Is Unity still for playing Tall?

[Drowe]

Building tall does not mean remaining small. If you want to build living space for 100 families you have two extreme options with everything in between being possible as well. You can build 100 individual houses, which requires a lot of land or you can build one skyscraper with 100 floors. Each option is viable depending on the circumstances. If real estate is expensive it's better to build tall, if it's cheap then wide is better.

In terms of Stellaris this means you could either grab any opportunity to expand your borders or you expand by terraforming every planet you can, building habitats and ring worlds. I would love it if you could settle moons, asteroids and barren planets as well, and increase the number of pops that can live on a planet.

 

[garbud]

In terms of Stellaris this means you could either grab any opportunity to expand your borders or you expand by terraforming every planet you can, building habitats and ring worlds. I would love it if you could settle moons, asteroids and barren planets as well, and increase the number of pops that can live on a planet.

well if a moon is of a habitable planet type you can they just tend to be small

 

[wurmkrank]

In conclusion: There is no tall vs. wide. It is instead about having options that are equally viable. Focus inward or outward.

so in conclusion, there is no focus inward or outward. There is only sandwich and hamburger.

 

[Diezy]

Even in Civ5, where the tall vs wide is from, you could still go Liberty and do the lovely Infinite City Sprawl, and a lot more trees unlocked, if you didn't neglect that resource. There were diminishing returns, but more cities make more culture so you weren't culture-starved!

But I don't think there's any Tall or Wide. Rather a choice of which will you do first - expand a lot, and then consolidate it later, or consolidate a core early and use it to support your expansion later.

 

[Drowe]

well if a moon is of a habitable planet type you can they just tend to be small

I meant if you could settle uninhabitable asteroids, moons and planets, there isn't really any compelling reason why you can't. What's the difference between an artificial habitat and one built inside an asteroid or on the surface of an uninhabitable planet or moon? In fact there are mods that let you do that.

 

[The Founder]

But I just noticed in this past stream, that in fact a building that produces Unity, the one that upgrades into the Heritage Foundation that produces 5 Unity, that building is not Empire Unique, in fact Wiz was building them on almost all of his planets. So the more planets an Empire has the more Unity costs, but also the more Unity it can produce, so what is the point of Unity?

I am not sure wich lifestream you mean. Because "Starcrossed Starfish #4" meerely contained the option to reserach it. No actuall building of it on any planet.
I do not even know if it is a empire unique or not. Nor what techlevel it is on. It might be the Empire Unique check is missing or the tech restrictions were lowered for demonstration purposes.
And that is before you consider: "No number is final".

The top Production I saw per planet was 3:
1 from the Capital
2 from the free Unity building.
With maybe a 4th from the Expansion Tradition Tree.
And maybe +2 Unity from Tradition Unlocks (Harmonies Paradise Dome comes to mind).

Unity cost scales both with Empire size and (poor) Happiness. Both parts at wich a wide empire is weaker, one way or the other. Even producing more Unity does not mater, if the cost penalty increases faster then your production.
The smaler/happier of the two Starfish empires reached Ascension Perks a lot earlier.
I simply can not see your claim that "Unity/Tradition gain is no longer stronger for tall builds". Not a piece of data supports that.

That being said, it was never intended that a tall empire could fully counter a wide empire. "There should always be incentive to grab more planets" - Wiz.
They have better Unity/Tradition gain, true. But the other side still has more fleets and everything else. Tall guys still need Federations/allies to make it in the large scale.

 

[Hertzila]

I don't think Unity was really about Tall vs Wide, so much as it was harmonious vs disharmonious empires. Unity generation and the costs scale with the size, so the relative Unity costs are more about how harmonious your empire is. Smaller empires tend to be more harmonious, so on average taller empires would have the advantage against wide empires. It depends more on the internal structure of empires and the given planets.

I've understood that the Tall features are more about giving you options to strengthen your position in case you get boxed in by other empires. In the ideal world, you'd build tall and force an opening through one of the other empires and continue expanding.

 

[Elfwind]

Soo... I was under the impression that only a maximum amount of Unity could be produced by a given Empire, then the larger that Empire got the more it would cost to unlock new Ascension Perks with Unity. Eventually once you got to 20 or 30 planets your Unity would slow down to a crawl and smaller Empires would be able to continue to unlock Ascension Perks thus outpacing you in Unity and becoming "Tall" in that way. This would mean that an Empire does not just spiral out of control and snowball to unstoppable sizes as is the case right now. But I just noticed in this past stream, that in fact a building that produces Unity, the one that upgrades into the Heritage Foundation that produces 5 Unity, that building is not Empire Unique, in fact Wiz was building them on almost all of his planets. So the more planets an Empire has the more Unity costs, but also the more Unity it can produce, so what is the point of Unity?

Has Unity lost its value since wide Empires can now be just as tall as tall Empires? What is the point of trying to build tall or is it even possible with this new mechanic? Could Wide Empires outpace smaller Empires in Unity production allowing them to snowball at twice the rate they were before?

I would also wonder if orbital habitats affect unity costs.

 

[Emraldis]

I would also wonder if orbital habitats affect unity costs.

They act just like planets, including colonization and pop growth, so I would assume they do.

 

[The Founder]

They act just like planets, including colonization and pop growth, so I would assume they do.

They do not project (a lot of) border however. So they might also be excluded/lessened for this penalty.

 

[Emraldis]

They do not project (a lot of) border however. So they might also be excluded/lessened for this penalty.

Is this an actual thing? I don't remember seeing this anywhere... I'd assume they project as much border as any other size-12 planet...

 

[The Founder]

Is this an actual thing? I don't remember seeing this anywhere... I'd assume they project as much border as any other size-12 planet...

It was mentioned in the Intermission (Starcrossed Starfish #3, effectively).

 

[Emraldis]

huh, I'll have to take a look at that again. That seems like it'd be a bit odd.

 

[macd21]

huh, I'll have to take a look at that again. That seems like it'd be a bit odd.

I'm guessing it's too exploitable otherwise. You could build them strategically to expand your borders into valuable territory.

 

[Emraldis]

I'm guessing it's too exploitable otherwise. You could build them strategically to expand your borders into valuable territory.

Frontier outposts?

 

[wurmkrank]

Frontier outposts?

limited by influence, habitats wouldn't be.

 

[Emraldis]

limited by influence, habitats wouldn't be.

that is entirely dependent on who lives in your habitat.

 

[Almond_Brown]

Frontier outposts?

Frontier Outposts have a base cost of 100 and 30 to build, with the cost increasing according to how far away the outpost is relative to your empire's current borders. In addition, they require 3 and 1 per month to maintain.

Habitats, at this time anyways, do not appear to require the above Influence at any point, let alone a ongoing maintenance cost using it.

 

[Emraldis]

Frontier Outposts have a base cost of 100 and 30 to build, with the cost increasing according to how far away the outpost is relative to your empire's current borders. In addition, they require 3 and 1 per month to maintain.

Habitats, at this time anyways, do not appear to require the above Influence at any point, let alone a ongoing maintenance cost using it.

If you fill a habitat with a dissident faction, it most definitely will cost that one influence per month. Kind of a moot point, but still. I would argue that the mineral cost and the upkeep costs of the structures on the habitat would be a reasonable enough upkeep to give a border range similar to a size-12 planet. Especially since as far as I know, a system exudes only the larges available border range from the system (IE colonizing multiple planets in a system doesn't increase your border range any more than the largest planet colonized).

Also how'd you do the symbols? That's pretty neat.

 

[nanoboy]

I just want more victory conditions than outright conquest. To me, that's what building tall should facilitate.