Empire size mechanic feedback

[Stormcow]

I am a little late to the party but i have arrived now.

I am currently about 50 years into my first megacorp game and for the most part i am loving it. So much has changed and so much of it appears to be for the better.

i want to give some feed back about the empire size mechanic because its the only thing so far that i am struggling with.

In the past we were restricted from colonising too many systems with a flat 10% penalty to all production and other stuff to boot for every system over the cap. It was a heavy penalty and 1 i would always avoid by either delaying planting the new colony until i had teched up or dumping systems into sectors. while this was going on you could still spread out so long as you had the influence to put down starbases.

in my current game i hit the empire size cap fairly early on. To give myself some breathing space i picked up the expansion tree for the extra cap room. I have 4 planets and some space to expand into, but i am now running at -30% on a bunch of stuff.

i tweeted about this and the stellaris twitter told me, "its fine, you should be over the cap thats what you are supposed to do" but i disagree. 30% penaty to production is huge! i have this area between me and an FE just begging to be exploited but i really feel that i cannot and should not do that as it will only increase the 30% penalty.

while i have been waiting for tech (which i am assuming exists?) to increase the cap i have hit max on influence, energy, minerals and i have 5K alloys saved up with no reason to spend it without hurting my empire more.

how is everyone else handling this new mechanic? do people feel as strongly about it as i do? It feels like its artificially stopping me from growing when i have enough of every resource i could possibly need.

 

[corny.1234]

I have a empire cap of 80 and have now an empire size of 150. I'm doing just fine.
You'll need to develop your economy in order to compensate the losses.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

It's a soft cap and penalties aren't that bad, so going wide is still better. Just manage your growth and you'll be fine.

 

[Eldoran]

Its no cap in a hard sense. Its just a point at which inefficencies start to show up. But thats usually no problem as long as you develop your empire. Witch a size of 200 and a cap of 80 i were able to develop new techs in 18-24 months, faster than i was able when my empire was only 80 size big

 

[lew1984]

I'm massively over my cap also and still producing loads of resources .

 

[WhapXI]

but i am now running at -30% on a bunch of stuff

That isn't a result of the admin cap. All going over the cap does is increase tech, tradition, leader, and campaign costs. As long as you keep growing your energy, research, and unity output, you literally won't suffer at all from going wide.

The penalty is more severe for a megacorp so you don't want to go too far beyond the cap, but trying to stay within it the whole game is madness.

Not sure why you're running -30% on all production. Are you sure you aren't bankrupt of some upkeep resources?

 

[Stormcow]

As i said in the opening post, this is my first 2.2 playthrough so it is possible that i have mis read something or got it wrong. i am encouraged by some of your comments. I will press on and see how it all pans out.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Where are you getting that -30% to production? Sounds like martial law or something like that. It's not because of the empire size.

 

[Stormcow]

probably from mis reading the very long list of things that are actually affected. i will check when i get home. i will be really happy if i have mis read this

if anyone is near to there PC and can screen shot the tool tip text and clarify what is affected by being over empire size before i get home in 8 hours, please do let me know. I will monitor this thread.

Cheers
joe

 

[anamiac]

If we make the assumption that your science/unity is increasing linearly with the size of your empire, then we can actually determine when a bigger empire works better than a smaller one. It depends on how big your administrative cap is.

200 is the breaking point for Unity. If your admin cap is 200, then a size 200 empire producing 20 unity is going to be discovering traditions at the same rate as a size 600 empire producing 60 monthly unity.

333.33 is the breaking point for science. If your admin cap is 340+, a size 400 empire producing 400 science is going to gain technologies slightly faster than a size 800 empire producing 800 science. If the admin cap is 330- though, the bigger empire comes out ahead.