Hi everybody

I have a little noobish question, I love 4x games but I'm not that good at them (masochist is seems).



So my question is: In what situation should I research and then build city impovements that boosts your FIDS production using your own population i.e. +2 per pop and when should I use city impovement that boosts the FIDS on your exploited city tiles?



Thanks in advance

FIDSI boosting is more optimal early to mid game, with a small population. A +10 is better than a +1 per pop if you have 5 population (leads to +5 :industry. In addition, a boost in FIDSI allows you to allocate the pop elsewhere, which is good in early game when it is too early to specialize a city.



FIDSI efficiency (+ per pop) are more optimal mid to late game, when your population expands and you start to specialize your cities. With the right improvements and governor skills, your population can produce massive FIDSI. Cultist governors in particular are excellent at deriving the most value from population, once they level up and are in a populated city.



A percentage FIDSI boost is, of course, better when the inherent production of a city is high (without putting pop there).



To sum up, in a city's "growth" phase, you want to an immediate boost to FIDSI (which is why Wayra Sigo, with and boosts, is excellent for young cities). When the city is in "maturation phase", with a sizeable population, you want to specialize and focus on FIDSI efficiency (which is why Cultist governors are excellent for mature cities).

So what would you prioritize mid game, researching tech that allows FIDS boosting via exploiting or via population?

Mid game you would typically make the switch from tiles to population, and from value-based to percentage-based boosts.

icarus86 wrote:
Mid game you would typically make the switch from tiles to population, and from value-based to percentage-based boosts.

It also depends on how much population I have and the state of my regions, but I agree, that's the general rule. At least based on my experience.

If you are specializing multiple cities (which is probably the way to go), you're better off maxing out the population bonuses and production. There's no cap on population based on city size so you can get some pretty big numbers without the need to build too many Districts. You can also prevent the loss of approval in the period when you build Districts before they level up. There are also items that you can put on Governors to increase. This is even better when using Guardians DLC.



If you are running large cities (ex. as Necrophage), balanced cities (Cultists) or you are really starved for the tile-based techs can be more attractive. Note that while population is not capped, the number of districts you can build is, so you'll need to increase your population to take advantage of those terrain-based FIDSI bonuses anyway.



I'd recommend going after the population based stuff early and then research the terrain-based bonuses later (if you need to)

I´ll try not to be repetitive, I´d say the order would be roughly: boosts(+x FIDSI) -> efficiency(+x/pop FIDSI) -> tiles(+x/tile FIDSI), because of the order things happen.



It´s very important to get the situational priorities checked, though. An early Geomics Lab (+2 Science/tile with science) will make up for neighboring regions that lack Science. A well-placed Canal Systems (+1 industry/tile with industry) in the turns before activating Industry Empire Plan level 2 in order to then build the Canal Locks (+4 industry/pop) can often knock two turns from this latter one - making the building of the Canal Systems virtually for free. Dust from water tiles can be an excellent and cheap alternative to early roads or early Economic empire plans lvl 2. Food from water tiles can render Public Granaries pretty useless, especially if you desperately need population early on Dust or Industry because of enemies. Apprentice Registry (+1 industry/tiles with exploitation) can either be immediately effective on a large city or reduce significantly the opportunity costs for a small city to become a large one. And Dust Transmutter (+10 dust/tile with dust) generally comes first than Dust Depository (+4 dust/pop) simply for it´s huge effect.

Thanks for your advices guys