How to make Ecumenopolis and Ringworld great again?

[Arithmetician]

As to the “never fill them” refrain... I frequently use Corvee System (or its swaps) late game... with the influence cost no longer a factor, and the energy credits being inconsequential next to your broader economy, it’s often more efficient to (mostly) depopulate conquered planets and relocate their populations to your Core, especially to ecumenopoli and ringworlds. This way, they will benefit from the +30% production from jobs thanks to your capital buildings and the +20% ecumenopolis bonus, if applicable. But either way, you’ll likely bring in more resources this way than if you just let them stay on the conquered planets, especially if they were lower-population worlds to begin with. Meanwhile, your ecumenopoli and ringworlds will be filled in no time if you keep conquering and resettling.

If you depopulate worlds in this way, you’ll have a lot of empty building slots and not many pops to work them outside of your core... so you can spam resource silos, fortresses (if you have the tradition that gives them +3 unity) or other buildings that don’t require jobs to work in order to give your empire benefits from holding those planets.

 

[ZeeHero]

Not to mention math says an ecumenopolis can house WAY more people than most sci fi says it does.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

It's not a complaint about power. It's a complaint about empty planets. It doesn't break the gameplay, it breaks the narrative fantasy.

Sir, I see where your coming from, but I cannot disagree any harder, because there never was narrative fantasy from my experience. "Pops" are too vague and too loosely defined to have any connection to people. How many people is a Pop? who the hell knows, and we never will. How many people work on just a corvette? who the hell knows, and we never will. If you go by the Jobs on planets, a Pop is 1 person, which is hilariously stupid because that means your homeworld has like 40 people on it. The whole system is too impersonal to ever have a real connection with your civilization. Now if the Devs ever bothered to change Pops into real, countable numbers, like the DEI mod for Rome 2 Total War, I would agree with you entirely. If I knew how many of my citizens die every time I lose a Corvette, or a Destroyer, or a Battleship....if I knew how many soldiers were actually dying in ground invasions, then I would understand and agree with this thought process. But you don't, and you never will. A raiding fleet stealing 2 Pops, tells me f*** all, honestly. I have no context of how big a deal that is outside of how much production I lose.

 

[GloatingSwine]

"Pops" are too vague and too loosely defined to have any connection to people. How many people is a Pop? who the hell knows, and we never will. How many people work on just a corvette? who the hell knows, and we never will.

That's actually intentional so that "a pop" can represent completely different numbers of discrete individuals of different species depending on the fiction in your head for that species.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

That's actually intentional so that "a pop" can represent completely different numbers of discrete individuals of different species depending on the fiction in your head for that species.

See, that's a cop out answer, because Pops don't get consumed building ships, or troop transports. They only exist on planets. You don't lose pops when you lose a Fleet. You only suffer "Losses" when a planet gets bombed. That's not immersive, and it's dumb. Maybe your fine with just not really thinking about how little sense the Pop system actually makes, and that's fine. But then following the logic, a Pop can be any random ass nebulous number you want, so why complain about the pop changes? Just make your 5 pop planet equal 10 billion people, who cares, it's all fake meaningless numbers anyway.

Edit: Thumb this post down all you want, it does not matter. You know I'm right and just don't wanna hear it.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Sir, I see where your coming from, but I cannot disagree any harder, because there never was narrative fantasy from my experience. "Pops" are too vague and too loosely defined to have any connection to people. How many people is a Pop?

It's not about concrete population numbers like having 3 billion citizens on your planet. It's about having a paradise world full of all amenities sci-fi civilization can provide and 100 years later it has 4 pops and 50 empty jobs and that will never change until the game ends.

 

[Arithmetician]

It's not about concrete population numbers like having 3 billion citizens on your planet. It's about having a paradise world full of all amenities sci-fi civilization can provide and 100 years later it has 4 pops and 50 empty jobs and that will never change until the game ends.

It won’t have innate growth, yes. You can still easily fill it with forced resettlement/Corvee System, and for most empires you can either keep conquering to get those pops, or spin off a vassal for a few decades, when it’s to the point when your own growth would otherwise be essentially stalled, and then integrate reasonably well-populated worlds into your empire and move them over.

I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for. The problem is inherent to the 3.0 pop changes as long as the added growth requirement per pop is not set to zero on the slider. But that’s the work around, which makes you continue to develop your core worlds, at the expense of outlying or recently conquered worlds.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Huh? What do you mean?

All computer games are made of code, but not all game code is equally easy to change. Game designers use things referred to as Game Engines which basically work as frameworks- anything within the framework of the engine is usually easy enough to change (modifying variables), but anything that directly challenges the engine build is not. Sometimes it's 'this is very hard,' and sometimes 'this is functionally impossible without wrecking the game.' When you change the underlying engine, software habit of changing in unintended ways as well that cause second and third-order effects. In good-old CK2, for example, part of the engine required there be a Catholic Pope for key parts of the game to function, and so Catholicism could never truly be abolished.

In this case, whatever trade system the game that goes 'trade must reach the capital to be collected' may be in the 'hard to change' category.

 

[rubert]

I wonder how ecumenopolis and ring worlds would work if they get reduction to the amount of pop growth required for the new pop. Basically if a pop requires 300 growth before the new pop is spawned in Ecu it could be 150. It would increase the number of pops somewhat and depending on the exact balance there might have to be some restrictions on number of ecus/ring worlds which can get the reduction.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

It's not about concrete population numbers like having 3 billion citizens on your planet. It's about having a paradise world full of all amenities sci-fi civilization can provide and 100 years later it has 4 pops and 50 empty jobs and that will never change until the game ends.

Then I fail to understand why that's a problem at all. Because as I said in the beginning. My most recent campaign, after the changes, I was drowning in resources I couldn't spend fast enough, and I had only 7 planets, and captured 2 Ecu's...I even went through a Civil War that cost me quite a few pops, and still, at the end I was fine. If your economy is booming, why does it matter if you have a planet with 50 empty jobs? You already have more than you need to finish the game. All I hear is complaints about the Pops change, but every campaign I play, I experience no hindrance in my ability to be competitive. Besides that I've already explained why the Pops aren't remotely immersive either way, so ultimately, I don't see the problem.

 

[ZeeHero]

In my current game 2 ecumenopoli produce around 80% of my empires alloys and consumer goods, got more alloys than I know what to do with right now.

 

[TSBasilisk]

Then I fail to understand why that's a problem at all. Because as I said in the beginning. My most recent campaign, after the changes, I was drowning in resources I couldn't spend fast enough, and I had only 7 planets, and captured 2 Ecu's...I even went through a Civil War that cost me quite a few pops, and still, at the end I was fine. If your economy is booming, why does it matter if you have a planet with 50 empty jobs? You already have more than you need to finish the game. All I hear is complaints about the Pops change, but every campaign I play, I experience no hindrance in my ability to be competitive. Besides that I've already explained why the Pops aren't remotely immersive either way, so ultimately, I don't see the problem.

Yes, and how many mods are you playing with? You specifically mentioned the "Vazurean Menace" as the source of your second Ecu which is from a mod, not base game. As soon as you start tossing in mods, it becomes increasingly difficult to be sure whether your perfect game experience is the result of a well-designed game or a mod which balances out the very issue you're dismissing as non-existent.

The fundamental issue is that the Ecumenopolis and Ring World exist to soak up late-game pop growth from earlier patches which no longer exists.

 

[Franton]

Best way to fill Ecus is vacuuming pops with raiding bombardment and then assimilating them to your main species. The assimilation helps eliminate the species management hell, and also pops don't require influence to move around while being assimilated! In my current game I'm waging a war against half the galaxy that nets me around 10-20 pops every month (>1000 pops wihin the last 6 years alone).

 

[TheRevanchist25]

Yes, and how many mods are you playing with? You specifically mentioned the "Vazurean Menace" as the source of your second Ecu which is from a mod, not base game. As soon as you start tossing in mods, it becomes increasingly difficult to be sure whether your perfect game experience is the result of a well-designed game or a mod which balances out the very issue you're dismissing as non-existent.

The fundamental issue is that the Ecumenopolis and Ring World exist to soak up late-game pop growth from earlier patches which no longer exists.

Yes, I am aware that the Vazurean Menace is from a Mod. I also said that I had 2 fully populated Ecu's, something easily possible in vanilla. I had 7 fully populated planets on top of that. The only benefit from the Vazurans is their armor plating. None of my mods affect resource generation, their all aesthetic, story, or overhauls for systems like espionage, which don't affect economy. I was deep into the black long before I started making Megastructures. Once I finished those the game became laughable and I ended up stopping because it got boring with how easy it had become. I understand that not everyones gonna get those parameters for their set up, but The devs even said they adjusted resource gains to make up for the drop in Pop numbers when they did the update. I honestly think this is just a case of people thinking "it's different than what I'm use to" and push against it. Now I could be wrong, very possible. But what I do know, is all of my Stellaris experience since the Pop update has shown no real difference aside from the sheer number of pops.

 

[Bezborg]

All computer games are made of code, but not all game code is equally easy to change. Game designers use things referred to as Game Engines which basically work as frameworks- anything within the framework of the engine is usually easy enough to change (modifying variables), but anything that directly challenges the engine build is not. Sometimes it's 'this is very hard,' and sometimes 'this is functionally impossible without wrecking the game.' When you change the underlying engine, software habit of changing in unintended ways as well that cause second and third-order effects. In good-old CK2, for example, part of the engine required there be a Catholic Pope for key parts of the game to function, and so Catholicism could never truly be abolished.

In this case, whatever trade system the game that goes 'trade must reach the capital to be collected' may be in the 'hard to change' category.

Sure, but you said that in relation to a commercial district on an ecumenopolis, which is just fine and uncomplicated to code

 

[Ferrus Animus]

I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for. The problem is inherent to the 3.0 pop changes as long as the added growth requirement per pop is not set to zero on the slider. But that’s the work around, which makes you continue to develop your core worlds, at the expense of outlying or recently conquered worlds.

Exactly, and what it gets you is one full world and one or more new empty worlds.
Not a solution.

Then I fail to understand why that's a problem at all.

Exactly.
You're trying to view it froma "Am I still competetive" angle, which isn't the one this is visible from.
Stellaris is a game about a story. A story about growing a civilization, a space empire. Except the growing stops.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Sure, but you said that in relation to a commercial district on an ecumenopolis, which is just fine and uncomplicated to code

The same section I was quoting when I said that was also suggesting that Ecumenopoli be trade-collectors like the capital, which could be not-fine and complicated to code. Hence the 'interested, but could be issues' to the whole quote.

 

[Bezborg]

The same section I was quoting when I said that was also suggesting that Ecumenopoli be trade-collectors like the capital, which could be not-fine and complicated to code. Hence the 'interested, but could be issues' to the whole quote.

Oh I see, thank you. You meant ecumenopoli as secondary trade collectors to the capital. Yeah, that would be interesting.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

Exactly.
You're trying to view it froma "Am I still competetive" angle, which isn't the one this is visible from.
Stellaris is a game about a story. A story about growing a civilization, a space empire. Except the growing stops.

At the end of the day, it's a game sir, a game that you're focused on winning. All this bs window dressing about immersion and empire building is nonsense due to how the system currently functions. You wanna build an empire? just take over more people...or and here's a novel idea, turn up the damn pop slider instead. If empty planets are such a horrific deal to you, then that is your solution, period. Complaining about problems when solutions for them exist is just ridiculous. Is it ideal? No, but almost nothing in life is Ideal.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

Conquer -> Vaccum -> Subsidary -> Branch office -> integrate

You Core systems (Ecu, RingWorlds) are now full of pops