Planet Upgrades and new technology

How do you upgrade your planets over time? Say planet 'A' has four factories to start. Do you later improve only two of the factories and tear down the other two in order to build a new type of production building that wasn't available earlier?

Since new technology brings auto-upgrades of factories etc. wuth it, there would be too much micro-management involved for this. All four factories will get the new type.

Do you blow away a couple sectors of entertainment, production, etc on a large planet in order to build a recently available galactic achievement?

Quite to the contrary, I'd build them or rather buy them on tiny planets, so no tiles of bigger planets get wasted.

Thanks for the insight oldschool. I especially like the idea of building 'specials' on smaller planets in order to maximize production on the larger planets.

My point about upgrading was more of a question of whether it's worthwhile to remove a couple factories and use the tiles for something else once you have factory enhancements. My assumption being that two enhanced factories can work as well as four basic factories, so you keep about the same production while freeing up a couple sectors for something else. Now, the factory enhancements may be less than a 100% improvement in which case I guess my plan wouldn't be feasible.

i just specialize certain planets to certain areas. for instance, my REALLY big planets (class 15-26/30) i usually dedicate to manufacturing, as the big planets can produce ships at insane rates, while i will dedicate smaller worlds to research (though some i make for manufacturing in case of attack and losing all my major production worlds), and the really tiny ones (class 2-9/10) i fill up with economic buildings.... this is very efficient, especially with big maps.

I will replace one building type with another on a case by case, as needed basis. I find its a very fluid process. If my cash flow starts its inevitable dwindle or I am not leading in research, I examine my planets to see if the requisite structures are in the pipeline. If not, I look to my smaller worlds to see if there are any that can build/convert.

Here is my Planetary Planning during different game phases:
During the Colony rush
-- queue up 2-3 Factory buildings
-- any planet larger than ~7 queue up a Starport
-- -- Any small world with research tiles then specializes.
-- Planets with Research/Manu bonus tiles get queued up appropriately.
-- All Farm bonus tiles are ignored until much later
-- All Influence tiles are ignored unless needed much later
-- Happiness tiles queued as needed, dictated by Morale (Party affiliations, starting abilities and tax rates can make these more/less important).
-- Planets with strategic value get Starports, even if quite small (they can be refit later).

After the rush:
-- The 3 largest planets are examined and selected for their fitness as Capitols.
-- The smallest planets are geared to be research only, over time their factories will also be refit into Labs.
-- Mid size planets will be manufacturing, financial and research labs, with focus on any bonuses those worlds provide.
-- PQ 12+ will gravitate to financial planets ([Money] comes from [Taxes] comes from [Population]), where farming is more viable to get the population numbers up.
-- Add Factories to larger planets to speed up social production, then refit factories as desired.
-- Find mid to large planets with hi frequency of Manu bonus tiles and gear them toward additional ship production and wonder/trade goods/etc.

Other things to consider:
-- There is no need to build Farms until a planet is nearing capacity, build a factory on that land until needed.
-- when building farms, build Happiness structure first
-- If seeking a Military Victory, a high manu planet with farms and morale will make an excellent troop transport planet.

Cheers,
Reaver

Great info Reaver, thanks! I'd made the mistake when first starting of dropping farms on those bonus food regions, only to drive my planet's morale and subsequent taxes right down the toilet. I like the idea of temporarily putting down some sort of production on bonus food regions until later in the game when you've got sufficient morale bonuses working.

I was putting a starport on most all planets of size 4 or greater to at least generate some ships over time, but I see that I could have better used those tiles for research while leaving the shipbuilding to larger planets.

BTW, does anyone happen to know what the production #s are for basic and improved factories?

v1.20.035 PlanetImprovements.xml (Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 2:31:40 PM)

Building	Production	Cost+Maint
Basic Factory	7	50+1
Factory	9	75+2
Enhanced Factory	11	100+3
Manufacturing Center	12	200+3

v1.20.035 PlanetImprovements.xml (Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 2:31:40 PM)

Gotta love XML. Thanks for dropping that in. So, retiring factories isn't really feasible until Manufacturing Center, and even then you're not getting a 2:1 improvement over Basic Factory.