Do you specialize your planets?

Is it a wise thing to have certain planets specialize research, or military/production?  If yes is the answer is this wise to start on early on? at least in the beginning you only hav so many kinds of planets to settle on, what should you focus on building with these planets? 

2,459 views 4 replies
Reply #2 Top

Improvements like your Manufacturing Capital and Power Plants will boost production for factories on the planet where they are built by a percentage. The more factories, the greater effect they have. Research co-ordination centers and Technology capital boost the output of labs on the planets where they are built. Locating these improvements on specialized planets with a lot of factories or labs greatly enhances their value. Output from factories and labs can be further enhanced if they are inside the influence of an economy starbase.

During the colony rush, you want to find high quality planets - preferably with bonus tiles - to develop as your capitals. I typically build my economy capital on my homeworld - you'll be mid game before any other colony has a higher population. You need at least one decent research colony and several ship building planets but most of my colonies only get a market center until my economy has stabilized. Manufacturing worlds in the early game should be specialized - you want to build ships quickly. For research, I tend to build labs whereever I find bonus tiles and hold off establishing my technology capital until I find a high PQ planet - high teens or twenties.

Reply #3 Top

IMO, there is no one simple answer to your subject line question. The answer depends on what you want out of the game, what kind(s) of map you like, and what difficulty level you choose.

Your nickname suggests you might prefer war wins. You might find one of the all-X strategies suits you--they seem very unnatural to me, but apparently they can yield very high efficiency. (search site:forums.galciv2.com for phrases like "all factories," "all labs," or "all-x")

Reply #4 Top

Specialization is in my opinion the most efficient use of your planets.  I specialize all of mine for either tech, econ, or industry right from the beginning of the game.  This will increase your benefit from the structures like the various capitals, power plants, and research coordination centers.

As for what mix of specialized planets to use, it depends on your play style, and if you are playing for points or purely fun.

Kzinti empire2.JPG Sentient species taste better...