How fast should the average empire progress?

[khevtol]

I'm having trouble with figuring out what is 'on curve' for the average player empire and would really appreciate some help. I'm toying with a fun way of helping out 'tall' empires in my mod update, and I wanted to know how to balance things right.

• How many years does the average game go? Is the start of endgame crises a good marker?
  
  
• When do you think are the breakpoints for the stages of a game (early/mid/lategame/etc)
  
  
• Whats the expected mineral/energy income and ship limit for each stage of the game?
  
  
• About how many new colonies per decade is a fast/medium/slow expansion?
  
  
• How many planets does the average early/mid/lategame empire have?

 

[scaper12123]

The AI are a pretty good indication of what stage you should be at throughout the game. In the mid game you're most likely going to see a lot of AI have superior fleets due to their tendency to go past naval capacity because they have a lot of energy to spare. You may find yourself forced to do the same. By the mid game you should be among the top 5 or 10 contenders on the galactic stage, and if you aren't, then start either aggressively colonizing or building up your navy. When you're about a hundred years in, that's a good point to start ratcheting up your expansion

As for your questions, I feel like 300 years is a pretty complete game. They'll almost always be decided by that point. Each stage is maybe 100 years? Depends on how quickly and efficiently you research stuff. During the early-mid game, during peace time, you should aim for a consistent energy income of over 50 and a mineral income of several hundred; ships cost a lot so always prioritize energy whenever you can. Late game, if you play well, should see you with an energy income above 100 or 200 and a mineral income over 500. Fast expansion could be considered going over the core worlds limit for the sake of preparing more colonies or claiming space before others. This is advisable only if you expect peace for a while and have a significantly positive income. Otherwise, the best method I know for colonization is always having 4 developing colonies you control, building basic buildings on all the tiles you need for that planet (and possibly upgrading to an administrative building and building special buildings) and then handing that planet off to a sector so you can colonize another world. That should net you a reasonable rate of expansion. Lastly, a very efficient empire should have upwards of 5 to 10 planets in the beginning, and a late game empire (that's been proactive) should have upwards of 30 planets.

Sorry for the wall of text, but i hope that helps!

 

[Radically Right Wing]

I'm having trouble with figuring out what is 'on curve' for the average player empire and would really appreciate some help. I'm toying with a fun way of helping out 'tall' empires in my mod update, and I wanted to know how to balance things right.

• How many years does the average game go? Is the start of endgame crises a good marker?
  
  
• When do you think are the breakpoints for the stages of a game (early/mid/lategame/etc)
  
  
• Whats the expected mineral/energy income and ship limit for each stage of the game?
  
  
• About how many new colonies per decade is a fast/medium/slow expansion?
  
  
• How many planets does the average early/mid/lategame empire have?

I would not call End Game Crises the actual End Game, they are the beginning of the End Game and the War in Heaven that follows when the Fallen Empires wake up is the actual End Game. I have looked into this and I have broken down the game into stages according to what usually happens.

: 2200- 2275: Colonization Period: During this stage of the Game nations will settle and slowly expand their borders, colonize uninhabited planets, and towards the end of the age is when wars will first start to break out. Alliances and Federations form during this Era, larger nations take shape partially through Conquest and partially through Colonization.

: 2275- 2350: Snowball Era: During this Era expansion mostly takes place through war. These are the Bullies in the Playground years, when the nations that started off lucky, or slightly larger than the rest, continue to eat their smaller neighbors and grow out of control, usually in the Galaxy you will end up with 2-5 Empires that dwarf all the rest, and dominate their respective branches of the Galaxy, these are the kings of their corner. This is reinforced by Empires gaining robots and foreign species during this period, which they can then use to colonize planets already within their borders, that they could not colonize with their founding species. Small Empires in the period will band together into defensive alliances, this period is sometimes marked by gridlock, as most of the Galaxy will become entwined in defensive alliances. Other times a specific Empire (usually the player Empire) will spiral so far out of control, that they will take over most of the Galaxy during this period.

:2350- 2425: Year of the Leviathan: During this period the Leviathans, are, for the most part, rounded up and killed. usually in the earlier part of the period. This is the Mid-Late Game just as the period before this was the Mid-Early game. Snowballing continues to happen, and the game can slow down a bit until the the 2400's. The End of this Era comes with the Arrival of an End Game Crisis. Once this arrives, everything is up in the air.

:2425- 2500: End Game: This Era usually begins when an End-Game Crisis arrives, once that takes place it will also trigger the Awakening of the Fallen Empires. This will often be the first time that a player-run Empire will have faced a serious threat since the Snowball Era. Usually the Awakened Empires will defeat the End-Game Crisis, or the player Empire will, following this the Galaxy will experience a War in Heaven. After one side has claimed victory, the game will usually come to a close, with a distinct victor of the Galaxy, overruling all others, by the year 2500. The game may continue past this point but a lot of it may just be mopping up. Repeatable techs are often being researched in this period, as normal techs have been mostly exhausted.

-Expected mineral and energy incomes vary wildly during the last two periods, so I really can't say for sure, as most of the mid-late game is dominated by a single Hegemonic Imperialist Empire that dwarfs everything around it.
-How many colonies do you settle each decade? For the Colonization period- most will settle I would say 2-4 colonies every ten years, in the early snowball Era, large Empires will quickly colonize all planets within their space as soon as they are able to, so maybe 3-5 in the first 20 or 30 years and then none for the rest of the game. Not much colonization in the last two periods.
- There is no average Empire starting in the Snowball Era, their is only the Snowball Bully Empires, and all of their dwarf cousins around them, which they will inevitably eat up.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

- There is no average Empire starting in the Snowball Era, their is only the Snowball Bully Empires, and all of their dwarf cousins around them, which they will inevitably eat up.

Unless you play as a Federation.

Federations take the place of a "snowball empire"- I'm currently very effectively carving up the "snowball empire bullies" using the support of a Federation that's of equal if not greater scale than either of the two remaining "snowball empires". My empire itself is fairly average in size- but that doesn't matter because any given war I have a huge number of other fleets taking on the enemy from the AI.

 

[Derp]

For the players talking about 300+ year games I can only assume they are playing on the absolute largest settings because even on Standard map sizes it's more or less over by 2300

 

[zanaikin]

Wow... those estimates are a LOT longer than what I'm used to.

It really depends on the difficulty. The harder the AIs and the larger the map, the longer it'll take you to expand.

I play on normal in default galaxy (800), and my estimates are usually:

Early game -- first 25-40 years. This is when you're still setting up your first wave of colonization (up to your max core systems, normally 5 but depends on government) into fully productive planets, and trying not to rely on sectors (and their terrible AI who mess up your construction). The exact duration depends on your play style. For example I usually play Plutocratic Oligarchy and transition into Pacifist Oligarchy (+10 core systems) after the first election, and I hold back on expansion and focus on tech-rushing until then.

Mid-Game -- when your initial planets are fully built up, minerals have stopped being a critical shortage (you only fall short when undertaking major fleet/colonial expansions), and your 2nd colonization wave is fully underway. This phase will last 50-70 years, and is the most boring one unless you're willing to wage wars (Pacifists, prepare to be bored to sleep). You should at least be making 200 minerals/month between core worlds and sectors when you enter this stage of the game, and your fleet could be anywhere between 50-100 capacity depending on how aggressively you play (deterrence fleets are smaller after all).

Late-Game -- After 90-100 years (on normal), you'll likely have enough tech to start fielding fully upgraded fleets, not to mention picking and choosing optimized weapon combinations rather than just "my best tech in whatever research line". This is when my fleets always start to reach and then exceed 50k, and I'm sitting on ~20 systems with a healthy chunk of the map (at least 25% of the galaxy shared between you, vassals, and protectorates; 33% if playing Federation). This is when I start being willing to provoke a Fallen Empire -- like settling that delicious size 25 holy world or taking strategic planets near the Militant Isolationists.

End-Game -- when you defeat both the Crisis and start waging successful invasions against Fallen Empires. I usually reach this by 120-150 years.

 

[Radically Right Wing]

For the players talking about 300+ year games I can only assume they are playing on the absolute largest settings because even on Standard map sizes it's more or less over by 2300

2300?
I didn't even know you could START a game that quickly! How do you get and game crises to appear if they usually only spawn after around 2350 to 2400?

 

[Radically Right Wing]

Yeah I just checked the wiki, it says that the Prethoryn Swarm only spawns between 2370 and 2500. So only playing until 2300 to me seems extremely short.

 

[Derp]

2300?
I didn't even know you could START a game that quickly! How do you get and game crises to appear if they usually only spawn after around 2350 to 2400?

They usually don't get started, which is why I liked the original crisis timing more.

Maybe I should just set all AI empires to advanced, see if the game lasts longer.

edit: current game if you're curious as to where I'm coming from

 

[Radically Right Wing]

They usually don't get started, which is why I liked the original crisis timing more.

Maybe I should just set all AI empires to advanced, see if the game lasts longer.

Well setting all the game AI to advanced would put you at a severe disadvantage, so you would have much tougher enemies at the start to fight. I think it would also make the game go quite a bit faster as well, since all the other Empires would start off at a certain high level of development. One thing I can say is that you will be pretty much guaranteed to get the Unbidden in that game, since they are summoned by researching the wrong techs.

 

[Radically Right Wing]

They usually don't get started, which is why I liked the original crisis timing more.

Maybe I should just set all AI empires to advanced, see if the game lasts longer.

edit: current game if you're curious as to where I'm coming from

If that is your current game that is pretty insane because I have never gotten that far in that short an amount of time tbh. I can see why you would say you finish the game in 150 years if you play that aggressivley. wow. How do you cede that many planets that quickly even? I can only take a handful of planets in a single war, you look like you annexed entire Empires in just a few years!

 

[Derp]

If that is your current game that is pretty insane because I have never gotten that far in that short an amount of time tbh. I can see why you would say you finish the game in 150 years if you play that aggressivley. wow. How do you cede that many planets that quickly even? I can only take a handful of planets in a single war, you look like you annexed entire Empires in just a few years!

Most of them never got large to begin with; combination of aggressive expansion to deny worlds and constant warfare. The few that did grow too large to easily annex I just chipped away at over a few decades. The FEs, I was surprised to find, could both be annexed completely in one war with plenty of points to spare.

It's just so easy in Stellaris to snowball out of control unless you get hard checked, and that is something that probably won't happen without advanced empires killing you in your cradle, or the moon aligning with all the planets to produce a galaxy full of Federation Builders who will unite against you. With the way minerals scale, and the total lack of any braking mechanism aside from the inconsequential Recently Conquered debuff, you can just keep expanding forever.

 

[Seryss]

Harder difficulties, and advanced starts only slow down the rate at which you conquer your first empire, after that you now have more resources/capacity, and a huge jump in ship tech for the next empire, which you'll win, and on it goes.

Debris research projects only further enable going wide, and little else, and honestly i think they really need to be looked at. There's nothing inherently wrong with building a larger fleet at the expense of less advanced ships, but one fleet battle, one space port, or even that one random construction ship can advance your tech decades. I've personally gone from fusion to antimatter, tier 2 kinetics to tier 4, and tier 2 plasma from nothing with just one war, never even had to research a thing - it's kind of ridiculous.

 

[MechaThumper]

edit: current game if you're curious as to where I'm coming from

"Free States"

Also is that a small map? Might explain why you are done so early. Your income/research/fleet limit seem very low for an empire bigger than 50-75 planets.

You would barely be done with 1/4th (1/8th) of the galaxy on a medium map (huge)

 

[Derp]

"Free States"

*cough*

Also is that a small map? Might explain why you are done so early. Your income/research/fleet limit seem very low for an empire bigger than 50-75 planets.

Medium map.

You would barely be done with 1/4th (1/8th) of the galaxy on a medium map (huge)

I'd love to give huge maps a shot someday when I have a better computer. As it stands, medium became almost unplayable near the end.

edit: as to low resources... well, once the game was clearly in the bag I mostly stopped caring about maximizing things. It's not like you need much tech to beat an FE.

 

[Nyrael]

There's no such things as average. You expand depending on the political situations and ethoses:
- MIL ethos means that it is a waste of ethic points not to expand
- Xenophobes should expand before they get cornered by Xenophilic federations
- Materialists can freely expand more as their bonuses will make up for rising research costs that come with expansions

So if you are in these three, expand fast. Otherwise, expand as political situation allows it.

 

[MechaThumper]

*cough*

Medium map.

I'd love to give huge maps a shot someday when I have a better computer. As it stands, medium became almost unplayable near the end.

edit: as to low resources... well, once the game was clearly in the bag I mostly stopped caring about maximizing things. It's not like you need much tech to beat an FE.

Gotcha, typically there's like .75 to 1 habitable planet per system in a galaxy (because of multi planet systems) so I usually see more colonized (though I tend to turtle a bit)

There's no such things as average. You expand depending on the political situations and ethoses:
- MIL ethos means that it is a waste of ethic points not to expand
- Xenophobes should expand before they get cornered by Xenophilic federations
- Materialists can freely expand more as their bonuses will make up for rising research costs that come with expansions

So if you are in these three, expand fast. Otherwise, expand as political situation allows it.

and Spiritualist ethos convergence only works when you are big so you should expand fast, Individualist works best when you have ethos divergence which is once again a big empire, pacifists get happiness bonuses, which means more minerals and slightly better ethos convergence so you can expand quicker, xenophiles get extra pops from other empires which you need empty planets and again helps with quicker expansion. I can come up with a reason for everything for why you should expand as quick as possible, your ethos mainly only determines how you expand.

 

[Derp]

Gotcha, typically there's like .75 to 1 habitable planet per system in a galaxy (because of multi planet systems) so I usually see more colonized (though I tend to turtle a bit)

Yeah, there are a lot of uncolonized worlds in my territory. Partially due to the aforementioned laziness and partially because I made the mistake of trying to vassalize + integrate some of the conq- er, liberated empires, and it's been tanking my influence for decades.

 

[Robotkiller]

Here is my empire in the early 2400's. I just had the unbidden spawn smack in the middle of my empire and I went into full FIRE EVERYTHING mode against them. Otherwise, my empire is an example of slowly building up, expanding, and building up again.