A suggestion to make administrative capacity more interesting.
Admin Capacity
This suggestion will replace the current empire-wide empire sprawl system. Instead, each colony has its individual Admin Capacity, that is expressed in a positive number. When a colonies admin capacity is low, that planets specialist output is significantly decreased and stability is decreased. Conversely, when admin capacity is high then stability and specialist output is increased. The admin capacity value is not capped, and could theoretically increase infinitely. A colonies admin capacity is decreased for every pop and district in it, and Bureaucrats and Administrative Office buildings now increase their individual planets admin capacity. Planetary Capitals also create admin capacity, and the capital world always starts with high admin capacity.
A colonies admin capacity is not in isolation. Each colony will try to find their "parent colony" (the colony that has highest admin capacity out of all neighboring systems), and will increase their own capacity by 75% of that colonies capacity as long as the child's capacity does not exceed the parents. For example, if one colony has a capacity of 100, then neighboring colonies will have a capacity of 75, colonies two jumps away will have 56, and ones 3 jumps away will have 42 (this is before the added capacity from planetary capitals).
Each colony now has a new planetary decision, Focus Administrative Capacity. By uses this decision, you can choose any colony to focus on. The colony you choose will have its capacity increased by 200% of the capacity of the colony you used the decision on. However, the latter colony will no longer be able to be chosen as a "parent colony" by neighboring planets, which therefore makes sprawling growth less viable. You can only select colonies as the recipient if they are less then three jumps away.
Overview
So overall, what will these changes do? The trickle effect of admin capacity will encourage creating core areas in an empire, and hopefully feels realistic. The ability to focus admin capacity creates unique decisions: You can choose to sacrifice further outwards growth in favor of increasing the efficiency of your existing worlds, or you can choose to focus on increasing territory at the cost of not being able to enhance core world as much. It should be balanced so that having densely packed planets with neglected admin capacity will always be suboptimal, so that you can't have the both a optimal core and peripheral without dedicating a large number of your worlds to bureaucrats.
This makes tall playstyles more viable, as instead of simply penalizing sprawling it actively creates benefits to playing tall, and it gives a reason to not grow larger by instead allowing you to redirect that growth back into your core worlds. Having it be by planet also allows creates a soft cap on how population dense your planet can be, which could be another way to do the tall vs wide problem.
Of course, I'm not exactly a game designer, and I'm not sure if it would work outside of my head.
Admin Capacity
This suggestion will replace the current empire-wide empire sprawl system. Instead, each colony has its individual Admin Capacity, that is expressed in a positive number. When a colonies admin capacity is low, that planets specialist output is significantly decreased and stability is decreased. Conversely, when admin capacity is high then stability and specialist output is increased. The admin capacity value is not capped, and could theoretically increase infinitely. A colonies admin capacity is decreased for every pop and district in it, and Bureaucrats and Administrative Office buildings now increase their individual planets admin capacity. Planetary Capitals also create admin capacity, and the capital world always starts with high admin capacity.
A colonies admin capacity is not in isolation. Each colony will try to find their "parent colony" (the colony that has highest admin capacity out of all neighboring systems), and will increase their own capacity by 75% of that colonies capacity as long as the child's capacity does not exceed the parents. For example, if one colony has a capacity of 100, then neighboring colonies will have a capacity of 75, colonies two jumps away will have 56, and ones 3 jumps away will have 42 (this is before the added capacity from planetary capitals).
Each colony now has a new planetary decision, Focus Administrative Capacity. By uses this decision, you can choose any colony to focus on. The colony you choose will have its capacity increased by 200% of the capacity of the colony you used the decision on. However, the latter colony will no longer be able to be chosen as a "parent colony" by neighboring planets, which therefore makes sprawling growth less viable. You can only select colonies as the recipient if they are less then three jumps away.
Overview
So overall, what will these changes do? The trickle effect of admin capacity will encourage creating core areas in an empire, and hopefully feels realistic. The ability to focus admin capacity creates unique decisions: You can choose to sacrifice further outwards growth in favor of increasing the efficiency of your existing worlds, or you can choose to focus on increasing territory at the cost of not being able to enhance core world as much. It should be balanced so that having densely packed planets with neglected admin capacity will always be suboptimal, so that you can't have the both a optimal core and peripheral without dedicating a large number of your worlds to bureaucrats.
This makes tall playstyles more viable, as instead of simply penalizing sprawling it actively creates benefits to playing tall, and it gives a reason to not grow larger by instead allowing you to redirect that growth back into your core worlds. Having it be by planet also allows creates a soft cap on how population dense your planet can be, which could be another way to do the tall vs wide problem.
Of course, I'm not exactly a game designer, and I'm not sure if it would work outside of my head.
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