In playing, I have found that an effective strategy is to focus each planet on a one resource. This has allowed me to easily outstrip the AIs. By building only buildings for a single resource and setting the planet's governance to that resource once it is done the initial buildup, it becomes extremely productive to the point that I don't see any benefit to splitting it's focus.
Am I missing something? Is there some strategy or fluke that I am overlooking? I am now forcing myself not to touch the resource focus chart to make it more challenging, but with multiplayer I can't keep others from exploiting it.
You are absolutely right. A bit of maths can also prove it. Yes, the governance slider kills any kind of choice/management on planets, because it can be shown it is strictly more efficient to just choose on of the three focuses - money, industry, or research - build only the corresponding type of building (maybe a couple extras that DON'T depend on the focus sliders if bonuses are interesting) and then set the slider to 100% for the corresponding focus.
Proof (to a first order approximation) :
Let's assume we have a planet with 20 free tiles, and each building produces either 1 money, 1 production, or 1 research (yes, they don't, but changing that doesn't change the validity of the proof, just final values).
If you choose to build only production buildings, for instance, and set the slider to 100% industry, you'll get 20 production
If you choose to build 50/50 production/money, and set the slider to 100% either, you get only 10 production or 10 money. A net loss of 50% of the planet's potential
If you choose to build 50/50 production/money and set the slider to 50% production/money, you get 5 production, 5 money, "10 units" total, a net loss of 50% of the planet's potential
And if you choose to build 33/33/33, you'll lose at least 2 thirds of the planet's potential.
I've simplified the model a bit (hence the aforementioned "first order approximation" - adjacency bonuses tend to push towards MORE specialization anyway, not less) but the general principle holds true : basically, either you set the slider to 100% for one focus and all the other buildings are just dead weight, or you don't and all buildings are running at partial capacity.
In other words : just spam the same type of building on each planet, because everything else is inefficient.
The way planetary management is right now is a mix of two great tastes that taste awful together.
But overall you want to specialize planets on nothing but one type such as Industry, Science or Money... but I have found out that it is not always that simple. I do however think it is too easy to move the focus slider around. I think there could be some rules tied in with government in how they can be manipulated. This would make this part of the game more fun.
My estimation is : just remove the damn thing. If it becomes more interesting, it increases micro anyway since it'll push us to make minute, ad-hoc adjustments on every planet. On an big map, it'll be a nightmare.
We already HAVE a mechanic for interesting planetary management : the tiles and adjacency bonuses. Removing the slider will give THESE a much more interesting role and force us to make difficult choices when placing building, instead of spaming one type.