"Empire Sprawl Penalty" Needs to be reworked

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It still costs building slots and jobs to keep your admin cap up with your expansion. It is not a pointless mechanic in that regard. I probably need one admin building per planet once it develops a bit. That’s a building that could be producing alloys or tech or whatever. So there is a trade off.

More admin overhead should require more administrator. Thats fair enough and I’m ok with the option to build more admin buildings. Admin for one planet or 100 planets is the same thing. Just scaled.

Of course the cost or the ease at which you can keep control of admin cap is something I would agree is too easy right now. So perhaps that’s something that can be changed.

I think the play tall brigade should release it should be hard to play tall and win for an empire. (Not human against AI) and stop looking for ways to nerf going larger, with more resources, population and territory you should be more powerful.

The speed of researching things was not slower in larger countries.
 
I really don't get why some people think limiting the buildings per colony is a good idea. The entire purpose of the admin cap mechanic is to penalize sprawling empires (it doesn't, but...).

Making the number of admin buildings per colony limited means you're required to spam colonies in order to stay under cap, which is entirely backasswards.
 
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I really don't get why some people think limiting the buildings per colony is a good idea. The entire purpose of the admin cap mechanic is to penalize sprawling empires (it doesn't, but...).

Making the number of admin buildings per colony limited means you're required to spam colonies in order to stay under cap, which is entirely backasswards.
Not really. The point is to rein in the bureaucrat spam without eliminating them entirely. It's kinda like how back when unity was first introduced, the only way to get it was to build the monument building. The problem was that the monument building was limited to one per planet. So even though unity costs went up with planets colonized, you were able to stay even with the curve if you built monuments. By treating admin buildings the same way, you would be able to break even with the sprawl curve if you didn't go too crazy with claiming systems, at least until pop growth caught up with you. But by that point, you likely have enough research and unity output to largely ignore the cap anyway.
 
I thought a lot of the Empire sprawl and Admin capacity Problem in the last days.
In the end i came the conclusion that it is broken.
While Empire sprawl and the penalty are ok the Admin capacity system alone is a good idea, but bad implementaded.
Its basically just a kind of tax you pay by micromanaging the construction of Admin Offices and wasting ressouces and pops on creating Admin capacity.
Replacing it by a slider like the one that decreases corruption in EU4 would just be the same without fewer Micromanagement.

The Admin capacity system should be integrated in another way.
While Empire sprawl as penalty for bigger empires is a good system, the balancing of bigger vs smaller empires should imho be done by another system.
 
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Just spam enough administrative offices to raise your admin cap to counter the empire sprawl.
so you say I should mainly focus on building more administrative offices as much as I can ? cause I have one in each of my worlds so I thought it should be enough (but apprently not :p)

P.S : I hate trying new PDX game ,No matter how good is a player and how many of their games played still when start a game anew it takes alot of efforts to figure out its mechanics :p
 
so you say I should mainly focus on building more administrative offices as much as I can ? cause I have one in each of my worlds so I thought it should be enough (but apprently not :p)

It depends on your Empire sprawl if 1 Admin building per planet alone is enough.
When you only care about the tech penalty there is a point at i think 25 researchers for normal empires where it is more efficient to decrease Empire sprawl than to add more researchers.
 
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so you say I should mainly focus on building more administrative offices as much as I can ? cause I have one in each of my worlds so I thought it should be enough (but apprently not

Why are you doing this "one in each of my worlds"? (except you are playing Hive than I could understand)
I guess you have realized that specialization is an import factor in Stellaris?

In a standard empire 1 bureaucrat produces 10 admin.
Giving the planet the designation/specialization "Bureaucratic Center"" increases output by 2 to 12 admin.
With a governor owning the trait Bureaucrat you gain another +10% admin which could raise the output of a single bureaucrat to 13.

Each building can employ 2 buraucrats, after an upgrade 5.
So it isn't really difficult to get 5x13 = 65 admin from one upgraded building. You can build quite a lot of these on a single planet alone (but usually I need around 6 admin planets when pop and planet count gets high).

From what I read, it is even easier for robot-empires (but I've never played them myself) and it is a bit different for Hives (but not difficult, either). While there might be times, especially early on or early midgame where your sprawl gets seriously above admin after you have expanded and conquered a lot, with a little effort it shouldn't be very difficult to get it under control again.
 
@Altruist
Thanks man ,Well as I said I'm a total noob and despite playing some other PDX games for long (especially CKII) and before starting this game I was thinking to myself "as a veteran of pdx games I'm gonna learn this thing in a matter of few hours" but now I realized how hard it can be to start a new game like this even for someone like me :p

Any ways I'm in the process of going through my second campaign as I lost the first one during my 1st war ,because I could not figure how to increase naval capacity (which when I left the game it was at 48) despite having resources to build more ships (well I was lacking in technology as well ,still producing corvetts) ,I blame empire sprawl as it occupied most of my attention and focus :p even in my newly started campaign Sprawl is becoming my problem again :(
 
Why are you doing this "one in each of my worlds"? (except you are playing Hive than I could understand)
If you have the Efficient Bureaucracy civic, admins produce stability, and then it can make sense to spread them out over your planets, specifically those that may be a little weak on stability. More to the point, assuming all planets are at >50% stability, each point grants an additional +0.6% to all resource output, so it makes sense to still actually produce a lot of resources on every planet with an admin center.

Without that civic I agree though: then it's better to focus your admins on just some planets and use planet designation to boost output.
 
I could not figure how to increase naval capacity
Early game you do that mostly with soldiers. Each adds 4 to your naval cap,, and also spawns 3 defense armies on that planet. Unfortunately you need to build Strongholds which require building slots and compete with your alloy and research production. Watch out for the "Global Defense Strategy" tech which unlocks the upgrade, called Fortress: this building houses 3 soldiers.

Other than that, there are a couple of techs to increase your naval cap. And there are Anchorage modules for your starbases that also increase cap - but you may not have all that many module slots available.

Besides, you can exceed your naval cap: it just increases upkeep for your ships. If you only do that during war, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
 
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From what I read, it is even easier for robot-empires
Only in that MEs (but not synth ascended) get access to a second upgrade, for a total of 8 jobs, and they produce 15 instead of 10 cap. However, MEs don't have a planet designation for admins, and to my knowledge no governor trait either. So it's almost as hard for them early game, considering the fact that they suffer from a much higher penalty when over cap.
 
I think the trick would be to make Empire Sprawl always provide a penalty, no matter what, and simply provide a greater penalty if above the admin cap. Following from there, the current Authority Modifiers would, instead of making the 'admin cap breached' penalty greater, simply make either the 'standard' Empire Sprawl penalty change, or change how much Empire Sprawl those empires generate.


I largely agree with you and I've even proposed that "sprawl" have three components -- two of which can be mitigated / solved by bureacrats && tech ... one of which can't be solved at all.

Perhaps we could simplify things in such a manner that:
  • Each additional researcher, priest, etc. contributes slightly less than the prior researcher, priest, etc. This way more is still "better" but there are diminishing returns to be had by each additional researcher [or even planet] you add to your empire.
  • For raw & manufactured goods [energy, minerals, food, alloys, etc.] maybe each sector could tax output at varying rates before it dumps what's left over into the empire treasury?
With the two above items combined you'd still have a situation where wider is better but the gains from going wider are marginal.
 
I'm gonna learn this thing in a matter of few hours
*grin
You'll rather need a few games to get a grip on it (although usually your first games will be perhaps only played until 2250 or so) but other than that If you start at lower difficulty levels, the game is actually kind of forgiving, you don't need a perfect run and you can correct quite some mistakes during your game.

The wiki is your friend. Quite handy also this tech tree.

because I could not figure how to increase naval capacity (which when I left the game it was at 48) despite having resources to build more ships
Well, it means you were able to build 48 corvettes and more... which is good.
For raising Naval Capacity there are several ways:
  • science, namely the green society research and within that Military Theory (due to the Stellaris research way this can be a bit fickle, though)
  • Starbases, look up anchorages and Naval Logistics Office
  • strongholds/fortresses as Franton pointed out
  • and if you are really desperate about NavCap... when gaining a perk within traditions you can go for Galactic Force Projection
Corvettes, by the way, are fine for quite a long time. It is, for example, wiser to use well outteched corvettes (2x +100 hull, cheaper production tech etc.) than just newly researched DDs or CCs. Sometimes I go as far as skipping DDs entirely.

So, and to avoid pirating this thread as a help thread this should do it as help, at least within this thread.
 
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