by Limitless333
The "PI/AC worth 4pw" tech tile may also be nice for Der Schwarm (aka Ivits) in a game with round 1 federation scoring (or even without). The first federation then just requires colonizing a single planet (1o+2c) and upgrading it to RL (5o+8c). Connect the two with a space station and you have a nice and tight federation (which hopefully gives you the extra resources to expand further in the same round in order to not get stuck with low income in round 2).
How does this help our long term economic development? My thought on federation forming is that it is almost always a 1 time benefit which means that even if we have to wait until the start of R2 for the bonus we have not lost much if anything. This means that I would rather open PI+RL+M+Space Station instead of skipping the mine and having the PI/A 4pw tile. I would prefer, as I usually do the ore+pw, 4c, or 1c+1k tiles.