Recycler quest - which option do you prefer?

[bhavv]

+10% worker speed or +1 food?

I've always been taking food, but I'm thinking the worker speed could be very useful, especially if playing as PAC.

 

[Stalker0]

+10% worker speed or +1 food?

I've always been taking food, but I'm thinking the worker speed could be very useful, especially if playing as PAC.

Its one of the choices I've gone back and forth on.

If you are going for terrascapes, then the +10% worker speed. Otherwise, its a tough call.

 

[ggmoyang]

I pick worker speed if I'm going to stack worker speed bonus, or playing on quick speed.
Otherwise food.

 

[Ryika]

It's a tough decision actually. +1 food will always be active, so that's a nice passive bonus.

Worker speed is a lot harder to calculate. At its core, it is a net energy-boost (+ a bit production), because you need less workers overall. But on top of that, your improvements will be done a bit faster, so you'll get the extra-yield faster which in return gives all sorts of bonuses. 10% off building a terrascape on a forest is 2 turns faster (iirc 3 turns with more %-bonuses from other sources, but not entirely sure about that), so that's 6 extra culture at worst and 6 of all three yields at best, if you're terrascaping a snow/desert-tile without having any alternative spot to put your next pop.

But I think even with all of this, the +1 food still wins. Especially when you're not using that many terrascapes and don't have enough additional %-bonuses on worker-speed to make the game round down up instead of down when it calculates the turns for the faster improvements.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

In my first games I picked worker speed, lately I am leaning towards food. In the end you can just build more workers, but stacking as many base yield as possible is good for your trade routes.

 

[milk steak]

Food from trade routes will dwarf the +1 you get from that quest. I always take worker speed.

 

[GenEngineer1]

Depends who i'm playing and what virtues I have. If my workers are already ridiculously fast (PAC + Prosperity), than another 10% might not matter. If slow, than its really good.

 

[Jimbo30]

One of the few real choices in the quests this one.

 

[bhavv]

Im trying a PAC game where I opened with all 5 tier 1 prosperity virtues, and took 10% worker speed from recyclers. This gave me a quick early rex, plus just my free starting worker, and the one from prosperity were enough to fully improve my capital and keep up with my second two cities:

Also I'm trying +1 repel range from fences instead of trade unit immunity, and have a nest in my borders to eventually get friendly aliens, in the meantime I'm setting up my cities within 3 repel range for the fences (fourth city coming up now between Tiang and Quyen and then commencing wonder spam in the capital).

I just have to wait until my fences are up, or aliens turn friendly before I can set up trade routes though, so my other cities will develop a bit slow, and also my science and culture are slower due to not opening with Knowledge, but eventually I'll be fine (I want Scalable Infrastructure next before putting 5 points in Knowledge).

Also I'll have 4 of my first 5 cities with Fungus on this map, so I can make good use of growlabs which are amazing buildings, and all of them will have Xenomass.

Playing on Gemini difficulty now.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Aside from Terrascapes, the +10% is amazing for setting up Magrails in a reasonable amount of time too.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I prefer worker speed. It's more useful in the long run. Having one Biowell more than oyu could have built without the speed bonus will give oyu 2 food and one health (and one culture).

 

[bhavv]

But then there's another building that has +10% worker speed or +1 covert agent ...

I picked the agent for that because +1% wonder production.

 

[Soronery]

I think +10% worker speed is the only real choice. The +1 food doesn't do anything except at the very beginning where you have 1 or 2 pop. After 3 or 4 population +1 food isn't much of a bonus. You always have internal trade routes to help grow your cities.

 

[Mithrantir]

When I played as PAC I chose the food bonus, deciding that my workers are OK with the initial bonus.
But for any other civ (or corp to be in sync) I would choose worker speed over food easily.

 

[BoydofZINJ]

But then there's another building that has +10% worker speed or +1 covert agent ...

I picked the agent for that because +1% wonder production.

yeah but you need that Covert Agent! ha ha

I would lose worker speed for an extra agent.

 

[bhavv]

I didnt like opening with Prosperity though, I mean the T1 policies are nice for early rexing, but then I fell so far behind in science and culture compared to opening with 5 knowledge virtues, then going into Industry for production, gold, trade route buffs and health.

The +10% worker speed from recyclers is nice, but I dont feel I need prosperity, I had so many turns wasted in my capital set to social or research development because I fell behind in my wonder techs, and I could have easily built an extra worker and colonist with all those turns anyway.

And this was a really nice map too, I had 6/7 cities with Fungus, but now I start a new map because I dont like replaying the same one.

Also due to having bumped it up to Gemini difficulty, I was in a mostly permanent war with Kavithan Protectorate attacking me throughout the game due to how close our cities were, defending against them made it a lot more fun.

 

[Soffacet]

This quest is not nearly as close a call as people are making it out to be. +1 food is a drop in the bucket. Worker speed is probably the narrowest bottleneck on your empire. I’ve played several Prosperity REX games through to about T150 now, spamming more workers each time, and still haven’t managed to keep the tiles concurrent with the growth, let alone finding time to lay magrails or chop trees.