Help with Food + Mining Please

1.  You are correct on pop caps - cities are used to improve pop cap up to the planet class (which may be improved through terraforming).  There are currently no other standard buildings which improve pop cap, though mining A. Viriles will increase pop cap by 2.   Cities are totally worth it.  The main source of raw production is your planet's population.

2.  Food does nothing for production or population - it is required to build cities (for carbon-based civs).  It can also be used for an Administration Center (gives 1 admin +1 influence / adjacency).

3.  Resources (other than food) are now mined, and build up over time.  Mines can be improved by researching on the Engineering tech tree.

4.  I think the basic ship roles haven't changed, ever, so that part is probably up to date.

Zero population colony ships can be filled at planets (edit - or shipyards, which may have multiple planets to draw from), and require at least 1.0 population as a minimum

Not sure about the econ thing, it seems to be accurate for me.

Well, I ended up getting Crusade too.  I'm enjoying it.  I think GC is currently in its best itineration.  Kudos!  

It *did* take me several hours to redo all of my custom civs, resizing portraits particularly, but oh well.  Also, figuring out how to make a city was a real pain.  I still am not positive on this, but I think food has to hit 4 production on that colony, + *maybe* population has to be at least 3, + *maybe* the colony has to be happy.  But I've built cities on colonies with zero farms, and just the basic food production.  A precise guide on cities would be great.

Note you can play the Ludicrous map even with under 6 gigs if you first create a ludicrous map with the map editor, then exit and start a new game.  You won't have to keep making a new map every game, either.

From what I can tell, not only does population = production, but since production = money and production = research, than population = money and research as well.  But some improvements add a pure +1 raw, and some don't.  And the +1 raw improvements usually having different adjacency bonuses and benefits.  So, for example, the Space Elevator gets a full +1 from adjacencies, and gives +1.  The city has +4 (or whatever, more than 2), gives +2, but only gets +1/4, and gets nothing from the elevator. 

So its apparently better to surround the Elevator with +1 (or better) construction adj.'s.  Which includes a city, of course.  But in the tile next to both, do you put a factory?  Or a farm?  The factory seems better, but that food could help get another city, which could go down next to the city and the elevator.

Ideally you would try for a starport surrounded by cities, on a military planet.  I think.

Has anyone ever built a single farm with a city on all sides?  Is there a max. adjacency bonus? 

I've also notice research is really more challenging.  On genius I noticed I was ranked 22 out of 22.   So I went to gifted to test.  Same thing.  When I finally got the city thing fairly worked out, I had 72 colonies and was 10/11 out of 22.  With 72 colonies!  Dude next to me had about 12 colonies, and 20 more techs.  I *was* in a corner though, so maybe it was because the other civs were tech trading.

Anyways... just some first thoughts.  I haven't even teched large hulls yet, so I'm sure I've a lot to learn.  

Oh, yes... this is the first time playing GC that I haven't built every galactic wonder.  I think I've managed 1 so far.  Crazy.

And I'm really enjoying the resource functionality!  Great ideas.  I did a 1 city challenge on ludicrous, and had 2 +2 ship resources on my size 16, and 2 +3 production tiles.  

Farms are global - any food, no matter where produced, can be used on any planet.

Pop caps start at 3, generally (5 for capital planets) - there is no max to adjacency boni, so that city can have a +250% on it, which usually means you need no more cities for that planet (unless it is an awesome planet).

Buildings will always list their adjacency bonus on a mouse-over.  The Space Elevator does not give to Population, so does not give any bonus to a city.  But a city gives +2 to All Construction, which is the SE's type, so it gets the bonus.

Surrounding a building with cities would be a waste of tiles - as the max pop cap is the planet class.  Many of those cities would basically ONLY be giving adjacency bonus, plus you would need to use a lot of tiles for farms, on this planet or elsewhere.

Regarding your research efforts, this might be misleading.  That chart tracks only the portion of your economy going into research.  It does not count any techs you might have traded for, at all.  And the Aid Research project gives you tech points, but that is tracked under Social Manufacturing.  Additionally, your neighbor might have some racial traits that gives them better research (Xenophobic is brutal at +200%, and aquatic races have excellent research buildings early on the tech tree).

Hope this helps.

Don't forget about those Economic starbases.  They require administrators, but as your tech advances, so do those percentages.

A class 21 planet produces 21 raw production, when full, just from population.  Add in your astroid mining, and raw production buildings, and a few factories/labs on-planet.  Citizens are great, but very focused.  7 econ starbases around a planet will give, with early tech, a huge advangage to Weath income, and a moderate amount to both Tech and both types of Manufacturing.

Even just a 5% from the basic Starbase Factory (you will need Durantium) will give 35% on a fully surrounded planet, not to mention the 175% to econ if you get Xeno Economics (also needs Durantium).

this is not at all trivial

Good info, thanks!

About cities... well, Let's say I start with a class 16.  I get +2 from ideology (I think), and ... +5 from techs?  So a class 23 homeworld?  I don't know what the current max is for planet size, but they can get up there.  So you are starting with a cap of 5 or 3.  How many cities to cap out?  And how many other improvements give that kind of adjacency bonus?  Of course, I didn't realize when I made my last post that asteroids provide +1 to raw, and (I think) have no range limit or decay.  So a +% factory can become much better than even +1 raw, when your raw starts getting up there.  When exactly this occurs obviously varies by planet and civ.  But, for smaller planets (counterintuitively), if an improvement, like a Starport does (I think), gain a full +1 from adjacency, than piling cities around the starport might be the best option.  It looks like Hives are gone.  I can think of only 2 other improvement that would give +2 shipbuilding, off hand (and I haven't looked down the tech tree, and don't want to).  And the pragmatic temple I guess.  Assuming your asteroids are going to larger planets to make use of the % piling.

I'm just musing.  For fun.  Of course I'll test some stuff out, like the asteroids.  Popping a huge per turn per shipyard is obviously the goal.

Thank you so much bro this is great topic i like it so much!

I believe it is possible to get 3 times from ideologies (I'd have to double check) - 2 malevolent and 1 benevolent.  Also, some races get a bonus terraforming tech (robots do for sure, there is another trait which gives a good terraform tech, but do not remember which one).

The numbers of cities you'll need depends on the adjacencies.  For a class 23 (all terraformed out) on a home planet, you could get away with 2 cities fairly easily, with proper adjacencies (5+3+3 with +125% total city adjacency bonus - assuming carbon).  The other issue with population is keeping them happy, I don't go for 100% on all planets, but try to at least keep it over 70%.

When considering adjacencies, yes it is always good to maximize (especially for the Shipyard with its +1 raw!!!) but placing cities which do no other good for population, as well as cost farmland, seems like a waste of tiles.  Factories only give +1 adjacency, but do not require resources (until later upgrades) and give a percentage to both Military and Social construction - which gets pretty nice once you DO research the techs, and upgrade them with resources.  Of course, play around as much as you'd like :)  Just my 2 cents.

You can get military bonus from factories, and on that same research path, Fusion (and later Quantum) power plants are great (these are All Construction adjacencies which give to both social and military).  Aquatics get the Central Mine (+2 to All).  If you get the Hyperion techs, these are all Military.  And the trait which the Arceans have (Vigilant?  or the other one? I forget)  gives special buildings which help military as well.

One other thing.  Asteroids do indeed decay - but always give a minimum of 0.1 raw to its planet.  One thing to keep in mind, once an asteroid has been mined it will automatically give its production to the closest planet by default.  If you gain a planet later, which is closer to that asteroid, you can reassign it to the closer planet for less decay (and perhaps a well-needed boost on your new planet).

Aye, I checked and discovered the .1 last night.  Bummer.  But better for game mechanics.