GalCiv2 Forums
When you're building up a colony from scratch are you better off building the most advanced versions of the buildings to start with or are you better off building a variety of basic buildings first (to give the colony some self-sufficiency while keeping costs down) then upgrading from there?
Thanks.
It depends on what am I building.
With the factories and stuff, I usually build the most advanced version upon colonizing (with the exception of Industrial sectors, those things are expensive and take too long to build up from scratch). I will also build any production enhancement building too (the latest version).
With farming, same thing.
The labs and entertainment buildings: I usually wait until the factories are developed before I go after the latest lab or entertainment,
With the money buildings, I always go after the latest version upon colonizing since they are easy to build anyway (with the strange and annoying exception with banking centers).
That is my usual strategy with new colonies. Hope it helps.
TA generally has less production per building (and marginally less per colony), so it's advisable to build one or two low-level buildings in TA simpy to get things jump started.
But aside from that, Industrial Sectors, due to cost, are the only thing to really avoid. After putting down your first factory-or two in TA-there's not a whole lot of difference in build times between going straight to Manufacturing Centers and spamming it with low levels first.
With regards to research buildings it's better to keep them to Invention Matrix at maximum, unless you have at least 3-4x the industry of an initial colony in place (or, alternatively, if you're focusing social from research, it's probably best to cover the planet with first- or second-level labs prior to installing the latest generation). Be advised that your focus efficiency in TA is 20% as opposed to DA's 25%.
Building lower levels first can save you some time, but by and large it doesn't save you money; it's actually consistently more expensive in the long run. I seem to remember something about getting the first building's cost put towards the second one, actually, but it's been a very long time since I messed around with that, and doing multiple upgrades doesn't get you the full benefit; it'll cost you even more money.
Best go for only one upgrade. You can demolish buildings if you want to build something fresh on a tile.
By the time I've got the advanced structures available, I try to have my economy developed to allow me to rush-buy the recruiting center; then social-focusing the colony allows the buildings to be coming online as the population builds to a level to support the production. If the population is getting up to 2B without that first production building, I'll rush-buy what's left of it to bootstrap the colony.
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