Why are my colonies so poor? (Full Version)

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Gregorovitch55 -> Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 6:02:18 PM)

Playing on very hard I am obviously coming across all sorts of problems I haven't had to worry about before. This one is about the fact that my neighbour is making vastly more money than I am and has accelerated his military strength to three times mine as a result. So I've been looking at why this is. These are two colonies at roughly similar development:

My colony has:

902k pop
61% quality
+94 happiness
135% culture
122k value
5k GDP

Their colony has:

773k pop
85% quality
(forgot to record happiness)
135% culture
104k value
35k GDP

So they are so rich because their colony has seven times higher GDP than mine. My question is why?



Nanaki -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 6:09:01 PM)

Planet quality. 61% is rather low, and is probably substantially hurting your income/profitability.



Vardis -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 6:21:39 PM)

The 85% is more than three times better a planet than the 61%, if I recall correctly. I think (quality - 50) * (other stuff) was the factor quality played in that equation, so 61-50 = 11 vs 85-50 = 35.

Also, you get severe penalties with higher difficulty levels. I don't know what very hard's modifiers are, but you're going to be well behind even if the planet wasn't crap to start with. At extreme, I think you get half the normal and they get double, because for similar planets the AI will get four times the GDP than I do out of them. Just a rough guess based on the numbers you showed, but they might get around 2.5 times the GDP per planet than you would due to the difficulty level, were all else equal. So the only reason they are only 7 times ahead of you there is because of your higher population... And because the planet has a low quality, you are going to have a lower top population for the same world sizes.

I tend to avoid planets below 70% unless I'm trying to claim territory with them, or they have some other benefit.



corwin90 -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 6:49:46 PM)

On Very Hard, I'd guess your home world is 61% quality (or worse)...



Bingeling -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 7:50:29 PM)

The home world quality should depend on the system setting, not on difficulty.

The colonies in the original post are not yet profitable by my eye measure. The 61% quality one will never be much profitable, and both of them lack population. The 85% will be decent once filled up with tax victims.

As mentioned above, I would not colonize those in the 60s based on the colony itself. It would have to be to grab territory, get a special ruin, or due to being bored once large and wealthy.




fruitgnome -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 8:19:43 PM)

What is with corruption?



Bingeling -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 8:38:54 PM)

You tax the colony revenue. Corruption is a percentage taken from revenue, meaning there is less to tax from.

The severity of corruption is an option in game setup. Corruption is larger with increasing distance from the capital. You can research and build a few regional capitals that removes corruption at the colony (and reduces corruption in colonies nearby).

With quite normal settings, corruption is quite easily close to 50%. For a high quality, large colony, getting rid of corruption is a huge income boost.




Gregorovitch55 -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 9:55:42 PM)

But corruption comes after GDP does it not?

OK, so the quality % of a colony is highly misleading - you need to subtract 50 from the quality % so a 51% quality planet has a rating of 1 and a 95% quality planet has a rating of 45, i.e. 45 times as much potential GDP.

This makes the Securans position (that's who I'm playing) very difficult because they start with the ability to colonise desert planets which typically have quality of 60-65% making them worth about 1/3 of a marshy swamp and about 1/4 of a continental. I have a string of marshy swamp and continental colonies coming on line but they are way behind the first crop of desert colonies. If the enormous GDP bonus given to AI factions from very hard difficulty is taken into account it looks like after a very long wait i could look forward to an income between about 1/5 and possibly 1/3 that of my neighbour given equal numbers of colonies.

Given there is little one can do to increase income apart from building resorts where you can and otherwise just waiting for populations to rise it's not immediately obvious to me how to get the Securans off the ground on very hard difficulty. The Zenox who share my cluster have roughly the same number of colonies as me but have five times the GDP and now four times the military strength.



Gregorovitch55 -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/1/2014 10:09:56 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

The home world quality should depend on the system setting, not on difficulty.

The colonies in the original post are not yet profitable by my eye measure. The 61% quality one will never be much profitable, and both of them lack population. The 85% will be decent once filled up with tax victims.

As mentioned above, I would not colonize those in the 60s based on the colony itself. It would have to be to grab territory, get a special ruin, or due to being bored once large and wealthy.




yes, the problem is the Securans can only colonise desert planets before getting marshy swamp and continental research done, and most of those are in the low 60's range (apart from my home world). It's either desert or nothing and at least colonising the deserts gives you some territory. It occurs to me the only way to play them on very hard would be going pre-warp and rushing marshy swamp and continental (I've been playing this on normal start).



Vardis -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/2/2014 6:39:44 AM)

You could also consider colonizing or invading independent colonies. Not only will that let you utilize other planet types without having researched the tech for it, but you'll start with much more population.



Gregorovitch55 -> RE: Why are my colonies so poor? (8/2/2014 9:57:17 AM)

For sure. This game however there was only one available - a desert planet of 52% quality. Joy.



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