Amenities

[JusTheory]

What is the best ways to get amenities? Early game providing amenities to satisfy my populations feels counterproductive to getting my economy up and running. Is an early holotheater the best route? A necessary building for a colony?

[Archmage MC]

Cleric jobs are a good midway point to get amenedies without compromising your eco as tey also produce trade value, which you convert into energy credits or consumer goods or unity.

[JusTheory]

So a commercial zone is best or rely on city sectors?

[CrUsHeR]

Holo-theater on every planet once you have the spare building slots. The unity boost is also kind of required to quickly unlock the first 2-3 ascension slots. Assuming you don't actively produce unity through the dedicated buildings.

Always build these instead of the gene clinics, their effect on growth is too small compared to what a robo-plant and the holo-theater adds. The math here is that 2 pops trying to add 10% growth and too little amenities is worse than two pops creating unity, and boosting stability measurably through amenities (you'll have the 20% happiness from "high amenities" for a long time, then you just upgrade the theatres).

Indirectly, the gene clinics are also subject to diminishing returns; with 10% from rapid breeders, the first passive 10% upgrade from bio research, and 10% from expansion traditions, those 10% from the clinics no longer have their nominal effect.
So you're going from baseline 3.0 to 3.3, 3.6, 3.9, then adding the gene clinics only makes it 4.2. Not 4.29 as you might expect it before building the clinics.

Stability even adds multiplicative pop growth through immigration pull, and has a global production modifier (up to 30% at 100 stability), so with migration pacts and enough free housing/jobs this will make up for the lack of gene clinics. So the gene clinics are mostly built in a later phase of the game, where your economy is already booming and you only want to fill new planets / ring worlds as quickly as possible with no regard to the current per-slot productivity.


Clerks are generally too ineffective at everything, unless you are playing a megacorp where you stack the trade value bonus. Otherwise the clerk jobs should only be fillers for workers while you don't have better jobs for them. There's a reason why they have the absolute lowest priority for the game when filling empty jobs.

The way i do this on e.g. an ecumenopolis, checking the open jobs, as long as there is 1 clerk employed, i can start opening the next actual job (district or building)

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by JusTheory:

So a commercial zone is best or rely on city sectors?

For a normal empire commercial zones and clerks are a stop gap measure at most. They are by far the most inefficient job in the game, in my humble opinion just slightly better then being unemployed.

As far as i know, the only logical reason to build commercial zones for normal empires is if you temporarily want to employ a lot of unemployed people (since even the basic building gives 5 jobs).

That said, clerk jobs that you get from commercial zones might be useful if your amenity needs are tiny (so that a dedicated building slot for it would be overkill).

If your amenity needs are larger, entertainers are far more efficient at getting amenities. When it comes to trade value it can be converted into energy, consumer goods & energy or unity & energy. But having the same pops that would have worked as clerks work a mix of Technician, Artisan and culture worker jobs is just way more efficient.

But as mentioned, this is for normal empires. Empires that specialize in trade value can get a lot more out of it.

[JusTheory]

In my current game I start having amenity problems in a colony between 5-10 pops. I try to check the population screen to see if jobs are available and not being worked for some reason, but the screen doesn't seem to line up. For example, my colony headquarters says it provides two jobs for amenities on top of a plus 5. But I only see two colonists at work producing 1 food but costing 1.3 or something.

[IPWIW]

Originally posted by JusTheory:

it provides two jobs
But I only see two colonists at work

the 5 amenities are from the building itself
wait it says 3

[galadon3]

at start genome-clinic, boosts pop-growth and gives enough amenities to keep the planet supplied in combo with the clerk jobs from the residential districts.
Planets with low pop-counts (like mining worlds) can often even work on that, bigger pops: add holo-theaters

[Lone Star Ranger]

if you play as a megacorp ammenties are a joke... lol
build 3-6 branch offices on empire capitals and build the buildings that boost ammenties by 10% and BOOM done... ammenties from commercial districts become enough and the boosts for trade from both your ethics and buildings in branch offices will bring you tons of profits... and if you have slaves I MEAN indentured servitude even better... lol

[Rivazar]

I dont remember needing more than 1 theather per planet. Early game you can just make planet edicts about ammenties from consumer goods. They are very cheap at start of game.

[Emperor Cheesius Secundus]

For amenities then holotheaters are priority. A bare handful of jobs can provide all the amenities a colony could need. Clerks do has a plus though. If you need energy (and especially with mods like gigastructures, it can get tricky) and can't build any more energy districts, then trade is a good stop-gap. Still low priority but a nice supplement if you got nothing else to build or are in need to energy.