[Slick]

It would be great if the population minister (PM) also considered the atmosphere of the planet and population when moving races around. If the PM started to do this, I would definitely use him. As it is now, the PM will eventually move wrong-breathing population to planets and thus make them domed. I think adding right-breathing population and removing wrong-breathing population is much more important than building up population numbers. Bonuses for undoming a planet effectively make it 5 times bigger for facilities and cargo. With a couple of other-breathing races in your empire, you can significantly increase your effective empire size without colonizing any additional planets.

The Colonization Minister (CM) should use this idea too. The CM should pick a target planet for colonization, then pick up right-breathing population from a convenient place (not necessarily the planet that constructed the colonizer) then colonize the planet. If the CM did this, I would definitely use him too. Keep in mind that if this method was used by the ministers, it would also improve the AI which is always a good thing.

Lastly, the PM should recognize the "magic numbers" for population as defined in settings.txt. He should try to the max extent to maintain populations of 100, 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, etc. on each planet so as to maximize population bonuses. He should know that a planet population of 1900 is no more beneficial than 1000, but those extra 900 people could better be used to raise other planets to a level of 100 or 500. Aside from undoming planets, this is the whole reason to move population around. Also a planet at max population level can't generate more population and it should be used as an available source of population.

As it stands I use no ministers because of their inherent flaws. IMHO, the PM and the CM would do the most to cut down on some of the micromanagement required in this game and recognizing planet atmosphere types is crucial to improving them. Though I wouldn't turn on the CM until mid-late game because choice of the right planets to colonize in the early-mid timeframe is too important.

Slick.

[ December 03, 2003, 14:50: Message edited by: Slick ]