Confused about social production and manufacturing focus.

Your focus allows you to, well, focus on that particular aspect of planet production. Social projects are the buildings you are constructing on the tiles on your planet. If you have a colony that does not have a starport and you leave the colony unfocused you are not optimizing that planet.

An example from how I play...

On mars I build one factory and two reasearch facilities. While building up to reasearch Academies I leave the social focused. Once I have two academies I destroy the factory, build another academy in its place then focus on reasearch.

Thanks. Okay, I'm starting to grasp the concepts going on here. I was under the impression that factories and such were long-term elements that perpetually added to some type of "economy" for your colonies. I didn't realize that they contributed directly to the construction of more tile facilities.

Yeah, *all factories do* is contribute to making stuff on tiles or to building ships in orbit (decided by social/military ratio). If you aren't building anything on a planet or in orbit there, the factories aren't doing anything.

Yeah manufacturing buildings affect how quickly your starships are built. Focusing on manufacturing makes it little bit better. Social focuses on how fast your buildings are constructed on your planet, and a manufacturing building makes it go alot faster than if there is none. There may be some other residual benefits, but basically focus on social production and build a manufacturing unit and then whatever other types of buildings you want there. After you have a starport and a few manufacturing buildings you can start cranking out your starships in a short amount of time, focusing on manufacturing will help speed that up a little. Social and Manufacturing seem to be restricted to that specific planet whereas research seems to be an empire-wide affair. I default all of my planets to research and only focus them on social or manufacturing if I'm building a fleet or buildings on the planet.

On mars I build one factory and two reasearch facilities. While building up to reasearch Academies I leave the social focused. Once I have two academies I destroy the factory, build another academy in its place then focus on reasearch.

I too did this, but then I began to wonder - doesn't keeping the factory mean the upgrades will complete faster. It seems that without it, my upgrades can take up to 2 digit or 3 digit weeks to complete.

I too did this, but then I began to wonder - doesn't keeping the factory mean the upgrades will complete faster. It seems that without it, my upgrades can take up to 2 digit or 3 digit weeks to complete.

I was wondering the same thing myself, and that's the only reason I've kept the single factory on my research only/economic only worlds. However, there is one thing you could consider... Just pay to have the upgrades built outright. A factory on a planet has no bearing on the overall cost for the upgrade (A factory may reduce build time to complete the improvement from 30 turns to 12, but it still costs the same amount to just pay to build it). So, you could scrap the factory, and build that extra Research facility, and just pay for the upgrades -- provided you have the economy to do so.

But, then again, I haven't gotten far enough into a game yet to change government type, and it could be like Civ III/IV, in which various gov't types don't allow you to pay cash for improvements, in which case my point would be moot.

So... I'll admit that I don't know enoguh on the subject!