Yes, they should remain available. As it is, your races ability to develop a new planet decreases as you become more advanced. Granted, it should be taking longer to bring a planet from nothing to full production as you become more advanced, but as it is, you lose the ability to get even basic production up and running in a reasonable time, unless you buy a top-end factory which you certainly arent going to do if you are strapped for cash.

And to the inevitable person who will complain about the micromanagement - its not necceserily a bad thing. I'd be much surprised if FrogBoy can't create a governer AI that can manage this reasonably well for you, and even if he cant ... it takes a minute or so per planet. You arent capturing dozens of planets per turn, are you? And if your playing properly your paying some attention to your new aquisitions anyway, so its not as if you're suddenly being forced to do stuff you wouldnt do normaly, you're just being given a few more options to select from. A little elegant interface design and you have to make one more click per planet, if you dont want to accept the default anyway.

i like it as-is
you can always buy your first factory or just build 1-2 starbases
planets you capture normally have at least 2-3 factories anyway and you dont settle on new ones later
having even more improvements in the list would make the whole menu messy

I'd like this feature as well. Besides the factory reason, if you come across a world with a 300% farming bonus you might want to put a basic farm on it, but not an advanced farm because of population/approval issues.

It would remove one of the few weaknesses of the Dread Lords though...

I am sure they could force the Dread Lords AI to build only the high-end buildings. But even if they could build mid-buildings, that would make them even fiercer opponents, no?

I must agree! I would like it too if it would be possible to build the older Factories.

I am a real Colonist Style Player and colonizing almost every Planet possible - and these new factories need more then hundred turns to build on a newly colonized planet if you can't buy them because of to low funds.

There've been a few threads about this now. In the last one I read, someone who wasn't me suggested that, when you build your factory, it should upgrade through all the lesser factories during the build time. I think that'd work nicely. No extra player involvement required and you don't need to have your interface all cluttered up with obsolete stuff.

Yes this threw me off the first time, when i played. It seems the game rewards people who have balanced research into factory/research/economy improvements.

Yet another feature of galciv that is somewhat unintuitive that makes it difficult for the human player, the first time around.

What would be nice (you guys listening stardock?) is that as the high level factorys and other upgradable buildings are built... they begin their production before their construction is complete... for example... The factory chain:

Basic Factory: cost: 50 output: 8
Factory: cost 75 output: 10
Enhanced Factory: cost: 100 output: 14
etc.

So if I where to build an enhanced factory on an empty spot, after 50% of it was complete (i.e. I have spent 50 industry points on it) it would then begin producing at a Basic Factory level... i.e. it then generates an output of 8. Once I have spent another 25 points on it, it would begin producing at the Factory level... i.e. it outputs 10 points, etc. Of course, it would be nice if you could halt the building of this at any time... and keep that level of factory.

What do you think? Would this unbalance things too much?

seems like to implement this would need serious restructuring of the codes, imho.

Should an "auto-upgrade yes/no" switch be available? By planet or by empire or both?

There is already a planet one in the details screen.