All-Labs to All-Factories. "The Flip"

With a nod to Wyndstar. I decided to try this strategy out, but I can't figure out if I'm doing something wrong. I'm playing Medium, Abundant/Abundant/Abundant, Very Fast tech, on Challenging (hey, it's my third game) with 8 AI's.

Here's how it went: I colonize eight or nine planets. Colony rush win++. I fill my homeworld with Research Centers. Eight or nine planets sit and do nothing for 60 turns. A couple of them take a shot at building some Adv. Trade Centers. It takes them like 20 turns each. I want to rush-buy some, but there's a hole in my wallet like this big.

So, since I can't do anything but research, the first 60 turns is basically me clicking Turn Turn Turn Turn, doing tech trading whenever I can, and watching all the other civs Do Things.

So here are my conclusions. Any feedback about it - am I on the right track, am I forgetting something important - would be appreciated.

1) You don't have to bother colonizing more than four or five planets to start. Only one world (home) does anything useful. The others just wait for you to flip to All-Factories anyway.
2) More important than colonizing is quickly meeting every AI in the game. Tech trading finances your civ's operations for the first year.
3) Because of the tech trading, you do gain leaps-and-bounds in technology, but you're just as much dragging the entire universe out of the dark ages and accelerating the game's overall technology level. Almost everything you research gets sold, anyway. Just keep the top-tier techs to yourself, keep +diplomacy techs to yourself, and never ever ever trade Planetary Invasion. Also, sell the AI's a matching weapon/armor set (like Lasers / Shields), but keep a different weapon set for yourself.
4) You can't build any ships until you flip because you have like 0 production. Any production you get out of focus is on the homeworld, and that's constantly tied up in upgrading your labs, anyway.
5) Forget starbases, mining resources (except Economy and Research), asteroids, etc... The time / money it takes to build / buy the necessary ships won't pay itself off for a long time, and it's more efficient to just wait until you flip and then take the resources over by violence.

Now, I can't figure out how to do anything but research while I'm in All-Labs. The reason why All-Factories works well for me is because Research is aggregated across all my planets. Production is not, so I can't get any colonies actually up and running without spending like a hojillion dollars per colony, and I can't affford that. In fact, I can't afford more than one (two, if I really stretch my dollars and live in debt).

Is that normal? I can pull this off easy on Challenging difficulty (as soon as I flip, I become a ridiculous powerhouse because I'm the only one with Medium Ships and Planetary Invasion, and then I can roflstomp my way across the stars), but any harder than that and I feel like the AI is going to have Medium Ships, Planetary Invasion, and my lunch. How do people run All-Labs civs throughout the game?

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All-labs is definitely tougher.

There are two major reasons for this, outside of the one that you've mentioned, where research is aggregated but production is not.

-Labs produce more research, in general, and hence require more funding. This is further compounded by playing at difficulties higher than Tough, due to the hidden bonus the player gets to research when a research bonus is present, as only half of the total bonus is free-you pay for the other half.

-You can't turn research "off" while still funding it. Funded social isn't spent unless something is in the queue, and neither is funded military. (Technically funded social is spent as funded military if military is funded and there's something in the military queue, but you get the idea.) So you can have planets that aren't doing anything, but still focusing their immense production on research. With all labs, you can't. Everything is funded, and the only way to turn it down is by lowering your overall funding rate, which in turn lowers your focused production.

There's also the focus nerf that came with TA-focus now provides 80% of the benefit it formerly did (except with social <--> military).

I haven't had much experience with all-labs myself, but you might consider trying a variant thereof-namely, all labs but with 50% research funding and 50% social funding.

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I haven't had much experience with all-labs myself, but you might consider trying a variant thereof-namely, all labs but with 50% research funding and 50% social funding.

Wow. How did I never even consider this, before?

I bet this would work really well, actually. Not as a permanent condition, but if you (er, I) aim the bright beam of science onto the economy branch early, and then push spending to social and fill up all but one or two of my worlds with Adv. Market Centers, I could lose a couple of months of research but end up with the finances to extend the All-Labs phase.

Hrm... I will give this a shot next game. Thanks!

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I haven't had much luck with all-labs as the Yor at all. Their starting research improvement (can't recall the name...) is very enticing, but it's 1 per planet. So, you can have decent empire-wide research, but every world builds slowly. Given that, one might as well go all factories, especially because the level 1 Yor factory is the most efficient structure in the game (6 bc's for 5 production). It's slightly less efficient, I think, when it comes to research (I can't remember the production -> research focus penalty), but not by much.

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because the level 1 Yor factory is the most efficient structure in the game (6 bc's for 5 production)

From a maintenance per industry aspect, maybe. Technically, the Torian tree's central mine beats it when considering any timespan 115 turns or less, which is quite a lot of them (10 industry/25 production cost/3 maintenance, whereas you'd need two first level collectives for a combined 10 industry/140 production cost/2 maintenance), but it's worth noting that the central mine is one-per-planet, so you probably won't ever see situations like I've just compared.

Basic slave pits on an equal basis (5 basic slave pits = 15 industry/125 production cost/5 maintenance) to first level collectives (3 1st collectives = 15 industry/210 production cost/3 maintenance) require 42.5 turns for the collective to prove its superiority, so it's arguable that the collectives are the "most efficient".

It's slightly less efficient, I think, when it comes to research (I can't remember the production -> research focus penalty), but not by much.

When focusing from production to research or vice versa in TA, the focused production takes a 20% hit to 80% of its former value. So the 25% production taken from military (for instance) and focused to research is 80% of that value or 20% of the whole by the time it arrives at research. As a note, this does not occur when simply focusing from social to military or military to social-there is no loss of efficiency there. In addition, focusing from social to military or military to social uses (and hence gives) 50% rather than 25%. (Yes, I know that wasn't your question).

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