Sphere 2 Transgenics/Paths Analysis

Initial Notes

• One + worth of population (60) provides +30/30/30 to all areas. Therefore, to make population the most efficient, one needs a total of +35% production of any items.

• Caste System roughly doubles the transgenic bonuses given to a power, meaning that you "only" need +17.5% production to make population the best overall buy for caste system.

• ZOCU and China already find it most efficient to increase population via SP to increase production versus buying CIP/PIP, even as a baseline power (+9 total production vs +8 per SP for ZOCU, +12 total production vs +12/10 per SP for China).

• The Magnates find it hardest to hit the 10+ point where population is more valuable than production (needing a total of +100% population production from transgene). This seems to be working as intended, making Magnate transgenics relatively less valuable to make up for how cheap they are.

Assumptions

Fluff

This assumes a new player with no preexisting fluff-i.e. he can choose paths at will and make up fluff to suit it later.

Goals

• The player is assumed to want relatively balanced industrial and wealth output, rather than a significant bias towards one of the three. This means that the utility of 1 unit of CIP, PIP, or Wealth is interchangeable with any of the other two, which allows strict numerical assumptions.

• The player here is assumed to want to maximize industrial output at minimal cost (Minimize Maximum Losses) in line with the Minimax theorem of game theory.

Maths

Will have to write some stuff here later.

Tentative Conclusions

The two most optimal industrial paths are these:

• Minimal population, baseline power: This gets you the most industry but lacks the combat bonuses of transgenic soldiers. However, this provides a significant flexibility advantage, because there is a greater variety of paths which grant production and many more options to shuffle production around (chaotic events primarily).

• High population, high transgenic power: The transgenic combat modifiers exist here, and high population + caste system can mostly make up for the minor loss of production. On the other hand, this also requires a significant buy-in (spending tech levels into transgenics, taking the +transgene options whenever available at flexibility cost), which can dissuade people taking this path. This is the most optimal method of achieving high production as a Magnate power.

All other sum paths are suboptimal and probably could do with a little bit of buffing. I suggest handing out, say, +1-10 SP for a power which doesn't fall under these two categories, depending on other factors.