Border range: What's it good for?

[Cruxador]

When I play, border range expansions are nice when playing a peaceful nation. They let you get new worlds to build stations around and to terraform and colonize, without going to war for it. Border expansion is much less useful when playing as a warlike nation, because if you want more space clay, you just conquer it. What's more, it synergizes best with a diplomatic approach, since you need to counter the diplomatic malus, and if you're a warlike nation you want to avoid being in too many wars at once, whereas a peaceable nation is generally prepared for wars, what with not being in an ongoing war most of the time.

But in Utopia, for some reason war expansion is going into the military tradition tree. It seems to me like that's something you'd want to buy when not playing a military playthrough, though the rest of the tree isn't, and when you are playing military, it's more of a speedbump on the road to the things you actually want deeper in the tree. Is there something that I'm missing here? Is there something that Paradox is missing? Do other people treat this very differently from how I do?

 

[Qoff]

I thing they're pretty good early on when you're trying to supress your neighbours.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

So long as there are still border range techs, I don't see the problem.

 

[Mummolus]

With the addition of habitats and ultimately ringworlds, more systems within your borders means more spaces to build habitats and ultimately ringworlds.

 

[RedPearlA]

When I play, border range expansions are nice when playing a peaceful nation. They let you get new worlds to build stations around and to terraform and colonize, without going to war for it. Border expansion is much less useful when playing as a warlike nation, because if you want more space clay, you just conquer it. What's more, it synergizes best with a diplomatic approach, since you need to counter the diplomatic malus, and if you're a warlike nation you want to avoid being in too many wars at once, whereas a peaceable nation is generally prepared for wars, what with not being in an ongoing war most of the time.

But in Utopia, for some reason war expansion is going into the military tradition tree. It seems to me like that's something you'd want to buy when not playing a military playthrough, though the rest of the tree isn't, and when you are playing military, it's more of a speedbump on the road to the things you actually want deeper in the tree. Is there something that I'm missing here? Is there something that Paradox is missing? Do other people treat this very differently from how I do?

I like border expansion because that can secure/deny planets and orbital resources. I don't know what you mean by warlike nation and peaceable nation.
It is not in the military tradition tree, it is in the supremacy tradition tree which is more imperialistic then it is militaristic.

 

[Wulfram]

Border range certainly isn't something to totally neglect as a conquering race.

Back a few patches ago I had a game where I was basically not doing any research, including border range. It got really really annoying. New conquests were often totally cut off from the rest of the empire because they were swamped by their former owners borders.

 

[Cruxador]

I like border expansion because that can secure/deny planets and orbital resources. I don't know what you mean by warlike nation and peaceable nation.
It is not in the military tradition tree, it is in the supremacy tradition tree which is more imperialistic then it is militaristic.

Every other thing in supremacy is tied directly to war, except for the rivalry bonus. I don't see anything at all that could be referred to as imperialism, except inasmuch as that's something that it's handy to have a good military for.