Debunking Myths

The VR then takes your income and spends it on the those Empire sliders based on your war-footing setting and that money then trickles down across all the planets for you, overdriving where it thinks it will help the most.

Sorry, the viceroys aren't that clever. There is no "where they think it will help the most" element. They pump up the econ slider to about 25% after a new planetary or regional facility tech comes online, and when they are done building, they dump that amount from the PBQ/RBQ sliders into the tech slider. They will then spend your planetary budget down down down on wasteful overdriving of tech until the planet is almost broke, or even in some cases until it actually goes broke. The tech just happens to come in so quickly, you usually get a new something or other you need to build, and it puts the money back to the RBQ again.

That there is anything at all clever about the way the viceroys handle the sliders is a total falsehood, a myth that QS has put forth that they don't want us to examine too closely. The keys to the success of the viceroys are clicking Next Turn often enough to give them time to complete all the stuff they can build. As long as you don't look too closely, you can eventually get to a point where they have built everything, and think, "Hey, maybe they do know what they're doing." They don't.

The Dev Plans can affect their priorities to some degree, but there is no feedback on how much, so that whole element of the game remains unproductive for me. I try. Setting terraforming or trade as a priority seems to do something good for those elements. If I get low on food or minerals and there are planets sitting around with Bio or Mining DEA's planned but unbuilt, emphasizing Farming or Mining can get them built faster. That's about all the use I get out of the devplans. We need more info about these options are actually doing.


The global budget is very important. It's one of the few places in the game where there is true macro control. The research slider works as advertised. Money you spend there goes to research, although some is taken off the top for admin costs. Planetary grants go to planets, but only a max of ten planets per turn, usually your weakest/newest. So you might as well not have more than about 5k allocated to planetary grants, even when your economy shoots up. The unrest slider works as advertised, too. I usually run a small, steady amount here, so it will "take care of" any minor unrest quickly, allowing me to avoid any micro management of unrest. If unrest grows past what this budget can handle, I NEED to lower the O-meter, taxes, piracy or other causes.

I don't know what the military slider does in the global budget. I wish I did. It clearly is vital to the game, if the other three budget sliders are any indication. I would GUESS that money spent here goes somewhere specific, perhaps accounting for some of those planets that seem to "spend more" than they are bringing in but never seem to lose money? Could it be that the military grants are going here, and we just don't get the indication of it? I don't know.

I'm also unclear as to whether the War Footing setting under Budget affects the planetary MBQ's, or the global military slider, or both, although I believe at this point it only affects the global slider.


- Sirian