For Terraformers players, this guide will show you those different types of specialized cities in game, let’s check it out.
Introduction
When I started playing this excellent game, I did to not care a lot about specializing cities, mostly placing 1-3 robot hubs to grab the nearest planetary expansions and whatever projects I happened to draw at the time. I still find this approach valid for some project types, for example research centers or oxygen factories can usually be placed wherever you have free spots.
But some rare projects are so powerful, sometimes nearly doubling the output of other buildings, that it can make sense to build whole cities around them if you draw them reasonably early in a game. These are not mutually exclusive; for example, I would recommend combining a specialization in mining and robots. But I would advise against dropping projects with no synergy effects in a city once you have decided to specialize it, as you will likely be able to make better use of the building slots later.
City types
Mining city
- Central building: Warehouse, exhaust processor, load balancing station
- Nice to have: electron beam printer, miner’s cottage, martian sailing school, expansion buildings (bus/train/hyperloop)
- Best environment: Resource depots in and around the city, access to northern ocean
Most mines have a standard output of 1. If you manage to get the 3 central buildings, this increases to 1+ 0.33 silicates + 0.33 power + 2 support, roughly doubling its output. This is generally worth more than the reduction in distance penalty you would get from mining around other cities. Especially potent if this city gets access to the northern ocean where you can get a dozen mines or more with a single dock. To get cheaper planetary expansions for mines, you can make this city a robot or 50/50 city:
Robot city
- Central building: Robot ingenuity center
- Nice to have: Robotised laboratory, Household robot dispatch center
- Best environment: Best combined with mining mega city
Bonus research and especially solid support per droid are nice to have, but most of all the ingenuity center doubling the expansion points, the main purpose of robots, is a good reason to stack them up in a single city.
50/50 city
- Central building: AI-guided road network
- Nice to have: Man-machine cooperative academy, combined living center, delivery drones, Automated robotic workforce
- Best environment: Lava tube
Generally, robots far outshine habitat buildings for most of the game. Comparing gaining two population from either two habitat buildings or a robot hub, the increased support income very rarely makes up for the vast, vast increase in price. That can however change if instead of getting one city expansion for a regular habitat building you get one research and four expansions for a combined living center or habitat + partial robot hub. Good for your starting city if your starting resources include a habitat building.
Energy city
- Central building: Radioactive refinery
- Nice to have: All energy producers
- Best environment: 4-hub, Mountain tiles (solar power), geothermal spot (geothermal power), coastal tiles (water barrage), warm zones (thermal updraft tower)
The radioactive refinery is not only influenced by energy produced inside a city, but planetary buildings owned by it as well. This means you can realistically get 5+ units of tritium in the late game if you consistently focus your energy projects on a single city.
Support city
- Central building: Touring company, expansion buildings (bus/train/hyperloop)
- Nice to have: Comfort of living increase (e.g. courthouse), domed city garden, skyscrapers, expansion buildings (bus/train/hyperloop)
- Best environment: Lava tube, sandstones, canyons, geothermal spot (spa), coastal tiles (underwater hotels, beach resorts, scuba diving school), high terraforming (comfort of living increase, natural reservation, bee colony etc)
The touring company vastly increases the usefulness of sandstones and canyon view towers, roughly doubling the output of the former. Since it works for both support and comfort of living improvements, which themselves increase in efficiency the more human population you have, it makes sense to stack all 3 in a single city if possible.
Food/habitat city
- Central building: Food monitoring office
- Nice to have: Restaurant district
- Best environment: Rich soil and/or 4-hub for food production, lava tube
IMO a weaker version of the pure support city, but if you do not manage to get a touring company but do get a food monitoring office, you can still get 4+ comfort of living to vastly increase the effectiveness of habitats just from focusing food production in a single city. I would recommed focusing most of your city tiles on food production and throwing in 3-4 habitat buildings.
Life spreader
- Central building: Gene vault
- Nice to have: –
- Best environment: High terraforming
Straightforward, but IMO both life spreaders and the gene vault’s 33% spread time decrease (meaning a 50% “production” increase) are so good it is worth it to consciously focus life spreaders in a single city if you happen to draw this project. If you combine with an already expansive city, like mining or support, you reduce life spreader distance penalties as well.