Count me in the group that says the 300% food tiles should just be taken out. There's basically never a situation where you should use them - you can get plenty of population for transports with 1 farm, 100% morale and a fertility clinic.

They just serve to mess up the economy of players who don't yet know to avoid them. And presumably they make the AI play worse, since I seem to regularly invade planets with tons of farms and such low morale that they'll never grow to use the food.

I dunno...I do use these 300% tiles--not all the time mind you--but I do use them.

No point in arguing. If they're left in they don't hurt anything. And those of us that don't know not to use them may very well find good ways in which to use them after all.

What's an example of a scenario where you'd use one?

The math for morale and taxes is on the wiki, and it seems like a pretty strong argument against them. Suppose you have a 300% farm bonus on your homeworld, and you've researched 1 level of farming techs.

If you build on a regular square, you've a max population of 17B. Your max taxes are proportional to sqrt(17). Your base morale is about 50%, and a VRC will add 20% to the planet's morale. In practice, one VRC plus your racial bonuses will be enough to keep the planet at > 70% morale once it's maxxed, and you'll be at 100% for most of the growth to max population.

If you build on the bonus square, your max population increases to 32B. Your max tax income is now proportional to sqrt(32), an increase of about 35%, or a little more than one stock market. Your morale, however, is now in the bucket. You have a base morale of 20%, and a VRC will only add +8% to the planet's morale. In other words, you'll need 3 VRC to get morale to the minimum you need for the population to grow. You'll have to give up many more stock markets if you want enough morale to make the population grow rapidly.

Basically, you're in a much better situation if you put the farm on an ordinary square, and put a stock market on the farm bonus tile. Or at least that's how the analysis has always worked out for me.

Do you have a counter-example? What's a case where using the food bonus actually leaves the player better off?

Hi!

Even worse. The base morale in DA is 10%, and VRC gives only 4%. I found that when testing
the planet tax revenue.

BR, Iztok

I doubt I do. However, I've used a single 300% food tile on a class 12-16 planet, using about 5+ tiles for morale buildings and the remainder for stock markets. I haven't done the math on it, per se, but the planet didn't have serious morale problems. Keep in mind the 'Naturally Joyus' morale bonus, morale trade goods and maybe a morale resource.

Well, that answers the question of what it "costs" to use the food bonus tile - the extra morale buildings mean that you can't use those tiles for actual production. With a farm on a standard tile, you'd need only 1 morale building. So that's 4 extra tiles that could have produced +100% income (with stock markets) or 48 manufacturing per turn (with industrial sectors).

I'll say again that these tiles have to be hurting the AI. Every time it tries to build on one, it's either incurring opportunity costs like the ones above, or it's condemning a planet to low morale and low growth. The AI is already pretty weak at developing its planets, and this can't be helping matters.

1 300% food tile + 2 100% approval tiles = your Economy Capital.
Enough said.

From what I've seen, that's not really an issue anyway. The AI seems to totally disregard any bonus tiles that are on a planet. The only ones that it seems to get right on a consistent basis are the production ones. I don't believe I've ever see it build a Farm on a food tile, it usually ends up being a Factory or Lab.

I don't know for sure that I've seen it use a farm bonus, but I seem to recall seeing it at least once. It's also possible that it did so by accident, just randomly picking that tile for its farm.

But I've definitely seen the AI build 3 & 4 farms on a planet, suggesting that at least some of the time it "decides" it wants that much food. Of course, this hurts it even more than using a 300% farm bonus would.

It seems like it ought to work that way, but the math just doesn't work out.

2 VRCs x 100% will give you a morale of 22% on any world with population > 25B (thanks Iztok for the updated DA numbers). If you want another 14% morale, so that your population will grow, you'd need either 4 additional VRCs or a total racial ability of around +330%.

And assuming you somehow get enough morale to grow this planet to the max population, you'll get about as much taxes as 1.5 extra stock markets.

Your hypothetical world would make an excellent econ capital if you: build one VRC on the first morale bonus, build a farm on the second morale bonus, build a stock market on the farm bonus. This will produce roughly the same income as using the farm bonus. If you put 4 stock markets on the tiles you'd have needed for morale, you'll be way ahead of the farm bonus scenario.

Except that the planetary morale bonus due to native ability is now capped at +100% in DA, regardless of what your actual racial morale ability is.   

The ironic thing is that all the morale nerfing that has happened was to stop people running "unrealistic" tax rates (50%+) with huge populations in excess of 25 billion. All it has succeeded in doing is remove the variety from planet builds, and the absolute optimum now appears to be every planet above PQ7 with 1 farm, 1 morale building and an even more unrealistic tax rate of 79% (gives a universal approval of 80-85%) or tax at 69% if you want universal 100% approval.

As for invading planets with high populations - just plant a spy on all the farms the turn before you invade and then only have to face a maximum of 6 billion unless it's their homeworld.

It's not hypothetical. That is how I play. I don't build economy worlds at all, but I do build an Economy Capital; and finding a planet with a farm bonus tile + at least 1 approval bonus tile happens all the time. Usually I can find one with 2 approval squares. I build a basic farm on the 300% food bonus, Zero G's on the approval bonus squares, and an Econ capital. That's it. I don't even bother researching VRC. No more tiles get wasted on markets or morale. If my morale can handle it--and usually it can--I'll upgrade the farm to a Xeno.

I don't know all the theory behind base morale for high pop planets. All I know is, I have planets in the 18b range that can handle it fine. And if I've got the farm bonus...why not?? One capital with 42% morale isn't going to lose the election. Oh, and one other factor comes into play: the Political Capital. That tends to go on the same planet as my Econ Capital. The population's ballooning anyway, might as well get the influence bonus and a 50% morale bonus to boot.


P.S. I agree about the morale nerfing. What did they accomplish by capping it?

i tryed this in my last game and it didnt work. the pop stayed the same much to my disapointment. maybe it was a glitch, but my spy did survive more then that one turn so, it should have worked theoretically.



the only counter-example i can think of is if your purpose for the world was NOT income, but rather as a breeder planet. if you had a single planet in the middle of enemy territory, (and ive done this) with a 300% food bonus, you get the food bonus, build 3 or 4 fertility clinics, and the rest moral bonuses. then as you produce troop transports you send them empty to this planet. the AI didn’t seem to hate empty transports as much, though that might just be coincidence. load up the transports from this always maxed huge pop and go take whatever planets you want with a huge amount of solders. that way your new worlds automatically have big populations. AND your breeder world is almost impervious to attack because of its huge pop.

because of this stratagy of mine i emplor you... do not remove this tile! i love being able to have a breeder world!

I see no reason to remove 300% tiles, either. If they changed to 200% tiles, though, I wouldn't notice the difference. Just build one farm there and let the population grow, you know? Free money, free soldiers. You didn't have to do anything.

Actually I want a lot MORE tiles. Economy tiles, planetary defense tiles (same story: usually you won't use them. Sometimes you will), 200% bonus tiles, reduced-building-time tiles, all that.

Ah, I didn't understand that you were using Basic Farms. We seem to agree that you maximize your revenue by getting the planet to around 17B.

Civilization Capital + Xeno Farming = 17B.
Planet Capital + 4xBasic Farming = 18B

So I see that there are cases where the +300% food helps you get to the limit in the fewest number of tiles. The key point is that you can't make any more money by allowing your planet to grow beyond that point.


And thanks, Magnumaniac. I didn't know about the DA morale cap.

This has been an interesting discussion. I've been building Farms on every bonus tile I come across. I've had planets that might have one 300% and two 100% and I've built on them all. I see now that may not be a good idea. I've always wondered what the ideal population limit should be, now I have an idea. Obviously I need to build less Farms, I've been trying for at least 2 per planet.

True. It would be a more interesting discussion to see what tiles everyone chooses to ignore. Me, I will ignore farm bonus tiles if there's more than one--frankly, I don't often build more than one farm anyway.

I ignore influence tiles if I'm playing on a large, sparse planets galaxy.

I ignore approval tiles on my tech capital and manufacturing capital. I need the tile for factories & labs. I'll also build factories on approval tiles until I truly need the morale bonus. Then I'll upgrade to a stadium or something.

Research and manufacturing tiles never get ignored.

ill ignor a research tile on a strictly manufacturing world. but thats the only other time. manufacturing tiles are the only ones i never ignor. everything else is per situation.

In addition to the farm tiles, I generally ignore influence tiles too. It's very rare that I'll build an influence building to begin with.

I always use manufacturing bonus tiles. Generally I'll use the research ones too, even if the planet is otherwise an all-mfg world. The morale ones get used if I'm planning to build a morale building on that planet, but not otherwise.

Well, I never was arguing for removing the 300% food tile. But honestly I really wouldn't mind if they're gone. The reason I asked for formulas is that there are two things I still don't get:

First, when playing with high native moral bonus (e.g. Krynn), I usually get a pretty high "native ability" boost to morale; say around 80%. I've noticed that when the population hit a certain point, not only is there a morale penalty from overpopulation, the native ability boost also drops sharply as well (to around 30% or so). What is causing this drop in native bonus? Is this explained anywhere?

Second, how exactly do morale buildings work? A VRC, for example, adds "40%" to the morale. But 40% of what? Clearly it doesn't add 40% to the actual approval rating.

And a bonus question: if VRC adds 40%, what's the point of super projects like Secret Police and Galactic Resort anyway? They cost more (+research) and does less. Again: am I missing something?

I'm the same. Except, when i have a very low class planet say 6 or under and it has a morale bonus and a manu bonus. I will at first put a factory on the manu bonus to help develop the planet, but then i will change it to a something else as i would rather use this planet and it's morale bonus as an Economy world.

I don't as a rule use low class planets as my manufacturing worlds.

It adds 40% of the planet's "base morale" to the planet's morale. You can figure out base morale as 100% - "?? from population" in the approval tooltip. For example, if the tool tip says "-60% from population" that means your base morale is 40% and a VRC will add +16% to the planet's morale. This is explained more clearly on the wiki, but the gist is that base morale falls off very rapidly above a population of 15B.



No, you're not missing anything. There's no point to those buildings. Someday Stardock will notice this and update PlanetaryImprovements.xml. You can fix yourself, but then you can't submit games to the Metaverse.

I did the same thing; I had that Civilization mentality, "we need FARMS!". It also drives me nuts not to use the bonus tiles, heh, my mouse finger itches, farm, darnit! Its a 300% bonus tile!

I still use 'em, yeah, even the 300% ones. Usually on high pop worlds I go ECON, but with those I make it "mixed" world with some decent industry so I can roll out tranports when their morale gets bad.

That's interesting... wierd but interesting. Guess this pretty much means morale buildings become less effective as pop increases -- another nail on the coffin for the usability of 300% farms.

Now if someone can answer my other question...

Reading this thread with interest after wondering why the heck my homeworld's morale started plummeting.

Am I correct that a general corollary to this situation is that one should seldom if ever research advanced farming technologies?