empire size as is does not really work as intended. The objective of empire size and tech and unity reductions that comes from it is meant to prevent too much snowballing from empires that seek to get as many colonies and as many pops as possible i.e "wide empire" by counterbalancing their more significant economies by reducing their the ability to out-tech or out-unity other empire. But as it is now, those empires can easily offset the tech reductions by just building more research labs and more bureaucratic centers. Several people have done the math by now and calculated that it would take about 1000 pops for those empires to start feeling the effect of empire size with only the bare minimum of efforts to build labs and bureaucratic centers. This is not nearly enough. I know it's an unpopular opinion but we honestly need penalties that are 10 times bigger at the very least.
I know there was a lot of backlash about the empire size mechanic but it is honestly something necessary for the balance of the game. There was a similar backlash when the devs introduced pop growth reductions from population size too but ultimately people got used to it, especially after the introduction of a slider in the setting of the game to regulate that growth penalty. Why can't we have a similar slider for empire size penalties? It would be an easy solution for a lot of issues.
It is not a perfect solution, however. As many people have pointed out already, decreasing the empire size from pops and increasing the sprawl from the number of districts, systems, and colonies in a given empire would make sprawl affect a wide empire more efficiently.
I have a few suggestions on my own that are more roleplay or player choice-focused since the dev tends to prefer those. Maybe the empire capital and colonies within systems linked to the empire capital by hyper relays network could get a reduction of the empire size they generate? It would force the empire to choose between spending their alloys on acquiring more colonies or on making sure they are correctly linked and managed, and a habitat-focused empire would get a lot of mileage out of this. And it would make sense from a roleplay perspective as a better-connected empire with a better infrastructure would be easier to manage.
Factions could decrease sprawl from pops in the same way they increase unity from pops. Meaning that en empire would have to spend time to make sure their population is happy or at least fall in line properly or see their empire becoming harder to manage. I would suggest increasing the base unity pop produce for this very reason.
Alternatively, there is the planetary ascension system which brings me to my second point. I like the concept of planetary ascension. But I think that as it is, it is not worth the cost. At best this is something for the empire to dump their unity on in the late game where there is nowhere else to spend unity. And it works well in that specific scenario. But beyond that it is useless. Which is a shame. Since ascending a tier reduce the empire size of the planet, I was thinking that by avoiding expanding too quickly and ascending well-populated planets there would be a way to mitigate Empire size, again putting in the player's hands the choice to expand as much as possible for maximum economic power, or expend carefully, but in a way that doesn't increase empire size so an empire can reach a decent amount of territory while still being able to tech or unity rush.
But in practice, the bonuses are too weak. It could stand a little more empire size reduction, something like 6-8% per tier. And especially it needs to increase the production a lot more to make the upgrading competitive, and a valid choice to spend unity on rather than edicts or ascension perks. To be fair I think the latter point is less due to the ascension system itself and more the fact it works through the increase of the bonuses from planetary designation, which does not work well with that system. The bonuses from designation aren't all that great. The main problem is outside of designations focused on producing basic resources, designations reduce the upkeep and cost rather than increasing production. You can only reduce metallurgist or researcher upkeep so much. If instead designation increased the production of those jobs like they do for basic resources, it would be a lot better.
I understand why designations are like that. though. That's why i suggest to add in the tech tree, especially the society tech tree, technologies that upgrade planetary designations effects, adding production bonuses that would be gated behind technology.
But what do you think ? Can i get a dev's opinion on this ?
I know there was a lot of backlash about the empire size mechanic but it is honestly something necessary for the balance of the game. There was a similar backlash when the devs introduced pop growth reductions from population size too but ultimately people got used to it, especially after the introduction of a slider in the setting of the game to regulate that growth penalty. Why can't we have a similar slider for empire size penalties? It would be an easy solution for a lot of issues.
It is not a perfect solution, however. As many people have pointed out already, decreasing the empire size from pops and increasing the sprawl from the number of districts, systems, and colonies in a given empire would make sprawl affect a wide empire more efficiently.
I have a few suggestions on my own that are more roleplay or player choice-focused since the dev tends to prefer those. Maybe the empire capital and colonies within systems linked to the empire capital by hyper relays network could get a reduction of the empire size they generate? It would force the empire to choose between spending their alloys on acquiring more colonies or on making sure they are correctly linked and managed, and a habitat-focused empire would get a lot of mileage out of this. And it would make sense from a roleplay perspective as a better-connected empire with a better infrastructure would be easier to manage.
Factions could decrease sprawl from pops in the same way they increase unity from pops. Meaning that en empire would have to spend time to make sure their population is happy or at least fall in line properly or see their empire becoming harder to manage. I would suggest increasing the base unity pop produce for this very reason.
Alternatively, there is the planetary ascension system which brings me to my second point. I like the concept of planetary ascension. But I think that as it is, it is not worth the cost. At best this is something for the empire to dump their unity on in the late game where there is nowhere else to spend unity. And it works well in that specific scenario. But beyond that it is useless. Which is a shame. Since ascending a tier reduce the empire size of the planet, I was thinking that by avoiding expanding too quickly and ascending well-populated planets there would be a way to mitigate Empire size, again putting in the player's hands the choice to expand as much as possible for maximum economic power, or expend carefully, but in a way that doesn't increase empire size so an empire can reach a decent amount of territory while still being able to tech or unity rush.
But in practice, the bonuses are too weak. It could stand a little more empire size reduction, something like 6-8% per tier. And especially it needs to increase the production a lot more to make the upgrading competitive, and a valid choice to spend unity on rather than edicts or ascension perks. To be fair I think the latter point is less due to the ascension system itself and more the fact it works through the increase of the bonuses from planetary designation, which does not work well with that system. The bonuses from designation aren't all that great. The main problem is outside of designations focused on producing basic resources, designations reduce the upkeep and cost rather than increasing production. You can only reduce metallurgist or researcher upkeep so much. If instead designation increased the production of those jobs like they do for basic resources, it would be a lot better.
I understand why designations are like that. though. That's why i suggest to add in the tech tree, especially the society tech tree, technologies that upgrade planetary designations effects, adding production bonuses that would be gated behind technology.
But what do you think ? Can i get a dev's opinion on this ?
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