Planetary Improvement techs to avoid (with 1.1 patch)

from GalCiv2 Forums
Xeno Bank Construction - Bad on its own

It replaces:
-Trade Center that gives +20% economic boost and cost 90 hammers
-with Banking Center that gives 24% economic boost and cost 250 hammers

Not very cost effective. Still, if you do research Xeno Bank Construction, research Galactic Stock Exchanges as soon as possible, since:
-Stock Market gives 30% economic boost, 10% morale boost and costs just 150 hammers

Yes, it's cheaper then Banks.

Manufacturing Centers - Bad, but useful for starbases

It replaces:
-Enhanced Factory that gives 14 industry points and cost 100 hammers
-with Manufacturing Center that gives 16 industry points and cost 200 hammers

Twice the cost for very small gain. Still, tech also unlocks one economy and two mining modules, so it could be useful if you focus on starbases, especially resource mining.

Industrial Sector - Very bad

It replaces:
-Manufacturing Center that gives 16 industry points and cost 200 hammers
-with Industrial Sector that gives 20 industry points and cost 400 hammers

Very ineffective. And makes developing of new worlds very painful.

Xeno Entertainment - Only bad if taken too early

It replaces:
-Entertainment Network that gives 25 morale bonus and cost 55 hammers
-with Multimedia Center that gives 30 morale bonus and cost 100 hammers

Twice the cost, small bonus. Still, Xeno Entertainment on its own gives 10 moral bonus, and cost of 100 hammers is not much, so you do want to research this, but only after you build Entertainment Networks where you planned.

Extreme Entertainment - Bad early, useful later

It replaces:
-Multimedia Center that gives 30 morale bonus and cost 100 hammers
-with Extreme Stadium that gives 45 morale bonus and cost 250 hammers

Now it does make things +50% more effective, but in early game 250 hammers is really prohibitive. Also, tech gives access to Ultra Spices that give +15% moral boost. So you do want to research this, but only after your worlds get a bit advanced.

Zero G Sports Arena - Bad, exempt for Gravity Accelerators

It replaces:
-Extreme Stadium that gives 45 morale bonus and cost 250 hammers
-with Zero G Sports Arena that gives 50 morale bonus and cost 300 hammers

Not worth the effort. Still, tech gives Gravity Accelerators that increase ship speed, so research it only if you want that benefit.

Virtual Reality Center - Very bad

It replaces:
-Zero G Sports Arena that gives 50 morale bonus and cost 300 hammers
-with Virtual Reality Center that gives 60 morale bonus and cost 400 hammers

400 hammers! There is no chance to build something like this on new worlds.
On the plus side, this tech does give access to Virtual Reality Modules that increase moral planet wide, but it hardly offsets its problems.


P.S.
I added this article to GalCiv wikipedia:
Link
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
All of these improvements are great as long as you have the production to build them. I think calling them bad is giving them a poor statement. Some may not be much better than a previous iteration but are still better and should be built at some point.

What you should have written is to hold off research on certain things because there is not much of an improvement. eg researching from trade centers to stock exchanges in one go is a good idea because banking centers offer little improvement at high cost.

Lenius.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sure, they are useful.
But only if you have nothign else to build, or don't plan to build up new worlds from scratch (after conquest or colonization).

Otherwise you penalize yourself more then you get the benefits.
Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have to disagree with you on almost all of your statements.

All the happyness buildings are useful and worth it's buildtime in gold, because they're the only way to have larger populations. (Lots of people = lots of money and lots of influence).

If you have a high population growth and don't want to hit the cap to soon (ie. you build lots of farms) those happyness buildings are desperately needed to be able to have a high tax rate.

Industrial centers are still quite expensive but are now a viable option, thanx to the patch which made them cheaper. Yes, its a pain to build them on new planets. This is why you don't build them, but buy them. And if they're built once, you will build the other buildings much faster and churn out space ships on a very high rate.

You're right with the banking center, which is imho a typo (a bug to be mor precise) in it's cost.


But one important thing to keep in mind is, that this varies greatly with your playing strategies. I for example are one of those, build a good infrastructure early, military later, players. So I'll need those industrial centers. If you go for an early conquest strategy it may be better to wait with researching them. Imho you can't really say, that's a good building, that's a bad one.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Still vote that the easiest solution is to allow us to build any building we have the tech for, not just the highest one. Once someone mods this, I'll quit playing metaverse games for this alone.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Btw, I haven't rated buildings as good or bad, but techs.
They are rated as bad, since they give both bonus and penalty.
If you research them too early you are crippling your economy.

Most of them are only useful after you build up most of your colnies.

So regard label "bad" more like warning, not something you'll never ever research.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's an interesting article, kind of like how people calculate which weapons are best using dmg/size ratio.

In theory, using your figures building 2 enhanced factories produces more production then 1 manfacturing center at the same social production cost, (not sure about the maintenance cost though) but this assumes you are willing to spare 2 tiles to do it.

E.g Most people build at least 2 factories and fill the rest with whatever they need, if you just stay at factories, you don't get enough social production to build other things you want.

But still good post.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have problem with the fact that you can build only latest hings on free tiles.

Here the situation - you conqured the planet and during the attack destroyed all Factories, no let's say you have "Industrial Sector" tech, how long do you think it will take to build one first "Industrial Sector" from nothing ?
And it's rather hard to buy it too , usualy >4,000 "credits".
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
yeah i try to keep my planets as reasonably low tech as i can until i have colonised all that i can before focusing on planetry upgrades as stated.Nowt worse than buying a factory for 480 bc on one colony then several turns l8r on ur new colony it cost u a fortune for ur industrial sector.Aint worth it
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Some serious food for thought here.

I am considering playing my next game with researching or trading for NO enhancements. I have seen 20+ planets at end of game still only 2 thirds full when colonized or taken late in game.

OK the "buy it" faction will yell "buy it"....who the hell do you thinik you are my son? wife? Dont I get enough of that from them?
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree/disagree, I don't think the techs are bad. But you do have to be very careful how you research them or you'll cripple your development. I typically will not research expensive buildings without the appropriate industry capacity to build it in a relatively quick time. So, if I'm going to be needing some expensive morale/economey buildings, I'll be building manu/industrial sectors first. Also, while those buildings are upgrading I'll be researching a tech line that does not result in building upgrades, ala miniaturization/logistics or weapons.

It just takes a bit of careful planning, and watching closely of your neighbours to make sure they aren't gearing up to invade you. Since I focus more on my infrastructure, military tech is usually a bit behind until I'm setup. In my last(still ongoing) game, the Drengin made it to Photon Weapon III when the rest of the galaxy was still at Stinger IV and I had just finished plasma. Even engineering the other 7 good races to fight them, they were rampaging across the galaxy until invasions captured me their photon tech.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There seems to be two issues here.

1) Is the relatively inefficency of advanced buildings, so for the same social cost you can buiild 2 lower tech buildings instead of 1 higher tech building, and the overall result is more production., altough you sacrifice one more tile.

Assume this is fixed, and Manufacturing sectors produce 30 production compared to 2x enhanced factories = 28.

2) I still wouldn't quickly research all the way to Manufacturing sectors, because any new factories I built from then on, won't become functional UNTILL I spend the full 200.

People are complaining more about 2) then 1) I think.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Extreme Entertainment - Bad early, useful later
...
Zero G Sports Arena - Bad, exempt for Gravity Accelerators
...
Virtual Reality Center - Very bad

It's even worse with those high-tech morale buildings. The increases they provide are summed up, and then taken to 0.8 power. After that one Extreme Entertainment gives only 21%, the Zero G Sports Arena 23%, and Virtual Reality Center 26.6% approval bonus.

And for the rest: don't forget you're limited by free tiles on planets. After those are used up, there are only two ways to increase output: upgrade instalations, or build more econ starbases. Neither is cheap, but upgrading instalations involves less MM.

BR, Iztok
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well don't forget that morale techs give you an automatic boost, which is extremely useful when trying to get a 100bil pop planet. Ahh... cash
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The only building in p22's list imo that might need adjusting is the banking centers. I'd say that the rest are prob not only well done but prob spot on.

A massive part of this game is knowing what to research and when, a lot of the buildings on this list I've never built in the 14 games i've played simply because my games havn't lasted long enough to need the tech required. But it's nice to know that there are worthwhile upgrades to improvements should i feel i need them.

Lenius.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Why not just say the whole tech tree is bad. Gee. Unless you want to micro manage everything you will be fine. Good luck tying to build those late model ships on anything other then Industrial. LOL.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Why not just say the whole tech tree is bad.


What u on about...?

The tech tree is fantastic, a very simplistic quality design. Gal Civ's 1 tech tree was a complete nightmare in comparison. I love Gal Civ's 2 tech tree, almost everything is where it should be.

Lenius.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
p22: Nice post. It explains numerically what I had seen in the game and why I have changed my strategy to not invest research into the later buildings until much later in the game.

I sometimes shake my head when I read posts in this forum. Some don't understand what they are responding to and others assume you are taking pot shots at the game. p22 is not saying the tech tree is not improved, he is saying some of the costs for advanced buildings are out of line based on what they provide. He is also not saying that the building is not worth it in some cases. But what we have here is the same thing as going to Walmart to buy tires for your car. Tire 1 is guaranteed for 50,000 miles and costs $50 each. Tire 2 is guaranteed for 60,000 miles but costs $100 each. If there are no other considerations, what would you buy?
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe I worded things badly.
But whole article is about techs that need to be avoided for a time.
By marking them "bad" or "very bad" I just ment that some need to be avoided more and some less.

For example I always discover Xeno Entertainment tech, but only after I built one Entertainment Center per every world.

Also, after I advance all my worlds a bit, so they all have a few factories and more populaton, I discover Extreme Entertainment, since then they are capable of building prohibite expensive Extreme Stadium, and that's also usually the time they would need 2nd morale builting, so upgrading existing one would save a space. And Ultra Spices are good too.

Now yes, these two examples are least problematic techs, since they have many other goodies tied to them, but same more or less is true for other techs.

They are not things you want to rush and get advantage of.
Those are the techs that should be deyaled and discovered only in proper time (like when you built eveything else on your wolrds).
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I dig this post, kudos

I had no where near that kind of grasp on the interworkings of the building mechanics. All I knew is I missed being able to colonize planets and buy their first two factories for around 500 bc. It makes sense to avoid these until your empire is built up a ways. I always rushed some of them, the economics specifically thinkin that I needed to improve my income badly early on to counter the constant red. Now it seems like that might have been puttin me farther in the hole. Madd props
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I sometimes shake my head when I read posts in this forum. Some don't understand what they are responding to and others assume you are taking pot shots at the game. p22 is not saying the tech tree is not improved, he is saying some of the costs for advanced buildings are out of line based on what they provide. He is also not saying that the building is not worth it in some cases. But what we have here is the same thing as going to Walmart to buy tires for your car. Tire 1 is guaranteed for 50,000 miles and costs $50 each. Tire 2 is guaranteed for 60,000 miles but costs $100 each. If there are no other considerations, what would you buy?


Clearly you would buy two of Tire 1 instead of one of Tire 2 because you can travel further at the same cost.. I'm assuming when the first type wears out, you can replace it with the second tire 1.

This is similar to calculating Attack/size ratio for weapons. You always take the weapon with higher attack/size.

But reasoning this way is not 100% correct for improvements because of limited tiles.

2 enchanced factories produce more production then 1 manfuturing center, but you might have only 1 tile left! This does not apply to ship components, because you are not limited by ship component slots.

As such I'm okay for plantery improvements (but not ship components) if there is some diminishing returns with the higher tech improvements.

E.g Improvement Tech II doesn't have to be equal or more productive then improvement tech II in terms of production/ social development cost.










Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Xeno Bank Construction - Bad on its own
Manufacturing Centers - Bad, but useful for starbases
Industrial Sector - Very bad
Xeno Entertainment - Only bad if taken too early
Extreme Entertainment - Bad early, useful later
Zero G Sports Arena - Bad, exempt for Gravity Accelerators
Virtual Reality Center - Very bad


You're right about Xeno Banks, but this is considered a bug (either in Xeno Bank or in Stock Exchange).

The industrial techs should be researched as soon as you can afford to. They give vital starbase improvements, particularly Industrial Sector. I play on small, densly populated galaxies, so I can often get clusters of worlds affected by 8 or sometimes even 12 economy starbases. The differences between Manufacturing Centers and Industrial Sector are the difference between an econ starbase giving +25% to the 3 resources, or +33% to them. And if you're getting 8 bonuses, that's a +64%. For 12, that's a +96%; almost a doubling of production.

As for the happiness buildings, I agree only because I play for modest-sized populations (money worlds have 17B people), so I can use the lower-end buildings to keep people happy. For people who have mastered the arcane art of keeping 25+B people happy, they need that stuff. I would rather use my tiles for Stock echanges (which also have a minor morale buff). But that's all play style. For us, they're useless, but for others, they're vital.

So, all in all, you're pretty much wrong.

Those are the techs that should be deyaled and discovered only in proper time


Well, yes. But that's not what you said, or what your article seemed to be about.

The fact that these techs should be delayed is, from my perspective, ingenious. The way they prevent you from doing it by making it so you can't build previous buildings works very well, don't you think?

You ought to want to suicide up to Industrial Sector, right? That's where you get all the sweet Econ Starbase bonuses, right? But you can't do that. If you did, you'd be castrating yourself. So, instead, you're forced to slowly advance, even if economically, you could afford the upgrades.

Civilization slows you down by its control of the tech tree. You aren't allowed to run up one "branch" of the tree, because everything is interconnected. GC2's tree isn't that way, so they have to slow you down in other ways.

That's why StarDock isn't, and won't, change GC2 so that you can build previous buildings. Because there is a method to this, and that method is to keep you from just running up the industrial tree.

And it's rather hard to buy it too , usualy >4,000 "credits".


If you could even research Industrial Sector, and you can't afford 4,000 credits, you have bigger problems than having to spend 4,000 credits.

I've only gotten IS once (and that was purchased from a friend). By that point in the game, I was dominant, on the warpath, and was making 1500-2,000 per turn.
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
But reasoning this way is not 100% correct for improvements because of limited tiles.


Yeah, it's like "I have 60000 miles to go so I'm going to buy five Tire 1s! Too bad I only have four axles."

If you could even research Industrial Sector, and you can't afford 4,000 credits, you have bigger problems than having to spend 4,000 credits.


That's like saying, "If you can even afford a car, and you can't afford $100 for tire 2, you have bigger problems than paying $100." Doesn't matter if you can afford 4000, it's whether you can do something better with the money, like upgrading three ships. I tend to think any economy that has a surplus of 2000/turn ought to find something better to do with the money.

Alfonse, you really nailed what Stardock got right about the tech tree. I thought it was going to be lame and dumbed-down because it didn't branch, but in fact you bounce around all over the place. You make your own branches. They really did a good job with that, and the choices add a lot to the game play.
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't completely disagree with the idea that the number of tiles comes into play as well as there are improvements beyond the increase in production that are gained when you research higher level things. My complaint is that they go too far. Case in point is Manufacturing Centers vrs Enhanced Factories - 14 to 16 Ind Pts for a doubling of cost. Thats too much.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


But reasoning this way is not 100% correct for improvements because of limited tiles.


Yeah, it's like "I have 60000 miles to go so I'm going to buy five Tire 1s! Too bad I only have four axles."


Not sure if you are disagreeing or agreeing but this analogy is wrong, strange?

In the real world if tire II lasts 1000 miles, and tire I which cost 50% of tire II last 600 milies, you can just use tile I for 600 miles on one wheel , then replace it with another when it goes out and travel 600*2-1,000 = 200 miles more for the same cost.

The car analogy is not useful here, I think because tires are meant to be used sequentially so you can easily subsitute 2 tires for 1 tire if you are willing to do the tires twice. A better ananlogy would be maybe computer with limited slots for ram .

I don't completely disagree with the idea that the number of tiles comes into play as well as there are improvements beyond the increase in production that are gained when you research higher level things. My complaint is that they go too far. Case in point is Manufacturing Centers vrs Enhanced Factories - 14 to 16 Ind Pts for a doubling of cost. Thats too much.


You are probably right, I was talking from the technical view point that Manufacturing centers are not STRICTLY worse,practically speaking is another matter.


Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
it comes down to knowing what to research and build when. If every planet has already been claimed, and you have multiple worlds where space is at a premium, you would get plenty of value from Industrial Sectors, because they give you that extra bit of manufacturing clout from the same amount of real estate. By this point, money and research points shouldn't even be a concern, because they are in much more plentiful supply than land tiles to put your installations on.