Is there any real point in designating a colony as 'mining', etc?

[Krsqk]

There's also the "Display Select Colony Type dialog when colonizing planet" toggle under Empire Options, which defaults to on, IIRC. Does the Colonization Minister override that?

[dogscoff]

What happens if an AI gets hold of one of my planets? Will it re-designate the planet or does it just build facilities according to what I designated?

[capnq]

do you use Ministers routinely and why?

No, because I get far better results by micromanaging everything myself.

The only exceptions are:

• when I'm running a test game and don't want to bother with the things I'm not testing; and
• the Turn Blitz #1 game on Play-By-Web {link}, where you can't avoid using them. (Said game is still looking for players, BTW.)

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
What happens if an AI gets hold of one of my planets? Will it re-designate the planet or does it just build facilities according to what I designated?

The AI will never redesignate a planet. We consider this one of its major flaws. When it's running low on a resource it won't look and see if a current colony generating an exces of some other resource has a decent level of the short resource and could be converted. It will just force the next new colony to be whatever type it needs, regardless of the planet's value in that resource.

[Gandalph]

Krsqk - No, it does not. The dialog box will still come up with what colony type you want to set for the newly colonized planet.

dogscoff - If you set a planet to minister control, it will not change the planet type, it will build facilities according to the planet type and the corresponding AI file.

Elowan - Sometimes yes and sometimes no. It depends on the game and the situation. I will never use ministers if I have not previously modified the corresponding files first. The stock AI files are just plain stupid and cannot be trusted.