How about calling it "Economy"? "Commerce" strikes me as a bit too capitalist-centric...drek wrote:Let's rename the "Trade" meter Commerce.
It doesn't matter how much food you have if you have nowhere to live due to low (or zero) population limits on unterraformed planets. Similarly, it doesn't do you any good to have terraformed planets if you have no excess population (due to lack of high growth, partly due to lack of lots of food) with which to populate them. IMHO terraforming and farming are a good combo...First, an empire with heavy research into farming and growth probably wouldn't *need* to terraform anything.
A mostly thematic link imho, which I declared unimportant (thematic, not mho). You're free to disagree, but I'd suggest you do so explicitly. And terraforming is only really development in this sense in the same way that population growth would be development, which isn't really a convincing argument for lumping terraforming with trade (since trade isn't lumped with pop growth).Second, terraforming is a kind of development--albeit on a grand scale. Terraforming is the equivlent of turning an entire planet into a nice shady park.
*A planet worth colonizing.To colonize new worlds, you need:
*Population to stick in the colony ship
*A surplus of food
*Good Health meter to counteract poor enviroments and quickly drag a new colony up a decent population
No sense dropping a bunch of well fed healthy colonists on a planet they won't be able to reproduce on anyway.
Terraforming isn't involved in horizontal growth, but it is involved in vertical growth. And giving the big negative penalties on unsuitable worlds for your race, there's not much use in horiztonal only growth.Terraforming isn't involved in rapid expansion; it's a kind of development.
I think "development" is a telltale too vague category... at least in name. Arguably anything in industry or farming would be "development" as well. I can sort of see a distinction between terraforming and growth/food (though not enough to convince me to split them up). However even if terraforming wasn't with farming/growth, I'm not convined there's any good reason to put it with with trade/commerce/economic stuff. You've suggested a (weak imho) thematic link, but the "development" isn't a sufficiently specific or exclusive relationship between the two subcategories in question to justify their being together.