empire size and planetary ascention rework needed

[smile444]

Empire size and it's iterations are a symptome of the failed progression system (science and unity). They are abstracted element being designed to act like ressource to be produced and consumed which cause obvious balance issue. The most effective solution would be for science to be overhaued in the same manner that the archeolgic and espionnage system was, while the unity mechanic would be redesigned alike the federal cohesion mechanic each in their own way.


Second, Stellaris isn't sid's Civillization game; They have no wide or tall dynamism in play. They have an ethics system in place that may emulate some characteristic from civ. You can have a fanatic pacifist xenophobe build min-maxing empire size leveraging their own assets ( wide ) or a fanatic militarist xenophile focused on leveraging their vassal insted ( tall )


And last the pop reduction resolved nothing. In contrary, it is a statement of a amateurish developpemet further unbalancing the game and made a case for the abstraction of the pop system that pds was never able to solve.

increasing tech costs for Unity isn't only in Civilisation. It's found in almost all 4X games, and it is that way because it works whether you like it or not. Stellaris may not be civilization but it is definitely a 4X game

And the pop reduction was mostly introduced to reduce late-game lag. in that objective it worked very well.

Now whether or not there would be a better system than empire size is another discussion, but what is undeniable is that the game needs a rubber band mechanic to compensate for wide play and as it is now empire size is too weak to do the job. Making it much stronger may not be the perfect solution, but it is a solution

I don't think you're fully understanding the intention behind empire size. They've said quite clearly that it's not intended to make tall and wide exactly equal. It's just intended to reduce snowballing, which it does. Without empire size, if you double the size of your empire while doubling your science and unity output, you double your rate of acquiring technologies and traditions. With empire size, you double your size and output but your rate of acquiring new technologies and traditions doesn't double, but it does increase.

If empire size penalties are so intense that expanding while maintaining the same ratio of science and unity output actually results in a net loss, it's failing to achieve its goal. That's never been the intention, regardless of how much a portion of the player base wants it. Getting bigger and investing in expansion should always be rewarding. If choosing to do nothing instead of expanding is ever the better choice, the game will have taken a massive step backwards, not forwards.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you want the tall play style to be a proper strategy that's on par with wide, there needs to be two things.

First, pop growth has to be decoupled from colony count.

Second, there has to be mechanics that expand upwards that are as powerful and interesting as wide expansion is.

You can tweak empire size all you want, but that's not the proper path forward if the goal is to make tall equal to wide.

i don't think you quite get what the problem is. Yes empire size is a rubber ban mechanic, but the presence of said rubber band is necessary to make tall play viable. And as it is now it it fails to do it's job.

There is something you don't understand. Yes If empire size penalties are so intense that expanding while maintaining the same ratio of science and unity output actually results in a net loss or even stagnates, it's achieving its goal. That's the intention, and it is how it works in almost every 4x game for a reason, regardless of how much a portion of the player base whine about it. Getting bigger and investing in expansion will always be rewarding even if tech and unity stagnate because even without it you would still have a bigger economy more planets, more resources, more ships. ETC. In this scenario, not expanding and focusing on tech and unity is not necessarily more powerful, just differently powerful.

There may be other solutions, but rubber bands still is A solution. It is a well-proven method we see in most 4X games

 

[HFY]

And the pop reduction was mostly introduced to reduce late-game lag. in that objective it worked very well.

Compared to 1.x the current game inflating pop count by a huge proportion.

It's not as much pop inflation as 2.8 had, but there are a lot more pops in 3.4 than there were in 1.9

 

[SeraphAscending]

i don't think you quite get what the problem is. Yes empire size is a rubber ban mechanic, but the presence of said rubber band is necessary to make tall play viable. And as it is now it it fails to do it's job.

There is something you don't understand. Yes If empire size penalties are so intense that expanding while maintaining the same ratio of science and unity output actually results in a net loss or even stagnates, it's achieving its goal. That's the intention, and it is how it works in almost every 4x game for a reason, regardless of how much a portion of the player base whine about it. Getting bigger and investing in expansion will always be rewarding even if tech and unity stagnate because even without it you would still have a bigger economy more planets, more resources, more ships. ETC. In this scenario, not expanding and focusing on tech and unity is not necessarily more powerful, just differently powerful.

There may be other solutions, but rubber bands still is A solution. It is a well-proven method we see in most 4X games

As much as i am a fan of tall play, i vehemently disagree that empire size / tech costs should increase so much by playing wide that you are effectively losing speed.

Especially for techs. For unity, you have a point, but not for tech. Having twice the amount of identical researchers should not make you progress slower than before. That makes no sense, is unimmersive and kind of a brutal hacking of a strategy for balance's sake.

I agree with @Ludaire that this isn't on empire size alone to fix, but more vertical expansion that wide play can't afford, because it costs the only truly limited resource: Influence.
But that is the problem. Horizontal expansion is always possible. You can always go and conquer, but you can't always build taller. That is locked behind ascension perks and techs and it is always very limited.
Stuff like effectively making your planets bigger (hydrocentric (+3), mastery of nature(+2)) are expensive as hell for very limited gain. Orbital rings are great, but they can also just give you +4.
So if you have a 3 planet empire the maximum you could add is a total of 27 districts and no building slots (because you usually hit the cap of buildings anyway on your core worlds) at the cost of some influence and 2(!) ascension perks. That is ridiculously expensive for 27 districts total. And even wide play with a core sector of 3 planets would likely build orbital rings there. So you're effectively paying 2AP for 15 more districts on your core worlds. That is a single conquered planet for wide play. At no AP cost.
But conquest comes with additional pops and pop growth. So it is even better.

There needs to be a significantly stronger influence-based planetary ascension-like mechanic.
But it should significantly increase your value per pop. The current planetary ascensions are way too expensive (even for tall) and too weak to do the job.

 

[Ikael]

I don't think that the aim of empire sprawl is to make tall viable. It can be fine-tuned in order to make mindless expansion more punishing (for example, by increasing colony sprawl the further from your capital said colony is located), but it would be a mistake to make expansion downright unprofitable.

The crux of the matter regarding tall, is that until the arrival of Planetary rings, the pop output is the same everywhere, with effects regarding "pop quality" (pop traits, planet modifiers, etc) being pitiful and mostly ignorable (only stability kinda matters. Kinda). The only investment worth diverting resources from your expansion efforts is the aforementioned planetary rings. Meanwhile, thanks to the habitability system, "wide" expansion is near infinite, and thanks to the housing system, "tall" expansion is (almost) infinite too.

This means that there is no reason to invest in making your pops more productive, for the right choice will always be to add more pops and call it a day. And there is no reason to concentrate your pops anywhere unless you build an arcology, either. So nope, no tall gameplay for you, no planet will ever be able to generate as many resources as a bunch of systems.

Until a deep economic / planet rework is tackled, all those problems will keep existing.

 

[Sutopia]

As much as i am a fan of tall play, i vehemently disagree that empire size / tech costs should increase so much by playing wide that you are effectively losing speed.

Especially for techs. For unity, you have a point, but not for tech. Having twice the amount of identical researchers should not make you progress slower than before. That makes no sense, is unimmersive and kind of a brutal hacking of a strategy for balance's sake.

I agree with @Ludaire that this isn't on empire size alone to fix, but more vertical expansion that wide play can't afford, because it costs the only truly limited resource: Influence.
But that is the problem. Horizontal expansion is always possible. You can always go and conquer, but you can't always build taller. That is locked behind ascension perks and techs and it is always very limited.
Stuff like effectively making your planets bigger (hydrocentric (+3), mastery of nature(+2)) are expensive as hell for very limited gain. Orbital rings are great, but they can also just give you +4.
So if you have a 3 planet empire the maximum you could add is a total of 27 districts and no building slots (because you usually hit the cap of buildings anyway on your core worlds) at the cost of some influence and 2(!) ascension perks. That is ridiculously expensive for 27 districts total. And even wide play with a core sector of 3 planets would likely build orbital rings there. So you're effectively paying 2AP for 15 more districts on your core worlds. That is a single conquered planet for wide play. At no AP cost.
But conquest comes with additional pops and pop growth. So it is even better.

There needs to be a significantly stronger influence-based planetary ascension-like mechanic.
But it should significantly increase your value per pop. The current planetary ascensions are way too expensive (even for tall) and too weak to do the job.

This tbh. The so-called rubber band mechanism doesn’t really do a good job since it’s not creating a diversity in playstyle but more of a pick-a-meta depending on how the balance numbers go, as we can see for current Stellaris implementation “wide” is still dominant strategy since the penalty is pathetic.

 

[SeraphAscending]

I don't think that the aim of empire sprawl is to make tall viable.

No, but an empire sprawl like mechanic is an absolute necessity to not have wide dominate everything easier.
If doubling your territory just straight up double your progress speed than wide is always superior to tall.

As i said, empire sprawl isn't the only mechanic that should be in play to make tall a viable strategy, but it is a necessary one.

We just desperately need more mechanisms to grow vertically instead of horizontally. Planetary rings are a step in the right direct, but a weak one. Same with Planetary ascensions (although that is even weaker).

This tbh. The so-called rubber band mechanism doesn’t really do a good job since it’s not creating a diversity in playstyle but more of a pick-a-meta depending on how the balance numbers go, as we can see for current Stellaris implementation “wide” is still dominant strategy since the penalty is pathetic.

Exactly. Not conquering is always an RP-decision, never an economic one, because more territory always makes you stronger and there is no other way to get stronger.

 

[HFY]

This tbh. The so-called rubber band mechanism doesn’t really do a good job since it’s not creating a diversity in playstyle but more of a pick-a-meta depending on how the balance numbers go, as we can see for current Stellaris implementation “wide” is still dominant strategy since the penalty is pathetic.

In Civ, there's a rubber-band mechanic: the cost of each tech is reduced by the number of civs you know who have that tech.

Rubber bands don't just apply friction to the leader, they pull the trailing civs up by reducing cost.

I don't think Stellaris has any rubber-band mechanics.

 

[SeraphAscending]

In Civ, there's a rubber-band mechanic: the cost of each tech is reduced by the number of civs you know who have that tech.

Rubber bands don't just apply friction to the leader, they pull the trailing civs up by reducing cost.

I don't think Stellaris has any rubber-band mechanics.

I also think research agreements are super weak.
20% research speed of tech somebody i share with?
If i already have +60% speed my speed only increases by 180%/160% = 9/8 = 1.125 => 12.5%
I am 12.5% faster researching tech someone has that i DELIBERATELY SHARE KNOWLEDGE WITH. This could be a reasonable rubber band mechanic.

I think diplomatic agreements should have varying effects depending on who the main beneficiary is.
The tech-weaker empire should have more research increase, but the other one might gain some diplo-weight or something - bonuses increasing the larger the discrepancy is.

 

[smile444]

As much as i am a fan of tall play, i vehemently disagree that empire size / tech costs should increase so much by playing wide that you are effectively losing speed.

Especially for techs. For unity, you have a point, but not for tech. Having twice the amount of identical researchers should not make you progress slower than before. That makes no sense, is unimmersive and kind of a brutal hacking of a strategy for balance's sake.

I agree with @Ludaire that this isn't on empire size alone to fix, but more vertical expansion that wide play can't afford, because it costs the only truly limited resource: Influence.
But that is the problem. Horizontal expansion is always possible. You can always go and conquer, but you can't always build taller. That is locked behind ascension perks and techs and it is always very limited.
Stuff like effectively making your planets bigger (hydrocentric (+3), mastery of nature(+2)) are expensive as hell for very limited gain. Orbital rings are great, but they can also just give you +4.
So if you have a 3 planet empire the maximum you could add is a total of 27 districts and no building slots (because you usually hit the cap of buildings anyway on your core worlds) at the cost of some influence and 2(!) ascension perks. That is ridiculously expensive for 27 districts total. And even wide play with a core sector of 3 planets would likely build orbital rings there. So you're effectively paying 2AP for 15 more districts on your core worlds. That is a single conquered planet for wide play. At no AP cost.
But conquest comes with additional pops and pop growth. So it is even better.

There needs to be a significantly stronger influence-based planetary ascension-like mechanic.
But it should significantly increase your value per pop. The current planetary ascensions are way too expensive (even for tall) and too weak to do the job.

I agree that there should be others ways to make Tall viable other than increasing tech costs, but I maintain that it is a solution that works. While we can discuss how much is too much, at the very least a wide empire shouldn't be able to out-tech or out-unity a tall empire. They should be behind on tech by a wide margin. Whether that means tech stagnation or just slower scaling depends on how they do it.

while increasing tech cost doesn't make sense rp wise, it is one example of realism having to cede to gameplay. As it stands tech is much more powerful than unity and I don't think it is possible to change that. If it makes anything better that is not the only place where that kind of decision appears in stellaris

If you have nothing contructive to respond you should stop making fallacious argumentation in order to incite a negative reaction ( appel to autority, evading argument...) That you like it or not Stellaris is not Civ 5. Restricting your expansion for the sake of emulating the infamous 4 city tall strategy will never work in a fonctional 4x strategy game. If your were not trolling you would be discuting how pacifism has been completly made uncompetitive by the soft pop's cap. and the general balance against it's opposed ethic.

if anything you're the one not adding to the discussion here, are you trolling? Plus I don't see your arguments either. Like it or not tech penalties is the standard of 4x games. I don't say another method can't be tried I'm just pointing out that yes it can be a method, one that proved to work whether you like it or not. It's as ubiquitous to this type of game as the tank healer dps trinity is to MMO. And you can cry that stellaris isn't Civ 5 all you want, it won't change that Civ 5 is only an example MOST 4X games do that. SO you can either grow up and accept it or bother someone else.

By the way pacifism isn't uncompetitive because of population soft cap. It's uncompetitive because tall is uncompetitive and it hinders military expension, and because pacifist ethics empire size bonus doesn't matter because empire size effects are too weak to affect anything until you reach the 1000+ pops

 

[Agathors]

I really don't get why you would say that tall play can never work in a functional 4x game.

Why would it not?
Why should it be impossible that investing your resources to heighten efficiency and avoiding lack of unity from spreading out too much could give you a fair shot?

Large empires face no additional challenges that should come from growing that big.
There is a reason large empires have always crumbled in human history. Too many players trying to get power, too large distances, too much cultural discrepancy and people do not "feel" like they are one empire. If they don't feel united, they will strive to become independent.
Literally all of those are entirely neglected by Stellaris as potential problems.
Being bigger literally always means that you get stronger. It shouldn't be that simple.

Wide play should be possible and powerful, but it should also be a challenge - not a snowball once you hit some very low critical mass.

4x= eXploration (materialist-spiritualist) eXpansion (pacifism-militarism) eXploitation (egalitarism-autoritarism) eXtermination (xenophile-xenophobe)


Tall and wide have no bearing in reality, It come from a design flaw from Civilization 5's failure to implement the one unit per tile rule that have forced the civ's dev to implement a shoddy band aid to fix their initial failure in the same light that the science-unity issue (1.9 ome planet stategy for example) or the pop cap (bye pacifism) that pds have done.
Why would you stop aquiring more ressource if you can afford the opportunity cost ? Why people like you want to play Stellairs if you don't want to deal with the eXpansion of a polity

Says the guy who simply adds a 'disagrees' to every single of my postings in the entire thread without bothering to make an objective argument to explain ...

Funny how now suddenly every single posting before yours has at least one 'disagree' . Is that what you're talking about?

Please stay on topic and respect the opinions of others, especially statements based on actual experience. Calling them trolls or otherwise for no good reason is uncalled for.

I respecfully disagreed with the theme of this thread and their adherents and made a constructive argumantation to back up my declared opposition that you should had know of if you had read my initial post in the first place.

 

[Sutopia]

I think artificial tech and unity impedance from size is not interesting at all since there is either only one sweet spot in the curve or it heavily prefers one side. For stellaris current numbers obviously favors expansion as pops = good.

Stellaris tall vs wide is not about this arbitrary impedance number but about how influence is spent to grow, either via building new starbase, improving existing colonies or laying claims to go to war. The middle option currently is very weak and why people say tall is not as good.

 

[smile444]

I think artificial tech and unity impedance from size is not interesting at all since there is either only one sweet spot in the curve or it heavily prefers one side. For stellaris current numbers obviously favors expansion as pops = good.

Stellaris tall vs wide is not about this arbitrary impedance number but about how influence is spent to grow, either via building new starbase, improving existing colonies or laying claims to go to war. The middle option currently is very weak and why people say tall is not as good.

it's less about this system being more interesting and more about the difficulty to come up with something new that efficiently solves the issue. And honestly any system will probably involve a negative feedback loop to horizontal expansion of some form.

4x= eXploration (materialist-spiritualist) eXpansion (pacifism-militarism) eXploitation (egalitarism-autoritarism) eXtermination (xenophile-xenophobe)


Tall and wide have no bearing in reality, It come from a design flaw from Civilization 5's failure to implement the one unit per tile rule that have forced the civ's dev to implement a shoddy band aid to fix their initial failure in the same light that the science-unity issue (1.9 ome planet stategy for example) or the pop cap (bye pacifism) that pds have done.
Why would you stop aquiring more ressource if you can afford the opportunity cost ? Why people like you want to play Stellairs if you don't want to deal with the eXpansion of a polity

I respecfully disagreed with the theme of this thread and their adherents and made a constructive argumantation to back up my declared opposition that you should had know of if you had read my initial post in the first place.

i don't know where you get that exploration is tied to materialism or spiritualist, or extermination to xenophile/xenophobe. It doesn't work that way.

Tal and wide may have no bearing on reality, but that's a moot point since it's a game. And for the last time tall-wide dichotomy isn't purely a Civ 5 thing it's a 4X thing. If you don't like that kind of gameplay, don't play 4X.

Why do YOU people want to play a 4X game if you don't want to deal with the mechanics of a 4X game is beyond me. You realize there are other means of expansion than war right ? That people like having alternative means of expansion?

The world of 4X isn't limited to Civ and Stellaris either.

Your argumentation is anything but constructive. You just whined that stellaris isn't Civ over and over like a broken record after you got corrected. That's your argument.

 

[Nevars]

This is a topic that has been in long debate, and for good reason. The very foundations of such a topic are easily debatable, anything further built upon said foundation then becomes a bit.. for lack of a better word, shaky. Know my words act as a point of furthering the thoughts of this debate, rather then being argumentative.

Firstly, we have to decide what is considered balanced. Should being wide always be more effective then being tall? Tall has a natural advantage: the fact you don't have to work for it. Being tall simply means not conquering or expanding too greatly, so it's easy to per say play tall in the most literal sense. To play wide you have natural competitors, other empires vying for territory, and thus must work harder for it. If you were to go into a game with the idea of playing tall, well no one's stopping you from doing just that. So in theory, were you to make the two perfectly balanced, where going wide gains you little to no real additional research or unity due to increasing empire sprawl, and it took considerable effort to gain said territory, then what's really the point of going wide? Being more powerful militarily speaking, perhaps, but technology as it stands is the ruler of Stellaris, as it increases literally everything by substantial amounts in the game. In what might be interpreted as balanced, wide would in such a world be considered the lesser choice, until you've gained a technological leap that enemies can never hope to catch up to, and thus tall having no longer any use.

To some this may be entertaining, (especially those who roleplay their empires as such) but most dislike the idea of not being rewarded for a hard won conquest, and in this case, potentially even -harming- you. (since it'll be at the cost of technology and unity) Should wide then be slightly better? Marginally? Or is it okay that being tall would be the most powerful route from a gameplay perspective?

So now that I've added some thoughts, I'm now going to focus on my opinions on the matter. Ultimately, I think there should be more benefits to playing tall - rather then nerfing playing wide to the ground, I think it should be focused on making tall more viable. To me, encouraging playing tall to such a degree it becomes meta is far worse then what we have currently. This game as it stands isn't one of intrigue, this game largely focuses on war. There isn't a whole lot to do if you aren't planning for war. Technology is gained to have the upper hand and go to war, economy is enhanced to go to war, fleets are prepared to go to war. Tall and war aren't exclusive, but there aren't many benefits to gain from war if you're playing tall. It'd be an overall pretty boring game for a long time if the game's early to mid game revolved around going tall.

I think the gap is certainly as it stands too wide (pun intended) in between the two, but I'd personally focus on enhancing/buffing tall, rather then nerfing wide. Bridging the gap between the two too much will encourage a play-style that this game just simply isn't built for. The game isn't designed to make things interesting outside of war. Even diplomacy mostly focuses on aspects of war, (or keeping others from warring with you) with anything outside of that being a simple press of a button. For example, trade agreements while aren't directly war related, they also don't make anything more interesting about managing your empire. Playing wide plays into what this game was designed for, space age warfare. If the game was more interesting during peace time, such as managing your empire in fascinating ways then I'd be uttering different words for certain.

How would I buff playing tall? One way is to give them a -proper- diplomatic stance. Maybe two or three, for different empires. As it stands, there's a few really great choices for those playing wide, but almost none for tall. Maybe another new diplomatic stance is in order as well, something which increases empire sprawl dramatically from colonies but also increases technology, among potentially other things. I mean some serious benefits, but also be brutal about the weakness so that wide can't properly utilize it.

That's at least an idea, perhaps I'll think more on it to see if I can add anything more later.

Haha good joke that playing tall doesn't need to work for it.

No, playing tall absolutely need to work toward it, you can't just sit on you own and expect that everything will be magically better.

Having fewer planet and system inherently make you generate less resource than empire bigger than you thus why playing tall isn't just sitting and do nothing like you strawmanning it to be.

Instead playing tall is to go for subjugation, whether through diplomacy or force, to outsources your basic resource gathering to subject (previously tributary, now almost any type of subject will do cuz you can fiddle with their contract) then focusing your own planet to produce advance resources.

This is properly tall play is, it need work, a lot of work to make it good and competitive against wide.

In my personal opinion, empire size mechanic currently is in good enough place, it need a bit more adjustment ofc but there is no need for major rework.

Though planetary ascension is kind of, not really worth much so adjusting or even reworking them would be welcome.

What really is the problem right now is that conquest is dirt cheep and big empire is unrealistically too stable, the recent buff to rebellion mechanic is a move to good direction so I'm content to wait for dev next move for now.

 

[SeraphAscending]

I agree that there should be others ways to make Tall viable other than increasing tech costs, but I maintain that it is a solution that works. While we can discuss how much is too much, at the very least a wide empire shouldn't be able to out-tech or out-unity a tall empire. They should be behind on tech by a wide margin. Whether that means tech stagnation or just slower scaling depends on how they do it.

I disagree with the wide-empire shouldn't out-tech tall - they should be roughly on par.
Having 4 times the amount of scientists shouldn't make you gain knowledge slower. Definitely not 4 times as fast, but absolutely not slower.

With Unity it's different. Having a large united empire should be orders of magnitudes harder than a united small empire.

Tall and wide have no bearing in reality

Yes, they do.
Especially in terms of unity.
Large empires fracture and fall apart reliably at some point. Some last longer than others, but a significant amount of large fast conquest-built empires have been crumbling within a few generations - if not dissolved immediately after the conquerer king died.

Smaller realms are inherently more stable - with the most significant threats to the status quo being external.

This is where i'd like to go with Stellaris.
Larger realms should face threats of rebellion and instability - those should be resolvable, but investment-intensive. Because that is the reality of large realms.
Smaller realms should have a much easier time dealing with internal issues and get to thrive in their stability. Their economy should be smaller in scale, but more efficient.

In my personal opinion, empire size mechanic currently is in good enough place, it need a bit more adjustment ofc but there is no need for major rework.

Though planetary ascension is kind of, not really worth much so adjusting or even reworking them would be welcome.

What really is the problem right now is that conquest is dirt cheep and big empire is unrealistically too stable, the recent buff to rebellion mechanic is a move to good direction so I'm content to wait for dev next move for now.

^ all of this.
Conquest is way easier than tall play. Not only do you just hit a ceiling in tall play very quickly (which wide also hits in their core sector - so no benefit there), but you also have to work for it even more to even stay competitive.

 

[nestorius]

This whole wide vs tall debate is a bit flawed I think. It shouldnt be that wide should be worse than tall in tech. In fact I would suggest Wide>Tall just that it shouldnt be such a difference. If you have 30 colonies and someone has 5 you should be able to out tech them and it shouldnt be that If the 5 has 1 research planet you need 6 research planets of the same level to compete. Its a complicated balancing thing I know but it just really shouldnt be that tall is better than wide in really anything.

 

[SeraphAscending]

This whole wide vs tall debate is a bit flawed I think. It shouldnt be that wide should be worse than tall in tech. In fact I would suggest Wide>Tall just that it shouldnt be such a difference. If you have 30 colonies and someone has 5 you should be able to out tech them and it shouldnt be that If the 5 has 1 research planet you need 6 research planets of the same level to compete. Its a complicated balancing thing I know but it just really shouldnt be that tall is better than wide in really anything.

Yeah, with tech i agree, Unity is an entirely different matter, though.

 

[Nevars]

This whole wide vs tall debate is a bit flawed I think. It shouldnt be that wide should be worse than tall in tech. In fact I would suggest Wide>Tall just that it shouldnt be such a difference. If you have 30 colonies and someone has 5 you should be able to out tech them and it shouldnt be that If the 5 has 1 research planet you need 6 research planets of the same level to compete. Its a complicated balancing thing I know but it just really shouldnt be that tall is better than wide in really anything.

Regarding tech, something like Imperator Rome tech mechanic make more sense tbh.

Just because you invented something, it doesn't means that your entire empire would instantly get benefit from that (well you get general tiny buff from tech in I;R) but you need to implement it too which cost gold (to adopt the invention, in Stellaris case gold would be energy credit) scaling with your size to represent how expensive adopting invention and implementing it across the entire empire is.

 

[SeraphAscending]

Regarding tech, something like Imperator Rome tech mechanic make more sense tbh.

Just because you invented something, it doesn't means that your entire empire would instantly get benefit from that (well you get general tiny buff from tech in I;R) but you need to implement it too which cost gold (to adopt the invention, in Stellaris case gold would be energy credit) scaling with your size to represent how expensive adopting invention and implementing it across the entire empire is.

That sounds interesting, would require a significant economy adaptation, though.
Because that makes energy credits way more important and also just adds new costs without adding new income.

 

[Nevars]

That sounds interesting, would require a significant economy adaptation, though.
Because that makes energy credits way more important and also just adds new costs without adding new income.

Might not required altering economy too much I think cuz from my experience, pass the very early game player are usually swimming in credit and just using it to buy other resources in market anyway.

 

[SeraphAscending]

Might not required altering economy too much I think cuz from my experience, pass the very early game player are usually swimming in credit and just using it to buy other resources in market anyway.

For me it's mostly the other way around.
I am swimming in other stuff and have to sell that for credits.

Just recently played a rockbreaker ME. So many minerals.... None of the AIs even wanted to take them off my hands for their resources...
Had +1k income and most the AIs were willing to give was like 40 EC in a monthly deal...
So i had to use the market a lot more than i had hoped.