How to make Ecumenopolis and Ringworld great again?
- Thread starter 苏白@夢璃花
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Terraform candidates are mostly created through an anomaly, which isn't limited. The more active you survey early on, the more terraforming candidates are you likely to find, and there is a slight exponential component because most other anomalies can only appear once, making terraforming candidates more and more likely to show up the more of the other anomalies have already been removed from the pool.
It's never a truly significant number, but there were games when I found 3 - 4.
What does this have to do with anything? Nothing you said contradicts what I said, which was that conquest is without exception the best way to win games of Stellaris.
Taking into account what you said, I would still consider them irrelevant.
What would need to change for them to become "relevant" in your view?
And do you ever build habitats?
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just pointed out why the devs should make blobbing and snowballing more difficult
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Honestly, I don't know how they would have to change to become relevant. Terraforming is very expensive without an ascension perk and takes 10 years and a substantial up-front energy cost, and all you get is one more normal planet. You get the terraforming tech at a time when you'd rather be investing into conquest and fleet power, not colonization. The only times I've ever bothered terraforming is when I decide to take World Shaper for some reason to make everything gaia planets for the resource boost, or machine/hive worlds. To min-max properly you should be colonizing everything you can and this theoretically includes terraforming candidates, but the stars have to align properly to even be able to make use of them for a couple reasons.
1) You have to research terraforming. Most of the time I roll the terraforming tech there are just better tech options available, at least until I've researched basically the entire society tree. This leaves the feature itself in an awkward spot. I would rather be getting starbase capacity, naval capacity, admin cap, habitability bonuses, building slots, resources from capital buildings, and so many other society techs over terraforming. This results in me researching it very late most games unless I'm playing a gestalt and want to get Machine or Hive worlds up and running.
2) You have to actually find a non-habitable planet that can be terraformed in order to want to take the tech in the first place. Low-habitability planets don't need to be terraformed because you can just plop bureaucrats and merchants on them or use them as breeder worlds, and not need to terraform them to be able to make very good use of them. This disincentivizes you from bothering with researching the tech.
If I had to give an answer, for terraforming candidates to become relevant the tech and projects would need to be cheaper as well as actually being common enough that there's a reason to make use of them. Because from my experience terraforming candidates hardly ever show up so they aren't even an option for expansion in the first place.
You asked about how I use habitats, I build habitats if I have influence to spare and no other viable expansion options, or if I'm playing Void Dwellers. Most of my games they come too late to be very relevant, as I get mega-engineering almost immediately after I get the habitat tech and all my influence goes into building megastructures and warring for the next 50 years. Likewise, my alloys are being poured into as many ships as I can afford (or are being banked for upcoming megastructures) by the time I get habitats, and so habitats just aren't very high on the priority list for me personally. Basically, the opportunity cost of building habitats is foregoing other things that usually make a bigger difference towards winning the game.
To me, they're like the cruisers of colonization tech if you aren't playing a VD empire. They're good for a little while and then become edged out by other options shortly after. One exception being if you get the Yuht precursor and are playing a machine empire, being able to spam habitats and get 4 pops on each one instantly is a pretty economical way to grow your empire.
That's a fine opinion to have, but not everyone agrees with it. Personally I have no problem with "blobbing and snowballing."
It's a matter of galaxy size and how high your rate on finding anomalies is. Terraforming Candidate is a repeatable anomaly, so if you discover all non-repeatable anomalies for barren worlds it's the only thing with a chance of spawning later in the cycle.
Of course the other question here is what's the point of the Grey Tempest reward of multiple worlds to terraform late game - go through all that effort and terraforming all the worlds in the L-Cluster is pointless, much like Terraforming Candidates.
Of course the other question here is what's the point of the Grey Tempest reward of multiple worlds to terraform late game - go through all that effort and terraforming all the worlds in the L-Cluster is pointless, much like Terraforming Candidates.
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This.
Even assuming population density only in the region of a typical 21st century Western Europe capital (which is by no means as dense as we could go; that isn't even entirely skyscrapers in fact) a Ecumenopolis would hold more than two trillion Humans.
On a Stellaris-level civilisation where you could hang skyscrapers from orbit instead of supporting them from the ground up, then quadrillions is possible.
Ringworlds heavily depend on the sun-ward radius for their population capacity - at Venus orbit, a 12,000 km tall Ringworld (diameter of Earth, ish) carries a surface area of 12,000,000m x 2Pi x 108,200,000,000m, which is 8.158x10^17m^2. Which in a bit more comprehensible measure, is in the region of 15 billion Earths.
Hard to estimate how much mass it would take, but the maximum - making it as thick as Earth to have Earthlike gravity by the old sheer amount of rock method, which is most certainly the heaviest way to do it, and therefore likely a massive over estimate - is 12,000,000m x (pi x 108,200,000,000m^2) x 12,000,000m x ~5,000 (Kg/m^3, which is 2.2x10^31 kg.
Or, ten solar masses. Which is a tiny fraction of 15 billion x 5.9722×10^24 kg, which demonstrates exactly why an interstellar civilisation would choose one, rather close to the host lightbulb, ringworld - sheer mass efficiency for housing space.
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What does this mean for Ringworlds and Ecumenopolis?
Basically, it should take thousands of years to fill them, which post-changes in 3.x Stellaris now does. But once you do fill them, you'll need to mass produce them to cope with future population growth...
Just played my first shattered ring game and the only real problem I had was that megaengineering didn't pop until the mid 2400s. I think shattered ring should have megaengineering as an option from the beginning. Then it would be worth it. It's too hit or miss now and you end up minmaxing like a mug.
lol that would be like turning on the god mode
the whole beauty of shattered ring is that you've got all the time and attention you need to spend on micro and minmaxing your homeworld while raiding the galaxy, too many worlds to manage requires too much attention
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megaengineering has a higher drop rate for anyone with a ruined megastructure in their space, which, as a shattered ring origin, is you. the only thing preventing you from seeing it early is that you're not researching the right prerequisites or using a voidcraft scientist. put a voidcraft scientist on your engineering research to increase droprate further. Make sure to research anti-gravity engineering when it comes up. other techs you also need to research before it drops: Zero Point Power, Citadels, Battleships. Also, the more citadels you have the higher the droprate. Even upgraded starbases that are not citadels increase the drop rate. The higher they are upgraded the more they increase the droprate and the more of them there are the more they increase the droprate.
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I have to second a couple of others here, the Euco and RW are not bad right now. I think that P-Dox just needs to slightly adjust districts in general to make them more in line with the new pop growth curves.
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Speak for yourself, I minmax every planet even in games where I have 50+, and it's not hard. It just takes a bit more time. Your empire is just too much more efficient if you properly build your planets to ignore it.
This. If you properly prioritize science and know how to manipulate your tech tree, even on builds that aren't tech rushes you should be hitting mega engineering around 2270 or sooner if you are lucky with Citadels showing up.
TrotBot has everything right here, but the one thing I will add is that you can further restrict your tech rolls to increase the likelihood of rolling mega engineering if you don't research any missiles or kinetic weapons. It's easier to do this if you don't plan to be going to war too much, but you can also rely entirely on advanced strike craft for your weapons until you get to mega engineering. Even better, if you can find battle debris of level 2 kinetics and missiles, you can permanently remove them from the random tech pool since you will always have them available as extra research options. This means you can get 4 or 5 engineering tech options that aren't weapons techs, which dramatically increases the odds for rolling the necessary battleships, citadels, and mega engineering techs.
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I don't think any of that applies when you're playing a hive (at 3x tech) aka a one planet challenge for the first half of the game or so
Even so, I had the pre-reqs for a good while before anything popped, which is why I said megastructures should be there already. But I do see y'alls point when looking at it from a min-max perspective so maybe not
Maybe the solution is some more origins for hives. The choices are pretty weak at the moment, especially from a narrative perspective.
I think the problem is more playing on 3x tech cost doing a one planet challenge than it is playing a hive mind. With such restrictive settings like that, I'm surprised the game is even remotely playable.
I'd suggest leading with that rather than sounding like you're just playing a normal game. Because if you're not getting mega engineering until the 2400s in a normal game there is something very wrong with the player. With your circumstances it's believable, not to mention completely irrelevant for anyone discussing normal game balance. Challenge runs have nothing to do with what most people would consider normal gameplay and balance is thrown out the window.
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Ringworlds should have all classes of industrial designations like planets and habitats, allowing us to fine tune the balance between consumer goods and alloy production.
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I feel like they should do the same thing with ecumenopolises and ring worlds that they did with Dyson spheres and matter decompressors. Buff them enormously but only let you build one. Yeah yeah, I know "but it's so artificial!" However, it's equally silly to be capable of spamming out a bunch of ecumenopolises or ring worlds when they're supposed to be unique and important. Coruscant wouldn't have been nearly as cool if there were a half dozen of them in Star Wars. I know in expanded media, there's more, but in the main movies, it's just the one, so it really stands out. I'd really like to see ring worlds and ecumenopolises be similarly awesome in Stellaris. I want the completion of my ecumenopolis to be a huge achievement that marks a turning point in the game. It shouldn't feel only a little more exciting than building another T3 capital building.
If you can only ever build/restore a single ecumenopolis and ring world, they can be much, much more powerful. An ecumenopolis could give you +300% growth and max immigration pull with no limit on immigration growth unlike other colonies. You could drop the rare resource requirements for districts. The districts could be double the size or even triple so you could support nearly 1,000 pops on it. That would make your singular ecumenopolis truly unique and meaningful.
Ring worlds could also get a boost to growth that they don't have now, a big boost to immigration pull, and maybe even larger resource bonuses.
Megastructures were greatly improved by the "you can only build one" limit, and I think that direction would really help ecumenopolises and ring worlds, especially given the new pop system.
If you can only ever build/restore a single ecumenopolis and ring world, they can be much, much more powerful. An ecumenopolis could give you +300% growth and max immigration pull with no limit on immigration growth unlike other colonies. You could drop the rare resource requirements for districts. The districts could be double the size or even triple so you could support nearly 1,000 pops on it. That would make your singular ecumenopolis truly unique and meaningful.
Ring worlds could also get a boost to growth that they don't have now, a big boost to immigration pull, and maybe even larger resource bonuses.
Megastructures were greatly improved by the "you can only build one" limit, and I think that direction would really help ecumenopolises and ring worlds, especially given the new pop system.
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The S-curve bonus can in no way overcome the empire-wide malus. If you do the math, pop growth goes from being effectively linear with colony count to close to a constant amount a year.
The problem with a constant annual amount when your colony count has grown 100-fold should be obvious.
Hence why you are funneling your empire's growth into a select few spots, and not growing 100 colonies simultaneously.
Now, that may not be possible if you are conquering hundreds of colonies, but if you're conquering hundreds of colonies you can (a) relocate the pops of hundreds of conquered colonies into your Ecumenopolis faster than you can build it, and (b) already winning.
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Yeah, but having 200 colonies creating 9 pop a year -- funneling to 1 colony still takes over a decade to fill the single ecu. A full ringworld will take another century. And now you have 195 colonies to go in addition to whatever else you've built in the meantime. And you've had to keep colonizing or accept even less growth per year as your empire malus grows.
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