Farms vs. Economic Improvements

I think economics improvements are better than farms. You'll spend too much on moral improvements to make a high populated planet worthwhile. But with one, maybe two farms,you can get enough population that doesn't need lots of moral boost, leaving tiles for eco.

You'll need a boost of population. Higher population means :
- More taxes
- More resistance to invasions
- More influence
- More tousism (=> more money), but i'm not sure of this

So yep, you're doing right

 Hello

Yes, for me it is. I have more Money Maker Planets than I do Research Planets but less than Shipyard Planets.

 Being new to this and all, for a Money Maker Planet, I build one farm and two to three entertainment buildings depending on moral on the planet then fill the rest of the tiles with economic buildings (and maybe Economic Capital if it's a high PQ). Sometimes I add one more farm to have a planet just for making marines to be collected for my Trooper Ships from a close by shipyard on a another planet.

I don't know the numbers behind it all?

Mmm Hard to see it is Mmm

I build one farm per planet only. That way i never have to build any morale structures and have all those extra tiles for stock exchanges. With 13billion people (typical planet with one maxed farm). you can have a good morale with taxes in the 70%'s with trade goods and yellow resources. when i get a planet bnear 13b I ship off 3b onto transports to fight for their new home, so I don't generally need more that one farm.  Economic capital planet is different and will either be on a home planet (16 b with no farm) or a planet with a bonus tile for farms. The PQ of the planet that your economic capital is on doesn't matter. Its not like th eother 2 capitals that multiply the effects of other structures. The economic capital only works with that planet's tax revenue. You don't need any other structures to take full advantage of the economic capital.

My strategy is to build myself up massively (culture hugging line) then, whoever refuses to love me enough i blast into the sky with my allies techs (advanced a bit mind). So I normally have 2 Production (sipbuilding) planets to 1 research planet to 7 economic planets.

My economic planets normally have a maxed farm and a starter farm (i think it makes 6b to 15b) with a stock exchange a moral boost (the waterfalls) and whatever bonus tiles are there. each planet gives me LOADS of cash, but i usually end up spending it all on -150bc production and research planets.

Oh yeah, if you have a trade route i always build economy starbases with trade benefits (thats if its mine).

I also have 'one farm per world' as a rule of thumb. I tend to hold off building farms on class 9 and smaller until I have some progress down the morale tech branch and/or morale resource mines. For DL and DA, I almost never used farm bonus tiles.

With TA's unique tech trees and my bad Thalan fixation, I've started to occasionally use a 300% farm tile b/c it is very unlikely that I'll ever have more than the Xeno Farms I bought from someone early in the game. And I'll sometimes build two or three Xeno Farms on a very high PQ world, especially if there's a morale bonus tile. Proximity to a potential combat zone also makes me more inclined to heavy farm use. I think a few high-pop worlds are a good thing to have in the bank if you suddenly need a bunch of new transports.

Large pops are also useful for influence as well.  I think there's a role for farms, though it's not a central role.

I'm more likely to build farms when I have economic and farm resources, those can modify my strat for economy some.

The average planet, with the average race, I will build one Intensive Farm and cap off the pop at 14b.  If I've got some good yellow starbases, I will upgrade the Intensive Farms to Advanced Farms.  If the planet has some farm bonus tiles, I will use one of them (preferably a 300%) and let the population grow as it may.  I can afford a few planets to go to 31% approval.   I use all my approval bonus tiles.

If I'm Iconians, I build two Robotic Farms, unless I manage to trade for some good Xeno Farm tech (which is not very often).  Robotic is better than basic Xeno Farm I.  If I'm Yor, two Charging Stalks per planet.  If I've got a Farm bonus tile, I go back down to 1 Robotic Farm/Charging Stalk.  If I'm Yor and have approval bonus tiles, those automatically get Charging Stalks, and I figure out the rest from there.

In terms of Economic Structures, I do the Recruiting Center.  The Iconians build their Precursor Archive and Merchant Emporium on every planet.  Other than that, I almost never build markets, unless I'm going for Influence victory (then I'll do some Stock markets).

This is because of the morale penalties for having large populations?

Brian

yeah, you start getting some hefty morale penalties at higher populations, and eventually it reaches a point where you the penalty cannot be offset in any economical manner (that is, yes you can have a very high population world but you would have to have a very low, if any, taxes, almost all morale boosting structures on the planet(s), and all the various morale techs.)  Needless to say, this would be poor strategy just to get a high pop world.

It's slightly more complicated than that.

The function that provides money based on the number of population a planet has is not a linear function. It actually is the square root (or some root) of the population, so you get diminished returns with further population concentration. And morale is a power function of population, so it increases faster. Combined, it effectively means that in a planet with X tiles, there is some combination of morale + tax buildings + population that will provide the maximum money.

If you're talking about a planet with a good number of tiles (14+), you're looking at around 9 billion population, 2-3 morale buildings, and the rest tax stuff. If it's a really big planet (22+ or so), you can get things up to 13 billion, with 4-5 morale buildings (probably high-end ones), and the rest tax buildings.

Note that this does not include TA-based buildings and such, which can allow some races to skew the curve one way or another.

Yes, but also no.

A DL/DA colony is 6B pop.  Because tax is based on the square root of your population, to make twice as much money you need four times as much population.  So to make twice as much money as 6B population, you need 24B population-or 18B population limit from farms alone (3 farms-3 stock markets would net you 75% more income).

A TA colony is 8B pop.  Following from the above, you'd need 32B pop, or 24B more pop, or 4 farms, to double your income-whereas 4 stock markets will do the same.

With these "low" numbers in mind, it is largely due to morale penalties for higher population that one would prefer to build stock markets, as ignoring that mechanic they are close to equal.

If you build a single farm (which most people do, as it's worthwhile both for influence via tourism and UP voting as well as to support and stave off invasions), in DL/DA you're looking at 12B pop, whereas in TA you're looking at 14B pop.  To double your income you'd need 48B pop or 56B pop, which would be 6 more farms or 7 more farms.

Even without accounting for morale, it is obvious at this point that stock markets are superior.

Therefore, the only time you'd want to build more than one farm per planet is if your strategy involves influence, tourism, UP votes, etc, as opposed to a taxation-driven economy.

Cheers for this, as a noob this it’s good reading.

I’ve just started invading enemy territory and even with a considerable tech advantage the combat has meant my population has gone down considerably.

Is it worth building higher population planets at the fringes of your empire? Not only will they be better able to resist enemy invasions, but they will also provide the troops you need when you want to attack?

That strategy is completely up to you. I build all of my planets to have at least 13billion people. I put 3000 million on my transports (enough to take a 6 billion AI planet with enough population left over). I try not to buiuld those transports until the planet has like 11 billion. But needs may change that, its game / galaxy specific.

I've read a few posts where people have had some very high population worlds just for filling transports. The idea would be to have a transport  built at the same rate that there's enough population to fill it. These planets would probably have fertility clinics (i build on a lot of planets and keep untill all other tiles are filled) and morale structues. I can't get into managing like that so I don't. But i do see the great potential for it.

You don't have to fill a transport from the world that builds it--a high-pop world with poor production can still help fill an assault wave if it has some more productive, lower-pop neighbors. And occasionally, I've had a 'frontier' high-pop world that I could use as a source of migrants to get newer, extreme environment worlds up to speed more quickly.

For what it's worth, population has almost no bearing on population growth rate-at least as far as transports are concerned.  Whether a planet has no farms or eight farms, it's still going to grow population at the same rate-in fact, it's probably going to grow population faster with no farms simply due to being at a higher approval rating.

So scrap your plan for farms and just fill a planet or three with fertility clinics to fill your transports.

(This doesn't apply during the colony rush, but that is to my knowledge not what we're talking about here.)

I've had pretty good success with transport-filling worlds, but they are not high-pop worlds, per se.  Actually they are fairly low-pop.  I get them down to around 3 billion, where the approval is still 100%.  Fertility Centers are easy to build--an otherwise crappy world can put out one every other turn (a REALLY crappy extreme planet, I can sometimes afford to just rush-buy FC's everywhere).  Then rather than building transports on that same world, I just rally point there from other worlds.  If it's going really well, I'll throw up a military starbase; not just to protect the fertility planet, but to boost the speed of all those transports going in-and-out.  If it's not going well, you can always upgrade all those FC's to something else.

Of course, if I'm Super Breeder, no need to build a fertility planet at all.  I've already got more pop than I know what to do with.

To help with an assault, I've had good luck building the Mind Control Center and going for flips.  You conquer the other guy's surrounding worlds, but then you flip one, which gives you a good population.  You now have a good source of soldiers (and more influence), right there on the front line.

Yea i tried having a good production planet buiuld ships to be filled on another world, like my tech capital that had full population but no starport. The thing is I launched with the minimum crew (1 million) and must have lost it in transit because a few turns later I invaded a planet of 6 billion with just i million soldiers.   I've learned my lesson since.

And its correct that you don't need a high population world to fill transports, its just that I like to keep my planets making money so I'd like to have at least 7 billion people left. I've never had a dedicated planet though. I just build war ships until i see a high population and then i switch that planet to build a transport. I tend to get a pretty steady stream.

I thought that the higher populations did mean faster growth. Barring a trip over the morale threshold of course. That a population of say 1 million would GROW slower than a population of 1 billion. That the formula for new population per turn used the existing population number somehow. ???? yay / nay?  I play but don't generally get into the numbers. My general rules are... factories build things faster, labs teach you things faster, banks and population mean money, money is good.

Once you get over 2.5 billion pop, growth ceases to get any faster.  So the sweet spot for a fertility world is between 2.5 billion and whatever level it is where you are no longer at 100% approval.

I've made that mistake invading worlds with 1 million troops before.  Actually, I've used Info Warfare before and gotten away with it, too.       I've also made the mistake of accidentally attacking a planet with orbiters with one of my transports.  The game will just stop you from doing that, right?  No harm done.  Well, apparently attacking orbiters with your transports is perfectly legal when you get the UFP resolution to give transports minimum armaments.  Bye bye loaded transport.

To expand on that a little more...

Base growth is capped at 75M/wk.  Default (and common) growth rate is 3%, therefore base growth normally caps at 2.5B.  For a custom race, base growth is 4% (IIRC), so base growth caps at 1875M, rather than the standard 2500M.  For the Torians, who have previously had a base growth of 7% (didn't verify this in TA but it exists in DL+DA), base growth caps at >1071M.

After base growth, you apply population growth bonuses and then the approval growth bonus.

Is it verified that a custom race's base growth is 4% regardless of whether they are Super Breeder?

I usually just stick a starport on a few dozen econ planets. If left alone, even the minimal output of the colony building will build one over time, and it's a convenient spot to throw money if you have to spend some at the end of the turn.

One thing to consider when balancing farms and stock markets: Economy bonus is additive, so for example while four stock exchanges means a 100% bonus, the next four stock exchanges will just increase that bonus to 200%, so in total you triple your income instead of quadrupling it (doubling twice). Farms, on the other hand, increase population, which affects the base tax income, which is multiplied by the entire economic bonus.

So for some generic race in ToA, let's run the numbers, assuming that it will take one extra morale building to keep a planet happy going from 8 billion to 14 billion, and two extra morale buildings to keep it happy going from 14 billion to 20 billion:

1 farm + 1 morale buildings uses two tiles and provides a 32% bonus (sqrt[14/8]

2 farms + 3 morale buildings uses five tiles and provides a 58% bonus (sqrt[20/8])

Now, two stock exchanges provides a 50% bonus and 5 stock exchanges provides a 125% bonus, so it seems at first like stock exchanges should win easily. However, the actual bonus of the stock exchanges depends on the existing economic bonus. For example, if you already have a 100% economic bonus, you currently produce at 200% of base levels, so going to 250% of base levels is only an increase of 50/200=25%. The 32% multiplicative bonus from farms will be better than the 50% additive bonus from stock markets if your existing economy bonus is more than 56%, or about two stock markets, so as long already have at least two stock markets, you should build the farm and morale building (if you need two morale buildings with your farm, then the number changes to 134% existing bonus and at least  6 stock markets, but one farm is still worth it for most decent planets). Looking at two farms, if you'll need 3 morale buildings to keep up, the 58% increase in base outcome only outweighs a 125% additive bonus if you have 222% already in econ bonuses, so that's 9 stock markets plus room for five more buildings, and so two farms is only worth it for maybe PQ in the high teens or above, since you'll probably also have a factory or two and maybe another morale building or a starport. Of course, farm bonus or morale bonus tiles both favor building farms, because you are sacrificing fewer stock markets. In addition, I believe your civilization economic bonus adds to the planets bonus, so if you have a high bonus based on race or green resources, that will make your econ bonus higher to start with and mean that farming will be favored more on lower PQ worlds, and of course morale resources and bonuses probably also favor farming because fewer morale buildings will be needed.

My understanding from Mumblefratz is that your civ econ bonus multiplies with the planet's income.  At least, for DL.   In other words, planet income is computed first (stock markets & all), then it is all multiplied by your civ bonus.   If true (and I think it is), that changes a few things.

Don't ask stupid questions.

Sorry, didn't mean to be rude-the answer is a positively verified duh.

Breeder doesn't change base growth, it just makes the multiplier when at 100% approval 8 instead of 2.

For what it's worth, this is yet another reason to play custom over at least some stocks. 

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Economy bonuses * stock market bonuses * tax formula.  Doesn't particularly matter where you multiply, as it's all multiplication, if memory serves.  I know this game truncates a lot of things but most of the economy formula survives to its final form before being subject to that.

Basically, a 25% economic bonus and a single stock exchange = 1.25 * 1.25x (1.5625x) as much money as you'd otherwise get.

So the civ-wide bonus does multiply again, that's good to know. I don't think it changes much though, it just means that civ-wide bonuses are really powerful and that it's only the planet's econ bonus (basically the number of existing econ buildings) that should count in terms of the stock market vs farms balance.