Simple way to make farms useful :)

Or just don't overbuild farms and avoid the farming techs so you have the smallest increment possible to work with

I've been thinking you should be able to throttle the pop limit, but it's probably not worth the complexity.

The problem is that better farms are good for smaller planets, but don't always work out on larger ones combined with the way things "auto" upgrade. Often I tell it not to upgrade the 2 intense farms, but then for some reason it decided to do it anyway.

Probably the easier way to go, is to have a "don't upgrade" lock available.

Isn't that in the governor setting?

Probably the easier way to go, is to have a "don't upgrade" lock available.

If you go into the details page of the planet screen, there is a governor option that allows you to toggle auto-upgrading on a planet-by-planet basis.

yes, but it should also be for building type upgrade specific as well.

or, at least would be best...

One idea: farms increase pop growth. That would make them useful.

That said, one thing I want in the expansion is to be able to build obsolete production buildings, or add in "mini-factories" later on in the game that can be built very quickly but don't give any more production that the earlier buildings.

That said, one thing I want in the expansion is to be able to build obsolete production buildings, or add in "mini-factories" later on in the game that can be built very quickly but don't give any more production that the earlier buildings.

Surely you're not saying on a planet without factories you would rather build an old Enhanced Factory rather than a Manufacturing Center or Industrial Sector costing 2X or 4X as much but only providing 1.1X or 1.6X the output!
The advanced factories in v1.2 are awful!!!

Paul D.

When you've just conquered a planet and those industrial sectors take 100-200 turns to build and you're low on cash- I'd like something in between...

One idea: farms increase pop growth. That would make them useful.

I've done that in my mod sort of. Unfortunately pop growth is limited to race abilities, and there's no way to mod a race ability with a normal improvement. So I gave each farm tech a +10 pop growth ability so that researching the newer farms also increase your rate of pop growth, as well as giving the ability to support higher max populations.

Works fairly well

One idea: farms increase pop growth. That would make them useful.

Or you can take away their condoms, hehe.

For us planet micro-managers, a max population adjuster would be just the ticket. I've wished for one myself on several occasions.

Thanks kryo. I didn't realize that control was on a per planet basis. But then you have the other problem of everything else not upgrading as Madjinn pointed out.

I reckon there should be a small morale bonus on the later farms, to make them worth using. Not enough to make up for the morale you'd loose by having the extra population (so you'd still need morale buildings), but just enough to tempt me into actually researching the techs. I hate 'useless' improvements.

This would also have the effect of increasing pop-growth on that planet of course.

I thought farms already give a population growth bonus. For example, if you have a planet with a max pop of 5 and pop growth of 5, build a farm on it and you'll be able to get to a max pop of 9, but the pop growth will also increase to 9. Correct me if I'm wrong >.>

I thought farms already give a population growth bonus. For example, if you have a planet with a max pop of 5 and pop growth of 5, build a farm on it and you'll be able to get to a max pop of 9, but the pop growth will also increase to 9. Correct me if I'm wrong >.>

Farms simply raise the max pop on the planet. The only thing that will limit growth is the planet's class--low class planets may never grow to their max pop, though you can put the people there manually with transports and they'll live just fine.

To get population growth per turn

1: First get .03 x population up to .o75B (get .075 when planet's population is 2.5B )

2: Then that gets multiplied by population growth modifiers ( such as civilization bonus, bonus from an anomalie, + or - bonus from a planet )

3: Then the result from {2} gets multiplied by any planet population growth bonus for morale;
Population growth doubled if planets morale is 100%
population growth is 125% if planets morale is above 75 or 80% ( not a biggy to me is why i'm not sure of number )

The only palce in the game I can think of where the effects get compounded rather than just stacked.

At 80% taxes, one Advanced Farm and one VR Center makes an entirely happy planet most of the time, and it's an efficient use of tiles. I'm fine with farms as-is.

I have to admit, though, I small growth bonus per farm would really be nice. It's not like it would unbalance anything, the AI would have it too.