jobs and a chemist job. The chemist does nothing but produce gas for the advanced research lab, so he is basically bonus maintence for your advanced research lab.

My workers currently produce 2.55 gas from one Exotic Gas Refineries (that's the correct name for the building btw) and they are far from their highest as I have not started repeated techs yet. So let's say, I'm going to use 9 building slots to fuel 5 Advanced Research Complexes (8 researchers per lab) with 4 Exotic Gas Refineries. This setup produces 40 researchers. To max the effect of these Exotic Gas Refineries I'll be building them on a different colony, usualy one that gets buildings slots in spare naturaly such as a refinery world or farm/mining colony. Now I'll be adding a Research Institute to the research colony for the added +15% research for all these 40 researchers (and probably at least the double of that in reality).

The equivalent would have been 20 normal labs meaning more than twice the building slots even when including the Research Institute (that I obviously cannot put into the 20 labs setup since I don't have that many buildings slots available after all!!). Minerals are rather cheap the moment I hit last lab level. For me construction cost is negligeable, I'll buy on the market if need be, while upkeep is actually much better than you say. +1 energy upkeep for each upgrade is quite a ridiculous low price for the effect (remember base lab upkeep is 4) because:

6 energy upkeep per ARC * 5 + 3 per Exotic Gas Refineries * 4 = 42.

vs 4 energy upkeep per Research Labs * 20 = 80.

On top of that, for 19 building slots I could (supposedly) have 10 ARC + 8 EGR + 1 RI for a total of 92 researchers (factoring the +15% for RI), leaving me with one spare building slot, for about half the upkeep of your 20 labs. With the spare building I could actually produce 10 energy credits easily meaning even less upkeep difference.

So I really don't follow here. It all comes down to scaling factor and colony specialization. And for that you need to plan for the whole production and upkeep facilities. The actual real issue here is consumer goods upkeep that you haven't detailed that much.

 

[Zenopath]

Sorry I don't get this point:

My workers currently produce 2.55 gas from one Exotic Gas Refineries (that's the correct name for the building btw) and they are far from their highest as I have not started repeated techs yet. So let's say, I'm going to use 9 building slots to fuel 5 Advanced Research Complexes (8 researchers per lab) with 4 Exotic Gas Refineries. This setup produces 40 researchers. To max the effect of these Exotic Gas Refineries I'll be building the plants on a different colony, usualy one that gets buildings slots spare naturaly (refinery world or farm/mining colony for instance). Now I'll be adding a Research Institute to the research colony for the added +15% research for all these 40 researchers (and probably at least the double of that in reality).

The equivalent would have been 20 normal labs meaning more than twice the building slots even when including the Research Institute (that I obviously cannot put into the 20 labs setup since I don't have that many buildings slots available after all!!). Minerals are rather cheap the moment I hit last lab level. For me construction cost is negligeable, I'll buy on the market if need be, while upkeep is actually much better than you say. +1 energy upkeep for each upgrade is quite a ridiculous low price for the effect (remember base lab upkeep is 4) because:

6 energy upkeep per ARC * 5 + 3 per Exotic Gas Refineries * 4 = 42.

vs 4 energy upkeep per Research Labs * 20 = 80.

So I really don't follow here.

The gas refinery has a lot more upkeep than just 3 energy, it also has a specialist worker, who needs food and consumer goods, and most importantly, takes 10 mats per month to operate. I sort of translated that to energy, to make it easier to see, since most goods are pretty much interchangable with energy anyways.

 

[TheBromgrev]

Don't forget that once the upgraded buildings are completed, workers will promote up to fill those jobs, thus lowering the output of food/minerals/energy/trade at the same time. It's a double whammy to your economy; increased consumption and decreased production, with the only solution being to wait for more pops to grow or be resettled to fill in the newly empty worker jobs.

 

[Nussor]

I usually find myself having an excess of rare resources, probably because I only upgrade those buildings when all building slots are filled.

I think its about priorities. Alloys and Research are the most important things now and everything else only exists to facilitate them. From that perspective, any cost is reasonable as long as you can pay.

 

[Belhedler]

Don't forget that once the upgraded buildings are completed, workers will promote up to fill those jobs, thus lowering the output of food/minerals/energy/trade at the same time. It's a double whammy to your economy; increased consumption and decreased production, with the only solution being to wait for more pops to grow or be resettled to fill in the newly empty worker jobs.

If you mine resources in your research colony you're basically doing something wrong.

takes 10 mats per month to operate

Since when?? As for energy and food upkeep it's very slow in my game. Once you spam Food Processing Centers in your farm colonies you'll have too many actually.

Edit: ok I get it you're speaking about the upkeep cost of the Gas Refiner job.

 

[TheBromgrev]

If you mine resources in your research colony you're basically doing something wrong.

I urbanize over time. New colonies are set up as rural worlds to feed my homeworld's industry. Homeworld districts are changed to housing as I outsource my basic resource production to the colonies. Colonies grow over time and urbanize as well once the building slots open up; that's when I specialize them.

I play with 0.5x habitable worlds, because I want each planet to be valuable. That means I typically only have 3 or 4 that I can colonize right away, and probably 5 or 6 that need to be terraformed. I can't specialize my starting worlds right away otherwise I'll run out of minerals/food/energy. If you play with a setting that allows more habitable planets, then you can certainly afford to specialize right from the start.

 

[maxp779]

If you mine resources in your research colony you're basically doing something wrong.

Why? The research buildings require a resource for upkeep why not produce it locally?

Having a more generalized setup for colonys is not "wrong".

 

[Summercat]

Why? The research buildings require a resource for upkeep why not produce it locally?

Having a more generalized setup for colonys is not "wrong".

World type/catagory bonuses.

 

[Devanor]

Am I the only one who don't understand this, even after seeing it so many times?

Yes, early on you build more buildings instead of upgrading them.

Later on you upgrade them so you have space for more buildings.

Isn't that what you're meant to do? I mean sure, they get more expensive in upkeep, but that's the price you pay to get more jobs for the same amount of space.

 

[Belhedler]

Why? The research buildings require a resource for upkeep why not produce it locally?

• To maximize the effect of unique buildings:
  • Research institute (+15%) on research colony,
  • Food Processing Centers (+25%) in agricultural colony,
  • Mineral Purification Hubs (+25%) in mining colony,
  • Energy Nexus (+25%) in energy mills.
  • It basicaly means you gain 1 'free' building every 4 buildings. 4 = 5. At best, i.e. without mod extending building slots, you'll be at 12 = 15. And it's actually stronger in 2.2 than it was in 2.1 because the tiles were preventing you from overly specializing even on a 25 tiles world.
• To maximize the effect of planet modifiers
  
• To maximize the effect of government traits that works the best in hyper specialized colonies:
  • +10% research from Intellectual/Analytical,
    
  • +10% from Iron hand for slaves,
  • +10% for farm from Agrarian Upbringing,
  • +10% from psionics,
  • and potentialy having both Iron Hand and Agrarian Upbringing (yes it happens)

 

[evilon]

I’m going to sum up this thread in a sentence:

If you upgrade your buildings in a half assed manner and without somewhat of a plan, your economy will hurt.

So everyone is right so far

 

[Belhedler]

Let's talk about the real upkeep of both solutions now, which is actually the concern of OP. And, while his declaration seems correct at first glance, it isn't really.

I hope you'll indulge with me but it's going to be as hard to read as OP message.

First option: upgrading labs (incomplete)

Friendly reminder, consumer goods upkeep is 1.0 for higher living standard (Academic Privilege for instance) and 0.5 for a normal level. That's why you'll see frequently a formulation like X down to Y. Additionaly, worker living standard lower bound is going to go very down due to slavery level for Social Welfare for slaves (0.1 CG.pop). The same way slaves housing upkeep is only 0.75 vs 1 for normal pop. Also I'm ignoring Domestic Servitude (standing at 0.25 house/pop) because it does not suit much a production oriented slave.

• 6 energy upkeep per ARC * 5 + 3 per Exotic Gas Refineries * 4 = 42.
• Pop upkeep:
  • scientists: 40 food, 40 housing, 40 down to 20 consumer goods
  • refiner: 4 food, 4 down to 3 housing, 2 down to 0.4 consumer goods + 40 minerals to fuel the refiner jobs
  • total: 44 food, 44 down to 43 housing, 42 down to 20.4 consumer goods
• [9 buildings used]

Second option: Tier 1 labs only

• 4 energy upkeep per Research Labs * 20 = 80.
• Pop upkeep: 20 food, 20 housing, 20 down to 10 consumer goods
• [20 buildings used]

OK that was the easy part. Now comes the harder part. I'm going to add some colours to keep it easy to read.

Comparison and (1st) - rebalancing of First option

Difference normal to upgraded:

• 38 energy upkeep spare,
• 24 food upkeep wasted: <~+3 farmers jobs needed [8 per farmer], +2 agricultural districts [32 food, 8 spare],
• 24 down to 23 housing wasted: <~+3 city districts needed [24 housing, 0 spare],
  
• 22 down to 10.4 consumer goods upkeep wasted: ~4 down to 2 Artisans [6 CG per artisan], +2 down to 1 Civilian Industries [24 down to 12 CG, 2 spare] (I'll keep it civil and not upgrade it here - but you should evaluate it actually)
  
• 40 minerals upkeep wasted: +5 miner jobs needed [8 per miner], +3 mining districts [48 minerals, 8 spare]
  
• 11 buildings in spare

Additional upkeep (2nd balancing of First option)

• 8 to 4 energy
• 4 down to 2 Artisans: 4 down to 2 food, 4 down to 2 housing, 2 down to 1 consumer goods
• 4(3) farmers: 4(3) food, 4(3) down to 3(2.25) housing, 2(1.5) down to 0.4(0.3) consumer goods
• 6(5) miners: 6(5) food, 6(5) down to 4.5(3.75) housing, 3(2.5) down to 0.6(0.5) consumer goods

total:

• [initial] 30 to 34 energy upkeep spare (before last stage balancing),
• 14(12) down to 12(10) food: 8 spare plus +one more farmer (job ignored for now),
• 11.5(10) down to 9.5(8) housing: let's say, we +add a city district and a +luxury housing here -1 building [-2 energy],
• 7(6) down to 2(1.8) consumer goods: 2 CG spare. +0 or one more CI -1 building [-4 energy]. We'll say the upkeep for the additional job need fits in the picture without a third balancing.
  
• [final] 24 to 28 energy upkeep spare
• 9 buildings spare

And we're done, at least!

Conclusion (for real this time)

For the exact trade off of 9 additional districts and certainly quite a great amount of minerals cost upfront, we spare a hefty amount of energy, 9 building slots while being able to optimize further our specialist production with the use of buildings boosting specialist production and governor traits.

So what you have to consider is mainly if you want to sacrifice districts for buildings or the other way around. You do spare energy with advanced labs. And you do need to plan for the upgrade to not get in a bad spot.

btw I play slaver so every time you read down to somewhere, that's the lowest of the two propositions that applies to my case. Also this production level are volountarily quite shabby.

 

[Dinkelman]

I never explicitly did the math, but I quickly got the feeling that the advanced resource refineries were too inefficient to make them worth it. After all, the reason to have motes/gasses/crystals is primarily to make planets more efficient. I find that I either mine them more cheaply from rare planet deposits, or preferably from space, or I buy from the market. The latter only to a limited extent, as you don't want to be dependent on something that ultimately will get unreasonably expensive. If I can't do this then I might rule that the price to pay is too high, and do without the upgrade. I think that's the point. You should be careful in your usage of them.

Later on in the game, when my empire is huge, and minerals plenty, I find that my automated sectors produce these resources which I don't mind that much. But at that point, the economy pretty much runs itself, it's much harder to disturb its balance.

 

[Arnovitz]

I understand the logic here, but I have to admit -- the first time I felt constrained by special resources was the first time I finally felt like Stellaris was a grand strategy game. Immediately I started hunting around the map for more resource deposits in other empires that I was going to conquer. I started planning for the future and rearranging my districts so each planet was specialized. I needed more minerals, so I had to find that 25 tile planet with high quality minerals and resettle arctic-habitable slave pops to mine it. My research labs also needed more gas and those isolationist squirrel people had a lot of it... I finally felt that all-consuming Malthusian society gearing up!

That said, refineries should really require more workers, specialists, or even have upgrades that use another special resource to produce more given how much space they take up.

 

[Belhedler]

I’m going to sum up this thread in a sentence:

If you upgrade your buildings in a half assed manner and without somewhat of a plan, your economy will hurt.

So everyone is right so far

You can add that slavers empires are even more potent at using the highly specialized version as their consumer good upkeep is ridiculously low compared to another empire. Scientist upkeep is at a comparable level. It's debattable for a species which would have high upkeep for workers as well even if I demonstrated that it wasn't that worse as it seems.

 

[Zenopath]

just to clarify here. i am not saying you should not upgrade at all. I am saying you should only start upgrading when you run out of slots.

I’m going to sum up this thread in a sentence:

If you upgrade your buildings in a half assed manner and without somewhat of a plan, your economy will hurt.

So everyone is right so far

that is absolutely the case.

It is worth noting that we are talking about 2 different situations here.

Early to mid game and late game.

I am saying that you are far better off waiting to upgrade until your planet is population 80 plus. The logic here is that for every 5 populations you get a slot, so you only need to find jobs for your people that will get them to the next slot. A few commerce centers will help with that, but also resource districts help too. Remember that while it is possible to have nothing but city districts for full population capacity, there is nothing wrong with your reseach world also producing some power, for example. Yes, the technicians wont get the generator world bonus, and you will need more research labs than any one type of district type, but making a world with full advanced research labs will be a massive drain on your economy and you will suffer trying to feed it resources.

You will find much greater utility in letting a planet have resource districts and un-upgraded buildings upto size 80, then start upgrading and shifting resource districts to city districts as you need extra housing.

If you have 3 basic labs, and need to make both housing and jobs for more scientist, you can upgrade two of them, demolish one, and add a housing complex. Growing your planet organically will be much easier than trying to super-focus and get everyone into research jobs at once.

Later on, you can start to shift your economy over to advanced buildings as the population continues to grow, but by then, you will be able to sustain your dedicated forge worlds, and science worlds with generalized output from more worlds.

 

[Belhedler]

You will find much greater utility in letting a planet have resource districts and un-upgraded buildings upto size 80, then start upgrading and shifting resource districts to city districts as you need extra housing.

This seems a bit late though. I agree with the general strategy, if you retrofit resources districts later on. You'll need city districts, nothing more.

My own take is that the first capital world isn't the greatest pick for that. Better keep it as a mix of all. It's better to find a more proper colony and turn it into a full-fledge research/trade world. You may even replace the labs and refineries you had on your home world if you wish too (although you'll need to use all these pops after all)

 

[Zenopath]

Conclusion (for real this time)

For the exact trade off of 9 additional districts and certainly quite a great amount of minerals cost upfront, we spare a hefty amount of energy, 9 building slots while being able to optimize further our specialist production with the use of buildings boosting specialist production and governor traits.

So what you have to consider is mainly if you want to sacrifice districts for buildings or the other way around. You do spare energy with advanced labs. And you do need to plan for the upgrade to not get in a bad spot.

btw I play slaver so every time you read down to somewhere, that's the lowest of the two propositions that applies to my case. Also this production level are volountarily quite shabby.

I am not sure i understand your argument. first of all, you can only build 15 research labs on a world, pop 80, you get 15 open slots. So that employs 30 people, what will the rest of your 50 people be doing?

Now, you want to compare that to 5 advanced labs, fed by 4 refiners, for a total of 9 slots. That would require population 50, the remaining 6 jobs would easily be filled by admin and clerks from housing districts so there at least, you could say that you have a "perfect" research world where everyone is occupied in science, outside of clerks for housing districts and the capital admins.

Which world is better? Well it depends on the question, how much resources will 50 population be producing?
And secondly, which world is more expensive?

Remember that a world with basic labs will cost you 180 mats per job, while a world with advanced resource centers runs something like 400 mats per job, (you saved some by cutting out 1 refiner).

In the long run, i am not saying you shouldn't use advanced labs. I am saying that growing your economy upgrading every lab as soon as possible will hurt you, because you could afford to build 2 basic research worlds for the cost of 1 advanced research world, in terms of material costs.

Also, while i didn't fact check the numbers, the idea of having "free districts" or "free buildings" is a false choice. Why would you want either? You forget worlds can do more than just science, you can fill the free slots with commerce centers or use the free districts to gather resources. Optimal worlds have just enough jobs and housing for their population, the fact that there is a specialization bonus for mining worlds doesn't mean much in the face of all the bonuses you get to resource collection from technology. Who cares if your resource gathers dont get +10% to their job type? You probably have +60% or +80% resource collection bonuses from tech. I tend to have all my worlds be either forge or research worlds, but also collect resources, except capital which i want to cram with clerks and city districts.

And you can only have 1 energy nexus or mineral purification hub per world, so what would you do with the rest of your building slots on your resource worlds?

Super specalizing is a costly investment that only makes sense in the late game. You are way better off using a mix of cheaper buildings and resource collection districts to grow your worlds than trying to super focus them and pay the higher upfront and energy costs per buildings of advanced centers. You should upgrade them gradually as your population grows past the 80 mark rather than trying to build a perfect, science only world, when it is cheaper to have "decent" science worlds that also gather resources and feed and power themselves. Just remember to make sure there are more labs or forges than any 1 district type.

 

[Twogs]

I think the whole "problem" here lies in a simple thing: Forgetting about production boni.

With them your rare resources cost LESS minerals than the usual 5 per resource, you need LESS of the building to get the upkeep of your people done and so on.
Also your miners will be more efficient so you need even LESS people to keep the upgraded buildings running. The list goes on.

Also the other way around, Reducing building upkeep (Prosperity, Architecture civic) also mean you require LESS rare resources.