Energy districts and additional space for Ecumenoplis?

[malakhglitch]

I've been watching Foundation recently and I went back to do some research on Trantor. While Trantor required the output of 20+ agricultural worlds to support its populace, it had sufficient energy production via its "heat-sinks" that tapped the energy from the planet itself. Why is it then that Ecumenopolis don't have energy districts?

The other other thing is that Trantor had multiple underground layers, which in Stellaris terms would mean multiple additional districts. Should there not be a Decision to allow for the expansion of an Ecumenopolis?

 

[Incompetent]

Trantor in the novels has a maximum population density similar to modern-day Germany, so it isn't an ecumenopolis as we might imagine it, more of a planet-scale arcology. It probably could make enough food for itself, but doesn't because of (in-universe) political/comparative advantage reasons and (out-of-universe) the author wanted to play on the story of the rise and fall of the city of Rome (population over a million at the height of the empire, and only a few tens of thousands in its medieval nadir). An Earth-sized planet with many *trillions* of people would be a different story.

Resources in general are pretty abstracted in Stellaris, with "energy" being one of the worst offenders, because there are no transportation costs and you inherently have the ability to store lots of it (whereas energy storage is a huge challenge in real life). So I don't think it's ever going to make much sense from a physics perspective.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

The relic worlds you restore to ecumenopli in game have reactor pits and solar arrays that sorta just vanish once you fix up the place.

 

[Tetranet]

The relic worlds you restore to ecumenopli in game have reactor pits and solar arrays that sorta just vanish once you fix up the place.

It could be argued that their output is exclusively required to support the Ecumenopolis superstructure and is not available for export.

 

[Archael90]

Agree with energy districts on ecumenopolis. At the same time, RW could have huge solar panels, placed on huge area, overall all sides of RW are faceing the sun. Yet... this could destroy the balance.

 

[Mastikator]

Agree with energy districts on ecumenopolis. At the same time, RW could have huge solar panels, placed on huge area, overall all sides of RW are faceing the sun. Yet... this could destroy the balance.

??? hardly destroys any balance. You build ecumenopolis for super foundries, you build ring worlds for super tech districts and/or commercial districts. Energy districts can be found in huge quantities on planets. I think energy districts on ecus and RW would be on the weaker side (which is fine)

 

[Franton]

I'd say the main reason for the lack of energy districts in Stellaris is the complete lack of logistics: it is more efficient to specialize a planet on trade or energy production than producing it on a non-specialized planet or ECU. Likewise it is more efficient to use as many pops as possible on an ECU for industrial production, than spreading industrial production over the ECU and multiple planets.

I. e. there is no economic reason why anyone would want to use energy districts on an ECU in Stellaris.

Trantor needs to generate it's own energy, because there is no good (efficient) way to transport energy from elsewhere.

 

[rubert]

I prefer to think energy districts as massive energy production and storage facilities which are meant to for export and for usage elsewhere. Ecus (and other planets without energy districts) would still have production facilities for power which would be comparable to "normal" electricity. So ecus still have those huge reactor pits and others but they are used for local energy grid.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

Trantor in the novels has a maximum population density similar to modern-day Germany, so it isn't an ecumenopolis as we might imagine it, more of a planet-scale arcology. It probably could make enough food for itself, but doesn't because of (in-universe) political/comparative advantage reasons and (out-of-universe) the author wanted to play on the story of the rise and fall of the city of Rome (population over a million at the height of the empire, and only a few tens of thousands in its medieval nadir). An Earth-sized planet with many *trillions* of people would be a different story.

Resources in general are pretty abstracted in Stellaris, with "energy" being one of the worst offenders, because there are no transportation costs and you inherently have the ability to store lots of it (whereas energy storage is a huge challenge in real life). So I don't think it's ever going to make much sense from a physics perspective.

ecus are simply an extrapolation of large cities: a densely populated urbanised area maxed out to the scale of an entire planet. and while we've got countless power plants within city radius, all the farms and greenhouses are located on the countryside. so from that angle there should be generator districts in ecus. from the gameplay pov it might be wise keep it as it is otherwise ecus would get too self-sustainable (with trade builds you already can import pretty much everything you need. energy repeatables would lead to silly production amounts)

 

[malakhglitch]

Local energy grid? What local energy grid?

The moment an Ecumenopolis is built, whether via Arcology Project or by restoring a Relic World, it becomes energy deficient. Each building built, each robot/machine pop, each researcher/calculator job, etc. will cost you energy in maintenance. If there was a local energy grid providing self-sufficient energy for an Ecumenopolis then there should be no energy deficit, but the opposite is true. Ecumenopolis in Stellaris must rely on other planets to provide its energy needs.

 

[TSBasilisk]

Presumably the reactor pits, solar arrays, etc. cover the basic energy requirements of maintaining the ecumenopolis - a planet-wide water network, planet-wide atmosphere control, planet-wide transportation grid, etc.

 

[Kapi96]

Not heard of it before but it sounds like the author massively overestimated resource requirements there. Trantor is supposed to have 800+ districts, with an average population of 50m each, so that's a total population of over 40 billion. There's absolutely no way that would require 20+ planets dedicated to agriculture to feed it unless either they're all tiny planets or morbidly obese people!

Earth currently has a population of 7.9 billion, and can support itself food wise. Could surely support a higher population is food was better shared, despite starvation and shortages in some places there is a lot of excess food in others. But let's just say it supports 8 billion for now.

Roughly 50% of Earth's habitable land is used for agriculture. We could definitely make more efficient use of that land and you'd also expect an "agricultural world" to use more land for agriculture than Earth, so given both of those lets say you could produce 30% more than Earth. So one Earth sized planet could support a population of 10.4 billion (and I think that's a VERY conservative estimate).

So you should be able to provide food for a planet like Trantor with just 4 Earth sized agricultural worlds. No need for 20+


Rant aside, ecumenopoli do already provide energy via trade though. Plus not long after you start to get them up and running energy becomes ridiculously abundant anyway, so it's not really needed. Underground districts would be nice though. I once had the subterranian empire event on a planet, got an extra 9 max districts from that, converted it into an ecumenopolis thinking it would be a huge one and last the bonus districts

 

[malakhglitch]

Not heard of it before but it sounds like the author massively overestimated resource requirements there. Trantor is supposed to have 800+ districts, with an average population of 50m each, so that's a total population of over 40 billion. There's absolutely no way that would require 20+ planets dedicated to agriculture to feed it unless either they're all tiny planets or morbidly obese people!

Earth currently has a population of 7.9 billion, and can support itself food wise. Could surely support a higher population is food was better shared, despite starvation and shortages in some places there is a lot of excess food in others. But let's just say it supports 8 billion for now.

Roughly 50% of Earth's habitable land is used for agriculture. We could definitely make more efficient use of that land and you'd also expect an "agricultural world" to use more land for agriculture than Earth, so given both of those lets say you could produce 30% more than Earth. So one Earth sized planet could support a population of 10.4 billion (and I think that's a VERY conservative estimate).

So you should be able to provide food for a planet like Trantor with just 4 Earth sized agricultural worlds. No need for 20+


Rant aside, ecumenopoli do already provide energy via trade though. Plus not long after you start to get them up and running energy becomes ridiculously abundant anyway, so it's not really needed. Underground districts would be nice though. I once had the subterranian empire event on a planet, got an extra 9 max districts from that, converted it into an ecumenopolis thinking it would be a huge one and last the bonus districts

You have not heard of Asimov's Foundation Series? It's still a worthy read, dated though the concepts may be.

Huh... you committed genocide on the subterranean civilization by accident?

 

[MK1980]

Not heard of it before but it sounds like the author massively overestimated resource requirements there. Trantor is supposed to have 800+ districts, with an average population of 50m each, so that's a total population of over 40 billion. There's absolutely no way that would require 20+ planets dedicated to agriculture to feed it unless either they're all tiny planets or morbidly obese people!

...

note that Asimov wrote those books in the 1950s (or maybe even earlier? - the publishing history on my copy of "Foundation" indicates it was first published in 1951). back then 40 billion people must have sounded like a lot. the world population was something like 2.5 billion back then and it was not obvious that it would multiply so quickly within just a few decades. And when the exponential growth became obvious, there were actual scientists who predicted that we'd have mass starvation in the year 2000. so i guess we can forgive Asimov when the numbers in his stories are off/outdated.

i guess if he wrote the books with todays knowledge, he probably would have used a much higher number.

 

[Archael90]

Local energy grid? What local energy grid?

The moment an Ecumenopolis is built, whether via Arcology Project or by restoring a Relic World, it becomes energy deficient. Each building built, each robot/machine pop, each researcher/calculator job, etc. will cost you energy in maintenance. If there was a local energy grid providing self-sufficient energy for an Ecumenopolis then there should be no energy deficit, but the opposite is true. Ecumenopolis in Stellaris must rely on other planets to provide its energy needs.

Houses, factories, and apartaments needs energy, local, everyday activities needs energy. Local powerplants are existing, but huge empire founded buildings, districts needs energy, and maintenance, this is what energy districts are for.

 

[Kapi96]

You have not heard of Asimov's Foundation Series? It's still a worthy read, dated though the concepts may be.

Huh... you committed genocide on the subterranean civilization by accident?

I've heard of Asimov of course, but I'm not familiar with any of his actual books, just his laws of robotics.

It... wasn't an accident. I was playing xenohpobe so gladly slaughtered the subterraneans and stole their land, hence the extra 9 districts. Although those districts seem to have got lost in the shift to Ecumenopolis still I guess it destroys all planetary features and those were what gave it additional max districts.

 

[unmerged(50874)]

note that Asimov wrote those books in the 1950s (or maybe even earlier? - the publishing history on my copy of "Foundation" indicates it was first published in 1951). back then 40 billion people must have sounded like a lot. the world population was something like 2.5 billion back then and it was not obvious that it would multiply so quickly within just a few decades. And when the exponential growth became obvious, there were actual scientists who predicted that we'd have mass starvation in the year 2000. so i guess we can forgive Asimov when the numbers in his stories are off/outdated.

i guess if he wrote the books with todays knowledge, he probably would have used a much higher number.

The bigger issue is that Asimov wrote them before the Green Revolution. Worldwide agricultural production almost tripled between the 1940s and 1970. And there have been significant increases since 1970. His whole model for how much agriculture could be raised for export was off. Although I suppose it is odd that he apparently thought that they'd have faster than light travel and worldwide energy grids but still 1940s style agriculture.

 

[Franton]

I guess it destroys all planetary features

Indeed it does, but unfortunately it is often hard to tell which of the features are considered 'planetary'. The Stellaris Dev team may have a very clear idea on what is considered 'planetary' and what isn't, but if they actually published that definition anywhere, I haven't found it.

Although I suppose it is odd that he apparently thought that they'd have faster than light travel and worldwide energy grids but still 1940s style agriculture.

It's not that odd when you consider that agriculture output has hardly changed from 1900 to 1950 - machines only helped to reduce the number of farm hands needed, but they hardly increased the total output per ha.

Now that we've started using genetically modified crops which can grant a yield increase of 20% or more in some cases, we can anticipate future increasing outputs on a similar scale as in industry. But that is only a recent development, unthinkable in the 50s.

 

[exi123]

Authors aside...

For me the current way of creating an ecumenopolis in Stellaris feels very gamey and not like an empire growing planet(s) into vast industrial city lands. I have no problem when it would be possible to mix districts of all kinds, it makes zero sense to me that there is this clean cut between normal, urbanized planets and an ecumenopolis.

To stay with the OP, when i pick the Arcology Project perk it would be more logical to get access via technology or whatever to these districts on ALL planets. We could stil have a planetary decision to transform the planets city and industrial (and maybe normal agriculture into vetrtical agri arcologies) districts into the arcology ones, but mining and energy districts can stay as they are, why not? This would open a completely new way to play tall with existing tools and it would make the perk much more interesting. Same for the relic world: Every cleaned blocker should open an arcology slot on these planets, without the arcology perk the number is static (maybe half of the whole districts?)

Why not have skyscraper high foundry arcologies right next to deep mines extracting the resources for them? Sounds like a cool sci-fi concept for me.

 

[unmerged(50874)]

It's not that odd when you consider that agriculture output has hardly changed from 1900 to 1950 - machines only helped to reduce the number of farm hands needed, but they hardly increased the total output per ha.

Now that we've started using genetically modified crops which can grant a yield increase of 20% or more in some cases, we can anticipate future increasing outputs on a similar scale as in industry. But that is only a recent development, unthinkable in the 50s.

I have to admit, I'm a bit less convinced. Even to the physics of the 1940s, FTL travel was simply impossible and had to be handwaved away with technology so advanced it's basically magic. If Asimov can envision a technological revolution in propulsion that is simply impossible to known science, why not in agriculture?