Unused money

Yes, it's wasted. This has been discussed many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many times.

The rumor is that the amount of waste may be reduced in the expansion, but it won't be eliminated.

Wow, and here I thought I was saving money by not having a couple places build stuff

SO I guess its important to make sure that either most/all of your places are building somehting useful, or else you turn social way down/off until there is something for everyone to build?

Yes. Your only alternative is to reduce the wasted spender quite a bit, and use that income to build up your treasurery. Then, you can afford to buy something outright once in a while. That too wastes resources of course, but you get it right away.


~SDC~

I find that there are only a few "must-have" social projects on each planet. The rest are "nice-to-have", and I only really want them on my best planet. I have my good planets build "nice-to-have" while my worse planets build the "must-haves". If I have nothing to produce on most of my planets, I rush-buy the "must-haves" on the planets that are behind.

The must-haves:
- terraforming (anything with +PQ)

- +production (manufacturing center, etc; helps the planet catch up)

- banking center, economic exchange, stock market, stadium, teleporters, entertainment network (basically, all the ones that give +economy or +morale for a good upkeep)

Controvesial:

- research buildings; I find that the free research gives me more than the upkeep cost, even on poor planets. Some people will disagree with this. When you have lots of research buildings, you have to adjust your spending sliders; it's still a good deal.

Nice-to-haves:

- influence buildings;

Nobody builds propaganda centers. For cultural resistance, building an influence starbase is cheaper, and you can pull constructors from other sectors. The upkeep of 4 isn't justified by +5% morale.

Only build shipyards on high-PQ planets that will be producing combat ships.

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However, since rushing costs 10x as much as normal production, you really don't see a benefit to rushing unless a planet is WAY behind.

I usually just leave the backwards planets as they are. They generate some research and the occasional constructor, so they're still worth it. I also build +production starbases if I want to help a planet catch up, but you're better off maxing out your top planets first.

I find "wasted resources" force micromanagement to avoid it.

I'm pretty surprised to learn it is wasted. Why was it decided so?? Wouldn't it be more coherent if it went back to treasury or to the 2 other sectors?!




PS: That would be an interesting thing to add in the manual, if it's not already.
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The whole "nothing" means "completely wasted" social spending thing sticks in my craw... if I could tell individual planets to put social spending into military spending instead (constructors) or into research, I wouldn't mind this... but as it is I have to either endure the inefficiency of having the planets done with social projects "waste" the money while the others finish, or I have to do selective purchasing/leasing, which is inefficient and involves some fairly tedious micro.

Ah well, I'm under the impression that this horse was beaten and killed (and beaten for some length of time after that) long before I got here...

It was beaten to unrecongizable pulp, then jumped upon until only a stain remained

The thing to keep in mind is that while we may waste the bcs, the AI just keeps on building things that don't do it much good and then suck away even more bcs for maintenance. In terms of strategic value, the issue of waste is largely cosmetic, i.e. it bothers us as strat gamers because we dislike the idea that we're spending money on nothing, but on the other hand, since everyone plays by this system, we're still actually ahead of the AI because we understand that it's not always better to spend it on something.

I'm sure decisions were taken with serious reasons, but the point is not "being ahead of the AI" but "making a coherent game".

Why exactly is it like this?? Wouldn't it have been better if the money went back in the bank, simply?

That's debatable. "Coherent" does not necessarily mean a good game relative to the AI. If there's an option to effectively have a defacto per planet spending selector, you've got to make sure the AI handles it properly because what is obvious or coherent to you is nothing more than a set of algorithms to the AI.

Get it wrong and what you wind up with is an even worse situation than now in regards to a good game: an AI that either continues to build unneeded stuff while you're actually making money intead of just being a little bit ahead, or and AI that doesn't build needed stuff because it sees the lure of 'free' money.

It's *always* better to make a choice that makes stronger AI over a choice that 'looks better' to a human. The example I always like to use is SMAC. SMAC is really the highwater mark for 4X TBS games overall but suffered from a huge flaw: so many cool choices for the human that the AI was effectively a moron no matter what the difficulty.

I don't think that 'must-have' and 'nice-to-have' are consistent. If you are fighting influence (and even if you build starbases), you often can afford to build propaganda centers, which only improve the odds of getting a saving roll!

Has anyone done an objective cost-benefit analysis of propaganda centers? I still think that a single constructor, for a +20% influence boost, is a better deal, especially if you were building the starbase anyway.

Similarly, planetary defenses seem unnecessary. If the AI ships are closing in, you may have already lost. For the same cost, an extra battleship or starbase military upgrade would be better.