The Ringworld is the final and most mighty of the titanic projects available for construction in the new Megastructures expansion for Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova, allowing the fabrication of a perfect artificial world in the shape of a ring, wrapped around a hosting star, for the people of your Civilization to settle and work on.
While not quite the crown of the Megastructures research tree (that accolade is reserved for the final level of Augments for the Stellar Nexus) the Ringworld is hi-tech stuff and takes a significant research investiture to achieve.
The Ringworld will also require a non-trivial amount of Gigamass to manifest, both for the Megastructure itself and to construct the Dyson Sphere required to power it. As such, the undertaking of such a magnificent project must not be taken lightly and you’ll need to decide whether a new super-planet is a better fit for your Civilization’s current needs than a Stellar Nexus with Augments or a set of Stellar Gates. While the performance enhancing bonuses granted by an Augment will be game-changing, it’s also quite difficult to quantify just how useful a massive, highly customizable artificial planet-like structure can be on your game.
Here’s a virgin Ringworld, pristine and sparkling with potential, before a clumsy uncultured barbarian like myself has had a chance to maul it with his crude designs.
You’ll note that this creates a colonized “planet” with very high Planetary Input values, and 39 tiles to build on, with a mix of useful tile types to allow you to really get the most out of that landmass. What you build on this magnificent Megastructure, is completely up to you!
Do you build one out of necessity, because your exploding Mimot population has colonized every last world in your territory and you’re not quite ready to go to war with a neighbor for their own planets? Or do you plan on building an almighty armada to bring a war of destruction to all around you, and so fabricate a world dedicated to industrial might and shipbuilding?
Let’s take a look at a couple of Ringworlds built for different purposes, and hopefully whet your appetite for the possibilities they offer in a variety of situations.
Firstly, let’s take a look at one I built in my own game as the Corporate Sector.
As you can see from the screenshot, this was right at the close of the game with the CS, where my main goals were to accumulate enough Credits to keep my greedy money-grubbing Iridium Citizens happy and ensure I had the proverbial “Sinews of War” to ensure no other Civilization could best me in a war. Unless you’re solely relying on Supply Ships, constructed and flown in from off-world, you’ll often want some Industry on a Core World to get everything else up and running.
Over at the east end of the planet I built a fairly solid core of Industrial Districts surrounding a Stellar Forge, for a substantial Manufacturing score. I used Supply Ships to get this going quickly, while interspersing this industrial development with Housing, allowing Citizens who were outgrowing their own worlds to be transported over to rapidly fill this new planet. You’ll not usually get such a high Manufacturing score unless you manage to conquer the Yor’s homeworld of Iconia, or find a very high class planet and dedicate it to industry and Workers.
The rest of the planet was then filled with Income boosting Districts and Improvements, with a substantial proportion of the population assigned over to the Entrepreneur Job. Sure, there are some big end-game technologies in play here, such as Individual Divinity, and the boost that’s giving to Citizens is inflating these Planetary Outputs a little, but you’ll see that this one Ringworld is producing a massive 431 Credits per month alone (taxed at about 40% for 151 Credits per month).
If you really want to, you can fill it full of Approval boosting Improvements to get that tax-rate up even further, but even without those, I pushed the tax-rate to the maximum of 75% here, and despite this eyewatering assault on our Citizen’s wages, we’re still able to get a respectable 71% Approval rate and a 324 Credit per month Income, just for this one planet.
And I’m not even trying here: I’m sure all you minmaxers out there are going to have a lot of fun figuring out how to really powerhouse your economy with these Ringworlds. If you dropped the industry, relied on Supply Ships and then just covered the planet with Housing and economic assets, I’m sure you could do a whole lot better than this.
Now let’s take a look at Ringworld dedicated to a completely different purpose.
I don’t need to explain this one too much, it’s built to pump out the biggest, most dangerous battleships as fast as possible, while still generating some Wealth, with some Entertainment Districts to counteract the inevitable Pollution that accumulates on a big dirty industrial world like this. You’ll note there are no special industrial Improvements here, this is mostly just Manufacturing Districts and a bunch of Workers.
And this is one of the Iridium’s prized War Bringer Battleship models, being pumped out in a mere two turns because of that massive Military score.
These are extreme examples I’ve shown you, where I’ve really tried to build for one specific effect. Now, you’re going to have to get your thinking heads on (or make a spreadsheet) if you want to work out whether the Manufacturing output you’d get from a Ringworld would be better value for you than a well Augmented Stellar Nexus and the product modifier it adds to you Manufacturing right across your Civilization.
Which one is better is going to vary greatly depending on your own in-game circumstances, but the Ringworld has some advantages that the Stellar Nexus does not.
Firstly, the Ringworld is much more difficult to remove from the game than the other Megastructures, as it must be successfully sieged and conquered. Of course, if you do lose it, your enemy can take it off you, and they’ll have access to all that infrastructure (and the Citizens) housed on it.
The other advantage is that the Ringworld can benefit you in a much more multidimensional way: you don’t need to pile everything into just Income or Manufacturing like I’ve alluded to here: you can build a more balanced Core World from it, and if you’ve saved some of the best Civilization Achievements for this world too, the Planetary Output values you can get from it can be truly staggering.