Why too many upgraded buildings will destroy your economy.

[Zenopath]

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.

you could use them either way. i would argue that you would be better off trying to avoid using upgraded buildings in the ¨need to get more jobs to unlock next building slot¨ way because you would be better off building a resource district. But once your population starts edging past 80, you might want to start upgrading some because you have run out of other ways to give your population jobs, that i think is the best way to do it.

it is my opinion, that the best way to handle your economy is not to upgrade at all, until you have run out of districts and building slots and need to get more jobs.

 

[Bki]

you could use them either way. i would argue that you would be better off trying to avoid using upgraded buildings in the ¨need to get more jobs to unlock next building slot¨ way because you would be better off building a resource district. But once your population starts edging past 80, you might want to start upgrading some because you have run out of other ways to give your population jobs, that i think is the best way to do it.

it is my opinion, that the best way to handle your economy is not to upgrade at all, until you have run out of districts and building slots and need to get more jobs.

Most of my tech worlds though are small worlds, and/or worlds with low resources deposits. Making more resource districts quickly become impossible, and I will end up converting them to housing eventually anyway.

And even if it wasn't the case, by the time upgraded labs become an option, my resource economy is pretty robust. Maybe it's theoretically more efficient to go for a resource district if I can, but it doesn't fucking matter, because the strategic value of getting 3 more researchers now is significantly higher than what those 10 or so minerals per month are worth. The same argument hold for upgrading alloys factories, assuming I don't have an ecumenopolis of course.

Of course that's for the tier 2 upgrade. The tier 3 is a trap unless the planet is fully occupied with tier 2 labs and I don't have another non-full tech world where those new pops could move to.