Tall play super viable in 2.0

[buglepong]

I dont argue that bigger was better. Im saying there was a (proto)concept of tall vs wide from the beginning.

 

[Pro]

What does it mean for a strategy to "exist" if there's no circumstances where it can compete with the alternatives?

 

[Itsalive]

Come on guys, this isn't Starcraft. It's sufficient for tall play to be 'viable' where viable means : conductive to an agreeable play-through that allows access to all or most features of the game.

 

[MadDemiurg]

Come on guys, this isn't Starcraft. It's sufficient for tall play to be 'viable' where viable means : conductive to an agreeable play-through that allows access to all or most features of the game.

Well, i would agree with that, I just don't understand people arguing that going small and gimping yourself by giving planets to vassals is somehow optimal now.

 

[buglepong]

What does it mean for a strategy to "exist" if there's no circumstances where it can compete with the alternatives?

I see you dont understand what tall and wide are.
Its a common occurrence.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Well, i would agree with that, I just don't understand people arguing that going small and gimping yourself by giving planets to vassals is somehow optimal now.

Tall play in Stellaris 2.0 is about limiting the amount of systems, not planets.

I'd estimate that ~20 systems with an average amount of planets (habitable or not) is enough to be fully competetive.

 

[serpentskirt]

It's hardly an essential concept. The civilization series really only allowed a tall strategy in number 5, which hasn't limited its success at all. Civilization 6 is a really good game despite having no penalties to expansion at all.

In Civ 1-3 they had corruption which was limiting, but not completely destroying, next city outcome. Was still useful to place a city to deny the land your opponents.
In Civ 4 you could actually go negative by expanding. A city will be profitable eventually, but you need to put some effort in it.
Civ 5 went from delicate happiness balance of vanilla, to crazy expansion in G&K where you could grow every city for free to 6-7 (thanks to religion and maritime city-states), to super-tall play of BNW where it's not possible to recover from penalties of settling 5th-6th city in the timeframe of the game.
In CIv6 the limit is increased settler and district cost. If you want to have a nice outcome in your next city, you need to put some effort.

Regarding Stellaris, I'm okayish with science penalty apart from it's freaking impossible to estimate your science outcome just looking at the top bar. +100 each will have completely different efficiency depending on size and/or composition of empire.

"Tall" and "wide" are abstractions for gameplay purposes, and the concepts exist because they are integral to the opportunity cost of going dense vs going outward with respect to technology in the game, in turn because technology research in games is also an abstraction. The divide has existed since the birth of 4x games because they are essential concepts, and you can bet when Paradox releases Stellaris 3 in 2030, we'll still be having this discussion.

I don't think tall vs. wide was a thing before Civ 5, the bigger was always better. Any examples from other games?

 

[Moocats]

In truth I believe Tall play has been nerfed since 2.0 & not the other way around. Life Seeded Civic makes a fair difference it's true but the fact each system you control, Ie; every star-base regardless of upgraded or not adds a 1% penalty to tech and pops punished tall empires too much. I preferred the old method of the penalties being dictated by pops and planet count.

The problem with the new system as it punishes tall play and not wide. Wide players can take more planets, add more labs and unity production to counter balance the increased systems. So yes, the costs go up but the production of your research and unity increases to compensate. When playing tall, especially when using Life seeded this counter balance is removed.

Wide has and should remain on paper stronger than tall, larger incomes of resources higher fleet caps and such. The saving grace of tall was a tech advantage and with the 2.0 adjustments to allow smaller fleets to have a combat bonus vs larger numbers I felt the balance could have been almost spot on. As I say, wide is and should always be stronger but tall should be viable too.

I have confirmed with some testing that playing tall on one planet will give you an early game edge in tech but after 50 years or so a wide player will have caught up due to higher base production of research. They will also have a far larger fleet cap and resource income.

I think the following change would finally fix the balance gap between tall and wide

The pre 2.0 tall empires would rely on F.Outposts to control resources; this is no longer viable and each system must be controlled by a starbase which adds a flat 1% penalty to tech and unity. I'd like to suggest that be changed from 1% to 0.25%. Evert planet controlled increases this by an additional 0.25% to a maximum of 2%.

This would allow a single planet empire to keep ahead of the curve technologically (and with unity) all the way into the late game, allow them to expand their borders enough to control a reasonable amount of resources without bringing them to an equal economic or logistical strength to a wide empire.

On paper this means;
1 planet = 0.25% penalty for tech/unity per system
2 planet = 0.5 % penalty for tech/unity per system
3 planet = 1.0 % penalty for tech/unity per system
4 planet = 1.5 % penalty for tech/unity per system
5+ planet = 2.0 % penalty for tech/unity per system


I think could provide an almost perfect balance between Life Seeded/Tall/Wide empires.

Of course it would need testing but this is what I've observed so far.

 

[buglepong]

I don't think tall vs. wide was a thing before Civ 5, the bigger was always better. Any examples from other games?

Bigger was better, but that isnt strictly tall or wide.
I admit people on both sides of the argument arent sure what wide and tall actually mean. They are relative concepts to each other with respect to tech. That last bit is vital to understand tall and wide gameplay, because tech itself is almost totally abstract in 4x strategy games.
Tall is essentially a "research focus" whereas wide is a "conquer focus" in order to fulfill the victory requirements. If there is a game where you can do both maximally with zero tradeoff, then its not a strategy game.

 

[Pro]

Tall is essentially a "research focus" whereas wide is a "conquer focus" in order to fulfill the victory requirements. If there is a game where you can do both maximally with zero tradeoff, then its not a strategy game.

That is just not true. There are millions of trade offs that players could strategize around that are not a trade off between expansion and research.

 

[Sacrii]

There are nothing in the game which indicate that communication is in any way instant or not empire wide. There are just highly abstract game mechanics.

With your logic then resources such as energy, minerals and food are magically teleported with 100% efficiency wherever they are needed and industrial tools and machinery accompany them wherever they go, except for construction ships (but resources still teleport to them).

My opinion is that the game operates on a scale similar to 15th-19th century Earth in terms of colonies and communications. While communications likely are much faster than actual travel it would be more like late 19th century telegraph kind of communication efficiency in comparison.

But that is only my opinion and the game really say nothing one way or the other. In game information provided for the player say nothing about how information flow in the world of Stellaris. Have you ever seen any game where in game information are ever delayed to the player as an intentional mechanic?!?

Well since communication was always faster since we discover the radio and even before with bird... I can imagine that we can communicate a lot faster than we travel ^^' Why should it be different in space lol?

Finally its a game not real life too ^^' This is mean that it must be playable for most player who want it ^^' If you add to much logistic mecanic it will become too much harder and wont drag enough people to play it ^^' Its commercial thing ^^

And for the definition of tall and wide the macedonian Alexander the Great was it Tall or Wide??? Because he is the best definition of one of the two ;p and im sure not the one you expected ^^'

 

[Tormodius]

I tried to play with inward perfection before the update and i got beaten by a federation of 3 members who combined everything and steamrolled me.
I was thinking of asking here if anyone had ever succeeded with it, but that was before the game changed radically.

Now I tried it again with a little more luck, plus the game changes with starbases all over. Worked much better now.
Even with a weak start and neighbours who grew all over, but few who rivalled me so was left alone for a long time.
I had only colonized 2 planets that was habitable, so had only 3 planets for a very long time, while all others grabbed the galaxy and fought eachother.
Allthough for early game you can just expand borders with outposts anyway, and with few planet and people inside your little area, then go for Void Borne and building habitats. The terraforming stuff is also useful with a weak start position.

Eventually i abandoned the inward perfection since you can not win the game with is. The victory conditions seems to be the same since the game was new, so i needed to change to more aggressive mode to be able to expand.

 

[Snoipah]

Tall play is more viable now than ever before because wide play has taken a huge hit due to research penalty.

 

[MadDemiurg]

Tall play in Stellaris 2.0 is about limiting the amount of systems, not planets.

I'd estimate that ~20 systems with an average amount of planets (habitable or not) is enough to be fully competetive.

Depends on what you mean by fully competitive, in general you want as many planets as you can get in the shortest time possible, while preferably minimizing the number of useless outposts you hold. whether you do this by spamming habitats or conquering stuff depends on what's more affordable in terms of influence and minerals (the 2 main limiting factors). I fully expect that taking planets from people for 0 influence with colossus CB is the most efficient way to steamroll mid/lategame, although many people report that it's also bugged.

In general you probably want to do both to an extent if you can afford it as 300 influence for 4x25 size gaia planets in 1 system is a good deal (although it's not as good for the victory condition as conquering 4 planets as it also increases the total number of habitable planets in the galaxy, but it's still good for eco), but otoh ringworld construction is slow and you need other ways to spend influence in the meantime (could be habs instead, but they are bad/meh for eco and influence wise it would depend on the claim cost reduction you have to see how competitive they are with conquest).

Speaking about number of systems, you just want to maintain a good system/planet ratio.

E.g at 1 system per planet your tech penalty is 0.06 x planets. In a theoretical case with 0 systems it would be 0.05 x planets, which is fairly negligible (e.g at 70 planets it's 5.2/4.5 = 15% difference in tech costs assuming you somehow crammed 70 planets into 0 systems )

You probably don't want to have 1 planet per 5 systems though if you care about tech costs, although once you get into repeatable tech and or/can build science nexuses to compensate it honestly doesn't matter.

P.S. I love fanatic purifiers (or equivalent) as you can take all their shit for 0 influence. AFE are tasty too (and you don't even need to be a neighbor for "containment" CB).

 

[serpentskirt]

Tall is essentially a "research focus" whereas wide is a "conquer focus" in order to fulfill the victory requirements. If there is a game where you can do both maximally with zero tradeoff, then its not a strategy game.

That's how tall was defined in Civ 5.

FYI, there are no search results for "tall vs. wide" before Civ 5 got released.

 

[Itsalive]

Anyway, I figured I'd roll back the last 20 years and play it a bit better to see if my estimates were correct, seems like they were, so here is a decent baseline for tall play, although I'm sure many will do way better.

Infinity almost understood, never saw the auto curating vault, species is now Erudite Robust Thrifty and Conversationist, Positronic AI almost done, living metal within borders and being researched, research institue is built.

Mega - engineering done (took 100 months), 27 systems, 4 fully popped habitats, 1 under construction and 1 about to be colonized. 12 planets in 27 systems, about to start the nexus once the influence gets there (a year late, claimed 2 systems I shouldn't have).

Unity output of the planets ranges from 50 to 100+

Got like 50 vettes with a trickster Admiral, and shitty weapons , but as I said, star fortresses all over the place (chose to skip citadels for mega engineering since my xenophobe neighbour can't beat me anyway)

Now just need to rush to ascension theory for the unity edicts, and decide what final perk I want.

 

[Sacrii]

Habitat is good but count as planet for malus research ^^' So nice to have some but not too much or it's becoming not worst at the end because of the size 12 ^^' so you get 5% malus research for 12 size.... Better to rush ring world and not have too much habitat in this case no? 20habitat = -100% research lol! I think habitat is a good solution to temporize ringworld now! With the malus research/planet you prefer to get a hight sized planet to make mass colonisation efficient no?

Because its nice to have +100 or +120% bonus research but if you have -400% by colonisation.... Is it worst? I mean from the early to the mid game off course !

 

[Itsalive]

Yes, the habitats are being built now only until I find a way to up my core sectors once more; Trappist system is already in my borders waiting. I'm guessing I will start converting mass in them once I have the dyson sphere finished.

BTW what are the reqs for ascension theory ?

 

[buglepong]

That's how tall was defined in Civ 5.

FYI, there are no search results for "tall vs. wide" before Civ 5 got released.

It wasnt formalised into those terms until that point, but the preliminary concepts were there from the beginning.

 

[MadDemiurg]

Anyway, I figured I'd roll back the last 20 years and play it a bit better to see if my estimates were correct, seems like they were, so here is a decent baseline for tall play, although I'm sure many will do way better.

Infinity almost understood, never saw the auto curating vault, species is now Erudite Robust Thrifty and Conversationist, Positronic AI almost done, living metal within borders and being researched, research institue is built.

Mega - engineering done (took 100 months), 27 systems, 4 fully popped habitats, 1 under construction and 1 about to be colonized. 12 planets in 27 systems, about to start the nexus once the influence gets there.

Unity output of the planets ranges from 50 to 100+

Got like 50 vettes with a trickster Admiral, and shitty weapons , but as I said, star fortresses all over the place (chose to skip citadels for mega engineering since my xenophobe neighbour can't beat me anyway)

Now just need to rush to ascension theory for the unity edicts, and decide what final perk I want.

I wouldn't really call 12 planets in 70 years tall, sure if you were lucky enough to get them close together and grab them without suffering a lot of tech cost penalties then good for you, but you're doing well because you have 12 colonized planets, not because you're "tall". If you had even more planets you would do even better. If you weren't as lucky and didn't have them as close you would still be likely better off grabbing them rather than not however, even if that meant more outposts.

I doubt that anyone is arguing that space mining is efficient past earlygame. The goal is to get as many planets as cheaply as you can. If you call it tall, ok. For me it's pretty wide (expansionist).