economic buildings vs farms

I'm trying to figure out how to balance between population, and economic structures, based on planet quality.

At what point does it become more sensible to build economic structues rather than more farms?

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after thinking about it for a moment, I think what I have realized is that when trying to decide between econnomic structures and farms, to think of it this way.... which will benefit more, X% of population increase from a farm or X% of economic increase from an economy building. But the thing to remember is that when increasing the population you will have to account for the extra morale penalty that will come from doing so.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Rarely is more than 14b or 20b justified in economic terms. Income increases with the square root of population, so stock markets are almost better.

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It all depends on your tech levels, but in these discussions people will typically say that you need 2 morale buildings to offset the morale penalty coming from the extra population the farm allows. Though of course this depends on your civilization and how far you researched the morale tech branch.

Meaning that you need to compare the increase in population (X%, don't know the figures by heart since ToA) with the tax increase generated by 3 econ buildings. Personally I prefer econ buildings as this usually generates more income for me, except if I need the additional population to have more troops or more influence.

Farms are easier to use on high quality planets because you get a positive morale effect of high planet quality, as far as I know this is the only aspect where planet quality comes into the equation.

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Farms are easier to use on high quality planets because you get a positive morale effect of high planet quality, as far as I know this is the only aspect where planet quality comes into the equation.

The +10 approval bonus you get for a planet higher than PQ10 is not going to make the difference between whether you have 14B people or 20B people on that planet.

You lose 26% absolute and your efficiency drops from 60% to 34% on morale which means that to have 100% morale at 20B you'd need 195% (counting the +10 approval bonus), or 203% without counting it. I haven't factored in taxes, so it's not quite as bad as needing double the morale, but it's still bad-bad enough that +10 approval, even when it isn't depreciated by population, isn't going to make or break it.

The number of tiles you have left over for virtual reality centers (or their equivalent) is a primary factor, and how many you actually need is even more important.

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I play at tough difficulty DA (so far) and to be honest I rarely put more than one farm on a planet and tend to only build morale buildings on my civ capitals and the ones I capture. IMHO a good soldiering score and a pop of 9B is enough to see off the vast majority of attempts the AI makes to take your planets and whilst it may be possible to optimise income at higher populations with a combination of farms, morale structures and stock markets, a simpler approach is just to ignore morale structures all together and build the morale boosting trade goods instead. This frees up space for extra stock markets.

Like I say I’m sure it’s not optimal – but micro managing approval is something I don’t enjoy.

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It also has to do with your own preference to managing morale. With someplanets having much higher populations than others, setting a tax rate that will keep thoise people happy without losing money on the smaller population worlds can be a pain. Personally I like to have all of my planets at the same max population and therefore about the same in morale when they near the maximum. \

So if I have one farm per planet and max out at 13 billion (non home wprlds of course) I can set the tax slider to a comfortable level and have the same morale on those worlds at 13b. Any planets making their way to the max will neccessarily be ok. Very seldomly if ever do I use moralke structures, prefering to have another stock exchange.

Of course once a planet hits its maximum population you can have its morale be at 22% and not lose anything, just watch for elections. But as a planet get to its maximum just build a transport and give some room to grow more people.

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I've explored this as well. On a large planet (qual 16 or more) I had alot of Galactive Stock Exchanges (GSE) and one Intense Farming thingy (xeno farm III) bringing it up to 15b population. When I replaced one GSE with a food dist network, it broght it to 18b but the income dropped. It depends. If you have few GSE's on the planet, go ahead and max your pop for taxes, but if you have lots of GSE's don't go beyond one farm or the gains will be offset by the maint' of the farm and the loss of a GSE.

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