District/Planet building + Unity question

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Hello there,

I just returned after a longer time for the new DLC and I'm struggling with setting up planets. Currently I'm playing a friendly hive mind with the tree of life origin (Thought that'd be a nice roleplaying thing, however it doesn't seem to have that much of an impact with actual events or stuff), however even though my pops grow rapidly (7.xx per month as far as I remember) I struggle with the distribution of districts and buildings. It's almost year 300 and I only have +45 alloys - I've not gotten the building upgrade yet and for whatever reason my unrest is growing as well because I have over 90 pops.

Anyways, so currently I have 1 planet with 2 others in the making (Just colonized before I went to sleep) and almost 200 energy, 800 minerals, 0 consumer goods (Don't I need them for the advanced factories?) and 30 food per month. I also "only" have around 50 unity per month and no idea how to increase it.

Can someone give me some general tips for building districts and stuff? I feel like I can't have any fleet (Thank god I got invited into a federation early on that I kept at war with the fanatic purifiers next door) because it's just too expensive.

I probably screwed up completely but I hope it can be fixed with the two other planets >.<

#ImNotGoodAtThis #ThisIsConfusing

Also, how can I get more unity without messing up my ressources?

edit: I also set it to be a long game by making midgame year 400 and victory 600

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Originally posted by Sehrael:

It's almost year 300

Do you mean 2300 (100 years into the game, but with "300" as part of the date), or do you mean 2500 (300 years into the game)?

Originally posted by Sehrael:

Anyways, so currently I have 1 planet with 2 others in the making

That seems a little low, even for only 100 years into the game, but your game settings would influence that.

Originally posted by Sehrael:

0 consumer goods (Don't I need them for the advanced factories?)

Hive minds don't use consumer good for anything. Advanced buildings will use special resources (crystals, motes, gasses) like any other playable empire.

Originally posted by Sehrael:

I also "only" have around 50 unity per month and no idea how to increase it.

I'm sure there is at least one building, if not more than one, that will provide jobs that increase unity. You should be able to go into your planetary build list by clicking an open building slot, and then read the descriptions of the different buildings available to see the output of the building and the jobs it provides. That will allow you to identify the ones that provide unity.

Originally posted by Sehrael:

Also, how can I get more unity without messing up my ressources?

You have to choose your building slots carefully, and decide what you need most. If you build a unity building then that means you didn't build a different one in that slot. So research, alloy production, administrative capacity, and much more, they all compete for building slots and what you choose to build can have a big impact on your planet and on your empire.

Since you only have one planet, your building slots are limited. Expansion is important to unlocking new building slots. Each planet has a limited number of building slots, and after about 80 pops no new ones will ever unlock for that planet. So new planets are critical.

Originally posted by Sehrael:

Can someone give me some general tips for building districts and stuff? I feel like I can't have any fleet (Thank god I got invited into a federation early on that I kept at war with the fanatic purifiers next door) because it's just too expensive.

Research is critical in the long term, because you need to dig around in the tech tree to find the advanced buildings. They are critical because they save building slots. One advanced building might provide 8 jobs, compared to a basic building that provides 2. The advanced building also requires a special resource, so you can think of it as also needing a second building slot to support it. That still means that 2 buildings are doing the work of 4 basic buildings, which essentially doubles the number of jobs per building slot. Since building slots are so important, that is key.

You can't focus just research, though, since you need a fleet to defend yourself, and that means alloy production. And planets need some building slots to support themselves (amenities, etc.). So growth is important, to raise population, to unlock building slots.

The growth on your main planet sounds very high, which is great. However, that's just one planet. If your neighbor has eight planets, even if each one only has a growth rate of 1, they are growing new pops faster than you. New planets are the key to faster population growth, because the growth rate is not based on the number of pops on the planet but rather a fixed rate per planet. So colonize early and colonize often (within the limit of what you can support), to raise your total growth rate as high as possible, to unlock building slots as high as possible, so that you can create jobs for research or alloy production.

Aside from buildings, you also have to manage the districts you create on your planets. This is typically a matter of keeping the planet working well (such as providing adequate housing) and then choosing the district that provides the jobs that produce the basic resources that your empire needs. If you need more food then you would build a farm. More minerals a mine, etc. For added efficiency, keep an eye out for the opportunity to specialize your planets. If you do a lot of farming on one planet then you can specialize that planet for farming and your food output will be increased. This can add up as your empire grows, but requires planning because the extra food won't matter much if your empire doesn't have enough minerals or energy. You can sell surplus on the market, but it is better to produce what you need directly.

The first priority for any planet is to keep it productive by providing the housing and amenities that is needs to avoid penalties. When those are in a good state, then other districts and building slots can be devoted to producing things your empire needs, be they basic resources (food, minerals, energy), or advanced resources (research, alloys, crystals/motes/gasses, unity, admin cap, etc.).

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Thanks for the reply, it puts some things in perspective. I'm so used to the tiles from the console version, that this is a little alien to me. I'm very sure I can mitigate my problems with more time since my starting world has plenty of food districts available so there's an option to specialize my homeworld on food later on. One other planet almost only has electric districts so I only need to find at least one for research and so on.

So basically, build reactive until you can afford to specialize planets. I've spread very wide (Yes, Chokepoint! Oh it goes further into another choke point, let's take that too! - And so on :D :D) so I guess I just need more planets.

With 300 years I mean 2300, yes ^^