The subject here is wringing the most production out of your planets with the least effort. Building 20 automated factories on a planet will certainly get you a very high production but at a very high cost. The amount of time that it takes to build this will allow your opponent, who took a more efficient route, time to build a fleet and take your planet just as it reaches its goal. The amount of production gained by any particular structure needs to be balanced against the time it takes to produce it. If you are adverse to tables you may want to skip to another section because there will be a lot of tables here.
A good place to start is with research planets. We will use them to demostrate the relative merits of different building schemes. Imagine you are exploring the galaxy and you come across a planet. It has 250 space, 30 food, 30 production, and 40 science. This planet is a slam dunk to become a science planet so lets plan our building strategy. We want to have a base of 3 farms, 3 factories, and 3 automated factories. Really we are only designating this for the amount of space they will take up, which is 84. This leaves us 166 space to play with. You may want to build defenses but for the sake of this demonstration defense will be ignored. First lets argue the relative merits of universities vs. science labs. Now you may think it is a slam dunk, just put as many science labs as possible but there is more to consider. Lets look at our first table. The output is calculated on the assumption of -15% corruption which is in the neighborhood of 35 planets at 0 reputation.
As you can see the most science is produced with 9 labs and no universities. But the overall production cost is 2.5 times greater than the cheapest option. This means the cheapest option would have been researching for quite some time before this planet would be finished. This begs the question of whether you should always go with the cheapest option. Generally speaking, yes. Lets say I went with the option immediately to the right of our cheapest option. It has a cost of 82,220 which is a cost increase of 8.4% and an output of 3,779 which is an increase of 1.7%. As you see the cost increases at a rate which is higher than the gain. This trend stays consistent throughout the table. Let me redo the table to demonstarte(I have eliminated the two first options since they offer lower output and higher cost)
# of Universities
7
5
4
2
0
# of Science Labs
5
6
7
8
9
Production Cost Increase in %
0%
8.4%
43%
88%
152%
Net Research Output Increase in %
0%
1.7%
7.8%
9.6%
11.3%
I hope this demostrates very clearly the diminishing returns when trying to make “super” planets. This holds true for all type of structures. The only thing that changes is the ratio of each type of building you make. We will cover my recommended ratios later.
A common question is the relative value of propoganda offices. Since they do not effect your output directly it can be difficult to see their benefit. To show the benefit lets go back to the tables. This time we will combine the two tables.
# of Universities
3
4
5
7
# of Science Labs
3
4
5
5
# of Propoganda Offices
8
5
2
0
Total Space Used
248
246
244
244
Production Cost
95,650
58,800
61,600
75850
Net Research Output
3,323
3,696
3,711
3,715
Production Cost Increase in %
62%
0%
4.8%
29%
Net Research Output Increase in %
-10%
0%
0.4%
0.5%
The unfortunate thing is that we are not getting a real smooth distribution and end up with a short table. To truly model things you need a larger planet but I felt a more reasonable sized planet would make the point more forcefully. Even with this we see the same kind of distribution that we see with just universities and science labs. Namely an even distribution among the building types generally provides the most output in relation to production cost.
If you suffer from a very high corruption rate either from a very large empire, a very low reputation, or a combination of the two propoganda offices value goes up a lot. The most effective way to combat high corruption is with propoganda offices so if you intend to be an ‘evil’ player than earl investment in propoganda offices will pay high dividends. If we take the exact same planet and apply a -50% corruption rate to it the chart would now look like this:
# of Universities
3
4
5
7
# of Science Labs
3
4
5
5
# of Propoganda Offices
8
5
2
0
Total Space Used
248
246
244
244
Production Cost
95,650
58,800
61,600
75850
Net Research Output
2,212
2,218
1,949
1,725
Production Cost Increase in %
62%
0%
4.8%
29%
Net Research Output Increase in %
-0.3%
0%
-12%
-23%
While the net results are the same the increased value of the propoganda offices is easily apparent.
The observant player may notice that propoganda offices give a 10% morale boost to 10 citizens. The side effect of this is that on large planets the net increase in loyalty will be less. This may lead some to believe that the ratio of propoganda offices to standard production buildings would be changed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me show you a large planet and a small planet. Large first, this is a 450 space behemoth, the base buildings are 5 each of factories, automated factories, and farms which takes up a total of 140 space. In this table all of the percentages in the bottom row are calculated from the lowest cost option. This holds true for all of my tables.
Now thats a table! Starting to get tired of all these wussy tables. As you can see the option immediately above the low cost option looks pretty good but a basically even distribution of buildings still does the trick. Now lets look at a little planet.
This is a 150 soace planet. The base buildings on this planet are 2 farms, 3 factories, and 2 automated factories. Personally I would never use a planet this small for anything other than mining or banking but I am trying to show the extremes.
# of Universities
1
2
3
# of Science Labs
1
2
3
# of Propoganda Offices
5
3
0
Total Space Used
142
150
148
Production Cost
26,900
16,500
18,850
Net Research Output
1,051
1,247
1,328
Production Cost Increase in %
63%
0%
14.2%
Net Research Output Increase in %
-15.7%
0%
6.5%
The basically even distribution of buildings still holds true.
In all but one situation having an even distribution of building types is generally going to give you the best output per cost. If you calculate every single planet I am sure that you could gain some small increase in efficiency but I do not feel it would be signifigant. As you can see in my tables the optimal output is not an exactly even distribution but in all cases it is close. The exception to the even distribution rule is mining planets, due to the low cost and high output of mining structures half as many propoganda offices gives the best output per cost. For those that combine mining and banking you will just have to play it by ear.
Early in the game it may be worth it to build more of the more expensive, higher output buildings since they will be in place for a longer period of time. This is an issue you need to decide for yourself. Personally I find any particular planet to be a temporary holding so I always concentrate on getting them up and productive as fast as possible. Yes, building that 12th science lab will pay off if you keep the planet for 500 turns but there is no way of knowing if you will keep the planet that long.
This guide has been created by uncountednose. See the forum contact information.
