How to make Ecumenopolis and Ringworld great again?

[苏白@夢璃花]

It's going to bounce back in value when admin sprawl is reworked.

Ecumenopoli and Ringworlds aren't just producers, they're efficient producers in terms of upkeep but especially admin sprawl. The strategic resources you're using are basically cutting off admin sprawl per X number of jobs supported. That's already significant now, because every point of admin sprawl in the later game is huge amounts of wasted science-beakers, but by the same token you don't want to waste pops on admin upkeep (which, itself, requires strategic resources to be efficient).

When bureaucrat spam is no longer a thing, Ecumenopoli won't just be better production centers, they'll be key to avoiding science cost inflation in mature empires.








A commercial/trade arcology is worth considering, though there may be some trade code that's not modification-friendly, but there's really no need for a strategic resource arcology. That's just building slots, which already exist on the planets you should be de-industrializing when moving pops to the arcology. Habitats especially will be your ideal refineries, thanks to their multiplication of space-based resources.




Outside of science, Ringworlds are basically the galaxy's refugee camp system that lets you benefit from waves of refugees and create a core economic base that's consolidated behind defenses and not vulnerable to being destroyed piecemeal by the crisis. It's something that lets you grow stronger as the AI falls, rather than have swarms upset your amenity and stability balances or become huge CG sinks for lack of jobs. It also puts your economic heart behind a secure defense line, rather than seeing your industrial core starved to death if you lose the frontier, ie if the Contingency spawns inside your economic bread basket and you go from having the strongest economy to dying in decades.

If you're good enough/strong enough that you can solo the crisis without AI, it's a waste. But the role is basically to achieve a compact self-sufficiency even if you lose much of your empire.

A commercial/trade arcology is possible as I mentioned, Planetary Diversity - More Arcologies already made it. It's just mabye the secondary economic center idea could be hard to implement. I think a strategic resource arcology is good because strategic resource buildings are so inefficient and if you want to spam habitats, it will cost your performance.

 

[苏白@夢璃花]

I like how people just ignore my post and continue to act like the new growth system is completely crippling when it's not. Worlds fill up just fine by themselves. You don't need breeder worlds, you don't need to vacuum pops with raiding bombardment. Do planets grow slightly slower than before? Yes. But it really isn't that much slower until the very late game at which point it doesn't matter because any player will have won the game by then.

Honestly don't get why so many people still say this even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

For poeple that tech rush and go to war often, there isn't huge difference, you just do what you did. But for people that have a more peaceful playstyle, to be fair, it does make a difference.

 

[TrotBot]

For poeple that tech rush and go to war often, there isn't huge difference, you just do what you did. But for people that have a more peaceful playstyle, to be fair, it does make a difference.

yeah the internal pop growth nerf has not been compensated with immigration buffs for societies at peace or anything like that to make the peaceful playstyle work like it used to. i think pleasure seeker utopian abundance could work but i've gotta find the right balance of artist jobs per planet.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

Ecu is a mid game research power house in a Rogue Servitor, My last game my Research Ecu was online 48 years in and was full around the 60 year mark.
It was giving me a 125% boost to my calculators.

 

[TSBasilisk]

I like how people just ignore my post and continue to act like the new growth system is completely crippling when it's not. Worlds fill up just fine by themselves. You don't need breeder worlds, you don't need to vacuum pops with raiding bombardment. Do planets grow slightly slower than before? Yes. But it really isn't that much slower until the very late game at which point it doesn't matter because any player will have won the game by then.

Honestly don't get why so many people still say this even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

You say it's not impossible to fill an ecumenopolis when the one you're posting is almost literally half-empty (88 pops with 74 vacant housing) because you've had to hyper-specialize your planet's construction to game the pop growth curve, along with specifically gene engineering for that rapid growth (Fertile and Rapid Breeders with Genetic Ascension for cloning) and then almost solely populating the world with that pop to ensure it's the one growing there. A lot of people against the growth mechanic aren't protesting because they don't know the meta to game it, they're protesting because they don't like the mechanic or the meta.

The answer I have on this remains the same: If the devs wanted to halve the pop numbers (they did; they said as much), they could have just literally halved them. Reduce all district housing/jobs by half, double the time it takes for a pop to grow, double their output. You get roughly the same economic power but with fewer pops and no arbitrary growth penalty to the empire as a whole.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

apparently the problem of the imbalance is not the scarcity of pops but the inflation of ecus/rings and planets

you're meant to conquer other empires and resettle all of their pops to them, not treating them just as an another fancy world in addition to your other fifty planets

 

[Bergest]

I don't know about ringworlds since I usually ignore them, but I reject the idea that Ecus are weak! Getting them mid-game is always the point where I will start to completely snowball out of control, and I usually play tall. Yes filling them is far more annoying with the Pop growth penalty (which is why I usually turn it down significantly) but mid-game it's still somewhat bearable if you follow a few central gameplay premises (prioritize pop growth buffs, prioritize getting robots, disable clerk jobs, settle every possible planet and build a lot of habitats, buy slave pops from the markets).

 

[blahmaster6k]

You say it's not impossible to fill an ecumenopolis when the one you're posting is almost literally half-empty (88 pops with 74 vacant housing) because you've had to hyper-specialize your planet's construction to game the pop growth curve, along with specifically gene engineering for that rapid growth (Fertile and Rapid Breeders with Genetic Ascension for cloning) and then almost solely populating the world with that pop to ensure it's the one growing there. A lot of people against the growth mechanic aren't protesting because they don't know the meta to game it, they're protesting because they don't like the mechanic or the meta.

The answer I have on this remains the same: If the devs wanted to halve the pop numbers (they did; they said as much), they could have just literally halved them. Reduce all district housing/jobs by half, double the time it takes for a pop to grow, double their output. You get roughly the same economic power but with fewer pops and no arbitrary growth penalty to the empire as a whole.

That's moving the goalposts. The post I replied to was saying that it was hard to even get 80 pops, and my planet has more than 80. I did no hyper specialization to manipulate the growth curve, there were that many city districts in the planet because I needed that many to have max building slots before I upgraded the planet from a relic world.

Rapid breeders is irrelevant because it's countered by the forced growth penalty, if I choose another species it still grows at 9 per month without any growth boosting traits, that's barely any difference. And just because it's got a ton of free capacity now doesn't mean it will always be that way - anyone can pre build city districts and say "wow, look at how empty my planet is!" It's only 2284, still the early game. Even before 3.0 planets didn't fill up completely that quickly, the planet in my screenshot will be full at more than 200 pops in the midgame.

Lastly, this was an entirely peaceful run, and I didn't even optimize my tech rush properly. I didn't go to war for the first time until well after completing my ecumenopolis.

You call playing well "gaming" the system, I call that playing the game properly. Don't blame the game if you can't get similar results, blame your own lack of skill and willingness to adapt.

 

[DeanTheDull]

A commercial/trade arcology is possible as I mentioned, Planetary Diversity - More Arcologies already made it. It's just mabye the secondary economic center idea could be hard to implement.

The trade collection is the difficulty I was referring to, yes.

Trade arcology is interesting, but has a separate issue in practice, which is the question of Ecu self-sufficiency. The design concept of an Ecumenopolis system is pretty clearly one where an empire is rewarded with extra efficiencies for building the entire empire around around providing resources for the Ecu to refine, with the catch that if the resources stop (say losing the colonial frontier in a war/robot rebellion) the ecu starves of food and minerals. First League origin and all that. This is in contrast to the Ringworlds which are the self-contained autarky economy package, where as long as you have a base level of minerals (say the Matter Decompressor unlocked by the same ascension), Ringworlds can cover all their own needs.

A Trade ecu runs afoul of that, because- once built- it basically becomes functionally self-sufficient. You wouldn't be building a trade ecu without a trade build, which means a trade federation (bonuses that maketrade economically viable), the trade federation policy (turning trade into both the energy and consumer goods needed for upkeep), and Mercantile (increasing the trade numbers and Merchant jobs from the presumed trade-district). With all your building slots unlocked, you can build hydroponics bays to cover the food and the refineries for the strate resources, with your only really necessary input being the mineral input for the refineries... which could well be bought with the trade.

Now, an optimization player wouldn't do that because it'd be more optimal to spam trade buildings for more merchant jobs and keep the empire structure, but the fact that you could do that illustrates the balance issue, since- even if the trade-ecu did lost their resource worlds- they could use their money to buy the minerals to change into something more self-sufficient.

Which an Ecu shouldn't be.

I think a strategic resource arcology is good because strategic resource buildings are so inefficient and if you want to spam habitats, it will cost your performance.

Arcology buildings are already covering for the strategic resource efficiency. The pops and energy/admin upkeep you are saving by moving former industrial worlds into the arcologies can be put to work on refineries for net strategic resource surplus. As you de-populate previously established planets, converting them into refinery worlds is a good way to make use of them as part of your overall 'resource worlds fuel your arcology.' Heck, you can put the refineries on the the Ecumenopoli already- they max the building slots, and benefit from the Ecu 20% bonus. That these take basic resources doesn't mean they're in-efficient.

If you need more basic resources to fuel your Ecu, the solution is a better balance of resource worlds not to make the Ecumenopolis require less resources or produce their own needs. Not-being self-sufficient is half the point of an Ecumenopoli build vis-a-vis a Ringworld build.

 

[ImaTomato]

I don't know about ringworlds since I usually ignore them, but I reject the idea that Ecus are weak! Getting them mid-game is always the point where I will start to completely snowball out of control, and I usually play tall. Yes filling them is far more annoying with the Pop growth penalty (which is why I usually turn it down significantly) but mid-game it's still somewhat bearable if you follow a few central gameplay premises (prioritize pop growth buffs, prioritize getting robots, disable clerk jobs, settle every possible planet and build a lot of habitats, buy slave pops from the markets).

You will snowball out of control even without them and unlike earlier verions of the game there is only minor advantage to them.They are better than normal worlds but not so much that they could be called strong.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Heck, you can put the refineries on the the Ecumenopoli already- they max the building slots, and benefit from the Ecu 20% bonus. That these take basic resources doesn't mean they're in-efficient.

I would still suggest making as many research labs as possible on your ecumenopolis, as research is by far the most important resource in the game other than alloys and getting the extra 20% (or 30% if former relic world) is incredibly important. Strategic resource gathering buildings also benefit from the mining world designation which is +25%, more than the ecumenopolis bonus.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I would still suggest making as many research labs as possible on your ecumenopolis, as research is by far the most important resource in the game other than alloys and getting the extra 20% (or 30% if former relic world) is incredibly important. Strategic resource gathering buildings also benefit from the mining world designation which is +25%, more than the ecumenopolis bonus.

Agreed, and also is validating the point- the Ecu should be the recipient of raw materials used to feed specialists, not the source. Leave the sourcing of resources to the resource colonies.

 

[DeanTheDull]

You will snowball out of control even without them and unlike earlier verions of the game there is only minor advantage to them.They are better than normal worlds but not so much that they could be called strong.

What about more pops and more output for fewer resources and fewer pops strikes you as weak?

 

[Ferrus Animus]

I feel like the people who talk about how bad the pop growth system is haven't actually played with the current default sliders at all, and only remember what it was like on 3.0 release. It's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. I never have problems filling up planets into the midgame and even lategame with hundreds of pops.

It is that bad.
The later a planet is colonized, a habitat/ringworld are created, the longer it takes for them to develop.
And given that they need to get past the "colony" stage, where certain buildings can't be built, and the growth increase due to planetary capacity doesn't apply, the can stay in that state for decades and more.
The game game literally has a by design victory of 2500, meaning the game is intended to last 300 years.
At 3 base growth the first pop (total) would take 34 months, roughly 3 years. Before the change that meant that it took a colony about 26 years to grow past the colony stage.
Now growth for colonies isn't really better, but growth costs grow intot he hundreds, meianign alter colonies take literally a century or two to grow on their own.

This is my empire capital's pop growth screen in 2286. Note the 10.57 organic growth and 5.6 monthly organic assembly. A synthetic empire will have those two numbers roughly swapped, ~10 assembly and ~5 growth per month. I may only have 334 pops in my empire at the time of this screenshot, but just with the base sliders, you're getting 50% extra base growth from pops (+1.50) and the pop cost is only 187.5% of what it was prior to the growth rework in 3.0. That means it only takes 25% longer to get each pop at this point in the game compared to before 3.0, and that's just taking into account base growth and ignoring the modifiers you can get on top of it. And my ecumenopolis is already more full than you seem to believe is possible to realistically achieve.

To claim that the rework makes it impossible to fill up an ecumenopolis is just flat out wrong.

What the one planet in your empire that grows from day 1 has decent population, what a counter-argument.

Dude, your capial is literally the one planet that's least negatively affected by the change to pop-growth because it gets the msot becfore the cost scales up and benefits from the boosts.

Do the same to an ecu made in 2386 without migration while going to war and we'll talk.

 

[blahmaster6k]

The game game literally has a by design victory of 2500, meaning the game is intended to last 300 years.

When you can be beating fallen empires before 2300 and have the galaxy conquered and defeated the crisis before 2400, there's very little point in playing past that, let alone until 2500.

Do the same to an ecu made in 2386 without migration while going to war and we'll talk.

It's also the most common use case. Most players will make their capital their first or only ecumenopolis whether or not they start with the remnants origin, simply because it's the best option. This doesn't invalidate my point at all, I'm using the most generally seen case.

And I'll reiterate, 100% of my games are over long before 2386, so no, I won't bother starting an ecumenopolis then because I'll be starting a new game instead.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

I like how people just ignore my post and continue to act like the new growth system is completely crippling when it's not. Worlds fill up just fine by themselves. You don't need breeder worlds, you don't need to vacuum pops with raiding bombardment. Do planets grow slightly slower than before? Yes. But it really isn't that much slower until the very late game at which point it doesn't matter because any player will have won the game by then.

Honestly don't get why so many people still say this even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

SIr these people are in total denial. I've been telling them there is no actual issue with the system repeatedly.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

This is the most american answer to a feature request on a videogame forum that I have ever seen.

Sir, this does not make you a rugged individual, and changing the pop slider to destroy your endgame speed is not "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps".

SIr, you realize you are complaining about a non issue, that is entirely fixable. You choosing to not take the steps to fix to fix it does not prove anything other than your own irrational stubbornness. This is not an issue where life has given you a bad hand and you require outside help to improve your situation and your just not getting it. You are entirely capable of the solution, the help was already given. You choose to whine about it instead.

 

[TrotBot]

SIr, you realize you are complaining about a non issue, that is entirely fixable. You choosing to not take the steps to fix to fix it does not prove anything other than your own irrational stubbornness. This is not an issue where life has given you a bad hand and you require outside help to improve your situation and your just not getting it. You are entirely capable of the solution, the help was already given. You choose to whine about it instead.

bro take a chill pill. why is a feature request such an ideological trigger for you. no one is challenging your self-sufficient life philosophy by asking for peaceful societies to have a way to grow without constant war. you don't want that? that's fine, but you can't say that just asking for it is them being spoiled or something. get off your high horse.

 

[TheRevanchist25]

bro take a chill pill. why is a feature request such an ideological trigger for you. no one is challenging your self-sufficient life philosophy by asking for peaceful societies to have a way to grow without constant war. you don't want that? that's fine, but you can't say that just asking for it is them being spoiled or something. get off your high horse.

Bro you need to chill, because the issue your complaining about, simply does not effing exist. You can say it does all you want, but it does not. I don't need war to have populated planets in my games. Period. The Pops are not an issue, and you simply refuse to accept that you're method of playing the game is resulting in the end problem, because your not playing efficiently. That's all there's to it. This isn't some nonsense about self sufficiency. or whatever bullcrap your spewing. You just refuse to adjust the game to suit your inefficient playstyle. You likewise apparently refuse to play the game more efficiently. Period. Your stubbornness is the problem, not the pops. You are whining about problems that are not real. You don't have some magical copy of the game that is different from mine. I have the same pop mechanics that you do, and none of my planets in my campaigns have pop issues. Ever. That is a fact. So if your having an issue, then the issue is on your end, not the bloody game.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

When you can be beating fallen empires before 2300 and have the galaxy conquered and defeated the crisis before 2400, there's very little point in playing past that, let alone until 2500.

So you are agreeing that colonies that are created after the early phase of the game liwill not fill by themselves, before the game ends?