Pop is good to have for a lot of reasons besides taxes ... generating troop transports and defending against invasions for starters. For that reason alone, I'd do some farms. For a PQ7-14, I'd probably do farm + 2 entertainment, then stack available squares with money buildings, PQ15+ maybe 2 farms + 4 entertainment, then money buildings. For the one or maybe two ocash planets you need.
RE: freighter hit points. In one game where I had it in my head to redesign my freighters, I put together a large hull ship (not cargo) with shields and beams, added engines and a trade module, and set up about five routes with these Armed Merchant Cruisers. They didn't get attacked though. But considering a "normal" freighter costs 150-200bc, and these AMCs cost about 600bc each, I'd be rather disappointed to find out the trade route abstraction re
I read a few days ago that, irregardless of how you design the freighter, once the route starts game mechanics take over, and you have a freighter moving at speed 1 along the route. Personally, I think this is a poor design decision; if you have tech to design a fast freighter, and are willing to pay to maintain it, why can't the freighter move at the s25 or whatever you designed? That aside however, I'm wondering about this as it might rel
I had the same thing happen with a starbase. Created an Influence SB, and the game created an empty box in the square with a "0" on it. This was very annoying for the rest of that game, as I prefer to name my SBs regionally for tracking, and was unable to rename due to the display refusing to allow access to such options with something else on the same square ... even if it was a 0 something.
Any farm I build is paired with two entertainment buildings; an enhanced farm square bumps it to three or four entertainments. PQ9+ I might drop a farm + two entertainments, PQ15+ I might do two farms + four entertainments. Except on a single (large) planet I might designate as economy, I go with a single economy building per farm set. Works well once you get past the first 9months and the initial colony populations start rising.
It seems some folks are forgetting Civilization, where you have to pick between military or social production period. I've played *thousands* of hours of the Civ series since Civ1 way back in the day, but that part has always been irritating; upgrade your city or build a unit. GCiv, at least, lets you pick between either, or a mix. The slider-waste thing is irritating in GCiv, but other than that I like how colonies can work on both.
The weaknesses I've seen in the AI's ship design and fleet movements so far are simple enough. It seems "defense" designs can do without an engine ... but it's better if this is done if there are some speed techs researched (Impluse +1 ship speed, Warp +1 ship speed), and better still if local defense starbases include some speed modules. All non-defense designs really need to include a single engine though; movement is not
