Could I get a little advice, please. After playing 3 games past 150 turns, it seems to me that making your home world a manufacturing planet may not be the best strategy. when I specialize, especially active core and desert worlds with their 25%-50% bonus, my home world falls way behind. It seems pointless popping ships out in 6 to 10 turns when the specialty worlds are 1-3. Admittedly, I don't specialize my home world. I balance it.
1) Do any of you recommend specializing the home world right from the start? I understand the need to spit out ships early, but eventually I think it's better served as a research, or even an influence or economic world.
2) Do any of you simply keep it a balanced world?
3) Do any of you actually make it a science, influence or economic world?
4) What strategy do you use for your home world?
Thanks in advance to any advice anyone offers.
I start my homeworld as manufacturing + research, but then specialize it to pure manufacturing once my first research colonies are ready to research.
Specialization is mathematically the best strategy (unless you're stuck on < 3 planets).
Sometimes I make influence worlds, but a bunch of cultural starbases is usually enough. My planet tiles are too precious to waste on culture, and culture flipping isn't as fun as Malevolent invasions.
With my homeworld I depending on bonus tiles I put 1-2 factories 1 research lab and 1-2 market centres and the entertainment building to bump up approval. I also put the financial capital and the trade capital on there as they compliment each other bonus wise.Generallly I put 1-2 factories,2-3 market centres,1-2 research labs per planet but if a planet has a lot of bonuses for either econ/manufacturing or research or military then I will specialise that planet and it also depends on where the planets capital is and where the terraforming hexes are?
hope this helps?
Thank you Echillion. That does help. I have been leaning that way, and I will try a game with my homeworld as my econ/trade capital.
Thank you as well Corg. That's the approach I've always taken.
I start out balanced for the first 50 or so turns but quickly specialise. My homeworld becomes either trade/wealth or tech, depending on what other colonies I've picked up. I pick a planet for my technological capital, manufacturing capital and trade/financial capital as soon as I can (especially trade and set up the routes). I never make it manufacturing because it's easy enough to use low quality colonies for that and tbh I never lack for manufacturing. I'm not really a warmonger though, if you plan to go conquest the majority of the game then you might want to make it manufacturing.
This is how I approach it as well.
Ultimately it doesn't really matter which specialization you choose for your homeworld, but you SHOULD specialize. Going a balanced approach is just plain weaker.
I usually did manufacturing in the middle, on the homeworld, but lately I have preferred science. Of course is starts out manufacturing+science. It depends which traits I took. Engineering + Pragmatic/builderII Coordinated gives you 0% decay for ship building, so you homeworld can be used on any frontier shipyard. But if I hadnt chosen to go with that combo, I think Science is better for your core world, as science has no decay. And trade of course.
I should also mention that manufacturing specialization goes to waste if all your ships take less than one turn to build. You could take this as incentive to dual-specialize, but I prefer to work around it.
The easiest solution is to research and design bigger ships with smaller modules. (Huge constructors with 20 points and 80 moves!!)
I also saw an idea from another player (marigoldan?), but found it to be too micro-intensive:
Well, another key strat I like to use is have my Hyperion Planet, where I max the Hyperion Shrinker to death. Use elurium defense shields if I have the spare elurium, just to get the +3. Prep center +2 is great as well. This hub take several buildings, but can net you a -50% mass, which is invaluable. Make sure the rest of this planet is manufacturing.
THIS is the planet I sometimes rotate with, as the shrinker's (and hyperion ship building) bonus applies if it is a sponser in the ship's LAST turn.
Yes, absolutely true, if you can ever build a ship in one turn, just build more shipyards. Or just bigger ships.
That WASN'T me. On the other hand I just learned something new....
I find it a waste to put my hyperion shrinker on my main manufacturing planet, since the bonus is global anyway. I find a planet with a +3 military tile and push it up to +13ish which is 75% capacity.
I put the shipyard/supply/logistics together on another planet that specialises research or wealth, then I sponsor with the minimal military production possible my main manufacturing shipyards which can be located anywhere.
Rspiccaver, are you saying you find a tech capital world and a manufacturing capital world, and make your home world the econ/trade cap...or you find 3 different worlds for your capitals? If so, what do you do with your home world?
Also, does anyone create Influence worlds? Do they serve a purpose?
In a perfect game, you find an active core, (50% manufacturing,) for you manufacturing capital...a ghost world, (50% research,) for your science capital...and an Income bonus- I forget the planet, (50% econ,) for your econ capital... would you then consider making your home world an influence world?
Thanks again all.
I tend to use world sizes as my main determiner for my manufacturing, tech, and wealth capitals. I don't rely on Ghost or Active Core, since the bonuses you get there (+50%) is really not more than what just one single building will give you.
A 16 quality planet is way more powerful in research than an 8 quality Ghost planet.
Since I usually choose a single class 16 planet for my homeworld, that is going to become one of my capitals. Then I just need to find 2 more really high quality planets for my other 2 capitals.
In my most recent game, I also micro my 3 capitals to have populations over 100 as soon as possible. It makes for really powerful planets, but too much micro now that Synthetic Pop Cap was implemented to get the population that high on 10's or 100's of planets.
I play terrans and I find earth is actually really well suited to becoming a pure manufacturing planet because of the tile placement. With 4-5 econ starbases and a manufacturing capital, I have an insane amount of production.
Overall, specializing planets is very much worth it. I tend to go by the ratio of 1 econ, 2 manufacturing, 7 research for every ten planets. Could even go with less econ planets because I always end up making too much money.
I think the ideal use for the home planet is to start off as a manufacturing planet. Ultimately, I plan to make it a manufacturing/military planet - which is to say that all the military 'hyperion' buildings will go there as well to gain the maximum value in terms of bonuses & usefulness. That way, all the ships built on my home planet will have all the hyperion advantages. With the hyperion tiles, the adjacency bonuses are important.
Also, I colonize my in-system second planet (usually Mars) quickly, and make it a research planet, because you need research immediately. For people with production of >1 capacity, It's easy to create a second shipyard on the adjacent planet to facilitate this production using the home world's extra capacity, without any distance hits.
I usually go for the terrain-enhancement techs to add to my planets, including the home world. To call the home world a production is a bit of an oversimplification, so the enhancement tiles are quite necessary.
For the production/military planet to be at maximum you will need to install 'farming' tiles, and hospital tiles, and possibly 'happiness' tiles as well, though I prefer to solve the happiness issue with starbases. Farming tiles are necessary to get the population up, and hospital tiles are needed to rebuild the population after sending out colony ships and transports. Don't remember if freighters require people or not. Colony ships & transports drain pop quickly. I may even retain a transport to shuttle extra people from my in-system planet into my home planet.
Overproduction is usually not an issue for me on the home planet. There are plenty of civilian tiles to build on the planet, so this is really a matter of adjusting the manufacturing slider to accommodate both needs,even if it is occasionally on a turn-by-turn basis.
Making the in-system planet a research planet is just a stop-gap for research until my expansion kicks in. Once I have lots of research planets, I usually switch over the in-system planet to production with a shipyard. This 2nd production in-system planet allows starbases to benefit from having two production planets in the same system. This second shipyard I usually dedicate to making constructors and, occasionally, transports - to ease the burden on the home world.
I normally always go for manufacturing at first. Then latter on if there are no other planets close by, so the shipyard can share production cost, i might destroy a load of buildings and redevelop it depending on the bonuses.
My homeworld is a production world right now. 1 or 2 Farms, 1 Entertainment, rest manufacturing. Later I build a trade capital there, because I built my freighters at my main shipyard, which happens to be my homeworld. I have zero research at the start. I'm playing on medium-sized maps, and first grab what I can grab. This may be different if you play on larger mapsizes. Then, at some point, I built up my research planets, 100% manufacturing first to get those research labs rolling. I'm way behind in research for some time, but once my research kicks in, around the time when it makes sense to have diplomatic contact, I start to outresearch the AI with my strategy. Throw some tech trading in the mix and I'm number 1 in technology on normal difficulty.
I'm wondering though what other strategies make sense. I've had good experiences with this strategy so far, on medium maps with normal difficulty.
I often make it econ/trade capital yes, because it's a lot easier to get freighters out very early game from your homeworld. The age of a trade route adds a lot of income so the earlier the better (I usually have trade routes by turn 50). The only time I don't do this is if I colonise another planet early on that would suit my trade world better (like it's further towards the edge of the map, and will get more for distance bonus). But I have to find that very early, and if I do I make my homeworld tech.
I prefer my tech capital to be a higher quality world than my homeworld, ideally with tiles less spaced out.
In all honesty, my homeworld is very often NOT my most productive world past mid game.
Making your homeworld influence is a waste imo, the only time you want influence worlds is on the fringes of your empire and my homeworld is normally well within my borders.
Usually I go 60/40 research/manufacturing early game and use my starting colony ship to colonize the secondary world that's (usually) next to my homeworld. I tend to make that world 100% manufacturing, and fill every hex with a factory. My homeworld gets a research improvement next to my colony Capital and factories everywhere else.
I always start with engineering, or the equivalent, to get fast moving colony ships (10+ moves) that can be built in 2 - 3 turns. I load them up with .5 population each and go on a mass colonization spree. As I colonize more worlds, I trade in factories for research improvements on my homeworld. Usually, I'm running at least 800+ science per turn on my homeworld by late game. Unless your homeworld is on the edge of your borders (unlikely) it shouldn't be much else than a science pump. Let your border planets be your main manufacturing pumps.
Btw> I rarely rush buy anything early game. I save my money to run deficits for the first 150 turns and supplement my income through tech trades. This means I don't have to spend time building markets, trade routes or any kind of gold enhancement buildings.
I balance my homeworld by filling it with factories. Then I balance my technology by rushing weapons and invasion modules. Then I balance my galaxy by plowing over all the aliens.
Jokes aside, manufacturing home world is the way to go. You only need a few key techs at the beginning and if you just put your new worlds on all research for a few turns (they make like 7 or so) you'll be able to pick them up fast enough. In the meantime you can build factory spam on your homeworld and every turn adjust the slider so that any social above 30 goes to military (or tech if you haven't finished the key techs yet). Also buy colony and constructors as needed and always use the pragmatic constructor trick because it is without a doubt the most powerful ideology period end of story.
Your Most Welcome
One thing I would point out is you can always destroy the buildings you no longer want or need so you can start with one type of world and change it into another.
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