I guess that works if you want to wait 200-300 years of gameplay. And of course, having started at 10 core planets I would be able to have 15 in my mod if I got that far. So...yeah
Real reason behind the 5 Core planets?
- Thread starter Wouter445
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But past a certain point micromanaging planets isn't strategy, it's mindless tedium. If you're such a great "strategist", why aren't you playing Brood War competitively?
Obviously StarCraft 2 is too casual for a competitive strategy gamer such as yourself since Blizzard implemented several mechanics that lightened the APM load such as better unit pathing, a higher unit selection limit, etc.
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You can have 7 from start and get advanced governments to get to 9 before you hit that number. There is also a fairly early +1 core world tech iirc bringing you to 10 easily. More than that and you need to focus tech on the repeatable, but the point is the game is already there if that's the style you prefer. There's a reason there is an actual government giving bonus to core worlds - it's because it is more powerful to have 7-9 core worlds than 5. So the game is designed to give you the range of workable core worlds - about 5-10.
Of course I'm all for modding the game to be what we each want so power to you. Just pointing out there is actual game balance in the default numbers
People seem to moan a lot about Sector AI being gash but so far my experience is fairly decent. On my first Terran campaign by about 150 years in my newest sector, about twenty years old which i'd explosively and aggressively colonized up to 14 planets and had set to military focus had its own construction ships, capping resources intelligently and building me stations in sensible locations, all the while running a healthy energy/mineral surplus. Presumably some of you show your sectors A) no love and B) no patience. Your meant to be the central government, means you need to occasionally give them an influx of money as well as not taxing them ruthlessly when you want them to be growing. As to the cap issue, again, 12 core planets on the same play-through, again at the very begining of 2300.
Heres the thing though: The Cap is actually 15, or 17 with the right government and you only incur a 10% resource reduction for every planet over the limit.
Just research the tech, or mod it and quit ya whinging. At the end of the day all ironman does is show your achievements to other players on steam, disable the console cheats and stack all the saves into one. You're going to die someday dude, you've got more important things to worry about.
To be fair most of us probably pay pseudo-ironman anyway.
I've yet to ever see a sector build construction ships. I have been able to mod mine to build extra military ships though! That'll make it fun when they rebel. At the moment it makes it much easier to defend my empire from invasion. Though I play with friends using this mod and it can make invasions a bitch too.
I think the tile system for planet surfaces is a dead end in terms of usefulness. All the cool other games they've made abstract the physical infrastructure of a power base. The whole zone/territory has a collective kind of way of looking at the resources, special buildings, or improvements.
I like that there's a physical location for a base or mining station in the system, because that makes for some interesting tradeoffs with maneuvering your forces, but the planetary tile system really is the worst case for it.
Like, why can't you just use pop as a cap on special buildings and improvements, turn the basic set of buildings (lab, mine, food, energy) into an abstract set of sliders--use special buildings but force them to have a cap of max pop - 1 (capital), and do a shuffle of -x [resource] from the slider production, but adds -1/2/3x [resource] + special effect.
A sector could just amalgamate that setup into a single huge slider, and whatever you need goes whereever--making managing the sectors production more straightforward. Maybe with constraints like 'sectors refuse to starve themselves or operate at an energy deficit'. Fiddling with the sliders would incur a infrastructure cost that would burn down over time.
One of the best 4x space strategy economies was the original Master of Orion. Sure, it wasn't incredibly sophisticated, but it scaled extremely well. Civ has position linked to resources, but it uses that as part of the strategic landscape. In this game, there's no reason to do that. The stations work that way, but the planets have unnecessary detail. The buildings on the ground don't affect the behavior of the starport or the ability to raise an army. Anything hinging on race only comes up with the associated build order comes up (colony ship or army). Migration is abstract, and only occasionally becomes meaningful, because planets are all star-wars-esque 'single biome'. So mixing tropical, desert, and tundra tolerant races on a planet isn't useful.
Tile blockers as a research thing and an extra step in planet building are another flavor thing that isn't useful. That could be abstracted to 'Size 20: Blockers 124 volcano, 2 wildlife, 6 mountain)' and just fold it into the burn down on the infrastructure investment. That's all that's happening, and once it's a sector, you don't even need that much insight, because it's completely out of your hands. Though, at the same time, little is done to call to your attention which blockers are more useful to destroy.
In fact, the research slider from the planet itself could clear blockers, and tie up research output until they're clear. Thus giving you some control, and keeping that idea, but making way for better and more interesting empire-wide research choices.
I don't know. I think Paradox has been really successful avoiding management without a purpose in their strategy games. If this were a simulation like Cities, it'd be different. Then the careful infrastructure management would be the point of the whole exercise.
I like that there's a physical location for a base or mining station in the system, because that makes for some interesting tradeoffs with maneuvering your forces, but the planetary tile system really is the worst case for it.
Like, why can't you just use pop as a cap on special buildings and improvements, turn the basic set of buildings (lab, mine, food, energy) into an abstract set of sliders--use special buildings but force them to have a cap of max pop - 1 (capital), and do a shuffle of -x [resource] from the slider production, but adds -1/2/3x [resource] + special effect.
A sector could just amalgamate that setup into a single huge slider, and whatever you need goes whereever--making managing the sectors production more straightforward. Maybe with constraints like 'sectors refuse to starve themselves or operate at an energy deficit'. Fiddling with the sliders would incur a infrastructure cost that would burn down over time.
One of the best 4x space strategy economies was the original Master of Orion. Sure, it wasn't incredibly sophisticated, but it scaled extremely well. Civ has position linked to resources, but it uses that as part of the strategic landscape. In this game, there's no reason to do that. The stations work that way, but the planets have unnecessary detail. The buildings on the ground don't affect the behavior of the starport or the ability to raise an army. Anything hinging on race only comes up with the associated build order comes up (colony ship or army). Migration is abstract, and only occasionally becomes meaningful, because planets are all star-wars-esque 'single biome'. So mixing tropical, desert, and tundra tolerant races on a planet isn't useful.
Tile blockers as a research thing and an extra step in planet building are another flavor thing that isn't useful. That could be abstracted to 'Size 20: Blockers 12
4 volcano, 2 wildlife, 6 mountain)' and just fold it into the burn down on the infrastructure investment. That's all that's happening, and once it's a sector, you don't even need that much insight, because it's completely out of your hands. Though, at the same time, little is done to call to your attention which blockers are more useful to destroy.In fact, the research slider from the planet itself could clear blockers, and tie up research output until they're clear. Thus giving you some control, and keeping that idea, but making way for better and more interesting empire-wide research choices.
I don't know. I think Paradox has been really successful avoiding management without a purpose in their strategy games. If this were a simulation like Cities, it'd be different. Then the careful infrastructure management would be the point of the whole exercise.
I'm glad its 5. I love the game to bits, but after 80 hours colonising is so boring that I can't wait to hand off my planets so I don't have to keep scrolling through, keeping an eye on the slow growing pops.
if you're glad to put them in sectors, then why do you need a cap? the design goal *should* be to make us want to sector our planets.
sectoring is essential for mid-late game micromanagement relief.
ok
but since we don't actually want to sector our planets, we require this limit, to force us to sector them.
rather, we should want to sector our planets to the degree that we have a restriction on if/when we can sector them.
if there's a penalty for having too many unsectored planets, it should be that there is some great benefit that you are not getting by having them sectored. not this -10%/-20%/-30%/etc. thing. (for ONE unsectored planet out of maybe hundreds, your empire loses 10% efficiency across the board? how?)
also... if we require the -25% income from sectors in order to balance resources, I think they have failed. late-game resources are overflowingly plentiful.
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Because I'm more criticising the nature of setting up colonies then I am the cap limit. it's easier to manage new colonies in GalCiv5 for heavens sake and you can easily have dozens of planets really early when playing the larger maps.
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Which is more a problem with the arbitary limitations they put onto you, like forcing you to wait for pops to grow before even queueing certain constructions. Or worse, no "auto upgrade" or "upgrade all" features. The vast mayority of micro management currently required stems from these problems and absolutely isn't needed and could be easily solved. Just think about how long it takes to upgrade all those buildings by hand on a larger planet, then do it again for another. Wait till the upgrades are all done and come back to order the next stage.
For me Mods are a player plus, but looks like Paradox want and hope modders fix all the things missing on the game. Sectors boring and lag " use a mod", only 5 core planets "use a mod", well i want the achievements mods dont work on ironman so?
I like the idea of setting the cap per the map size rather than 5 for all. It makes sense if you have a larger map that you can have more starting core planets.
I also don't oppose increasing the cap to 7 or 10 or even 15. I know people bring up MP that it wouldn't be fun to have 15 planets to micro but...I mean the sector system is there from the beginning. You can start creating sectors as soon as you have your first colony!
I also would like more say over sectors. Not because the sector AI is terrible: 50% tax and giving it energy credits and minerals occasionally to develop itself actually leads me to getting enough resources to do what I want and that's what I care about. But simply because I like having control.
The one thing I'd change is when I create a colony ship using a spaceport in a sector, it shows up on my list instead of having to manually find it.
I also don't oppose increasing the cap to 7 or 10 or even 15. I know people bring up MP that it wouldn't be fun to have 15 planets to micro but...I mean the sector system is there from the beginning. You can start creating sectors as soon as you have your first colony!
I also would like more say over sectors. Not because the sector AI is terrible: 50% tax and giving it energy credits and minerals occasionally to develop itself actually leads me to getting enough resources to do what I want and that's what I care about. But simply because I like having control.
The one thing I'd change is when I create a colony ship using a spaceport in a sector, it shows up on my list instead of having to manually find it.
The real issue is how the sector works.
Are they fully function?
From my point of view... Not much.
Are they fully function?
From my point of view... Not much.
Yes I understand what you're saying. All I'm saying is that I agree with a lot of others on this thread that 5 core worlds isn't enough even for the default. I think Paradox should increase the default, or perhaps make sectors a lot better. But until then, modding it the base number of core worlds is a helpful alternative.You can have 7 from start and get advanced governments to get to 9 before you hit that number. There is also a fairly early +1 core world tech iirc bringing you to 10 easily. More than that and you need to focus tech on the repeatable, but the point is the game is already there if that's the style you prefer. There's a reason there is an actual government giving bonus to core worlds - it's because it is more powerful to have 7-9 core worlds than 5. So the game is designed to give you the range of workable core worlds - about 5-10.
Of course I'm all for modding the game to be what we each want so power to you. Just pointing out there is actual game balance in the default numbers
Don't you want to play (i.e., what you call "wait") through 200 to 300 years of game play? Just how fast do you think a nascent interstellar Empire should grow?
To me, anything less than ~250 years (for a new player to the game) to get to "powerful" ~10 planet core would be too fast. Anything slower than 600 would be too slow. Stellaris seems just right. It is immersive and enjoyable that it took me a couple hundred years to grow my Empire to "mature" status. It might take me a couple hundred more to be in "truly dominant" status in the galaxy and perhaps another 100 on top of that to finish it.
To me that is what a "grand strategy on a galactic scale" means: fairly slow, though not a snails pace.
You're joking, right? I really wish Stellaris to have 250+ years parties, but people are getting Endgame crisis after 150 years and since it could be triggered by AI Empires, and not only by players there is nothing that could be done about it. So "250+ years parties" are abnormal for Stellaris.
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Personally Stellaris feels a little too shallow for 250 years of gameplay. Don't get me wrong, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game right now and I'm not one of those that are unhappy with day one Stellaris. However, I can certainly admit that the best part of a playthrough is the early game as there isn't a whole lot to do once you get to the mid game. I'm looking forward to seeing this get fleshed out in patches and DLC.
Of course this discussion is about core planets. I would not want to have to wait several hundred years just to have 10 core planets. Frankly I hate the sectors and I enjoy planet management. So 5 planets is just not a high enough base IMO.
I think this is an important point to repeat.
Micromanaging planets is only relevant when you need to do it to overcome resource limitations. ie. in the very early game. Once the cost of building planet items is no object, there's no problem to solve in building up new planets, you just follow a relatively simplistic formula of "build the building that makes the kind of resource you need
Outside of the early game, once you have even enough planets running to make up the default core sector size, you never have to worry about the cost of building something on a planet, and really most of the time the only resource you have to worry about is energy anyway. So what you're actually worrying about then is "which five planets in my empire do I want to not lose 25% of the power plant revenue from".
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