virtual reality centers

Its another thing to add to the cart of morality improvements, like most luxuries its for the elite and expensive. I argue that it should add mabye a point of influence or something similar considering its cost . . .

I believe that Frogboy has explicitly stated that they wanted to have improvements that really aren't worth building, or that are at least marginal, just to avoid the "build everything you can" syndrome. (Much like in the old text adventure games, where if you could pick something up, even if it was pocket lint, that meant that it would be important elsewhere in the game. Not so in this case; VR Centers and other items' costs must be weighed against their utility.)

I believe VR centers are a last resort (no pun intended). If everything else has been done, and you still need to boost a planet's moral, then you build one. There is no other reason to choose a VR center over other moral builders.
Personally, I don't think I've built more than a dozen in all the different games I've played. Do EVERYTHING else first: raise PQ, lower taxes, spend on planetary propaganda, send full combat transports out. Then, if all else fails, build the VR center.

I wouldn't mind so much, if I didn't need to take one down at every AI planet I flip or conquer...The AI DOES have build-everything syndrome, and seems to be able to afford the upkeep on everything as well.

The aliens do build everything it seems, I agree. As for VR, I always saw that for a red herring for the rich and/or desperate. Of course, I am a minimilist builder myself. Most planets are pretty bare, with a small handful of higher PQ planets built up with a few morale and research extras and one or two special production centers that get "everything" under the sun in due time. A special circumstance like a border system getting culture bombed or a system on the front line of repeated invasions get exceptions like media centers, news networks, planetary defenses, or whatever is needed.

The problem with managing building in GalCiv is that you can't spend only at one planet. In order to spend at all, you must spend everywhere. When your best planets run out of useful things to be building, you might have them "do nothing" for a while, or build the Advanced Quality Control (a good way to get SOME value out of 500 bc that would have gone up in smoke). Eventually, though, it becomes "cheaper" to buy a few improvements at spankin new planets (if you grab some PQ12-14 later in the game) than to do normal building with 90% of the money wasted anyway.

VR centers are something you can build at smaller planets while your larger ones have actually "fallen behind" by way of spending a lot of time wrapped up in wonders and trade goods. No use building a VR center at a larger planet.

Then again, I read people talking about the 5bc maintenance like it means anything. Late game, I'm usually flush with cash anyway. In fact, I'm usually SO flush with cash, I've gone back to grabbing PQ12's right from the git-go, knowing that they add almost zero income, but do add production capacity where I make more use of all that cash.

I usually end up building a lot of VR centers: at smaller planets, which only build constructors anyway, while larger planets build the starship foundry and quality control.

The one item I almost never build anymore is the Galactic Research Center. I have only ever had one game where my economy+trade was so incredibly massive, I NEEDED GalRes Centers to have more research capacity than my economy could fuel, even after mining research resoures. And what was my reward for a splendidly perfect tech victory game on Maso? Squat, because the tech scoring has been nerfed into the dirt.



Media Centers? Those are an essential in my games. My planets are usually suffering under heavy taxes in the early game and need the morale boost. There is usually a point in every game where my pop growth takes off and never looks back: the stage at which I get media centers available! Then shortly after, it's stadiums, stock exchanges, and teleporters. 100% morale from there on out, pop growth never looks back, except at some straggling low-PQ worlds, where sometimes my pop has gotten so high, I've actually needed a VR center or orbital hospital, or in rare cases, both! As someone mentioned, transports can be used to shuttle population around, though, so it's only if you are too lazy or too busy with higher priorities to stop to build a transport. (And speaking of which, my answer to the stripped down 1 morale planets that the AI sabotages when you are flipping them, build a colony ship and send most of the pop offworld immediately).

Morale boosting wonders, starbases and trade goods seem to work only THROUGH morale buildings. That is, you get no benefit at all on a new planet until you build that entertainment center. Then the effect of that building will be quadrupled if you have +300% morale. Thus, to baby along a spankin new PQ13 grabbed in the late game, I will cash-rush soil, habitat, entertainment and stadium, and maybe teleporters. That planet can then support over 10 billion, and they'll grow pretty quickly once the ball gets rolling.

VR centers would be a lot more useful if tech victory was a worthwhile pursuit. As it now stands, though, there's no use letting the game go that long. If it takes that long, you were too poor to pay for the VR centers anyway.


- Sirian