"Building tall" as opposed to "building wide" is a bad meme

[mudcrabmerchant]

stuff

Sorry, I misread the start of your original post. For the record, I want a system that makes expansion vs. development an actual decision in the short term.

But the late game shouldn't have paper leviathans like early 20th century Russia. The way game mechanics work, the early game is like the USA expanding westward and spreading its culture without any long-term degradation in per capita wealth or technology, and the late game is like a dozen different USAs, all coming from the same starting position, taking broadly interchangeable planets and populations from each other (except for xenophobes). This is not EUIV or Victoria, and there are no mechanics to represent countries being ridiculously ass-backwards compared to others, for deep-seated cultural or historical reasons.

If everyone starts equal, tall-and-small countries should never be so comparatively tall that they can wreck countries that are significantly larger than them.

 

[zanaikin]

People really are way over-complicating a very simple idea.

Tall: A very small, highly developed group of cities/planets that receives certain bonuses for being small and highly developed.
Wide: A very large group of cities/planets that, due to it's sheer size, has access to vast amounts of resources.

In this context, Tall and Wide are mutually exclusive. We already have a taste of it with smaller empires gaining fairly decent science bonuses.

After some thought I realized a much bigger question. Players keep mentioning that the tall vs wide argument is all about a choice of asymmetric playstyles. Well then...

Why must Tall vs Wide be a mutually exclusive choice?

There's nothing stopping a large empire (ingame, not IRL) from also being highly efficient in organization. It's a big part of why I play Pacifist Oligarchy + Rapid Breeders and give sectors only fully developed and optimized planets (15 core systems without repeatable techs allows me to do this!).

There's already a mechanic in game that equates too-fast-expansion with inefficiency. It's call sectors and their terrible construction AI. If you expand slower but steadily and manually develop all planets, you inevitably get more efficiency out of your planets, allowing you to play 'taller'.

As Paradox steadily add more and more mechanics (as we already saw with CK2/EU4), the gulf between manually developed planets and sector managed planets will only continue to grow.

 

[shadowclasper]

Singapore would only be able to avoid a war from china in this scenario with the backing of the US, it has nothing to do with Singapore being 'tall' but a bigger player on the block protecting it and the only reason America would block China expanding would be to stop it from becoming more powerful. Singapore in and of itself would not be able to force others to support it.

and the only reason anyone would back them is that they have the economic basis and influence over a region that is well outside of their land area. That's how a tall empire actually would stop itself from being steam rolled, by building alliances.

But if you want the tech based one, then fine. Israel v. Everyone around Israel.

 

[Derp]

Why must Tall vs Wide be a mutually exclusive choice?

Because tall and wide are at their roots two different Civ 5 strategies, not descriptions.

Tall meant you would settle your capital and two or three cities ASAP, build an NC and then pursue your victory. Ideally you would later capture a few more high-value cities from AIs since the math actually puts the ideal number of cities above the initial settled number; you just don't want to settle them yourself.
Wide meant you would settle more cities (about twice as many) and then go for your victory.

It's basically a question of opening with REX or opening with development.

How does it translate to Stellaris? I dunno. Maybe wide means you just keep expanding no matter what, while tall means you fill out your core system count and then stop to develop before reevaluating. It's hard to say, as nobody has really formulated any distinctly tall vs. wide plays - although someone did post a fairly interesting build he called the "5 core" that could serve as a base for either.

If you try to detach the words from their meaning, though, you just end up with two vague, mostly worthless labels. Great for starting forum nerd arguments, not so great for anything else.

 

[TerrBear]

and the only reason anyone would back them is that they have the economic basis and influence over a region that is well outside of their land area. That's how a tall empire actually would stop itself from being steam rolled, by building alliances.

But if you want the tech based one, then fine. Israel v. Everyone around Israel.

But it has nothing to do with Singapore's influence... thats like saying America supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets because they were playing 'tall' LOL. It has everything to do with global powers competing and nothing to do with tiny countries somehow having an inherent power to force big players to help them.
With your Israel example again its through massive military aid from America that they can compete against the surrounding nations otherwise Palestine/Syria/Jordan should also be 'tall' and be able to compete.

 

[gajop]

I think one aspect how Tall vs Wide could be modeled is through defenses, where Tall empires have an easier time defending their smaller empire.

However, before that, defenses should be improved to be more useful at all times in the game. They should have unlimited strength, provided you're willing to build and maintain them. Much like fleets already are, but with higher efficiency (due to defenses being immobile). That would in turn create a need for some siege installations (perhaps even cross-system), or just some anti-defense fleets - hard hitting weapons that are trivial for ships to evade normally. FTL inhibitors also should be rethought, the kind of battles they're creating right now isn't good.

Another way would be to drastically increase ship maintenance in transit and also at the same time reduce it when ships are in station orbit. This would ideally make it very costly to use a single doomfleet you'd be moving from one part of the empire to another.

I think we should look at the galaxy map and system layout for answers. In most strategy games if you expand wide, but don't build appropriate defenses, you will get raided and you won't be able to react to all points of attack. Raiding in Stellaris isn't that well rewarded, particularly as the game goes on: mining stations aren't that important and planets are hard to blitz conquer (maybe they shouldn't have shields unless you build them).

 

[Foraven]

I'm a bit late to this discussion, but Tall vs Wide doesn't always mean large vs small empire. It can also be quality vs quantity. In the Endless Space series there are many techs that provide bonuses per planet or per systems regardless of how good the planets actually are, that just make it more beneficial to colonize many systems then than pick the quality ones with better planets (thus wide empire are favored). On other hand, if the tech makes good planets better (%), you have more incentive to look for the better planets and build them up and colonize the bad ones only if you have nothing else better. I believe Stellaris does favor building tall as there are many incentives to pick good planets and build them up rather than just colonize everything available. However the way the game is set, we do have to colonize many worlds, small empires are at a huge disadvantage since production speed is capped and having few worlds means they can be taken away in just a few wars. Also, small empires can end up being boxed it by hostile neighboors closing their borders...

 

[Magil]

Here's one of my bugbears in regards to "tall versus wide":

It's strange, in my view, to want to encourage building up empires, yet attach maintenance costs to buildings. Consider an alternative model: buildings cost no maintenance, but each colony costs a scaling maintenance cost based on your total # of colonies and the number of pops on the colony (with a possible diminishing multiplier for recently-conquered colonies). What would be the result? Infrastructure is all positive now, no downsides aside from opportunity costs. But mindless expansion and leaving colonies to grow without investing in them becomes a costly endeavor. Civ IV used this model and it was great. I've always wondered why this wasn't the standard for empire-building games, as I saw no downsides to it (aside from the must-build-everything mindset which wouldn't apply to Stellaris anyway).

Just something I was musing over.

 

[Kayden_II]

My Definitions:
"Wide" Empire = During the Game, a rather big Number of Worlds, but rather low in its Development (Amount of Tile-Clearing, Buildings + Upgrades and POPs) ...
"Tall" Empire = During the Game, a rather small Number of Worlds, but rather high in its Development (Same as Above) ...

I mean - I know, that sooner or later, Your Empire spreads across the whole Galaxy and all your Worlds are high in its Development ...
But, due to a Lack of additional Worlds, (so that You have to highly upgrade your Worlds), That's not really a "Wide" Empire anymore and, due to a Lack of additional Upgrade-Possibilities, (so that You have to spread your Empire), That's not really a "Tall" Empire anymore, too ...
So, as my personal Opinion, You will rather reach the Limit of Upgrade-Possibilities than a Limit of new Worlds, so that It isn't a "bad" Argument to boost/promote a "Tall" Empire-Style ...

So, What would I do to boost/promote a "Tall" Empire-Style ...
1. The higher the Amount of POPs on a World the lower the POP-Growth-Time on that World ...
2. To reverse the Costs of Buildings + its Upgrades (Example: Basic-Mine = 180 Minerals, Mining-Network I-II-III-IV-V = 150/120/90/60/30 Minerals) ...
3. To adapt the Maintenance-Costs of Buildings in the "Spirit" of Point 2.: Example: Basic-Mine = -1EC(s), Mining-Network I-II-III-IV-V = -1/-2/-2/-2.5/-2.5 EC(s) ...
4. Same as Point 3., but in Regards of its Production-Output: Example: Basic-Mine = +1 Minerals, Mining-Network I-II-III-IV-V = +1.5/+2.5/+4/+6/+8.5 Minerals ...

I've rather restricted my Suggestions, because I have no Clue, How the new Faction-System will impact this Topic^^

 

[Dëzaël]

a fairly interesting build he called the "5 core"

I use a variant of that one where I only put outposts, as many as I can, rushing influence techs, holding from colonizing as much as I can, relying on orbital economy. This is to keep my tech speed the fastest, and I colonize only when I can't up my science score any more. Ideally my second planet will be the capital with science labs V, and I won't need others for the rest of the game. So I end up very small and any empire can crush me.
(Then I finish my 5 core, lvl V buildings, and furbish 2 of them to sectors with new colonies. That's why I call it a variant. ^^)

The point I want to make is that, as said earlier, there's a need for at least good defensive pacts (with no missiles trust me on that ^^). So this is very situational. But on one vs one, I should still be able to stand a mid sized empire and its crappy laser III armor II 'vettes & destroyers with my shield IV kinetics V BBs and cruisers and rest, provided I use the right weapon slots. I should not be able to attack and win, but standing my ground with the use of fortresses and my technological edge seems to me reasonable if the size gap is not to large. For the time being, this is pacts, or I'm screwed.

To sum up :

- Tech edge being too weak.
- Fortresses being too weak (long being said).
- Ship production time not scaling with tech level

@Derp quoted Civ 5, I never played Civ, but I'm trying the 6th, and you can have bonusses to military prod by changing government, and/or using the right dogmas, and/or directly buying them with gold. This is a great way to reward peacefull and economically efficient play (internal and external trade), and helps making a tiny empire defensively more viable. And the tech edge is soooo strong with this one!