[3.3 Beta] Suggestion: There's more to sprawl than research and unity: There must be benefits as well!

[Lidhuin]

"it's neat to pick up some snowball effects from having big size"

Uhm... Yeah, it's called being a blob and conquering the whole Galaxy

Having pirates (and independence movements) scale with sprawl isn't a terrible idea (although pirates are terrible and revolutions are implemented awfully as is)

 

[Paul93]

Large empires are intimidating, needs a bonus of diplomatic weight, per sprawl point. 1% per 100? 200?

Most definitely not this, at least from a gameplay perspective. Instead, diplo weight should grow sub-linearly with empire military/economy/pop/tech. A good choice (which also has a theoretical justification) would be to take a square root to obtain the actual voting power in the Senate. Another choice could be the logarithm (but maybe this would be too punitive). Anyway, the point is: there must not be no other bonuses to diplo weight from size, absolutely. Otherwise the point of having a GC where a tall civ could use brains and tongues in place of brawns would be missed.

Since the real world factors that produce disadvantages for large empires are not represented in the game, they must get several penalties instead. Unfortunately, your proposal goes in the exact opposite direction.

 

[Unseelie]

Oh, I don't agree that the Galactic Community is organized around fairness and therefore ought have square root or logarithmic size relationships.

I do think a certian sort of Galactic commuinity should, but I'd argue that that should be a vote-able thing, with the big players obviously wanting to vote for the opposite. But a plurality of small nations could swing it the other way early on.

 

[Paul93]

Oh, I don't agree that the Galactic Community is organized around fairness and therefore ought have square root or logarithmic size relationships.

Neither do I xD

My considerations come purely from a gameplay perspective. The GC is one of the best instruments, together with federations, to project your influence beyond your borders. As such, it is one of the best mechanics to develop in order to give tall empires some punch in a dynamic, player-guided way. The only way to make it actually usable by tall empires is to make diplo weight sub-linear with respect of empire size.

I do think a certian sort of Galactic commuinity should, but I'd argue that that should be a vote-able thing, with the big players obviously wanting to vote for the opposite. But a plurality of small nations could swing it the other way early on.

This is a very good idea to introduce this kind of thing in the game without too much suspension of disbelief.

 

[GnoSIS]

To ALL: I really don't understand why the level of disagreement is so high on this

Sprawl is just a linear scale like so many other scales in all paradox games. Please discuss more and even suggest penalties for sprawling other than research. Because if some bonuses seem reasonable then certainly We can think some penalties for sprawling, examples:

1. +% piracy generation and +% piracy fleet size per 200 sprawl.
2. +% pop ressetlement costs per 200 sprawl.
3. -1% energy income per 200 sprawl for administration (dare I use the word corruption? EU4 and Civ players will scream!)

The fact that you are categorically against any discussion, points to some spiritualist ethos empires that are very rigid and bend over the complete annihilation of blobs.

Remember that bonuses and maluses are not centered at zero, but at the point where we would cosider the average empire size to be i.e. 700-1000 sprawl? This means that tall & small gets buffed, as we create design space on the left of the sprawl scale!

Please be open minded and not unidimensional.

 

[Olterin]

Well, Sprawl as a mechanic is stated to be designed to slow down snowballing, i.e. exponential growth from all the benefits that come from being large, and is an abstraction of all the actual factors that contribute to the lack of a fully-exponential growth. That does make it hard(er) to put it into a both plausible and balanced place penalty-wise.

With that being said ...

The one thing I can see not having immediate and terrible downsides is tying the bonus starbases that currently come from systems and only systems, to Sprawl instead, and obviously it'd need to not be 1 starbase per 10 sprawl as that'll just facilitate starbase spam. However, and hear me out on this, it would put sprawling empires that also happen to be expansive in terms of empty systems claimed on more even footing with empires that don't have that many systems but are quite sprawling in terms of the population and number of planets they have in their more limited space.

Other things: I absolutely think that increasing Sprawl should in some way affect trade value ... but negatively. If piracy wasn't such a whack-a-mole unfun mechanic that I hated with the fury of a thousand suns *ahem* was a workable mechanic that created interesting gameplay choices, I'd propose that increasing Sprawl would contribute to an increase in Piracy, but... well.

Potentially also a higher fleet upkeep that comes with higher ship speed within your borders, up to a certain extent (similar to that federation or GC bonus), scaling with your sprawl - though this is something I'm not hell-bent on. It does increase the costs of having a fleet (and depending on exact numbers, significantly so), but would also ease the use of said fleet in conquests, so... The idea here is, from a gameplay sense, that it would be easier to deploy fleets in your own(ed) and controlled space, and your empire would deploy infrastructure to make this easier as it grew in size (which does not exist in any form before Gateways), but there'd be an upper threshold to how much it could be done, while the costs would keep on rising because maintaining this infrastructure would be more and more expensive.

 

[Paul93]

Please be open minded and not unidimensional

Speaking for myself, maybe my first post was too strongly-worded. If this is the case, I apologize.

There a some points that you should consider though:

(1) Wide play is already, and by far, the strongest strategy in Stellaris. See the first part of this post for some the reasons why this is not a good thing. As such, it definitely does not require further bonuses. This is a super well-known feature of game theory. Rebuking this kind of proposals is not a matter of close-mindedness, it's a matter of pointing out that they go in the exact opposite direction with respect of any solution of a known problem.

(2) All of this has already happened: there was a period in which empire sprawl couldn't be countered as thus effectively pushed back against snowballing players. Then someone complained and PDX added bureaucrats, effectively killing the "anti-snowball" part of empire sprawl altogether. This happened despite being warned that this wouldn't be a smart move. I think that many, this time, want to make sure that this story doesn't repeat.

(3) You say that several modifiers, both negative and positive, can be considered. These modifiers can be easily made as to be "balancing" (so, more negative than positive in the end). At this point however I must ask: what's the point then? Instead of a simpler and clearer mechanics, you will end up with an array of small positive and negative modifiers that is harder to read through and that do not add anything to game. EU4 is a game full of small modifiers and metrics and button to push, but in the end it remains a pretty one-dimensional map painter. Stellaris shouldn't become EU4 in space, at least in my opinion.

 

[MrGuyPerson]

To ALL: I really don't understand why the level of disagreement is so high on this
*snip*

People are disagreeing because the whole premise of your post is built on a false idea of what sprawl actually is. You are framing sprawl as simply a measure of empire size. It's not, full stop. It's a weighted measure that provides a proxy for empire manageability to abstract the negative side of increasing empire size. The only reason it exists is to slow down endless blobbing. Every iteration of the game has attempted to do this in some way. Your original premise here was to give bonuses based on sprawl, but that isn't what sprawl is for. The bonuses you're talking about already come directly from existing game mechanics or emerge organically through game play as empire size increases. I don't think anyone is against discussion of tweaking the way sprawl is implemented as a means of slowing down blobbing, but that isn't how you started this thread.

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Yes, you do. Every 10 star systems you get a starbase.

Why should you get even more?

How about instead of getting 1 starbase per 10 systems you get 1 starbase per N sprawl (choosing a value of N to get roughly the same number of starbases as currently)

That way the game plays out similarly, but sprawl no longer feels purely negative. Oh and while your at it, changing the name to something less negative (maybe Imperial Size) might also stop players from overly fearing high values.

 

[Dragatus]

The fact that you are categorically against any discussion, points to some spiritualist ethos empires that are very rigid and bend over the complete annihilation of blobs.

Your reasoning failed to persuade me, but now that you've added an insult I have seen the error of my ways.

Seriously though, if you're going to be throwing around that accusation, you may want to look into a mirror. We HAVE engaged you in discussion, you're just not getting the discussion you wanted. You wanted to discuss possible positives to go along with the negatives, instead you got a discussion about whether sprawl should even have positives, which you assumed is a given, but clearly many of us disagree. And we have provided you with logical arguments of why sprawl shouldn't provide bonuses, namely that blobs already have massive advantages and that sprawl was implemented to combat snowballing and is supposed to represent the bad side of size.

You get sprawl from owning systems and owning systems by itself already has inherent advantages. You get sprawl from districts and having districts already has inherent advantages. You get sprawl from colonies and those too already have inherent advantages. And finally you get sprawl from having pops, which also have a lot of inherent advantages. Everything that creates sprawl already makes you stronger and better in many ways. And the advantages are inherent in the things that create sprawl. Every possible advantage that could come from empire size already has a better thing to be based on than sprawl. Intimidation? Fleet power. Economic strength? All the pops and districts. Diplomatic weight? All the things that currently give you diplomatic weight. Trade bonus? Economic strength. Countering effect of distance on diplomatic acceptance? Diplomatic weight.

Because all the things that create sprawl already make you stronger, empires with high sprawl tend to be stronger, more influential, and more intimidating than empires with low sprawl. And so there is no need for sprawl to provide positives because empires with high sprawl already have all the positives that would come from being big. And I am yet to hear a counter-argument to this core point I've been repeating throughout the thread.

And nobody is talking about "complete annihilation of blobs". All sprawl does is slow down the rate at which you gain new traditions and technologies. It doesn't make you weaker, it just slows your progress. But as long as you maintain efficiency bigger empires still research faster than smaller ones, even with the sprawl penalties.

1000 sprawl -> 200% tech costs
2000 sprawl -> 300% tech costs

If the double-size empire has 2x as much research it will research technologies 33% faster than the half-size empire. Example: the smaller empire has 1000 Engineering research and the bigger one has 2000 Engineering research. They both research an Engineering technology with a base cost of 10.000. For the first empire the cost is doubled to 20.000 and divided with 1000 research that gives 20 months research time. The second empire would instead have to spend 30.000 research to get the technology, but it has 2000 research, so it only needs 15 turns to research the technology.

The empire with half less sprawl needs 33% more time to research the same technology and that is with sprawl penalties.

And a 4000 sprawl empire with 4000 research would have to pay 500% cost and would need 13 months to research the technology (50k/4k=12.5, rounded up). As long as you preserve efficiency, bigger is still better in every way. It's just less better than it would be without sprawl. Without sprawl the 2000 size empire would be researching technologies 2x as fast as the 1000 size empire and the 4000 size empire would be researching them at 4x as fast. So as soon as an empire gain somewhat of a size advantage it just keeps getting stronger faster than all the other empires and it's effectively game over. With sprawl the bigger empire still researches faster than smaller ones. Blobs still win, even with sprawl. Sprawl only make empires that have fallen behind a little less screwed than they would've been otherwise.

 

[grommile]

It is because this is modeled unrealistically as a drawback, that some people do not like it.

Sprawl is the drawback of being big.

The benefit of being big is that you have lots of stuff, allowing you to impose your will more effectively in the interstate anarchy of the 23rd century and to better resist modest reversals of fortune.

 

[MK1980]

i don't agree with the suggestion, but i think at least one of the ideas has some merit - starbase cap could actually be tied to sprawl (ie. ~total size) rather than system count.

that would give some additional starbases to civs with many pops but low-ish amount of systems (aka "tall") and allow them to have a few additional anchorages for more navy cap and to eliminate piracy by paving the whole length of their traderoutes in starbases.

that might be a sensible change.

 

[GnoSIS]

What I'm getting at, is that it shouldn't just be a counter-measure. It should be ok to be on the far left of the scale and on the far right.

You begin on the far left, because all empires start with 1 system. But there should be additional buffs for not going to the right as much as there should be additional buffs for doing so. The former would help tall, less sprawly builds, the latter would help expansive empires.

Pehaps an additional metric would be best, since sprawl doesn't tell you if your empire is tall or wide: Empire density - defined as total sprawl / systems controlled:
tall empire 1000 / 20 systems = 50 density
wide conqueror 1000 / 100 systems= 10 density

and reward/penalize both the left and the right side of the density spectra with different modifiers. In this way you will even be incentivised to release vassals, to become more dense, and get those bonuses! OWO

 

[Nevars]

What I'm getting at, is that it shouldn't just be a counter-measure. It should be ok to be on the far left of the scale and on the far right.

You begin on the far left, because all start with 1 system. But there should be additional buffs for not going to the right as much as there should be additional buffs for doing so. The former would help tall, less sprawly builds, the latter would help expansive empires.

Pehaps an additional metric would be best, since sprawl doesn't tell you if your empire is tall or wide: Empire density - defined as total sprawl / systems controlled:
tall empire 1000 / 20 systems = 50 density
wide conqueror 1000 / 100 systems= 10 density

and reward/penalize both the left and the right side of the density spectra with different modifiers. In this way you will even be incentivised to release vassals, to become more dense, and get those bonuses! OWO

And people repeatedly told you already that sprawl is the trade off from the benefit you got from being large.

The thing that increase sprawl (thus penalty) also give you various advantages i.e. more economy, more research, more everything.

Being big is the reward and sprawl is the penalty.

I don't know that else to tell you to have you understand this point more clearly.

Hmm alright imagine someone come up and tell everyone that 'what if ship upkeep is more than penalty, what if it give you benefit for example ship will get bonus scaling from their upkeep like increase fire rate, increase ship speed, etc.'.

Do you see how absurd this idea is, that's essentially your idea.

 

[GnoSIS]

And people repeatedly told you already that sprawl is the trade off from the benefit you got from being large.

The thing that increase sprawl (thus penalty) also give you various advantages i.e. more economy, more research, more everything.

Being big is the reward and sprawl is the penalty.

I don't know that else to tell you to have you understand this point more clearly.

Hmm alright imagine someone come up and tell everyone that 'what if ship upkeep is more than penalty, what if it give you benefit for example ship will get bonus scaling from their upkeep'.

Do you see how absurd this idea is, that's essentially your idea.

It's not about how big you are, it's about the what form you have on the map that would differentiate you not in absolute numers as in larger = moar stuff, but in terms of play style.

Another example: tall vs wide could affect fleet designs: Wide empires would have faster and cheaper ships that are more fragile, while tall ones would have much tougher and expensive ships, with slower speed, since they don't have to cover a lot of ground.

 

[Nevars]

It's not about how big you are, it's about the what form you have on the map that would differentiate you not in absolute numers as in larger = moar stuff, but in terms of play style.

Another example: tall vs wide could affect fleet designs: Wide empires would have faster and cheaper ships that are more fragile, while tall ones would have much tougher and expensive ships, with slower speed, since they don't have to cover a lot of ground.

Are we still talking about Stellaris anymore? I'm confused.

 

[John MacWhat]

I might be crazy, but doesn't the AI already take your size and strength into account? I know there's a threat value somewhere in the game, because CBs mentions whether they generate extra or reduced threat.

Maybe just make this number clearer?

 

[Nevars]

I might be crazy, but doesn't the AI already take your size and strength into account? I know there's a threat value somewhere in the game, because CBs mentions whether they generate extra or reduced threat.

Maybe just make this number clearer?

iirc threat generate from you conquering stuff, it scaled with number of systems and planets you annexed and the distance between them and you I think.

 

[evilcat]

You generally get all that.
Bigger empires get: more starbase, more weight from economy, more weigth from pops. Your economy is stronger so probably more fleet.
More power translates to vassalization acceptance.
You definetly get more trade value from systems (some)
On normal you can get vassal acceptance with favours.
But it might be easier to outtech ai and go for patronage.

 

[Ludaire]

As other people are pointing out, there's already benefits for being larger, and the sprawl mechanics are meant to be an anti-snowball and rubber banding mechanic. It keeps the pace of the game under control by having a dynamic version of the increasing tech costs as you rise in tiers by also basing it on your size, and it means games are closer because when you're ahead, you'll have a smaller advantage on research and unity than the current 3.2 patch.

I think the better idea would be to put the negatives of sprawl alongside the positives the same way we do for most upkeeps in the game. Show your effective research/unity independent of sprawl and then show the sprawl reduction in the tooltip in the same way we show upkeep. Put a note in there similar to the note they have for base population growth. It says something along the lines of "Base growth is modified by the relationship between your population and planet's carrying capacity." Remove the increase to costs and add a -% modifier to your final research and unity production with a note at the bottom saying "Research/unity output is reduced based on the relation between your production and empire sprawl." Under the sprawl tooltip, remove the specific numbers so that you understand it affects research and unity speed, but to see the specifics, you have to see the actual effect sprawl is having.

This better communicates the purpose of sprawl: a negative that offsets something that has a huge benefit, just like all the other upkeeps and such in the game.