Recruiting centres?

They increase population growth and give a 10% (I think that's the right percentage) economic bonus.

10% is the correct percentage.

Maintenance cost is 1bc so if you don't have something more urgent to build the recruitment center is quite early on a good investment (as soon as the basic tax income of the planet is 10bc these centers pay themselves back), even more so if you don't have fertility centers to increase population growth.

Hard to say if they are as important as research and industry buildings though; just see them as a decent way to increase your population and income early in the colonization of a planet. Later on fertility centers or pure economy buildings yield better results.

Fertility center is +25% growth whereas recruiting center is 20% growth and 10% economic.  While you can argue that a stock market is superior to a recruiting center, the instances where you'd rather have a fertility center than a recruiting center are few and far between.

But as you can stack fertility centers, rather than the one-per-planet limit of the recruiting center, of course it is technically better.

The other reason people use the recruiting center is because it's so cheap-it only costs 25 production to build.  (Granted, so do fertility clinics, but you don't have access to them as early.)

I always use them as soon as i can get my greedy little hands on them as they give a good early boost to your populating increase, and as everyone knows its the population that gain you your much needed BC's

Right next to the StarPort, there's nothing equal during early turns but *much* faster planet developments.

Agree, a great little development - you can always upgrade them to a stock market once population is as high as you want it, although they are still useful for rebuilding population after loading up a troop transport.

I find them exceptionally useful if you are trying to win through conquest (especially when coupled with extra population growth from allocatable points) They help the population of frontline planets quickly get to the point were you can take troops from them without making them vulnerable to counter invasion. the planets might not be good at building transports but it lets you take troops from there instead of your built-up worlds, which can make use of econ improvements you've already built, keeping your economy on track.

They are great to have. Get them early as you can. They help your economy out on planets and get your populations to grow faster which in turn gets you more money. Replace them when you need to. They really help on planets that build your Transports so your population doesn't fall to quickly.

I agree. On my small maps, Earth is usually where my transports comes from, and with one of those on the planet I can pretty much  get one transport every few turns and rarely have to slow down because of population drops.