I've never used these techs so far. Is this all that helpful? If yes, how does it help and when would you transform a planet?



Thanks.

It is important in the mid and end game. In the mid game i usually transform barren to lava to get a better production output from the planet. If arctic or desert is available, barren gets transformed to desert.

After that i try to discover tundra and terra-terraforming in a row to transform all planets to terra because after the food to industry conversion terra is the best planet you can get. Transforming planets gives a huge boost to your wind-production because a Tier 1 planet has much more inhabitants and a better production bonus than tier 2, 3 or 4.

Also, terraforming planets reduces the disapproval rating if that is an issue for ya.

Terraforming into good planets like Terran or Ocean tends to happen late enough in the game that you've already won by that point. It's basically for people who want to spike the ball or are builder perfectionists.



Terraforming into bad planets like Lava just seems like placeholder tech because there aren't many good improvements that make bad planets into good planets.

Sowers loves desert a lot, until some point they want jungles, though most races loves Terran, Jungle/ Ocean are for more specialized builds, or at the point you don't need dust for younger systems/fleets.

Though at that point you are really close to wonders ending already.

It depends. If it can be done in 4-8 turns, it is usually worth upgrading a class imo. You should look at terraforming like any other improvement. As a rule of thumb, when choosing the next improvement, build whatever can be made faster.

I terraform a lot, main thing to keep in mind when deciding if or what to terraform is what exploitation you'll be using on the planet. e.g. Dessert might have 1 more production than lava but production exploitation gives lava 3 and dessert none. During the mid game I often terraform to improve approval, I guess this is down to research, as if you've got enough improvements built that boost happiness you might be fine going the other way (e.g. all lava planets for your production system).



As others have said by the time you can terraform to Jungle/Ocean/Terran you have usually either already won or are in a position to do so, this does depend on how the game played out I guess. The game I played yesterday (all day long, 10+ hours) remained tense for over 200 turns when only 3 of the 8 starting races were left, that's when I found out I forgot to disable wonder victories (thought I had)



Just make sure when terraforming that you know what your systems focus will be and be sure to exploit that to the best of it's ability. AI will often mange this for you, but it's not perfect and will sometimes build things that aren't desired or not terraform when it should etc. (or explore moons before building exploitations despite it taking 3-4 times longer...)

I wish there was a terraformer victory for the sowers.



To like terraform 50% of the galaxy.

Igncom1 wrote:
I wish there was a terraformer victory for the sowers.



To like terraform 50% of the galaxy.

Same here, I was playing as Amoeba yesterday and turned every (bar 2) planet(s) into Oceans, but I feel especially for Sowers there should be a terraforming (count as wonder) victory.

Teraforming is important

It allws you to close any hole in your faction.

Just pick teraform to get what you are lackking

M11xStryker wrote:
By the mid-late game, it is important. If you can turn a 6 population barren planet into a 6 population desert planet, then you've gained a massive production boost, going from just 6 proudction to 30. Still, terraforming is a fairly expensive operation, so you need a good grasp on how long the game goes-the longer the game goes, the more valueable terraformed planets become.

8 population desert. Assuming it's an improved huge 6 pop barren(4 max pop + 2 from mods), then going up to desert gives you an extra 2 pop max. A small but important correction as it allows you to squeeze more pop into fewer systems which give better efficiency from system-wide improvements.

Ash_F wrote:
8 population desert. Assuming it's an improved huge 6 pop barren(4 max pop + 2 from mods), then going up to desert gives you an extra 2 pop max. A small but important correction as it allows you to squeeze more pop into fewer systems which give better efficiency from system-wide improvements.

The problem is that the extra two potential population and small production increase just cost you 800 production and is going to take many turns to fill in with actual population. The game will be over well before you get back the cost spent terraforming, though it can be a useful way to waste Production if your only other alternative for spending your Production is converting it to Research or Dust.



For example, going from 6 Production to 30 pays itself off in 34 turns.

This can be very important in the late game. For example, terraforming a system to pure deserts is only good if you have enough food to back up the lack that the desert will be causing.

K__ wrote:
For example, going from 6 Production to 30 pays itself off in 34 turns.

Two things. First, when base production from a planet goes up, you get more production from the system due to the various percentage based production modifiers(improvements, luxury bonuses, happiness ect). Second, you get not only production improvements, but dust, science and happiness.



You raise an interesting question though. We should do the math to see how much it benefit you get from going up a tier in various areas. For example, if you go from barren to arctic, that is an improvement on base fids per pop value from 5 to 7. And a pop improvement of 2. So the planet improvement would be 22 fids, before percentage modifiers. Compare that to the other improvement you get for the same tech, hydrosequencing, which is slightly less production cost, at 4 fids-per-pop improvement and no happiness bonus(costing you severe fids eventually). You get no pop cap increase and, unlike terraforming, it has 3 upkeep. Though it works across multiple planets, so the formula is more like (P(4)-3). A 17 Fids improvement for that same huge barren planet. Add a small barren to that system and you get net 25 to come out ahead, but still no happiness.



In conclusion, terraforming is one of the better improvements in the game. What really pushes it over is happiness which can cause severe fids penalties if not kept in check. But I must stress that if you hard tech for it, you are going to have problems. Build the cheaper improvements first, including those in other tiers. Again you are looking for a 4-8 turn build time.



If anyone wants a suggestion as to *when* to start doing it, I'd say go to class 3 from 4 after the following improvements:

Hydrosequenceing

Predictive logistics

Adaptive taxation

so the main is to transform whole your planets into the highest level like ocean for example? but, in that case i won't get all profits from specialisation and i must build plants for food [amiright?-i'mcompletelynewbiehere].

and another question not so much connected with topic but it could be big help for me: during end game phase, do you concentrate at one type of planet [imeanyouchoosebetweenfood,industry,technology,dust] or you mix your planet's specialisations?

greetz!