Technology and tradition cost increases based on empire sprawl (rather than sprawl - cap)

[Delthor]

I've been thinking about the idea of having two separate factors influencing tech and unity costs. One based directly on empire sprawl/size. The other based on the vanillla approach of being based on (sprawl - admin cap). This way, tech/unity costs increase at a rate that's not very steep regardless of bureaucrats, but has a much steeper increase that's avoidable via bureaucrats.

However, there doesn't seem to be any way to do this. The only way to change tech or unity costs I can find is a multiplier on the penalty you get from going over admin cap. The modifiers tech_cost_empire_size_mult and tradition_cost_empiresize_mult are multipliers on the penalty you get from going over your admin cap, not the cost of those things ion general. There is no alternative that simply affects things based on empire size, at least not that I can find.

Is there something I'm missing? It seems like I can influence the cost of almost anything, even bizarre things like army consumer goods costs or deposit nanite costs. So I can influence almost any material cost in the game, change it based on empire sprawl (rather than sprawl - cap) by putting a modifier in empire_size = { } in 00_static_modifiers.txt, but I can't change the cost of techs or traditions? That seems crazy. I can change costs that don't even exist in game, but I can't change the cost of technologies and traditions? Especially since this was something that once existed in the game, it seems like this should be possible somewhere.

Am I just missing something?

The only alternative I see is hooking it to research speed and country unity output, but this doesn't work. It leads to a situation where a certain empire size reduces research speed by 100% or more, essentially halting your research entirely with no recourse to change it except increasing research speed, and those modifiers are limited. The unity version is worse, since it has the same problem, but applies to all of your empire's unity generation *except* unity from trade if you have "Marketplace of Ideas." Which means you could end up in a situation where you have -100% unity generation from all sources except trade, and can only work around it by using Marketplace of Ideas.

If this just isn't doable at the moment, I may just have to avoid messing with this part of the game in my mod...

 

[Ryika]

As far as I know it's not possible.

I also would advice against it from a design perspective: The new system is meant to replace the old system partly because having a passive, growing penalty that you can't combat, isn't a lot of fun.

What you can do to achieve a similar effect is to make empire sprawl scale up stronger as you expand.

If you put empire_size_<X> type of modifiers there, you can essentially create a system that has an element of exponential growth to certain, or all, things that create empire sprawl - which required wide empire to have an ever higher percentage of their pops as of Administrators, which means they have fewer scientists.

 

[Delthor]

The motivation from the design perspective is trying to smooth out the technology curve. Right now, it feels like technologies start out taking a very long time to research at the beginning, often in the 50-60 month range. That seems long to me, but good play causes it to drop down sharply early in the mid game to the point where I'm often researching T3/T4 technologies in less than a year. Basically, once you have enough infrastructure to support one or two dedicated research colonies while also pushing your admin cap up to your sprawl, your research speed gets absurd, and it doesn't really get back to reasonable levels until you hit tier 5 technologies. I often then find myself getting even those down to super low speeds thanks to megastructures and hyper specialized planets until I get high into the repeatables. I don't think the way technologies are laid out works well for having zero increase in cost based on empire size, since it makes the curve of how long it takes to research things go all over the place.

Making empire sprawl scale exponentially doesn't help that, since the biggest problem area is mid game when this exponential system wouldn't be changing much. It would mainly take effect at a point where the increasing cost of repeatables should already be curbing out of control tech speed.

Having tech costs increase by ~10% per 300 sprawl softens out that curve throughout the game. I think that combined with some tweaks around the super early game and the point just before you hit megastructures would help make things a smoother and more natural feeling progression, where you vary between 12 and 50 months based on how much you have dedicated to research, rather than wild swings between 70-80 and 5-10 depending on the point of the game.

 

[Ryika]

Having tech costs increase by ~10% per 300 sprawl softens out that curve throughout the game.

If you want a linear model so specifically only tackle the midgame, an alternative approach would to to just make administrators less efficient. That's pretty much the "reverse implementation" that achieves the same effect, since you do linearly decrease the amount of scientists an empire can run.

 

[Hansatron]

If you want a linear model so specifically only tackle the midgame, an alternative approach would to to just make administrators less efficient. That's pretty much the "reverse implementation" that achieves the same effect, since you do linearly decrease the amount of scientists an empire can run.

The game hands you an easy tool for the gap (C) between sprawl (A) and cap (B).

A-B = C can be rewritten as C+B = A, IE, if you target bureaucrats which exist in larger numbers linear to the sprawl you have, you can target sprawl directly. For example, each bureaucrat adds a small penalty to your overall sprawl. Then you get the exponential effect you seek.

 

[Delthor]

If you want a linear model so specifically only tackle the midgame, an alternative approach would to to just make administrators less efficient. That's pretty much the "reverse implementation" that achieves the same effect, since you do linearly decrease the amount of scientists an empire can run.

Yeah, adjusting bureaucrats is another thing I was planning either way. Perhaps I can be a bit more aggressive with them to compensate... Thanks for confirming that I'm not missing anything and the bit of design feedback.