Galaxy Size Discussion

[Kilmantor]

I want to talk about your expierences with galaxy size.

Usually my brain sais "more stars, more fun" - but I always make the expierence, that in the late midgame/lategame it gets kind of chaotic in large galaxies.

You have all these native empires popping up and you have so many of them that you even forget which one you wanted to enlighten and which one you wanted to conquer.

The AI-Empires often already scattered in varíous nations due to ethic conflicts and the AI is settling in the gaps between your systems, as you don't have enough influence to connect/close your borders everywhere with outposts. Also you just start to colonize randomly every planet you can find.

I always have to force myself to play in mid-size galaxies but I notice that every species, event, empire and native civ gets much more value this way. Also things like core planes or planets with special tiles are much more important.

Do we get the same amount of leviathans and events in every galaxy size or do they scale?

Is it just me or do you feel the same? What expieriences did you make and what is your favourite size you play with?

 

[FrosT37]

I've only played on the largest galaxies so far but I play with 25% habitable planets.

My only complaint is that there are too many primitive civilizations and monitoring them is a pain... They should at least cut that number in half and give us easier tools to monitor them.

 

[tobias.mb]

Do we get the same amount of leviathans and events in every galaxy size or do they scale?

A 1000 star galaxy will have more leviathans / special systems and generally nice stuff like pre-sentients.

 

[Your3rdShadow]

I always play on the largest setting, I start with about 16-19 Ai's. I never had any with an advanced start, i would, but without fail, every time i do, they start right next to me, and attack unprovoked as soon as we meet. I'm a bit of a wuss, because i typically restart until there's not 3 empires all sitting right next to me, I like my breathing room.

 

[Emraldis]

I always play on the largest setting, I start with about 16-19 Ai's. I never had any with an advanced start, i would, but without fail, every time i do, they start right next to me, and attack unprovoked as soon as we meet. I'm a bit of a wuss, because i typically restart until there's not 3 empires all sitting right next to me, I like my breathing room.

You can turn them starting beside you to off in the game settings...

 

[Mitchz95]

I use the 1,000 star galaxy with 25% habitable planets and only 5-6 other empires (half with advanced start). This way space still feels big, but each empire still feels like a proper "character".

 

[BIGTEX285]

I used to play on large galaxies, with 100% habitability, but after the mid-game everything just becomes so tedious. I find myself playing on medium galaxies, with 25% habitability, and enjoying games for much longer. I still wish I could turn down habitability even lower, something like 10-15%. I think it would make for a very engaging playthrough.

 

[Qoff]

I want to talk about your expierences with galaxy size.

Usually my brain sais "more stars, more fun" - but I always make the expierence, that in the late midgame/lategame it gets kind of chaotic in large galaxies.

You have all these native empires popping up and you have so many of them that you even forget which one you wanted to enlighten and which one you wanted to conquer.

The AI-Empires often already scattered in varíous nations due to ethic conflicts and the AI is settling in the gaps between your systems, as you don't have enough influence to connect/close your borders everywhere with outposts. Also you just start to colonize randomly every planet you can find.

I always have to force myself to play in mid-size galaxies but I notice that every species, event, empire and native civ gets much more value this way. Also things like core planes or planets with special tiles are much more important.

Do we get the same amount of leviathans and events in every galaxy size or do they scale?

Is it just me or do you feel the same? What expieriences did you make and what is your favourite size you play with?

I usually play in 800 stars galaxy but I can have fun only early and mid game, I hate late game in Stellaris and I finished just one single game in over 480 hours.

 

[FrosT37]

I use the 1,000 star galaxy with 25% habitable planets and only 5-6 other empires (half with advanced start). This way space still feels big, but each empire still feels like a proper "character".

I start with similar setups, but by 2300 there are empires popping everywhere because of primitives civilizations reaching the space age.

I used to play on large galaxies, with 100% habitability, but after the mid-game everything just becomes so tedious. I find myself playing on medium galaxies, with 25% habitability, and enjoying games for much longer. I still wish I could turn down habitability even lower, something like 10-15%. I think it would make for a very engaging playthrough.

If only habitability could be a continuuous slider instead of a 25% increment one...

 

[Kilmantor]

I use the 1,000 star galaxy with 25% habitable planets and only 5-6 other empires (half with advanced start). This way space still feels big, but each empire still feels like a proper "character".

Isn't your empire a patchwerk that way? dozenz of planets that are not connected with lots of free space?
In a 1000 galaxy this seems only really playable when you have a mod that erases the influence-maintenance on outposts.

 

[FrosT37]

Isn't your empire a patchwerk that way? dozenz of planets that are not connected with lots of free space?
In a 1000 galaxy this seems only really playable when you have a mod that erases the influence-maintenance on outposts.

Not necessarily. If you expand too far, the influence cost is atronomical (sometimes greater than 1000). Therefore, there is an incentive to colonize planets that are closer to your borders.

But yes, in the beginning you may have some "patchwork" until you get more border extrusion. To connect the patches, you have sometimes no choice but to conquer a primitive or colonize a very low habitability planet with droids.

When you get access to terraforming, avoiding patchwork is quite easy.

 

[The Shacks]

Always play largest, 25% habitability, usually 10-16 AI, 3/4 FE and around half advanced starts, non clustered. Tempted to play a smaller cramped galaxy though atleast once when 1.5 hits. Always found they were the more fun choice in Galciv 3, with the mehcanics of Banks it should be interesting.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I play 800 or 1,000 with less AI than the default setting. I found that it isn't the size of the galaxy that I don't like: it's how many AI there are and how tedious it is to manage relations with so many of them.

I also made a mod that slows down the rate that primitives develop. Unless they start the game as Machine, Atomic, or Early Space Age, they are probably going to stay primitive for the entire game.

 

[CocoCincinnati]

I always fall into the trap of bigger is better so always play 1000 stars as well. I generally set the # of AI's to between 12 and 16 but so far have kept habitable worlds at 100%. I suspect I'll lower that some once I get back into playing after Banks comes out. I agree with what others have said, primitives seem to be too numerous. I would like to see the system tweaked so that primitives very rarely "pop" into a full AI empire without help. The changes in Banks should help somewhat in dealing with primitives of different ethos but I hope for even more options in the future.

I would love to have an option where enlightening them doesn't make them an independent empire but rather just makes them a planet in your empire.

 

[Diezy]

The first ones were with 600/Eliptical, but then I moved on to 1000, either eliptical or spiral.

As for Habitable worlds, setting them to 500% didn't feel -that- crazy, and I suspected it might not work as intended. There are indeed more habitable worlds, but certainly not 5 times more.

So I checked the required worlds for Domination Victory and at size 600 it said said 100 planets for 100% and 164 planets for 500%, instead of the expected ~500!

EDIT: Also 25% Habitable worlds lists 74 required worlds for Domination Victory.

So the slider looks like a 75% worlds to 150(160?)% worlds, instead of the 25% to 500%.

 

[terrycloth]

I usually play with default settings, but sometimes I'll change them up. I did 1000 stars once and it was just too big, and the smallest setting was comically tiny.

One of the last games I played was using an 'insane galaxies' mod that had weirdly shaped galaxies that kind of confuse the empire placement routines? I ended up with 16 of the 19 empires in the galaxy all in my little corner, and had to leapfrog past them to colonize anything since I was a pacifist. x.x

I would love to have an option where enlightening them doesn't make them an independent empire but rather just makes them a planet in your empire.

That's called 'infiltration'.

 

[Your3rdShadow]

You can turn them starting beside you to off in the game settings...

Not originally

 

[stumason]

Up until recently, I played exclusively on 5k (with 200% habitable) star Galaxies, but run into the same problems as the OP (not to mention game slowdown!) - it all becomes a bit "much" so I start over...

Recently I started on smaller Galaxies - I think my new fav size is 2k.. much more manageable.

 

[LordStaufen]

How does the AI perform in a 25% habitable worlds context?

In many games i experienced that AI has way more problems to handle those kind of restrictions (like playing on low ressource spawns), and therefore struggles to compete with the player even more.

Is that a problem in Stellaris? Do you see any difference in the AI performance dependent on your game settings?

 

[Your3rdShadow]

Up until recently, I played exclusively on 5k (with 200% habitable) star Galaxies, but run into the same problems as the OP (not to mention game slowdown!) - it all becomes a bit "much" so I start over...

Recently I started on smaller Galaxies - I think my new fav size is 2k.. much more manageable.

I used to have late game lag, but I read elsewhere it was because of how many planets I had in sectors. I started keeping no more than 8 planets per sector and haven't had a problem since.