Can we nerf Empire Sprawl a *tiny* bit?

[RhysTheT00n]

As far as I'm aware, playing tall is currently the only way to stay under your administrative cap, since no matter how many repeatables you unlock, you'll never manage to catch your Admin cap up with your Empire Sprawl (ES). This seems to be mainly due to (as far as I know) there not being any other way to increase Admin cap until we get Megacorp. I normally play as a Devouring Swarm, mainly because I've never managed to get a total victory on the game yet, fulfilling my Cassus Belli on all empires in the game. Currently, 3 things increase your ES, which is the amount of colonies you have, the amount of systems you have, and the amount of districts you have. The thing is, colonies and systems each give 2 ES, so my 81 colonies equals 162 ES and my 472 systems equals 944 ES. I think that each type of empire should have a way to increase your ES by a small amount. My idea for Hive Minds would be Hive Worlds increasing your Admin Cap by about 30 per Hive world. Out of my 81 total colonies, I probably have about 50 normal planets which are all Hive Worlds, I currently have 2447 ES, knock off the 550 ES if you took my nerf into account from earlier and round it to 1900, then if Hive worlds had +30 Admin cap, that would bring it down to 400. But we're not done there, then the rest of the heavy lifting would be done by the Admin Cap repeatable technology, 40 of those equals 600 which is what I'm one tech off of now. This would require a lot of grinding in order to keep under the Admin cap and you'd still have to be careful when building too many habitats lest you go over. Also, it's an important thing to remember that around 10-15 of my colonies aren't developed with districts, some of them are just owned planets with about 2-3 pops on them, so the ES could still go back up quite quickly if you're not careful

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Can I just make clear, without all these changes you would literally need more than 160 repeatable techs increasing your Admin cap in order to get below your ES, which in order to do, you have to build more research focused habitats which to do THAT you'd have to build more mineral focused Hive Worlds so you'd actually need closer to 200 Admin repeatable techs, probably more.

 

[MordridBlack]

also empire sprawl wont be an issue once we get the rest of the 2.2 update stuff as there is a tile building that will increase admin cap (and you can build more than one per planet)

 

[RhysTheT00n]

also empire sprawl wont be an issue once we get the rest of the 2.2 update stuff as there is a tile building that will increase admin cap (and you can build more than one per planet)

How did I know you'd be the one responding to this? Welcome to my 3rd thread featuring you man. You spend a lot of time on the forums?

Anyway, in that case the question then would be do you need Megacorp to get those buildings? I'll be buying the pass anyway but I don't exactly like the idea of having a big issue like this that's solved by a £15 expansion. What does Megacorp actually have in it?

 

[MordridBlack]

How did I know you'd be the one responding to this? Welcome to my 3rd thread featuring you man. You spend a lot of time on the forums?

Anyway, in that case the question then would be do you need Megacorp to get those buildings? I'll be buying the pass anyway but I don't exactly like the idea of having a big issue like this that's solved by a £15 expansion. What does Megacorp actually have in it?

let me do a quick check to be 100% sure, but i don't think you actually need the DLC to access that tile building (i think it was just a general update)

 

[RhysTheT00n]

let me do a quick check to be 100% sure, but i don't think you actually need the DLC to access that tile building (i think it was just a general update)

I hope so, like I said it won't really affect me but given how quickly you can pass your administrative capacity I'd feel bad for the people that don't have it.

 

[MordridBlack]

Ok so I just checked on PC in a game without Megacorp active, and the Administrative Office tile building is still there

as for what Megacorp adds in (since I forgot to include that in my last post)

Megacorp Governments [and empires]
Caravaneers [and their home systems]
New Civics
Slave Market
New Megastructures
New Traditions
Achievements
Ecumenopolis

plus some other various stuff that isn't "technically" in the game yet

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Ok so I just checked on PC in a game without Megacorp active, and the Administrative Office tile building is still there

as for what Megacorp adds in (since I forgot to include that in my last post)

Megacorp Governments [and empires]
Caravaneers [and their home systems]
New Civics
Slave Market
New Megastructures
New Traditions
Achievements
Ecumenopolis

plus some other various stuff that isn't "technically" in the game yet

Sounds awesome, don't know what most of that is but I like the sound of making Ecumenopolis worlds because my alloy empire is primarily sustained by one in my current save. It's those Megastructures that caught my eye. What new ones do we have? How many of them can we build? I know there exists a "Matter Decompresser" which supposedly gives you minerals.

 

[Pantshandshake]

I kind of doubt we'll see something like this. There's just no pressing need to manage your sprawl to that degree. All you really need to do is increase your research capabilities as your empire grows.

Unity is a little more difficult to manage, but I don't believe for a second that you'd have a hard time finishing all the traditions before the end-game period, unless you purposefully ignore it.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

I kind of doubt we'll see something like this. There's just no pressing need to manage your sprawl to that degree. All you really need to do is increase your research capabilities as your empire grows.

Unity is a little more difficult to manage, but I don't believe for a second that you'd have a hard time finishing all the traditions before the end-game period, unless you purposefully ignore it.

Unity is still important for campaigns in end game and the campaign cost with my sprawl is +1826% which means they cost X18 what they normal cost.

The problem is that you can't manage your sprawl at all until end game, also, your suggestion to increase research capabilities literally only helps reduce the growth of sprawl, not to reduce sprawl, I have an Advanced Research plant on at least 50 planets including all 4 of my current Ringworlds (4 entire ringworlds, not ring segments, so 16 Advanced Research Plants) including around 20-30 habitats exclusively churning out 8 districts of research each with a Science Nexus. I currently have 28K total research per month and I'm exclusively researching more Admin cap and the sprawl is still going up. Need I remind you, there's probably about another 30 planets in my territory to colonise and the ones I HAVE colonised aren't even fully developed yet, meaning I have potentially thousands of sprawl to gain when each tech I research only gives +15 admin cap.

Can't wait for the next update where we get buildings to reduce this

 

[RA3236]

Ok so I just checked on PC in a game without Megacorp active, and the Administrative Office tile building is still there

as for what Megacorp adds in (since I forgot to include that in my last post)

Megacorp Governments [and empires]
Caravaneers [and their home systems]
New Civics
Slave Market
New Megastructures
New Traditions
Achievements
Ecumenopolis

plus some other various stuff that isn't "technically" in the game yet

Administrative Offices are not in the current version of the game.
I was unable to find when the building was released into the game (none of the patch notes contain it) but the relevant developer diary points to Patch 2.4.
They are also not MegaCorp exclusive as you have already mentioned.

To address the OP's concerns:

1. The Imperial Prerogative ascension perk increases admin cap by 30, which means it completely overshadows Technological Ascendancy and One Vision combined for at least the first century of the game
2. Most of the impact from empire sprawl is linear, which is the same for wide empires, which means that you can outproduce and even benefit far greater from being wide currently.

Staying at around 200 admin capacity for the first couple of centuries is really a good idea since a) you have a large economy and b) that's below the point where it becomes less efficient to combat admin cap (which apparently is at the 330 mark).

 

[MordridBlack]

Administrative Offices are not in the current version of the game.
I was unable to find when the building was released into the game (none of the patch notes contain it) but the relevant developer diary points to Patch 2.4.
They are also not MegaCorp exclusive as you have already mentioned.

To address the OP's concerns:

1. The Imperial Prerogative ascension perk increases admin cap by 30, which means it completely overshadows Technological Ascendancy and One Vision combined for at least the first century of the game
2. Most of the impact from empire sprawl is linear, which is the same for wide empires, which means that you can outproduce and even benefit far greater from being wide currently.

Staying at around 200 admin capacity for the first couple of centuries is really a good idea since a) you have a large economy and b) that's below the point where it becomes less efficient to combat admin cap (which apparently is at the 330 mark).

did a few more tests [all done with the dlc that existed at the time on, while others were turned off]

test 1: patch 2.2.7 - administrative building mia *

test 2: patch 2.3.3 - *

test 3: patch 2.4.0 - *

test 4: patch 2.4.1 - *

test 5: patch 2.5.0 - *

test 6: patch 2.5.1 - *

test 7: patch 2.6.0 - administrative building present [Federations patch]

result

we won't see this tile building until next year sometime

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Administrative Offices are not in the current version of the game.
I was unable to find when the building was released into the game (none of the patch notes contain it) but the relevant developer diary points to Patch 2.4.
They are also not MegaCorp exclusive as you have already mentioned.

To address the OP's concerns:

1. The Imperial Prerogative ascension perk increases admin cap by 30, which means it completely overshadows Technological Ascendancy and One Vision combined for at least the first century of the game
2. Most of the impact from empire sprawl is linear, which is the same for wide empires, which means that you can outproduce and even benefit far greater from being wide currently.

Staying at around 200 admin capacity for the first couple of centuries is really a good idea since a) you have a large economy and b) that's below the point where it becomes less efficient to combat admin cap (which apparently is at the 330 mark).

1. +30 admin cap is horrible for an ascension perk, that would do basically nothing in the long term. Including all non-repeatable technologies for admin cap and the empire civic for admin cap AND that ascension perk that would still be less than 150 admin cap. Let's say you had about 10 planets (more on the wide side and you said that's even better than being tall) and each planet has 15 districts (some planets can have 20-25 districts), not counting the sprawl from making those colonies and owning the systems , that's a minimum of 150, but could wasily surpass 200, especially if you include the other factors of sprawl.
Without Hive worlds, you'll be making less resources than you could with hive worlds which will take a while to get the tech for and terraform and it'll be more difficult to specialise in the most important resources than if you had Hive Worlds. Also, it'll be much more difficult to keep your Alloy production up and your research production up and your mineral production up without getting more planets so sprawl is pretty much unavoidable

 

[RA3236]

1. +30 admin cap is horrible for an ascension perk, that would do basically nothing in the long term. Including all non-repeatable technologies for admin cap and the empire civic for admin cap AND that ascension perk that would still be less than 150 admin cap. Let's say you had about 10 planets (more on the wide side and you said that's even better than being tall) and each planet has 15 districts (some planets can have 20-25 districts), not counting the sprawl from making those colonies and owning the systems , that's a minimum of 150, but could wasily surpass 200, especially if you include the other factors of sprawl.
Without Hive worlds, you'll be making less resources than you could with hive worlds which will take a while to get the tech for and terraform and it'll be more difficult to specialise in the most important resources than if you had Hive Worlds. Also, it'll be much more difficult to keep your Alloy production up and your research production up and your mineral production up without getting more planets so sprawl is pretty much unavoidable

Just did some quick calculations.
Imperial Prerogative gives +30 administrative capacity. My current Determined Exterminators runthrough has 213 empire sprawl and 80 administrative capacity with a Technology Cost increase of 39.90%, which corresponds to 0.3 technology cost per empire sprawl over the admin capacity. +30 administrative capacity thus essentially means -9% technology cost (multiplicative since it applies directly to the cost of the technologies). Tradition Cost is currently at 66.50%, corresponding to 0.5 tradition cost per empire sprawl, thus +30 admin cap would be -15% tradition cost.
You thus get:

One ascension perk	Two ascension perks
-9% technology cost, -15% tradition cost, which can end up being upwards of +50% research speed depending on bonuses	+10% research speed, +10% monthly unity, +50% chance to gain rare techs (not worth it), -10% pop amenities usage, +33% governing ethics attraction (both are situational)

+30 administrative capacity is definitely worth it.

EDIT: To address the question I know someone is gonna ask:
The effective research speed change gained by Technological Ascendancy is given by the formula:
(((current research speed percentage + 10) / current research speed percentage) - 1) * 100

This means that if you have no research bonuses Technological Ascendancy will give exactly what it says on the tin, but if you already have +20% research speed bonus then TA will give (120 + 10) / 120 -1 * 100 = 8.333%.

At a rate of 10 research per month, a 1000-research cost tech will take a hundred months to complete, whereas taking IP will decrease that down to 91 months (910 research cost), which is an effective research speed bonus of 9.8%.

To save you the effort of calculating when TA is less worth it than IP in terms of current research speed bonus, it is 2.04% (the first research speed tech is +5%).
So yes, IP is still better.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

Just did some quick calculations.
Imperial Prerogative gives +30 administrative capacity. My current Determined Exterminators runthrough has 213 empire sprawl and 80 administrative capacity with a Technology Cost increase of 39.90%, which corresponds to 0.3 technology cost per empire sprawl over the admin capacity. +30 administrative capacity thus essentially means +9% research speed (multiplicative since it applies directly to the cost of the technologies). Tradition Cost is currently at 66.50%, corresponding to 0.5 tradition cost per empire sprawl, thus +30 admin cap would be -15% tradition cost.
You thus get:

One ascension perk	Two ascension perks
-9% technology cost, -15% tradition cost, which can end up being upwards of +50% research speed depending on bonuses	+10% research speed, +10% monthly unity, +50% chance to gain rare techs (not worth it), -10% pop amenities usage, +33% governing ethics attraction (both are situational)

+30 administrative capacity is definitely worth it.

First off, why would you compare three bad perks together to say one is worth it, all three of them are bad.

Second, +30 administrative capacity is not worth it. It doesn't just reduce the cost of traditions and research like that, it reduces the rate of cost increase *in the short term if you waste an ascension slot* by a very small degree *If you aren't playing very wide*. Let me elaborate on that, I have 80 total colonised planets, about 50-60 of them are contributing to sprawl and I have about another 30-40 planets ready to colonise which would likely jump the sprawl up by another couple thousand when my sprawl is currently above 2500. +30 admin cap isn't gonna have an effect on that, like I said, I have +40 Admin cap repeatable technologies, which equals to more than +600 admin cap, more than X20 Imperial Perogative, No thanks, I'll wait for the update where we can increase admin cap properly.

Just to be clear, even with all the changes I suggested (Might not be necessary now I know about the buildings) you would still need heavy focus on Admin cap repeatables to stay under that cap and you would still need to slow down your empire's growth when playing wide, even with all the changes I suggested, even if every planet in the game was a hive world I could still easily go over that cap if I wasn't careful

 

[RA3236]

First off, why would you compare three bad perks together to say one is worth it, all three of them are bad.

10% research speed is certainly not bad at all (see my edit on previous post for relevant mathematics behind why IP is better), especially for min/maxing empires. +10% unity production isn't terrible either if you are rushing megastructures and Galactic Wonders.
This is also about the first ascension perk that affects your entire empire for the rest of the game, and you need two perks to get the more heavy stuff (one for the ascension paths).
Your picks for your first ascension perk slot are limited to:

• Consecrated Worlds if you are spiritualist, which is nice if you are spiritualist and have Holy Worlds nearby
• Eternal Vigilance, which is basically useless in the long run
• Executive Vigor, which might be useful if you have the spare influence or got ascension theory really early, but really won't change that much either way
• Interstellar Dominion, which is useful if you are genocidal or Xenophobic Isolationists and it looks as if you might be cornered
• Mastery of Nature, which is great when you get your planets fully built up (it doesn't give that massive of a bonus to resource production unless the planet is smallish)
• Nihilistic Acquisition, which is garbage
• Shared Destiny, which is also garbage
• Transcendent Learning, which is also garbage
• Voidborne, which will take years before you can get
• Technological Ascendancy, One Vision, and Imperial Prerogative

For the standard empire TA, OV or IP are the best picks on average.

Second, +30 administrative capacity is not worth it. It doesn't just reduce the cost of traditions and research like that, it reduces the rate of cost increase *in the short term if you waste an ascension slot* by a very small degree *If you aren't playing very wide*.
Let me elaborate on that, I have 80 total colonised planets, about 50-60 of them are contributing to sprawl and I have about another 30-40 planets ready to colonise which would likely jump the sprawl up by another couple thousand when my sprawl is currently above 2500. +30 admin cap isn't gonna have an effect on that, like I said, I have +40 Admin cap repeatable technologies, which equals to more than +600 admin cap, more than X20 Imperial Perogative, No thanks, I'll wait for the update where we can increase admin cap properly.

As I said previously, empire sprawl penalties are applied linearly. This means that +30 admin cap will have the same impact throughout the game (even if you increase empire sprawl) since the total effect will require another 30 empire sprawl to cancel out. It also is a flat +9.8% multiplicative research speed bonus for the entire game. (See edit on previous post).

 

[RhysTheT00n]

10% research speed is certainly not bad at all (see my edit on previous post for relevant mathematics behind why IP is better), especially for min/maxing empires. +10% unity production isn't terrible either if you are rushing megastructures and Galactic Wonders.
This is also about the first ascension perk that affects your entire empire for the rest of the game, and you need two perks to get the more heavy stuff (one for the ascension paths).
Your picks for your first ascension perk slot are limited to:

• Consecrated Worlds if you are spiritualist, which is nice if you are spiritualist and have Holy Worlds nearby
• Eternal Vigilance, which is basically useless in the long run
• Executive Vigor, which might be useful if you have the spare influence or got ascension theory really early, but really won't change that much either way
• Interstellar Dominion, which is useful if you are genocidal or Xenophobic Isolationists and it looks as if you might be cornered
• Mastery of Nature, which is great when you get your planets fully built up (it doesn't give that massive of a bonus to resource production unless the planet is smallish)
• Nihilistic Acquisition, which is garbage
• Shared Destiny, which is also garbage
• Transcendent Learning, which is also garbage
• Voidborne, which will take years before you can get
• Technological Ascendancy, One Vision, and Imperial Prerogative

For the standard empire TA, OV or IP are the best picks on average.



As I said previously, empire sprawl penalties are applied linearly. This means that +30 admin cap will have the same impact throughout the game (even if you increase empire sprawl) since the total effect will require another 30 empire sprawl to cancel out. It also is a flat +9.8% multiplicative research speed bonus for the entire game. (See edit on previous post).

I can think of many uses for Eternal Vigilance, I'll be giving it a go in my next save.
Your picks for your first ascension perks are only limited if you pick a perk as soon as you unlock a slot, which I don't do, I wait to get the ones I actually want. My AP setup is Hive Worlds, Defender of the Galaxy, Colossus, Voidborne, Galactic Wonders, Mega-Engineers and the biological AP for this save, I'll be creating empires in the future which use Psionic AP and Synthetic AP, maybe I'll replace Defender of the Galaxy with Eternal Vigilance since it has the same effect but more bonuses, is more universal and doesn't become obsolete after the year 2400. What I'll give you is IP is better than the other two you compared it to, which might be useful in a tall empire when growth isn't critical for your survival, but I'm talking about playing wide as an empire which if doesn't grow quickly and build a fleet, will get killed as soon as possible, with that in mind Eternal Vigilance is a much better perk for that situation.

I don't know what the stats are like in your game but your game seems to be working a lot differently to mine. Something I'm going to need you to address is, if IP is so good for the long run in a wide empire, why is it that consistently increasing my admin cap with repeatables is just barely keeping the research cost consistent? I don't know what you mean when you say "multiplicative", since surely +600 Admin cap would have X20 the effect of IP. Also, you contradicted yourself when you said it has the same effect even if you increase sprawl, unless you got +30 sprawl in which case the other perks would work the same way when it comes to sprawl. Also, again, I'm sure you're aware of how easy +30 sprawl is to get right? I could develop 2 planets within a couple of years and not only negate that effect but make it worse. Like I said, I'm at 2600 sprawl and more than a third of the planets I own aren't colonised, and some of the planets I have colonised aren't developed, meaning I could theoretically double my sprawl. I don't even have all the planets in the game yet (soon...).

 

[RA3236]

Your picks for your first ascension perks are only limited if you pick a perk as soon as you unlock a slot, which I don't do, I wait to get the ones I actually want

The ascension perks that I listed are all Tier 0 perks, which means they do not need any other ascension perk to be picked beforehand. In your case Voidborne was your Tier 0 pick.

I don't know what the stats are like in your game but your game seems to be working a lot differently to mine. Something I'm going to need you to address is, if IP is so good for the long run in a wide empire, why is it that consistently increasing my admin cap with repeatables is just barely keeping the research cost consistent? I don't know what you mean when you say "multiplicative", since surely +600 Admin cap would have X20 the effect of IP.

You've missed my point entirely and you are also in the endgame where repeatables are much easier to get.
An increase of 30 administrative capacity will give -9% research cost right off the bat as soon as you pick it. Before repeatables, the most admin cap you can get is around 150 (on a very specific build, most empires will only get 90), a large chunk of which is from Imperial Prerogative itself.
Increasing your empire sprawl indeed does increase your tech costs, but you've missed that any advantage is an advantage. In this case, -9% research cost applies no matter how large your empire is, even if its in the endgame (any research bonuses once repeatables are started are basically nullified anyways). An empire with IP is going to have 9% less research cost than an empire without it of the same size, which means it has tremendous value for technologically inclined empires.
This is why I said IP was the better ascension perk for the first century of the game or so; once you begin the endgame expansion and repeatables it becomes less relevant.

Also, you contradicted yourself when you said it has the same effect even if you increase sprawl, unless you got +30 sprawl in which case the other perks would work the same way when it comes to sprawl.

Read that part again. I meant that an empire without IP will need to decrease their empire sprawl by 30 in order to match the costs of an empire with IP.

I'm also slightly wrong about the exact values (it is a diminishing return) so this reddit post might be of some use.

 

[Pantshandshake]

Unity is still important for campaigns in end game and the campaign cost with my sprawl is +1826% which means they cost X18 what they normal cost.

The problem is that you can't manage your sprawl at all until end game, also, your suggestion to increase research capabilities literally only helps reduce the growth of sprawl, not to reduce sprawl, I have an Advanced Research plant on at least 50 planets including all 4 of my current Ringworlds (4 entire ringworlds, not ring segments, so 16 Advanced Research Plants) including around 20-30 habitats exclusively churning out 8 districts of research each with a Science Nexus. I currently have 28K total research per month and I'm exclusively researching more Admin cap and the sprawl is still going up. Need I remind you, there's probably about another 30 planets in my territory to colonise and the ones I HAVE colonised aren't even fully developed yet, meaning I have potentially thousands of sprawl to gain when each tech I research only gives +15 admin cap.

Can't wait for the next update where we get buildings to reduce this

I'm still having a hard time grasping your issue with sprawl. Yes, sprawl makes things more expensive. Accumulating sprawl is also what happens when you increase your empire size. Increasing your empire size should be allowing to to increase how much research you produce. So while your research may slow down later in the game, the fact that something costs 18x what it did when you started should be heavily offset by the amount of research you're NOW producing.

Like, literally, the only time sprawl even matters is when your empire size is increasing faster than you can industrialize all your pretty new colonies. For me, that stops being an issue in the very early mid-game. Maybe you need to work on making that process more efficient?

As far as unity goes, if you hit the end game and haven't finished all the traditions, you're definitely not playing very well. Maybe this is why you have such a problem with sprawl? In any case, this isn't a problem with sprawl, but with your ability to effectively manage Stellaris. If your complaint instead is that the late-game unity-powered edicts are too expensive because of sprawl... well, yeah. They are. I'm pretty sure the intent is not for you to run more than a few of those constantly. Maybe I'm wrong on that, and I'm not doing as well as I could be. But I generally have at least Grand Fleet up all the time, with 1 or 2 more going off and on.

 

[RhysTheT00n]

I'm still having a hard time grasping your issue with sprawl. Yes, sprawl makes things more expensive. Accumulating sprawl is also what happens when you increase your empire size. Increasing your empire size should be allowing to to increase how much research you produce. So while your research may slow down later in the game, the fact that something costs 18x what it did when you started should be heavily offset by the amount of research you're NOW producing.

Like, literally, the only time sprawl even matters is when your empire size is increasing faster than you can industrialize all your pretty new colonies. For me, that stops being an issue in the very early mid-game. Maybe you need to work on making that process more efficient?

As far as unity goes, if you hit the end game and haven't finished all the traditions, you're definitely not playing very well. Maybe this is why you have such a problem with sprawl? In any case, this isn't a problem with sprawl, but with your ability to effectively manage Stellaris. If your complaint instead is that the late-game unity-powered edicts are too expensive because of sprawl... well, yeah. They are. I'm pretty sure the intent is not for you to run more than a few of those constantly. Maybe I'm wrong on that, and I'm not doing as well as I could be. But I generally have at least Grand Fleet up all the time, with 1 or 2 more going off and on.

I have finished all the traditions, that's not the problem, the problem is how much research you constantly have to produce AND reduce sprawl at the same time AND not grow your empire fast just to be able to have two edicts at once.

Honestly, if you don't have a problem then I can't argue with it but I can't wait for these admin buildings