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How do you want to win your match?
Simply by playing along and doing stuff until you hit any one of the victory conditions? Then yes, effificency again.
What about if you are specifically going for a particular victory tho? What good do those science-primed planets do you when you are trying to accomplish an economic victory?
Take any of the militaristic victories. Having dust will be good to pay for your fleets and the science comes in handy when you go after higher tier military tech. But dust becomes meaningless after a certain amount and science (tho nice) isnt really that important. In order to keep your fleets at a maximum and refreshed you gonna need INDUSTRY mainly.
So you see, almost every victory condition prefers a certain type of income.
Terraforming is not a MUST but it does enhance your resource generation in a particular area and shouldnt be neglected or forfeit if available. You dont need to unlock the terraforming tech of course. Play the game as you want :) Many people think that terraforming adds too much hassle to the game (I need to be in the mood as well else I ll just hand it over to the AI governer). If you are after min-maxing tho, terraforming is THE tool hands down.
I was talking about terraforming in the above post but you really mean exploitation right?
Always select the optimal exploit for any given planet type, the only exception should be food which is needed to make any planet valuable. Sometimes I use dedicated "breeder" systems where all planets regardless of type (I prefer tundra, jungle and lava tho) are exploited for food. I use that system to churn out colony ships and dont bother changing the exploit until all available space is gone.
Selecting any other exploit then optimal is a waste really. You might be in a pinch for any of the other resources then generated by that planet and you can do so of course if you feel its a "need" but if you are going to run dust exploit on a Lava planet for any longer periods of time you really "should" go after the appropriate terraforming tech and change the lava to desert or arid.
In that regard, I think people generally mean "by terraforming" when talking about system specialization because simply going for a specific exploit regardless of given planetary conditions is very inefficient.
In fact im currently in my first game where im over turn 100. I did play other times before, but allways restarted because i discovered i was doing things wrong! lol
The way i been doing it (i would appreciate you correct me if you see im doing something wrong), is:
1.- colonize the new system (duh! hehe)
2.- set initial exploitation to food, so that population grows faster.
3.- once that initial planet has 3 or more people, i colonize the next one (next planet in that system of course) i desire, and set that new planet to food as well.
4.- rinse & repeat untill all planets in the system are colonized and full of people.
5.- go thru each planet, and see what kind of exploitation yields the most for that planet type, and set it. Be it science or dust.
6.- IF the most lucrative exploitation for a planet is food or industry, then i select industry, and set the entire system to convert production to either science or dust (whatever i need the most).
I do this (#6) because i understand that food and industry are local to the system. So if my population is full, i dont need extra food, and if that system is not a designated ship producer, i dont really need the industry.
Then i will find a nice juicy system, suitable for production of ships, and set every planet in it to industry.
Im i doing it right?
Thanks for your advice!
The two really go hand in hand though. In order to effectively specialize a system you need to terraform all the planets in it to that particular specialization. Otherwise you're better off letting each planet do what it does best and not bothering with system specialization at all.
Frankly, I find that by the time you get to the point where you can terraform a system sufficiently to seriously specialize it, the game is pretty much over anyway. So it seems rather pointless to pursue that approach. Maybe that's different on higher levels though, I've only played on Easy and Normal so far.
Terraforming has a different value in MP but can be really valuable if you are aiming for a specific victory condition rather then "just win the match"
There is a late game tech that will allow you to convert all of your surplus food into production. Once you get it, you may not be making the best use of your system by setting the exploitation of all the planets within it to production. If you happen to have a system that has two or three Terran type planets, you might be better off letting those planets exploit food instead, and converting your surplus.
This is not entirely true. There are some special resources that provide an empire wide bonus to food at least. I suspect the same is true for production and the other FIDS as well, but I haven't paid enough attention to that in order to be certain.
I suppose that's true. Terraforming techs so far have always been a low priority for me, I've really only unlocked them while on my way to something else. Perhaps I'd see it differently if I actually focused on them. Personally though, I tend to see terraforming as too much of a hassle, and I would rather not bother with it.
nr.1 - 4
That will work fine. I only internally colonize a neighbour planet within a system if the initial colony has reached its max population (not after reaching a size of 3). Hopping a pop over too soon before its max size is not ideal in terms of fids generation (replenishing the empty pop spot in terms of food yield is suboptimal). Assuming your next colony will be on a less perfect food producing planet type of course.
Keep in mind that you're initially in a expansion phase of the game, where you claim your territory and try to defend it until you have enough firepower to effectively consolidate and develop it (next phase). You will need systems that produce ships to protect your borders. So there is the balancing act between pop growth here and focussed war industry there. Planet specialization is essential if efficiency alone is not enough (hope that makes sense).
In the consolidation phase you should be able to produce an effective military defense fleet (tier 2) so that you can give yourself the room to specialize more strategically (fully develop science for instance).
There is your nr.5. MTB-Fritz' brain farts in (especially) his #2 post are made of gold...!
nr.6
When a system is maxed out in pop you are right to specialize certain planets to ind, sci or dust (beware of the food threshold influencing happiness). If you don't need to build ships or expensive enhancements on your planet, Ind has the additional benefit that you could set the queue to ind>sci or ind>dust. But Arctics and Barrens should really be set to research cos they contribute almost nothing to ind. Late game there is this gem of a tech that gives you the possibility to convert surplus food into ind (east wing tech tree). In some cases it could even be interesting to (build all those neglected food developing enhancements and) focus on food again! (as Belanos suggested)
Concering terraforming:
On higher levels it all comes down to pace, keeping up with the AI in order to emerge first on your strategic goal. Whether terraforming is useful is very circumstantial and depends on the layout of the planet types in your claimed territory. I've had frequent playthroughs on Endless in which I did not terraform a single planet (emerging tops by running an optimal route through the research tree and micromanage *build and specialize* each planet accordingly). N.B. In all honesty, ~80% of my Endless games still end up in defeats, so I might be underestimating the benefits of strategic terraforming quite definitely ;-)
Does anyone know the name of that tech that converts food to industry?
This is something that is giving me a hard time (and the reason i had restarted so many games)... I dont know the tech trees.
What i mean is, i dont know what extra-usefull stuff there is to look forward to. Many times i just focus research on areas specific to my current needs (e.g. i go to war, so i pick military stuff) without actually pursuing a specific tech, because i dont know what specific tech there is that is worth going after.
For example, On my frist couple of game, i had a very hard time with aproval, and i dint even know there was a tech (dont recall the name), to automatically gain extra aproval empire wide!
Im on turn 120 iirc on my current game (first one over turn 100) , im playing as terran and i think im doing good. Im very close to eradicating the pilgrims from exsistance (they declared war on me), my aproval is decent, got no dust problems, etc. Game is going ok, but I still wonder what other great tech exsist, that could have made my current game so much easier.
I need to familiarize myself with the tech tree!
I guess it would be easier if i wasnt learning to play Endless space, galactic civilizations 3, and master of orion at the same time! LOL
I'm not sure of the name of it, but it's somewhere in the left hand tech tree. It's deeper in the tree though, so it will take you awhile to get there.
It will come. I'm still not 100% familiar with them either yet, but I've learned a lot just by going through them all and learning what they do. If you zoom in enough, you can mouse over what they unlock and get a better understanding of which ones are useful to you. There are a number of them that I consider rather pointless so I just ignore them completely or try to find another path around them.
That would no doubt make it a bit confusing. I used to play Galactic Civilization 2 and discovered that I had to unlearn a few approaches because this game is quite different in many ways.
The required technology is located in the far right tech tree. I consider it end-game really and is called "Dust Virtualization". It gives you access to the system improvement "Adaptive Industrial Systems" which will transform 100% SURPLUS food into production. This means that the bonus will only start to take effect on fully capped population systems. If you even have 1 population missing there is no surplus as all food goes toward population growth.
Also the main reason why "population bombardement" in a siege is so important to cripple or slow down an enemies industry.
It goes hand in hand with another end-game tech located in the far oppposite direction (left tree -> Accelerated Evolution -> Permanent Parennials) which DOUBLES all surplus food on a system.
Dont fret about it, simply play the game and knowledge will come on its own. Mastering the tech tree and knowing your options and "best paths" for certain victories or situation certainly is the most important aspect of the game. Its a large beast to tackle but its size comes with complexity which is tied to options and freedom of choice. Once I understood the technology tree I really loved it.
Of course in hindsight I could say "its not complex at all" but all things complicated become "easy" once you understand them :) I admit freely I was the biggest bamboo on the planet at first and really "thick" in my approach.
The technology Tree is similar across all factions but has slight variations due to racial technologies, replacements and different localizations which can result in massively different matches depending on the faction chosen.
Its actually nice to discover new "tricks" and synergy effects after 200+ hours or find completely new solutions when picking a different faction.
Are you sure about that? I could have sworn it was in the tree with all the trade, diplomatic and approval techs, which is on the left hand side. I could very well be mistake of course.