Idea: Ecumenopoleis (aka planetwide cities)

[BlackUmbrellas]

Hmmm. Yes. I would sort of agree. I suppose the degree of abstraction requires slightly screwy ways of thinking about what a pop actually is.

In which case, I would personally suggest that the best way of representing a city world would be, essentially, a set of (even) higher tier building that the current top tier.

They would obviously need reasonably significant resource generation, potentially akin to that of the current rare tech buildings. Having resources that are more difficult to generate like unity and influence be available on them would be sensible too.

New Galactic Food means that you could actually have no food production type buildings amongst these city world buildings. If possible, having a cost in food for them might be useful too (to simulate the greater population size.)

I don't think there should be any real requirements like habitability etc. beyond a tech/ascension barrier as is the case with habitats.

I could see it being a special terraforming-like option that actively changes the planet type and applies specific restrictions and bonuses, the same as an Orbital Habitat.

That way you can get a nice custom tileset, custom buildings, and specifically-balanced prices and production ranges for everything.

That, as a mechanic, would be a lot more flexible than a "add more layers of tiles!" one, too- Paradox could develop all sorts of specialized planetary roles if they wanted to so long as they had a mechanic to create them in place.

 

[Wyrm]

A possible way to handle this could be an ability to change a tile to "Heavily Urbanized" and have that tile swallow two pops for twice the output (and twice the food requirement). As a trade-off, make it void any pre-existing resources but instead allow upgrading buildings to the top-tiers that are otherwise restricted to the home world.

Just a thought

 

[Pern]

Hmm, you going about this the wrong way..how about this?
First of all why would anyone want a city on the whole planed? (yeah its cool. but never mind that)
Feels more like something that will can happen if the population of the planet keeps on growing, crap! to many people
- Alright lets build a higher tower

I mean its not an optimal situation to overcrowd a planed and force everyone to live in a massive city.
And game vise as the population grows (automatic, or you as a player manually builds it) the "normal" farm gets replaced with a high rise of some sort, looses the bonus from the land but can hold more people working in some sort of farm in the building (and so on for the other types of buildings).

And as all the tiles is replaced with city tiles it turns into a planet covered in a city; perhaps graphics can change over time aswell....

 

[Mitchz95]

First of all why would anyone want a city on the whole planed? (yeah its cool. but never mind that)

What other reason do we need? This is a sci-fi video game, and city planets like Coruscant are arguably a staple of the genre.

 

[AndragonLea]

Planets like the one we discuss usually happen when a planet either carries a lot of prestige (capital planets for multi planet empires) so that living there is a sign that you're somebody, or because a planet sits well placed on a node of resources/major trade routes/a rare strategic resource, which would make it the most likely place to stack any industry that needs those conditions.

They don't just happen, you're right, but as most of this stuff is just implied or omitted for simplicity in the game, we can't rely on it to generate such planets for us. That means it's usually easier to set some ground rules (only 1 planet wide city per X planets or pops, or only 1 in total, or only on pre existing hive world ruins, or whatever) and otherwise let the player decide where he would want it.

This also gels better with the strategic aspect of the game - it would be frustrating if your most valuable colony happened to have been generated far from your core systems between angry enemies or close enough to trigger a xenophobic Fallen who forces you to abandon it, for example.


As to why we would need it: we don't. We also don't need leviathans, plantoids, ring worlds or ascension perks.

We would want it for fun, variety and roleplaying purposes. ^^

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I could see it being a special terraforming-like option that actively changes the planet type and applies specific restrictions and bonuses, the same as an Orbital Habitat.

That way you can get a nice custom tileset, custom buildings, and specifically-balanced prices and production ranges for everything.

That, as a mechanic, would be a lot more flexible than a "add more layers of tiles!" one, too- Paradox could develop all sorts of specialized planetary roles if they wanted to so long as they had a mechanic to create them in place.

the problem with planet specs is that you're heavily layering the mechanics. We can already specialize planets through choice of structures, as well as various planetary bonus buildings, adjacency bonus buildings, edicts, and governors. A mechanically justifiable planetary specialization scheme (ie one thats not shitty) would move specializing worlds from an option towards mandatory in an optimization sense.

The existence of ringworlds also complicates things, as an 'advanced world' like a hive world have to be enough worse than a ringworld as to justify the ringworlds expensive construction scheme.

Perhaps a hive world might work as an event chain tied to racial traits - a hive mind or communal society with enough global food surplus getting the choice to do so.

 

[General Retreat]

Simple solution:
Could just be a capitol building upgrade that looks like a spire and requires 25 pops. Allows for tier 5 constructions as a previous poster suggested, and adds a happiness penalty to reflect squalor and overcrowding.

Complex solution:
Alter pops to a percentage system which allows a degree of overcrowding with a proportional degree of effectiveness. So a growing pop contributes resources, but to a diminished degree - 10% grown yields 10% , resources; 110% overgrown yields 110% resources. Similarly for food, 100% pops require 1 unit, 50% requires 0.5, 150% requires 1.5, etc. Unrest from the pop is also multiplied by the size - a megapop in a hive city is going to get very angry and set a lot of fires if it's left unhappy or starves.

By default a pop can only grow to 100%. This could be increased with tech and buildings. As an example, constructing an urban centre would increase the maximum cap for surrounding pops. The urban centres are designed to provide mass housing and bureaucratic support to planet population. Example stats:

• Metropolitan District: 1 energy, 1 mineral, +25% cap to adjacent tiles.
• Megalopolis Area: 2 energy, 2 mineral, +50% cap to adjacent pops.
• Ecumenopolis Region: 3 energy, 3 mineral, +100%.

By default you can only build up to a megalopolis. If a planet has 25 pops and at least 10 megalopolis areas, you can upgrade the capitol complex to a hive spire which upgrades the resources and adjacency bonuses of the capitol. This also unlocks the ecumenopolis upgrade. There could maybe be a hive world achievement for having a planet with a spire and 24 Ecumenopolis Regions.

As a practical example of the result of doing this:

An Ecumenopolis surrounded by 4 others results in the central tile getting a pop cap of 500%, or x5 to resource production. That also means that pop is consuming 5 units of food and producing 15 units of energy and minerals. An entire planet of them would effectively have a population that tapers to the edge of the grid and consumes an unholy amount of food in exchange for huge resource output.

 

[costevie]

clearly not a whole lot of blankies posting on this here forum

 

[AndragonLea]

What the heck is a blankie.

 

[Rhoanna]

Why wouldn't a planet with no tile blockers (except slums, I suppose), buildings on every tile, and pops on every tile already be a planet-wide city? You've already leveled mountains, cleared jungles, and melted glaciers. There's no more room for productive populations or buildings; the planet is arguably filled. More tech to cram more pops in could be justified (perhaps building more levels or something, but that might already be happening), but I'm not sure why it would be necessary, or easy to balance with ringworlds, habitats and planets. It probably couldn't cost much less than the 1/100 the ringworld cost per tile added without having significant drawbacks for use, though.

 

[Seomis]

The only mods I could find that used the word "ecumenopolis" in their descriptions were both... Lacking. Most importantly, the modders lack the ability to make a city world actually have more people living on it.

Gotta step up your search game, but even the two you found go a long way toward satisfying the OP's feature list (plus very nice planet art!). Other implementations include a handful of WH40K mods as well as ones that allow you to blanket a planet with "Megacity" buildings. If you go with a ringworld-like implementation (divide up the planet into quadrant "planets," each supporting 25 pops) as suggested here a couple times, the OP's entire list is theoretically moddable.

I definitely appreciate the general spirit behind the OP's suggestion, though. It strikes me as a solid "build tall" solution to throw into the mix, one that would be accessible far before the technology and resources for constructable ringworlds.

 

[Praetorian44]

Honestly, there are far more important things I would like to see the developers work on.

 

[Highlordelliot]

I think it might be possible to create something close to this with some planet modifiers and upgradable buildings representing the urbanization.

benefits: focuses on the centralization making it far more useful to the central authority
+generating lots of minerals and credits to represent a massive economy
+influence
+faster army and ship build speeds due to all the infrastructure and enormous population to draw on

downside: focuses on the liabilities of having a massive chunk of your empires power in one place.
-making sure its getting enough food so youll need dedicated agri worlds which force you break off fleets and build forts to defend
-if not properly cared for it can become a massive hotbed of anti government ethos based descent
-if any enemy can get through the worlds defenses they can deal a massive blow to your empire

 

[AvalancheZ250]

An ecumenopolis or planetwide city (or moonwide city) is a planet or moon that is completely covered by a city (except for possibly oceans, mountains or polar ice caps). These incredibly densely populated planets and moons host hundreds of billions to trillions of sentient beings and would consume vast resources of any interstellar nation. It would be cool to have them in the nothing so this is my idea. Actually I find it they're not being included in the utopia expansion.

Requirements:
-Researched the following technologies: Galactic Administration, Spacescrapers (new), Galactic Market, Supersolid Materials
-Inhabited planet or moon with at least 80% habitability for all species with full citizenship of your nation
-Planet or moon is already fully populated
-100000 minerals and 9000 energy credits (takes 10 years to built)
-Cannot be built on tomb worlds
-Planet or moon must have a planetary capital
Effects:
-Planet gains five "levels", which can be scrolled through (=5 times the amount of current tiles on planet)
Each level can be industrial (+50% credits and minerals) or habitational (+50% research) by choice. The uppermost level cannot be industrial.
-Planet consumes 10 times the food amount of a normal planet of the same size
-Each pop requires 2 times the consumer goods than normally required
-All buildings other than energy buildings on the planet require twice as much energy
-Ecumenopoleis have +10% ethics divergence, so your coreworlds should be safer to built one in than faraway planets
-Doubles the world's amount of unity
-Spaceports of ecumenopoleis produce everything twice as fast
Miscellaneous
-Fallen empires may have ecumenopoleis in their empire
-Purging an ecumenopolis gives twice the opinion malus for each pop purged
-If an ecumenopoleis is under blockade, it is cut off from the nation's food supply and will result in mass starvation
-Unlimited bombardment may cause levels of the ecumenopolis to collapse, causing the death of many pops, might trigger international incident
-May attract illegal immigrants, deporting them might cause an international incident
-Ecumenopoleis cannot be occupied, only blockaded
-Conquering an ecumenopolis always requires 100 warscore

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

I was thinking along the same lines, although rather than the ecumenopolis of Star Wars (Coruscant) I was thinking more about the Shield worlds of Halo. Essentially, they are planets that have undergone a "planet wide structural integrity replacement project", which is effectively giving a planet a metal infrastructure (think skeleton) but is still primarily made of rock. They are still of the same size with the same number of tiles, contain no natural resources or tile blockers, and provide +15% to all sciences. The planet's planetary fortifications are doubled once all other factors are weighed in making it an ideal core/military stronghold world. All tiles are "technological habitats" which gives 90% habitability to all species, and doubles mineral and energy output from any type of robot. Other than that they are just normal worlds, no need to over complicate something as small as a single planet.

 

[AvalancheZ250]

Also I hate the concept of galactic food, without some form of trade routes, if you wanna move stuff around there should be a logistical cost, both in terms of resources but also in terms of practicality and time.

Perhaps in the future, but at least we'll get SOME form of galactic food system in 1.5 along with a bunch of other stuff. Right now one of my Gaia worlds is sitting there with 20 surplus food (agri-processing plants are just amazing), while another planet in my empire is suffering from starvation.