Why too many upgraded buildings will destroy your economy.

[ChiefBigFeather]

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

That's presumptuous.

Upgrading buildings trades minerals and pop jobs for building slots. If you are not limited by building slots or are limited by mining districts, this is a bad trade. I usually make use of the mining districts on all my worlds, simply because minerals become the limiting factor later in the game.

About the confusing math:
A very productive miner can supply a very productive chemist who may be able to supply 3 gases. In essence you are using one job to do in 3 building slots what could otherwise be done in 6. It is really only one job because if you do it in 6, you require a technician to pay the extra energy upkeep. This is a rough estimate as there are a lot of other things factoring into productivity and efficiency of pops.

 

[Less2]

Doesn't really need a ton of math or long explanation to prove. Upgrading buildings is a last resort because the job becomes less efficient..

 

[evilcat]

Rule of thumb is that when you build research lab you do notonly pay with consumer goods, energu and resource. But you also pay for 2x (or 3x or 5x) workers who do not make energy anymore, but instead are researching. That is suprise 8 (or 12 or 20) energy you pay, and it is more over time (bonuses to base resources)
With alloys it is a bit better, since you can always resell your alloys.

 

[Novacat]

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.

There are no repeatable techs for higher-tier resources. Only Minerals, Food, and Energy get repeatable. So, in order to feed a large number of high tier structures, you will need a lot of rare resource production, entire planets to it, even, and yes, I have the -20% building upkeep from the tradition and civic, those two things are must haves now.

The only huge relief is that getting a ecuamenpolis pretty much means you can focus your entire rare production towards research labs, since the ecu makes absurd amounts of alloys and consumer goods without any rare materials.

 

[ChiefBigFeather]

There are other ways to improve production: Stability and high level governors. But they are more difficult to enhance then +% production. This is why I like the One Vision ascension perk.

 

[Belhedler]

There are no repeatable techs for higher-tier resources. Only Minerals, Food, and Energy get repeatable

There are two techs somewhere that gives +5% empire wide each. Although I'm not quite sure which ones they are.

That's about my current situation. Notice the Empire: +5%:



And no, the best I have is 2 Advanced labs thus my quite low research output for this date and sprawl. What looks like my future research world doubles with a highly specialist world akka ecumenopolis:


And that's after I only gave me all techs and repeatables for the purpose of the test (and +5000 physics as I messed up the command but forget about that one). Notice the Empire: +10%, and +33 became +37 in the top bar:



As for the (very) end-game production:

 

[Twogs]

Thats the prosperity bonus of +5% specialist production

 

[Belhedler]

OK. What about the second +5% then?

 

[Belhedler]

I've just seen a disturbing live streaming. I don't know what to think of it.

Basicaly the strategy consisted in going all-in on research while not going over the admin cap. To do that, the priority was upgrading the starting lab as fast possible to ARC. The economy, which amounts to only the starting colony was entirely geared toward supporting this goal aside from exotic gas he was buying from the market when really needed. I don't know what the tech/tradition multiplier setting was but still he was blazing through Tier 3 research with a 17 month to completion (research leaders were level 6 or 7). He left few minutes after that and I just had the time to take this screenshot. I had taken one with the colony details but seems like I lost it. Sorry for the poor quality. The points of interest are 35 unity / 269 research production, 30 admin sprawl, 30 admin cap, 1 colony, 46 pops. Gota try that myself to see what it's actually worth.

 

[Novacat]

There are two techs somewhere that gives +5% empire wide each. Although I'm not quite sure which ones they are.

That's about my current situation. Notice the Empire: +5%:

Non repeatable. I am at the stage of the game where most of my technology options are repeatables. I only care about the energy and minerals. Food is so plentiful that I never bother.

 

[roman566]

I've just seen a disturbing live streaming. I don't know what to think of it.

Basicaly the strategy consisted in going all-in on research while not going over the admin cap. To do that, the priority was upgrading the starting lab as fast possible to ARC. The economy, which amounts to only the starting colony was entirely geared toward supporting this goal aside from exotic gas he was buying from the market when really needed. I don't know what the tech/tradition multiplier setting was but still he was blazing through Tier 3 research with a 17 month to completion (research leaders were level 6 or 7). He left few minutes after that and I just had the time to take this screenshot. I had taken one with the colony details but seems like I lost it. Sorry for the poor quality. The points of interest are 35 unity / 269 research production, 30 admin sprawl, 30 admin cap, 1 colony, 46 pops. Gota try that myself to see what it's actually worth.

View attachment 438528

It all depends on what AIs spawn next to you. Nice ones like pacifists or inwards perfection and you are set. Anything else and expect a quick declaration of war followed by even quicker defeat. Research doesn't win wars, alloys do.

 

[baronmoll]

Another Idea a friend of mine had when I explained to him how to do genetic mutations to your different species is you could totally make different species for different specialized planets. Sure it's a whole nother thing to micromanage but if you do it right you get an extra +15% of stuff from intelligent, industrious, ingenious, agrarian, etc...

 

[ComradeKroo]

OK. What about the second +5% then?

5% from planet specialization bonus.

 

[Secret Master]

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

Basically, this.

Despite their placement in the tech tree, upgraded research and alloy buildings aren't really an early game thing. You only want to start using them when you have enough resources and population to justify their use.

 

[nuyu]

IMHO, it depends on your playstyle. If you play rush then all what OP have said are true but if you played it slowly then it doesn't matter at all. After at mid game you will get around 300+ resource monthly.

 

[BigPony]

That is why you need habitats to build dos refineries on to support your upgraded buildings on your worlds.

 

[Badesumofu]

A tease arch planet filled with staffed maxed out research labs produces 4x as much research than one filled with basic buildings. Of course you will need to make some refinery planets, but not 3 per tech-world.

Beyond a certain point space becomes the most important resource. Early on and for quite a while it’s mostly not worth upgrading buildings except alloy plants because those are so crucial. But as your economy develops you have to upgrade buildings on established planets and start building refineries on developing planets if wish to keep building your economy.

 

[Zenopath]

I think my point was basically just to say that unlike in 2.1, where there was no reason not to upgrade your buildings as soon as you unlocked your tech to do so, in 2.2, upgrading your buildings has downsides. One thing i forgot to mention in the OP is the opportunity cost of having a chemist. He could be a miner or a technician instead, so not only do you need to pay for his maintenance and his building, you also lose one miner or technician, further adding a hidden cost to upgraded buildings. If you upgrade sparingly and only use a number of resources equal to what you mine, that would be one thing, but having go make tons of synthetic crystals or chemical plants is a small but noticeable drain.

 

[Bki]

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.

Do you mean in the "fill all the 20 slots" or in the "I have unemployed pops, enough housing and amenities, but have yet to unlock the next building slot" sense?

From the rest of your post it seems like you're talking about former, which I disagree with and I think the latter is the right approach. Because if I want to build something on my science world, it's because I want more research (or need more housing/amenities for my researchers). If it doesn't then I might as well resettle those pops to make more alloys.

Early in the life of the colony, it's good to alternate between the immediately-needed-resource districts, the science lab and housing, but later it's only housing and science labs, which supports at least 5-7 pops but only gives 3-4 jobs. It's possible to build more housing district in advance, but it's inefficient (as get more empire sprawl for no gain. Yeah it's not that big of a deal but why increase it when you don't need to?) and it just push back the issue anyway. Upgrading the science labs make the best use of those pops. Waiting for all the building slots to be used before upgrading, you would end up having dozens of unemployed pops and even with the living standards where they produce unity it's not as good as having them do a real job.

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

The basic assumption used in the title is wrong.
Advanced/upgraded buildings will only destroy your economy IF you upgrade them carelessly and IF you do not check your resource production.

Since I got a hang on the new system, I have never ever had problems with upgrading. There is nothing wrong with specializing planets and putting the rare resource production say, on a mining/energy/food world.

Also, there is nothing wrong with e.g. build 10 Research buildings and like 5 or so Gas Plants.

As of now, the upgraded buildings help alot because you cramp more production in less Space. Which helps with the Admin cap.