So the Tall play style is all but done away with now??

[methegrate]

I think the problem might be less about tall as a viable playstyle, and more the fact that there are no asymmetrical or alternative playstyles in general.

Right now, I would argue that there is only one, extremely straight-line way to play. You gather resources, build ships, then win fights with superior numbers. Having better tech plays some role in this, you'll certainly do better with plasma weapons than with blue lasers. But I think even high tech isn't really a viable playstyle because even a modestly well-run empire will generally keep up in technology without even trying. Since Stellaris relies so heavily on small percent modifiers, as long as you're within the same general technology ballpark as someone else then you're only talking about a 5% difference here, a 7.5% difference there. (You obviously would rather be the fleet with Shields IV rather than Shields III, but either way the fleet with more ships is winning.)

There are no trade nations, no political/diplomatic powerhouses, no other paths to power in the game other than building as many ships as you can.

As someone else mentioned, once that's true then the laws of physics just kick in. Getting bigger makes it easier to expand further and there's virtually no way for a small empire to keep up.

No matter how you set it up, personally I'd agree that "Tall" should be a harder play style in general. But it could certainly work better. I think this is how I'd do it. Instead of focusing on "how can we make small empires stronger" I would focus on "how can we have diverse playstyles in general." From there, you can have some that might favor smaller empires more than others. Or you can let small empires pick a strategy that best suits their situation. As long as it's just a straight-line race to the biggest fleet, though, there's really never going to be a good role for tall empires.

 

[g4borg]

No, it absolutely would not make sense. Scientific problems don't become harder to solve for a more populous nation.

Absolutely agree. There's a reason Monaco isn't a research giant, even though it has a massive wealth-per-head-of-population.

Not so sure about this. First off, Monaco is a bad example, it is not a tall, but a one-planet-challenge empire. Second, Monaco does not concentrate on research anyway, it is a retreat for very rich people.

Historically, larger empires had usually easier times in engineering research, especially applied engineering; You can see that in the US and USSR, which very much dominated mostly over engineering technologies, being able to throw large amount of resources into the blender.

however this was not true for theorycrafting. And there are a lot of good tall play examples in the real world to mention a few:
For example Austria, which has a very high Physics, but also Philosophy output. Being rather rich, it was also very interesting in the past for being a large point of investment into mobile phone technologies, resulting in at times more than 5 networks in the same country.
Or Japan, which post ww2 is definitely a tall build, and historically the prime example for isolationism. While the early build did not keep up in science, the post ww2 era definitely resulted in a high tech powerhouse especially in robotics.
Or Israel. Being threatened seems to be a great motivator for extreme innovations. Having good relationships to powerful countries of course helps.
Or Switzerland. Being a neutral bank in the middle of other empires does help to focus on small scale engineering or building colliders.

The upsides of large empires is resources, but the downside is finding the correct way to apply them. Also, larger empires have less "threat". Motivation for innovation is after all also determined by a need. However you also need longer to establish infrastructure. This can be seen how slow fibre optic Internet, or even modern power systems were established in the US, compared to a lot of smaller european nations, who went lightyears ahead. Because infrastructure and wealth _does_ impact scientific research, in reality.

And finally I also think, there is a difference between theory and practical use, and which domain we talk about in science. Physics and Social Techs could get easier for a tall empire, which is rich, and keeps its infrastructure upgraded, to achieve. However with engineering, it seems different. Yes for theory, no for things that require larger infrastructure and experience.

In the end, size of an empire might not be a good indicator, but it is also not completely wrong, to assume, that a small nation, who keeps his infrastructure up2date, his people happy and satisfied, but also faces challenges which create great motivators, would in the end tend to become more successful at implementing something like a science directorate.

So I agree it is not the primary factor, but I do think it is not because of easy reasons.

---

For Stellaris in general I think a few points come into mind that I would take in:
- science without diversity is hard. it is also hard with too much diversity. it needs a balance of strict methodicism coupled with innovation. this makes me question gestalts being good at all kinds of science, or totalitarian empires being able to motivate people to innovate; i have a really hard time of imagining gestalt consciousness to solve some stuff there; not to understand, but to see the need to innovate or try something that might fail.
- democracy starts to flatten with larger populations. most large empires had indirect democracies. direct democracies are only seen on small scale. with wealth and size comes a more populistic political system, that is unable to react or enact major changes. i don't think a few light years between worlds will make this better.
- and besides if we walk away from realism and say "but this is science fiction!" then the small super intelligent slowly breeding race is _the_ scifi trope.
- population growth is the biggest issue i have with current systems anyway ingame: i think growth should depend on the existing population, with the factors of existing population and available living space; modifiers to species in that area could be more base mechanic style (like a queen-egg-system for more base growth that does not scale up as much with pops, or short lived fast growing pests). survival rate could be a factor in picking the next growing pop (so slaves or bad income pops would generally grow more likely). I think a lot could be innovated around those core mechanics, resulting in different tall play styles.
- tall play kinda will never solve the issue of how war is handled atm. with fleet blobs, or the fact you can just land a few more soldiers than the defenders have on their friggin homeworld and conquer it, no matter how anti-climatic that is.

 

[womble]

I wonder if admin cap should work to make growing wide harder by providing negative modifiers for building and district cost, starbase influence cost, leader upkeep, governing ethics attraction etc, in conjunction with making bureaucrats less effective. This way it slows down growth needed in order to overcome the burdens of admin cap.

You mean, all those bureaucrats get in the way of actually getting things done? Kinda makes sense. Especially if they keep sticking "beware of the panther" notices on the door to where the permits are kept. On its own though, it'll just mean people don't bother with Bureacrats, since the penalties as they stand from Sprawl exceeding Admin Cap are insufficiently pointed to require Admin Cap to be kept up with.

For the sake of verisimilitude, there should be a level of administrative oversight which does make things more efficient. The bins wouldn't get emptied in large parts of most towns, if the Council administrators didn't arrange waste collection, erm, collectively, for a trivial example.

 

[womble]

I think the problem might be less about tall as a viable playstyle, and more the fact that there are no asymmetrical or alternative playstyles in general.

[snip]

Instead of focusing on "how can we make small empires stronger" I would focus on "how can we have diverse playstyles in general." From there, you can have some that might favor smaller empires more than others. Or you can let small empires pick a strategy that best suits their situation. As long as it's just a straight-line race to the biggest fleet, though, there's really never going to be a good role for tall empires.

Word. Quoted for Emphasis. And other noises of approval.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

You mean, all those bureaucrats get in the way of actually getting things done? Kinda makes sense. Especially if they keep sticking "beware of the panther" notices on the door to where the permits are kept. On its own though, it'll just mean people don't bother with Bureacrats, since the penalties as they stand from Sprawl exceeding Admin Cap are insufficiently pointed to require Admin Cap to be kept up with.

For the sake of verisimilitude, there should be a level of administrative oversight which does make things more efficient. The bins wouldn't get emptied in large parts of most towns, if the Council administrators didn't arrange waste collection, erm, collectively, for a trivial example.

Actually I meant the exact opposite - make going over admin cap affect stuff that directly slows growth and destabilises your colonies. At the minute it affects your goals that utilise unity and research, but you just pop a few bureaucratic centres down and you don't need to think about it again.

What I'm proposing is that you affect say:

• Starbase Influence Cost
• Building Costs
• Naval Cap
• Governing Ethics
• Very Minor Stability hit
• (Possibly Colony Development Speed)

Then you can't ignore cap, and it would take you longer to fix it, allowing those who keep up with sprawl an opportunity to catch up or stay relevant.

EDIT: I mean this still means wide = better, but it would slow wide down enough if you balanced the numbers enough.

 

[womble]

Actually I meant the exact opposite - make going over admin cap affect stuff that directly slows growth and destabilises your colonies. At the minute it affects your goals that utilise unity and research, but you just pop a few bureaucratic centres down and you don't need to think about it again.

What I'm proposing is that you affect say:

• Starbase Influence Cost
• Building Costs
• Naval Cap
• Governing Ethics
• Very Minor Stability hit
• (Possibly Colony Development Speed)

Then you can't ignore cap, and it would take you longer to fix it, allowing those who keep up with sprawl an opportunity to catch up or stay relevant.

EDIT: I mean this still means wide = better, but it would slow wide down enough if you balanced the numbers enough.

Oh. I get you now.

Not sure that adding more penalties for Sprawl > Admin Capacity will achieve very much beyond reinforcing the need for Administrators further, unless you're suggesting that Admin Capacity not have a negating effect on the penalties. It wouldn't take any longer to fix than it does now, really: you'd plonk the Admin Centre on a stable planet, or switch a world or two with 'incidental' Admin Centres across to being Designated as such, while you get another Centre or two built....

I think there needs to be more structural reform of the system, though I do agree that administrative chaos should probably affect those things you mention as well as what it already does.

 

[Less2]

Its a big problem, and not just for strictly tall players. Before If you wanted research you could stop growing past a point. Research was asymptotic so you could look at an empire of 5,000 pops and decide to hold off on growth because the research gains from going up to 10,000 pops were relatively minor. But now every research pop is just as good as your first one, so there's no reason not to have 4 ringworld segments building at all times along with spending every bit of excess influence on habitats, ballooning your pops to extraordinary levels. This then leads to the heat (CPU) death of the universe.

 

[DaJay42]

The fundamental problem of the current system is, your sprawl scales linearly with how 'wide' your empire is, but your ability to produce admin cap also scales linearly with how 'wide' your empire is. Therefore the fraction of your resources that is dedicated to maintaining the admin cap remains constant throughout the game, i.e. a wider empire has just as easy a time remaining under cap as a less wide one.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Oh. I get you now.

Not sure that adding more penalties for Sprawl > Admin Capacity will achieve very much beyond reinforcing the need for Administrators further, unless you're suggesting that Admin Capacity not have a negating effect on the penalties. It wouldn't take any longer to fix than it does now, really: you'd plonk the Admin Centre on a stable planet, or switch a world or two with 'incidental' Admin Centres across to being Designated as such, while you get another Centre or two built....

I think there needs to be more structural reform of the system, though I do agree that administrative chaos should probably affect those things you mention as well as what it already does.

I agree, it doesn't do much, that would require a rewrite of overall design of the game to have more playstyles than 'go big or go home'.

But the idea is broken down into two parts - namely it slows growth by increasing building costs (so you need more resources to build an interim bureaucratic building), slows colony development (so it takes longer to get new colonies to build admin focused planets) and increases starbase influence cost (so it's harder to expand and make up the increased costs, and reduces your chances of building an outpost where a potential admin colony could be). Of course if you're marginally over and can build admin jobs, this is like now - but if you don't have space, you're spending more to fix the problem.

In the meantime, by decreasing governing ethics and stability, your planets are not as productive, thus reducing the benefit of wide empires.

I'm actually throwing this together as a mod, so fine-tuning the numbers is key, but I think it could have some potential (though whether the AI can handle it is yet to be seen.)

 

[methegrate]

I think the other thing that would help a LOT is if the game started to work with systems other than just resources, income and cost. Right now pretty much every game mechanic is based on influencing resource costs or resource income. Empire sprawl increases resource costs for things like tech, traditions and leaders (not that leaders matter beyond driving science ships). Ethics drift makes pops happier or unhappier (depending on empire choices). Happiness, in turn, makes the pop either more productive (increasing resource income) or less productive (decreasing resource income).

This is one of the big reasons why no mechanic really pushes back on the tall vs. wide thing though. When every mechanic's push and pull is based on resources, then increasing your income can be the solution to every problem. Wide empires can just grow their way out of any mechanic that the game throws at them. Does sprawl make your tech more expensive? Then grow your research income faster than the costs do. Does ethic drift make your pops less productive? Then expand to offset this.

Virtually by definition the advantage to wide play is that it lets the player gather more resources, more easily than a tall player. When the pushback on this is to make things cost more, you create a linear race between costs and income. You let a player make any counter-expansion mechanics irrelevant by, ironically, expanding.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

I'm actually throwing this together as a mod, so fine-tuning the numbers is key, but I think it could have some potential (though whether the AI can handle it is yet to be seen.)

Please be aware that if your solution is to slow downt he game even mroe, that mainly means there is less to play in the game.
Ask for feedback if that makes people play differently or jsut the same way but slower.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I think the other thing that would help a LOT is if the game started to work with systems other than just resources, income and cost. Right now pretty much every game mechanic is based on influencing resource costs or resource income. Empire sprawl increases resource costs for things like tech, traditions and leaders (not that leaders matter beyond driving science ships). Ethics drift makes pops happier or unhappier (depending on empire choices). Happiness, in turn, makes the pop either more productive (increasing resource income) or less productive (decreasing resource income).

This is one of the big reasons why no mechanic really pushes back on the tall vs. wide thing though. When every mechanic's push and pull is based on resources, then increasing your income can be the solution to every problem. Wide empires can just grow their way out of any mechanic that the game throws at them. Does sprawl make your tech more expensive? Then grow your research income faster than the costs do. Does ethic drift make your pops less productive? Then expand to offset this.

Virtually by definition the advantage to wide play is that it lets the player gather more resources, more easily than a tall player. When the pushback on this is to make things cost more, you create a linear race between costs and income. You let a player make any counter-expansion mechanics irrelevant by, ironically, expanding.

I wonder if there's a way to make the penalty exponential, for example adding a Sprawl Penalty negative for 'X' number of sprawl over admin cap?

I agree fully that just adding more penalties to things that affect resources doesn't just fix everything, but it would likely take a fundamental rework of the overall game design to make what you're suggesting happen.

My idea is an attempt at trying something within the existing mechanics.

 

[CrazyJ]

my earlier idea for restricting the research output of tall empires was meant to balance the game. it did not necessarily have to make logical real world sense.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Please be aware that if your solution is to slow downt he game even mroe, that mainly means there is less to play in the game.
Ask for feedback if that makes people play differently or jsut the same way but slower.

Thanks - doing my own playtesting first as my fear is it may cripple the AI too much.

 

[Mastikator]

The fundamental problem of the current system is, your sprawl scales linearly with how 'wide' your empire is, but your ability to produce admin cap also scales linearly with how 'wide' your empire is. Therefore the fraction of your resources that is dedicated to maintaining the admin cap remains constant throughout the game, i.e. a wider empire has just as easy a time remaining under cap as a less wide one.

BINGO

If we don't limit the player's ability to build bureaucrat jobs then any amount of added disadvantages for going over the cap is meaningless. If the problem is the bureaucrats then the solution has to be to change bureaucrats

 

[womble]

This is one of the big reasons why no mechanic really pushes back on the tall vs. wide thing though. When every mechanic's push and pull is based on resources, then increasing your income can be the solution to every problem. Wide empires can just grow their way out of any mechanic that the game throws at them. Does sprawl make your tech more expensive? Then grow your research income faster than the costs do. Does ethic drift make your pops less productive? Then expand to offset this.

This is true when all increases are linear. If the cost of expanding increased as you expanded, but the return from expanding continued linear, there would be a point at which the extra [whatever] wasn't worth it.

I don't get why PDX don't use exponents (even little ones) more. Maybe Clauswitz can't do powers.

If we don't limit the player's ability to build bureaucrat jobs then any amount of added disadvantages for going over the cap is meaningless. If the problem is the bureaucrats then the solution has to be to change bureaucrats

I don't think the problem *is* the bureaucrats, though. And putting hard limits on things is emphatically not something I think is a good way to develop. The problem is the relationship between the value of Admin and the cost of expansion. Which numbers you jigger with don't really matter. You can make "being large" be a drag on some things, but not others; you can make "getting larger" progressively more expensive; you can make mitigation of the downsides progresively more expensive and less effective. There's probably other levers that can be pulled, and the more you add into the mix, the more variety of playstyles you can design by giving Civics and Ethics and Origins and Traditions and Edicts and all the other things the player can control different effects over different aspects.

my earlier idea for restricting the research output of tall empires was meant to balance the game. it did not necessarily have to make logical real world sense.

There are advantages to having games seem to make some sort of sense. It helps players not sit there going "WTF" when experience doesn't match expectations. Large, prosperous nations have strong research. Why would going into space make this otherwise? When there are plausible other mechanics, it's just lazy, unambitious thinking to introduce a simple "this big means that small" relationship for any two factors.

 

[Archael90]

Maybe is empire sprawl woudl not have counter like admin cap, but just rise. It would affect also other aspects of the game rather just unity and science. Maybe stability drops on colonies would be great. Only way to counter stability drops on colonies would be upgrading capital building. The stability and overall usefullness of colony would be depend on total empire sprawl (bigger it is, the harder colony is managed), and on capital building (and maybe some techs/traditions), the higher capital the better burocracy, and management. This way tall playstyle would be also effective. finnishing one colony after another would be more efficient than handling with few colonies at the same time, but having few colonies at the same time would result in all of them being developed faster than one at a time. So faster small bonusses, or later bigger bonusses.

 

[Mastikator]

I don't think the problem *is* the bureaucrats, though. And putting hard limits on things is emphatically not something I think is a good way to develop. The problem is the relationship between the value of Admin and the cost of expansion. Which numbers you jigger with don't really matter. You can make "being large" be a drag on some things, but not others; you can make "getting larger" progressively more expensive; you can make mitigation of the downsides progresively more expensive and less effective. There's probably other levers that can be pulled, and the more you add into the mix, the more variety of playstyles you can design by giving Civics and Ethics and Origins and Traditions and Edicts and all the other things the player can control different effects over different aspects.

Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that the penalty for going over the admin cap is 1000 times bigger. What would be the effect of this?

Any empire that goes over the cap is technologically/unity frozen and unable to use campaigns.

This will punish tall empires severely, meanwhile wide empires will be completely unaffected. Staying below the cap is easier when you're wide. In fact it's trivially easy when you're wide, I do it all the time. When I play, I play wide and I always stay below the cap. The opportunity cost of staying below the cap is something I can only afford because I go wide in the first place, a tall empire will have less space to put their bureaucrat buildings.

It would be very easy to prove this as well, just make a mod that alters the defines values.

I've actually tried this approach, increasing the penalty for going over and increasing the cost of bureaucrats, it didn't help. It made things worse for tall empires.

I think one final piece of evidence that bureaucrats are the problem is this: we did not have this problem in 2.5, bureaucrats didn't exist in 2.5. This problem is caused by bureaucrats.

 

[exi123]

I dont know until today how this bureaucrat-change even got to the live game. That empire sprawl mechanic was the only thing which holded you down in 2.5, and you needed to progress further if you wanted to grow. More alloys and more fleet capacity laways had the price that you needed more tech, more unity, more consumer goods. It was just more of everything, bit it was stil better.

To some extend the new unity generation with multiple buildings per planet for that on one planet feels odd the same way as the bureaucrats do. Do the unity ambitions get more expensive if you stay under the sprawl cap? The only thing i see is that i have millions if unity later on with all ambitions running and i havent even build a dedicated world for it, so its way to cheap.

Later in the game the repeatables in tech are so easy to earn... Grow your tech and stay under the cap and you can research a level 10 repeatable in 8 months? Thats FEELS just plain broken honestly.

For me this whole "mechanic" needs to go. You can keep the administrive part of that, it would be thinkable for me that a well administrated planet gives a reduced sprawl for that one world. The same thing for unity, if you want to go fast through the traditions, you need to build that building on every planet, once.



For me the way planets are build and designed is in general a bit off. The mainbuilding provides to much. It should only give me administators and higher tier buildings. Administrators give all the following bunuses, but a just a little bit. If i need enforcers to reduce crime, i need to build them seperatly, if i want to reduce spwawl, i need to build offices. If i want to collect "unity" from the local pops, i need that heritage site or com link. Holo-theaters for amenities... This alone would nerf wide play a bit, because you need much more administrative buildings per planet if paired it with a mechanic that planets outside of the core sector are harder to administrate (more sprawl, more crime, more amenities usage etc.). So if you focus on building inside your core sector, everything is just way more efficient. A good basis for playing tall.

 

[builder680]

I would say there never was a tall play style. Anything you can do tall you can also do wide. It has always been this way. Sorry, you cannot be Nepal, the world conquering... uh... right.