Proportions Question

[tbontob]

What is the upgrade list to get to a cultural center?

Is it Settlement==>Colonial Community==>Minor City==>Major City==>Metropolis==>Cultural Centre?

I read somewhere that the SpacePort City is not uprgadeable to a Cultural Centre. What is it's upgrade list?

[PvK]

You can't upgrade a population center into a Cultural Center. The Cultural Center has to be developed from scratch.

You can't even upgrade to an Arcology, because those too require advanced planning and construction from scratch.

The largest upgradeable population center facility is a Megalopolis, which IIRC can be upgraded from Minor City or larger.

PvK

[oleg]

It may seems like a major letdown that you have to build advanced cultural buildings from scratch, but that is the only way to reconcile PvK' vision of Future and SE reality.

I feel you pain though, man. Every time I get past 300 turns.

[tbontob]

Yeh!

Only I am in the beginning of the game NGC Proportions (2405.4) and am still wondering how everything relates to each other.

But it does seem a little wierd that you cannot upgrade to a cultural centre. I suppose the SE4 game structure prevents it in some way.

[dogscoff]

But it does seem a little wierd that you cannot upgrade to a cultural centre. I suppose the SE4 game structure prevents it in some way.

Yeah- because cultural centre tech is available from the start of the game (it has to be, because that's what your homeworld starts with), it would break the city upgrade system if it were on the upgrade tree.

The game only upgrades to the highest thing on the tree, so if you build a minor city and have city/major city tech availabel, you would ONLY be able to upgrade it to to a major city- you CANNOT upgrade to the intermediate size (city). That's why the colonial development techs are so cheap - they are only there to allow you some control over your upgrades (ie don't research major city until you have issued all your "upgrade to city" orders)

Likewise, if cutlural centres were at the top of that tree, you'd ONLY be able to upgrade to them, you'd never have the option to upgrade to to a city or major city or any other intermediate stage. Because CCs are so horrendously expensive, this would that whole upgrade path utterly unusable.

Of course the (seemingly) obvious solution is to make CCs affordable, but that's just not how proportions is supposed to be. There are a few long-winded and occasionally heated threads around here as to why they should be priced as they are.

[Ed Kolis]

What if there were duplicates of each facility which had its own upgrade path that stopped at whatever level you wanted? This would also solve the problem of multiple facilities upgrading to Cultural Center, as there would be duplicates of that as well.

(I can't remember the Proportions names so I'll use the SE2 names )

Outpost A (non-upgradeable)
Outpost B -> Colony B
Outpost C -> Colony C -> Settlement C
Outpost D -> Colony D -> Settlement D -> Cultural Center D
Spaceport Outpost A (non-upgradeable)
Spaceport Outpost B -> Spaceport Colony B
Spaceport Outpost C -> SpaceportColony C -> Spaceport Settlement C
Spaceport Outpost D -> Spaceport Colony D -> Spaceport Settlement D -> Spaceport Cultural Center D

Of course, the upgradeability of any facility would be determined at build time, but at least it would work better than the standard system... And it would have the added advantage of keeping all the levels of facilities on the screen without turning off "latest only"!