Empire Spread Not Pop: a possible way to resolve empire sprawl penalties

[Morcroft]

So the idea is probably simple in concept, hard to fine-tune, but it goes thusly: (it's a long one, thanks for bearing with)

1) Empire Sprawl is based off of the Planetary Government size (Planetary Administration, Planetary Capital, System Capital-Complex) and the distance in hyperlanes form the empire's capital world.
2) Population does not direction correspond to sprawl.

-So the idea is that the more advanced worlds a empire has the more resources it takes to keep them supplied and under control of the Player's/NPC's empire. As worlds advance in their planetary administration, the more they impact sprawl; thematically, it means that the planet/system has the infrastructure to potentially rebel and rule themselves.

-Additionally, the idea of the distance factor is to represent how systems that are further away from the Capital system are harder to control, similar to the concept behind piracy. Messages (news, orders, requests, etc) and ships (military and civilian) take longer to get there, so it's harder for the government to have a controlling influence.
--this also means that systems that have Gateways or wormholes help mitigate the sprawl as well.

-Removing the direct tie to Empire Sprawl with Population allows for more and easier ways to affect the Empire Sprawl. Since the population number is already meant to represent a larger number of people anyway, it would make sense to uncouple it from the sprawl.
--Reworks for vassals could be that while the number of planets a vassal has affects your sprawl, certain civics or traditions reduce that sprawl by a significant amount.
--Diplomats used to improve relations with vassals also contribute to the vassal's sprawl contribution.
--Similar rules apply for Protectorate empires, making it not debilitating to diplomatically influence and then integrate the empire.

-Since the class of the capital administration is still reliant on population it doesn't completely remove population as a factor, so high population worlds still contribute, though it does put an upper limit to how much a planet's population can contribute to the sprawl.
--While this means that there is no difference between 50 pops and 100 pops on a planet in terms of sprawl, that world already has ways that pops affect the empire's resource efficiency: food, minerals, consumer goods, energy, as well as crime, stability, and happiness.
--This can also help limit Habitat construction without overly hampering their use: habitats rarely go for huge populations and advanced capital buildings, and tend to be in already colonized systems, meaning their sprawl is minimal, but placing lots of them in their own systems (for example, to act like hyperlane choke-point bunker stations) will have a greater, but not prohibitive affect on sprawl.

-This can mean that government type, traits, civics, tech, and other factors might affect either the empire sprawl or population upkeep, but not both: the Expansion tree would mean much more to an empire trying to go wide ("−25% Empire Sprawl from Systems and Colonies") whereas the Harmony tree could be redone to focus entirely on population upkeep (-10% population up keep instead of -10% Empire sprawl from population).

-Incorporating the concept of Planetary Ascension could mean that each level of Ascension contributes to the Empire Sprawl, balancing the resource production of these advanced worlds with their affect on the efficiency of the empire.
--Similarly special planetary designations could have more or less affect on the sprawl, but in unique ways: Thrall worlds would contribute slightly more Empire sprawl than a regular world, but have less population upkeep and and even larger pop-growth rate factor; Penal Colonies have the same empire sprawl affects and pop upkeep reduction, but the crime reduction is significantly more in a set number of hyperlanes as well as reducing piracy in that same radius. Resort Worlds reduce Empire sprawl but have increased pop upkeep, in addition to the current benefits could have a increased happiness affect applied to colonies in a certain number of hyperlanes (everyone loves to vacation at Risa).
--This kind of special world designation could be used in other kinds of empires for similar effects: Bureaucratic worlds have increased pop upkeep but reduce empire sprawl in a certain radius of hyperlanes, Trade worlds improve the trade value of trade in all colonies but also increase the piracy pressure in a certain number of hyperlanes.
--Gestalt empires could have worlds that increase pop grow/construction, but have a higher maintenance cost (pops, buildings, or something, not sure where the upkeep would be best balanced), or worlds that produced army drones faster at the effort of costing more resources to produce each army, Synapse worlds that reduce empire sprawl but have increased pop upkeep, etc.

-Empire edicts could be used to increase the radius of effect for planetary designations, directly reduce empire sprawl, piracy, trade, etc.

-One additional rework that could be interesting is that spies in empires could have special objectives to increase the empire sprawl from a selected world, and once the stability got low enough incite rebellion (either regular pop or gestalt).

-This can all play into the larger concept of the Influence-Unity rework: Influence is what allows you to expand (unclaimed systems), make claims, influence other empires with the number of envoys/spies you have and how effective they are. Unity is the internal cohesion of the empire, affecting sprawl (the more you sprawl, the more unity you need), crime/piracy reduction, generating traditions, ascending planets, making mega-structures, and stability of worlds: unity producing buildings can improve stability based an a factor of how much unity is produced (meaning for example: the Police State civic could be made to improve stability and reduce crime from all of the enforcement buildings) as well as how happy the pops are.
--Gestalt empires could still improve their planetary stability and benefit from having unity-producing jobs, but not quite match the improvement that free-willed populations could.
--Worlds focusing on unity production might have a low happiness factor, but the stability is high so while they won't rebel or have inherent crime issues, they wouldn't produce as much as happy worlds.

-With the above rework in mind: Planetary stability can be used to affect empire sprawl.
--High-stability worlds have a lower impact on sprawl than low-stability worlds.
--Free-willed worlds of very happy citizens are less likely to rebel and work in the empire much easier than worlds with disgruntled pops.
--Planets with low-stability can be kept in line either by increasing the unity production (more temples, but now the world is becoming more Spiritualist) or increasing the enforcement presence (more justice centers, but the world is becoming more Authoritarian)."
--Gestalt planets with low-stability can rebel into their own gestalt empires, or have a chance to become inoperable (the pops die, but the planetary infrastructure is left in place) [Note: I thought about the idea of once the gestalt empire controls the planet again they'd get all the pops back, but then it'd be super easy to just have a single military unity parked over a world and every time it rebelled you'd just land them and take control again, like nothing had happened.]
--Worlds with focused designations (Research Worlds, Bureaucrat Worlds, Forge Worlds, etc) could still have their bonuses of output and specialist upkeep reduction, but empire would still need to dedicate at least some resources to either increasing stability or increasing happiness.
--Gestalt empires are inherently more stable than free-willed worlds unless they spread themselves too thin, but highly unified free-willed empires can spread farther but have a high resource upkeep to match.

-Influence is generated by several factors: your Ship Force Projection, the size of your empire, the number of traditions, you have, so on and so forth. The larger the empire you have the more influence you should be able to produce, but you have to spend the resources on maintaining that unity.
--Examples:
---Despotic authoritarian empires can rule with an iron first and have a lot of galactic influence, but could be easily destabilized if targeted correctly.
---Researched focused empires might have little galactic influence and tend to be smaller (fewer unity producing pops), but their advanced tech does still mean that other empires take them seriously (Tech and Ship Force Projection), and also require much less unity to be maintained.
---Spiritualist empires can spread far and have massive influence, but tend to be very behind in their technology and advanced resource production.
---Gestalt empires can be very influential as they are presented as a unified front, so as long as the Gestalt does not overreach they have little worry over deviancy and strike the middle balance between base-resource production and specialist-resource production (lots of drones mining is way easier to maintain than lots of drones making really advanced computer parts) and tend to grow internally at a much slower rate than free-willed empires.
---Genocidal Empires represent a real threat to the galaxy, so their influence is large (easier to lay claim or expand, though they can't use diplomats and generate far fewer envoys to use as spies), but have to spend more resources on maintaining their Ship Force Projection, because the AI empires will be much more willing to go to war against genocidal empires if that AI has a stronger Ship Force Projection; genocidal empires also have a slower population growth (on average) because they cannot incorporate other xenos into their empires as free pops or as slaves.

There are probably fringe cases that could exploit or fail drastically with these ideas, but that's where the number-crunchers and balance experts come in.

Thank you for reading, please feel free to throw ideas, complaints, questions (I'm going to cross-post this to reddit)

 

[Unseelie]

Oh, I would love to see a terrain based sprawl system!

 

[fourteenfour]

Distance from an empire capital is a valid concern but we have a sector system which in effect extends our influence through the use of highly skilled government officials who can be expected to ease the management load of the empire as a whole.

 

[Morcroft]

Distance from an empire capital is a valid concern but we have a sector system which in effect extends our influence through the use of highly skilled government officials who can be expected to ease the management load of the empire as a whole.

While true, the sector system is meant to show how much control we can exert over a given area, that doesn't represent how much effort it requires for that given area: sector governors have very little upkeep, and there's no cost to having a sector in general. The distance factor simulates the real-life affect of unsurpervised colonies like to be independant (think of all of the colonies and how much they rebelled): having a governor in that sector should matter more, even for "uninhabited" sectors, which in truth have inhabitors, but they live on tiny resource or research stations. Trade still flows through those sectors, regardless of inhabited planets, and at the very least a governor would mean a great deal more in pirate supression. IRL: it's not a glamorous job, either given to new, young administrators, or to administrators who might be in trouble, as it were.

 

[Derp]

While true, the sector system is meant to show how much control we can exert over a given area, that doesn't represent how much effort it requires for that given area: sector governors have very little upkeep, and there's no cost to having a sector in general. The distance factor simulates the real-life affect of unsurpervised colonies like to be independant (think of all of the colonies and how much they rebelled): having a governor in that sector should matter more, even for "uninhabited" sectors, which in truth have inhabitors, but they live on tiny resource or research stations. Trade still flows through those sectors, regardless of inhabited planets, and at the very least a governor would mean a great deal more in pirate supression. IRL: it's not a glamorous job, either given to new, young administrators, or to administrators who might be in trouble, as it were.

we're not playing EU or vicky; a "colony" in stellaris is not necessarily an oppressive, extractive regime meant to enrich the homeland at the expense of the natives, and they shouldn't be modeled that way by default.

 

[John MacWhat]

I proposed a similar idea

I do think there is value for Pops to be part of the Sprawl/Size/Spread calculation. That's because the point of the system is more than just balancing Wide and Tall, it's also about managing Big and rubber-banding it a little bit to make it more possible for smaller empires to catch up. As Pops are the most important source of economy in the game, it makes sense to keep them in your calculation for the rubber band mechanic.

 

[GloatingSwine]

So the idea is probably simple in concept, hard to fine-tune, but it goes thusly: (it's a long one, thanks for bearing with)

1) Empire Sprawl is based off of the Planetary Government size (Planetary Administration, Planetary Capital, System Capital-Complex) and the distance in hyperlanes form the empire's capital world.

Quit and restart every time you spawn on or near the edge of the galaxy I guess?

Distance-from-capital isn't a great mechanism for sprawl or divergence (which it used to be used for) because it leads to gamey responses like moving your capital to whatever is the most geographically central location or just generating galaxies over and over until you get a favourable start.

 

[John MacWhat]

Quit and restart every time you spawn on or near the edge of the galaxy I guess?

Distance-from-capital isn't a great mechanism for sprawl or divergence (which it used to be used for) because it leads to gamey responses like moving your capital to whatever is the most geographically central location or just generating galaxies over and over until you get a favourable start.

The easy solution to that isn't to count actual jump distance, just give additional sprawl based on whether a colony is in the home sector, any other sector, or not in a sector at all.

And I don't think it's gamey to give an actual reward for moving empire capitol, there should occasionally be circumstances where it makes sense for administrative purposes. It has happened historically

 

[Ludaire]

Quit and restart every time you spawn on or near the edge of the galaxy I guess?

Distance-from-capital isn't a great mechanism for sprawl or divergence (which it used to be used for) because it leads to gamey responses like moving your capital to whatever is the most geographically central location or just generating galaxies over and over until you get a favourable start.

Exactly. It also punishes you disproportionately if you end up with few planets nearby but plenty a bit farther a away, which you have zero control over.

Additionally, removing pops from the equation totally eliminates the main purpose of the size-based increases to techs, traditions, etc. It's a rubber banding effect, which means it needs to be based on how powerful your empire is, which is mainly based on pops. People keep trying to make it about wide/tall. It's not, and the fact that pops are the dominant factor in empire size makes that pretty clear. Rubber banding may indirectly help tall because it's a weaker strategy, but stop trying to make empire size a balancing element between wide and tall. If you want that, you really need to zero in on the fact that pop growth is tied almost 1-1 to number of planets. As long as that fact of growth remains true and pops are the main unit of power in the game, tall as most people imagine it cannot exist as a competitive strategy. It can only exist as a weaker strategy that just doesn't fall as far behind due to rubber banding.

 

[Unseelie]

Exactly. It also punishes you disproportionately if you end up with few planets nearby but plenty a bit farther a away, which you have zero control over.

Additionally, removing pops from the equation totally eliminates the main purpose of the size-based increases to techs, traditions, etc. It's a rubber banding effect, which means it needs to be based on how powerful your empire is, which is mainly based on pops. People keep trying to make it about wide/tall. It's not, and the fact that pops are the dominant factor in empire size makes that pretty clear. Rubber banding may indirectly help tall because it's a weaker strategy, but stop trying to make empire size a balancing element between wide and tall. If you want that, you really need to zero in on the fact that pop growth is tied almost 1-1 to number of planets. As long as that fact of growth remains true and pops are the main unit of power in the game, tall as most people imagine it cannot exist as a competitive strategy. It can only exist as a weaker strategy that just doesn't fall as far behind due to rubber banding.

This is mathematically un-true.
Right now, every colony has additive costs to sprawl. They could have multiplicative costs or exponential costs.
Given Pop sprawl costs plus colony sprawl costs, you see sprawl scale one way. If pop sprawl costs were multiplied by the number of planets, you'd see it grow a very different way. If you saw it raised to the number of planets, you'd see it grow an even different way.

One more planet being worth +1x growth matters not at all if it is worth ^2x sprawl.

 

[Mauer]

I used to play with a mod that increased sprawl exponentially for each capital building, it worked great.

The idea of high stability worlds costing less sprawl sounds terrific to me, because Pacifists get more stability and they're the ones more likely to play tall due to much less expansion, but sources and costs of stability would have to be rebalanced because it is currently too easy to get it high in most of your planets.

 

[Ludaire]

One more planet being worth +1x growth matters not at all if it is worth ^2x sprawl.

You could, in theory, create a sprawl system so punishing as to upend the "pops equal power" core of Stellaris. That would be totally changing the game's balance at a fundamental level, though. It would also likely mean that someone who twiddles their thumbs after settling a few nearby planets could end up as powerful as someone who conquers a third of the galaxy. That would be incredibly sad.

What's needed for tall to be a valid strategy is for it to be a separate, competing expansion strategy that goes vertical instead of horizontal. Specifically one that's in some way mutually exclusive with wide expansion such as using the same non-scalable resource like influence. Tall needs to be a different kind of big, not just another word for small. If tall is just another word for small yet it's equivalent to wide which is just another word for big, then you end up with the above situation where playing the game and not playing it are equally valid strategies, which isn't remotely appealing to me.

 

[Unseelie]

That would be incredibly sad.

Oh, I agree.
I'm just pointing out that it is entirely possible to have sprawl by planets have the whole range of outcomes. It could be exponential, it could be negative.

 

[Morcroft]

Quit and restart every time you spawn on or near the edge of the galaxy I guess?

Distance-from-capital isn't a great mechanism for sprawl or divergence (which it used to be used for) because it leads to gamey responses like moving your capital to whatever is the most geographically central location or just generating galaxies over and over until you get a favourable start.

I mean, both instances are real life things: empires of the past have explicitly moved their seat of government to equally large cities that are closer to the center of their empire, usually only staying in their original capital for religious reasons.

Edge is a little harder, because the real world analog is the ocean, and for empires that started next to an ocean but weren't mariners (rare but happened) it was definitely harder for them to expand, because they could only go one way. The advantage was (as long as they didn't meet any sea farers) they were completely protected on that side, so resources be more easily distributed on the pressured sides.

Exactly. It also punishes you disproportionately if you end up with few planets nearby but plenty a bit farther a away, which you have zero control over.

Additionally, removing pops from the equation totally eliminates the main purpose of the size-based increases to techs, traditions, etc. It's a rubber banding effect, which means it needs to be based on how powerful your empire is, which is mainly based on pops. People keep trying to make it about wide/tall. It's not, and the fact that pops are the dominant factor in empire size makes that pretty clear. Rubber banding may indirectly help tall because it's a weaker strategy, but stop trying to make empire size a balancing element between wide and tall. If you want that, you really need to zero in on the fact that pop growth is tied almost 1-1 to number of planets. As long as that fact of growth remains true and pops are the main unit of power in the game, tall as most people imagine it cannot exist as a competitive strategy. It can only exist as a weaker strategy that just doesn't fall as far behind due to rubber banding.

The pops are still part of the equation when it comes to the size of the planet's capital building (that doesn't change at all) and still affects how much stability and resources are being used on the planet. The idea here is to break the 1-1 dynamic, making it so at point pop size doesn't effect how far your empire can sprawl.
The Empire's influence and unity are also still directly reliant on pops, so the wide empire might have a higher sprawl penalty that are also generating more of the resources of every category to do that. If that gets mishandled, then yeah: it should suck.
There has to be a meaningful fail-case, and that has to come from several directions depending of factors. Wide empires gather more resources but are inherently harder to manage: bad management or bad empire planning should hurt you. Tall empires might get lots of science, but they can starve themselves of basic resources. Wa-focused empires are a real threat, but trying to do too much with too little, or abandoning the actual management of your empire should be a losing scenario.

Also I'd be more into Sectors if the base-game sectors didn't suck donkey nuts.

 

[Unseelie]

I don't think this system would mean that starting on the edge means you restart the game, unless starting with any bad start today makes you do the same. Start stuck behind a marauder or a fallen empire, and you restart. Start beside a fanatic purifier, restart. Stuck at the end of a galactic arm, with only one direction to expand..restart.

Or you just take that as a challenge and play the game. Both are viable ways to play.

 

[fourteenfour]

tl;dr - I am adverse to penalty driven game play. I also get lost in the weeds and hit the occasional tree and small woodland creatures.


Sprawl or Empire Size, I don't care what we call it, needs to be grossly simplified. It also needs to be something a player can manage. The idea of galaxy spanning empires not being able to manage themselves is ludicrous. Galactic Empires are scary because they are huge, have incredible resources, and tend to squish those who do not have them. They have incredible numbers of resource gatherers, researchers, and more.

In other words, what we should use Empire Size to stymie is empire wide bonuses we want to pay for edicts and traditions. For this however we need a complete rework of traditions so that they have far more impact than they currently have and expansion consumes the same resource needed to pay for them. I do not like the idea of buying and maintaining leaders with unity.

So unity. Unity should replace influence for claiming uncontested systems. It should also be used to maintain ownership over them. Now this early game puts you into the position, get an ascension perk quickly or lock down my space now. We can even use it to pay to start research.

So how do Tradition Costs. The formula is easy to understand and you can see how much unity is consumed. So if we want to slow early expansion we can use this as basis for determining what it should cost to expand your space. Long term we can use a similar process to slow down research. As in research points only are used to complete the technology being researched but unity is required to make a choice as to what research next. So are put into a situation where you choose a new tech to research or take a new tradition. To overcome this means a lot more unity jobs than research jobs; voila we have slowed the tech race

Current tradition costs... I list 5 because you need 5 to get to complete any tree.

300 + (8 * 0) ^1.8 = 300  = 300
300 + (8 * 1) ^1.8 = 342  = 642
300 + (8 * 2) ^1.8=  447  = 1088
300 + (8 * 3)^1.8 = 605  = 1694
300 + (8 * 4)^1.8 = 812  = 2506

So you need 6,230 unity points accrued to gain your first Ascension Perk. At 25 per turn that is 250 months. That assumes of course you don't improve your unity production.

So if it cost influence to take a new system and influence to settle a colony and each cost increases five to ten percent over the last we can scale it easily.

assuming your first sector has 15 system
100, 110, 121, 133, 146, 160, 176, 194, 215, 236, 250, 275, 303, 333, 366 and on.... 3,118 influence! You could even throw on a one or two unity per month management cost!

When it comes to technology, the influence cost to choose a new tech is ten percent of its base research cost. Research points are not accrued but you could expend them on researching items in your situation log. So your first tech choices are entirely free to choose what to research but when you complete them you are faced with a unity cost of 200-300 to choose the next tech to research; this is tier 1! Tier two are usually double and so on. As in it will always cost unity to do research.

* for what it is worth, I think research jobs are fabulously too efficient, +4/+4/+4 base per job needs to be +2/+2/+2 and bonuses need to be reduced a lot.

I would not have a system with any penalties. Its a trade. Either go through traditions, tech, or research, or favor one more than another or completely ignore one at the expense of the others.

The idea is traditions and ascension perks should be so important that you will sacrifice tech growth to get the next one. This might mean reducing the bonuses a technology equivalent provides to half or even single digits. Example instead of two bases per tech to have more you get only one but the tradition gains you double or triple that and the ascension perk gets five or more plus bonuses to building them.

 

[Pancakelord]

-With the above rework in mind: Planetary stability can be used to affect empire sprawl.
--High-stability worlds have a lower impact on sprawl than low-stability worlds.
--Free-willed worlds of very happy citizens are less likely to rebel and work in the empire much easier than worlds with disgruntled pops.
--Planets with low-stability can be kept in line either by increasing the unity production (more temples, but now the world is becoming more Spiritualist) or increasing the enforcement presence (more justice centers, but the world is becoming more Authoritarian)."
--Worlds with focused designations (Research Worlds, Bureaucrat Worlds, Forge Worlds, etc) could still have their bonuses of output and specialist upkeep reduction, but empire would still need to dedicate at least some resources to either increasing stability or increasing happiness.

I'm not really sure how this changes much, you already want max stability (and negative events only happen at <40/<20%) for the extra buffs to output (and the carried indirect buffs from pop happiness flow in to this too). It would basically boil down to

1. >50% stability then -x% colony and/or pop sprawl contribution
2. if <50% stability then +X unity upkeep per pop
   • (which has been suggested before in a few different ways - such as pops opposed to your governing ethics carrying a unity upkeep cost - something that would be very painful to overcome if you start conquering left and right and arent genocidal, or indoctrinating pops somehow)

In the (distant) past i'd have supported sprawl scaling with distance from capital, but quite honestly it doesnt make much sense in the current game. In the early game you wont be big enough for it to matter, whilst in the mid-late game, distance will collapse to 0 or near 0 with the addition of gateways and jump drives. That means it really only matters for a brief window between the ramp-up of your wide snowball and your acquisition of gateways or J-drives.

Sprawl's fine as it is now. IMO, It's being able to spam out tech worlds [and to a lesser degree, Alloy worlds and resource worlds] (whilst the AI cant), with pure upsides - there is no risk to packing billions of eggheads on to one planet and not expecting one of them to go nuts and birth cyber-cuthulu, or even something mundane like events that swing output on planets by a lot

• e.g. "Scientific Fiasco -30% SCI output on X world for Y years, after [flufftext]"
• And you can burn influence or unity to counteract this, via a planetary decision.
• But now you are facing real, internalised, costs for building tall. If you'd scattered those research labs across a ton of worlds, yes you'd have less output overall, but your -30% modifier would only affect one tiny piece of the pie, and you could ignore it.
  • I'd argue that taking a leaf out of HOI4's decentralised industrial networks would make for a good civic or tradition too. A society that intentionally builds un-specialised worlds, getting bonuses if its got a mix of jobs, and losing them (partly/fully) if it starts specialising a world.
• This could apply to any hyper specialised world radiantly via events
  • crop yield failures on agri worlds with >50% farm districts, or %chance by ranking by highest food output colonies in the empire, lots of performative ways to do it
  • union/strike movements on low-amenity worlds with high output
  • slave guilds take a slice of the pie (e.g. if you have slaver guilds) and reduce output for X years of all slaves.
  • Market slumps on trade worlds (-TV, merchant pops suicide)
  • Evidence of corruption, cost-cutting and systemic production faults (CGs) or Alloy-embrittlement (Alloys) on industrial worlds.
  • slave revolutions on thrall worlds

I'm waiting to see what the "situations" they teased will support as this is, broadly speaking, the kind of thing that would suit that well

• "sir we have a situation brewing on [one/several] agri worlds - it's "Blorg Blight!" what do we do? If we dont do something soon, our food production will slump sharply!
  • spend influence to get discount deals through the market or allies to weather it,
  • spend unity to force farms to change up their crops - making them immune but lowering yields on "farm-dense worlds"
  • spend science to find a suitable pesticide etc.
• Failure to stop it could cripple food supply on some worlds for years - potentially even add blockers to agri-worlds, disabling their farms, "Blighted Soil" or whatever, that take a long-ass time to clear.

(and then you find out it was a spy operation by the Blorg Idyl, all part of a clandestine plan to cripple your farming infrastructure and become food-dependent on them).

The easy solution to that isn't to count actual jump distance, just give additional sprawl based on whether a colony is in the home sector, any other sector, or not in a sector at all.

And I don't think it's gamey to give an actual reward for moving empire capitol, there should occasionally be circumstances where it makes sense for administrative purposes. It has happened historically

I think this is actually the way PATs should go, i.e. they should be deleted and worked in to "sector ascensions"(also, why do we have 2 mechanics called ascensions? Call them investments, or infrastructure or something else).

It would require some big sector rework - but being able to enhance your sectors would do more for buffing tall v wide, through unity, than handling things on a planetary level currently does.

A tall empire that's dumped all of its unity in to its home sector should have built up a mighty little chunk of space, whilst going wide means you cant pick and choose a few high-end worlds to upgrade amongst the ocean of mediocre ones, you have to work with the local sectors (and going wide means having many more - it also means more unity upkeep in governor hires).