The focus on "wide" stifles the game

[Ixal]

Wiz has said that a large (wide) empire should always be stronger than a tall one. While this is logical if both are of equal tech level and internal development I think that the overall design philosophy behind it stifles the game.

A lot of problems the game currently has, doomstacks, the general weakness of tech versus mass, the rapid progression of traditions or the general uselessness of megastructures compared to building masses of habitats can be traced back to this.

The research and unity you can gain from new planets outweight the penalty you get from expansion. Same for Unity. You also get more naval capacity and more ships are always better even if they are lower tech. In short, more is better and it has no downsides.

That makes strategies which lead to rapid expansion through conquest objectively much better than peaceful gameplay so that there is no use in playing them (sure you can roleplay not wanting to be successful but that gets boring fast). So a lot of options the game technically offers do not get explored as they are weak if not suicidal.

To improve the game there must be other solutions to problems than just going bigger and it should not always be the best option without downsides.
Growing too big should solve some problems but create others through stability.
Other Paradox games already do that for the military. HoI has stacking penalties and EU4 has morale and combat width. Throwing more men at a prussian army in the mountains will not work. That is what Stellaris needs. A point where getting bigger, be it in fleet, army or empire size, will produce very dimished returns or not work at all. It needs a way for empires which did not become quite as large as military expansionists to remain relevant and competitive within reasons. That would make so many playstyles in Stellaris viable and the game would benefit from it.

I hope someone from Paradox will read that as I fear that currently the direction of the game does not want to deviate from the "bigger is better" philosophy.

Edit: If you disagree with that can you give a short reason why you do so? Thanks.

 

[Mrakvampire]

Totally agree. Something should be done with rapid expansion.

 

[durbal]

Yeah, it's a problem that's been there from the start. The early game is exploration and seeing different stuff. The surprises (even if you've seen them before) are still fun. Then once the first few core worlds fill up with pops...BOOOM. The exponential expansion gets absolutely nuts and the entire galaxy is filled. So of course, you need to do the big land grab ASAP since getting those worlds early and filling them out later is still easier than building up slowly (which reaches a cap) or fighting a long war for them.

There needs to be a better balance so that successful empires are not ones that just spam colonies everywhere but rather ones that maintain healthy levels of both USEFUL expansion and internal management (i.e. the ol' wide vs. tall). Currently, all expansion is useful eventually -- and that shouldn't be the case. It should be like the Scottish colonies or the Spanish control of the Netherlands in some cases: tons of resources spent and wasted with no real return. The Scottish colonies failed and the Netherlands rebelled and couldn't be controlled (partially responsible for one of Spain's bankruptcies during its heyday). If, for example, fleets needed to be maintained to stop random pirate attacks or armies needed to be ever-present to combat titantic lifeforms then we could have the Scottish example where the colonists needed protection while the colonies slowly grew, costing many resources. If, for example, we had unhappy colonies subjected to foreign (or autonomous) interests where spending lots of political power and physical resources to keep control them then we could have the Spanish example. Right now the gains always exceed the cost, so expansion is a no-brainer.

 

[Neocv]

I couldn't agree more.

No strategy should be perfect. As was said " more is better and it has no downsides", and it shouldn't be this way. While a large empire should have advantages, I also think that should have problems.

A empire that occupies half the galaxy, while I would expect to have a great amount of resourses, if does not have a good infrastructure, should be ,at minimum, unstable. The faction and unrest system improved this problem greatly, but I don't think that fully fixed this. Why a empire with a bunch of underdeveloped colonies should be better than a empire with fewer but with fully developed colonies? I would expect much more strife in the first, while the latter could be much more harmonious and efficient.

The technology(combat technology to be more specific) has no use, but if you wouldn't expect a triplane from WWI to defeat the most modern jet fighter to date(roughly 100 years of diference), why expect ships equipped with tier I tech defeat a ships equipped with tier V? Considering that the you could reach end game techs by 90-130 years, possible earlier,(the fastest I ever reached with a fully focused tech empire, being 130 years the time when I finished the last of the non-repeatable technology), I would expect that a tier V ship would literally crush swams of tier I ships without the minimum difficulty, but curretly thats not true, and not even close to it.

A empire with underdeveloped colonies as a way to get fleet cap and the lowest kind of ships(tier I ships for example) shouldn't be the most optimal way to play. Heck, it should barelly be playable.
I'm not saying that a bigger empire should be bad to play, but it shouldn't be in a way that you get a colony and then forgets for the rest of the game.

But my major point is that differents strategies should be possible, and each of them should have advantages and disadvantages

 

[Teutonizer]

How much time it needed for EU4 to make 'tall'...somewhere viable? (I know itsn't and wouldn't ever be perfect, still)
Maybe after a few big patches we'll have something like that in Stellaris

 

[razaron]

In most 4x games, a new colony takes a while to become useful, for one reason or another.

In SoTS, money is love, money is life. New planets take a while before they have enough population to break even.
And in most 4X's, production is... produced. So new colonies have abysmal build speeds. These games usually have some sort of trade mechanic so you can share production with newly developing colonies, limiting how fast you can risk expanding.

The problem with Stellaris is that it's a 4X/Grand Stategy. So a pure 4X solution would feel too gamey, which is probably why the devs are taking their time to come up with a good solution.

I'd personally prefer a Grand Strategy solution. Something like new colonies being more divergent and unrest-y, forcing you to put effort into keeping them compliant.

 

[Sapa Inca]

Advances in military technology need be more powerful and unrest for warmongering wide civs need be more hard for manage, how many successful rebellions have you suffered as a player? The unrest really need be fixed.

 

[Juboboman]

Yeah, it's a problem that's been there from the start. The early game is exploration and seeing different stuff. The surprises (even if you've seen them before) are still fun. Then once the first few core worlds fill up with pops...BOOOM. The exponential expansion gets absolutely nuts and the entire galaxy is filled. So of course, you need to do the big land grab ASAP since getting those worlds early and filling them out later is still easier than building up slowly (which reaches a cap) or fighting a long war for them.

There needs to be a better balance so that successful empires are not ones that just spam colonies everywhere but rather ones that maintain healthy levels of both USEFUL expansion and internal management (i.e. the ol' wide vs. tall). Currently, all expansion is useful eventually -- and that shouldn't be the case. It should be like the Scottish colonies or the Spanish control of the Netherlands in some cases: tons of resources spent and wasted with no real return. The Scottish colonies failed and the Netherlands rebelled and couldn't be controlled (partially responsible for one of Spain's bankruptcies during its heyday). If, for example, fleets needed to be maintained to stop random pirate attacks or armies needed to be ever-present to combat titantic lifeforms then we could have the Scottish example where the colonists needed protection while the colonies slowly grew, costing many resources. If, for example, we had unhappy colonies subjected to foreign (or autonomous) interests where spending lots of political power and physical resources to keep control them then we could have the Spanish example. Right now the gains always exceed the cost, so expansion is a no-brainer.

The problem is "success" in Stellaris is measured by the size of your empire. That's where the victory conditions lie. There is no culture victory or religious victory like in Civ. So yeah you can either roleplay some small, militarily average/weak nation with a super high standard of living in and science etc. But if you want to "win" the game as most people see it in becoming the most powerful nation in the galaxy, you have to go wide. As you should. It's no different in the real world. Land+population = resources, military, economic, and even scientific. And the problem with your examples is that they are cherry picked and ignore the massive historical success of "wide" nations. The US went from a sliver on the east coast to controlling the better part of a continent. Russia, China, India... all owe their great power status the massive territories and/or populations they control. Sure there are examples of countries that tried to join the club and failed. But that's hardly an excuse to behave as if such failure was the norm. No one plays Stellaris to be Scotland's colonies. They play to be Rome, Great Britain, the US etc. To paint the world or a big chunk of it their color.

It would actually be ridiculous if small empires were able to take down galaxy sprawling giants. Or if the game was intentionally skewed in such a manner than it was more rewarding to sit in your nearby systems for 300 years rather than expand and conquer to the far edges of the galaxy. Instead of hopelessly trying to weaken wide gameplay which is the natural outcome in 4X, the only solution I would see is to expand victory conditions to include economic/religious/cultural. Unfortunately the systems for any of those 3 are not even place yet, let alone fleshed out to the point where you could build win conditions around. So maybe in a year or 2 with 6+ full expansions under our belt it'll be possible.

For now you are left roleplaying a small empire or expanding.

 

[redharo]

I don't see a problem here.

Tall = faster tech, smaller fleet but higher quality ships, reach voidborn faster. More advanced infrastructure. Compact, But you can only cram so much into a tiny space.

Wide = more raw resources, less tech, but enough room to grow infrastructure

 

[Sapa Inca]

I dont see problems with a small but very advanced empire have a chance of beat a huge but low tech empire. We have exemples in real life, Pizarro vs Incas and Cortez vs Aztecs for example, a victory possible by the combination of more advanced tech with help of internal rebelions (unrest).
The fact that it is more cost efficient stay using tier 1 technology after having researched tier 2 is enough proof that the system is broken.

 

[redharo]

I dont see problems with a small but very advanced empire have a chance of beat a huge but low tech empire. We have exemples in real life, Pizarro vs Incas and Cortez vs Aztecs for example, a victory possible by the combination of more advanced tech with help of internal rebelions (unrest).
The fact that it is more cost efficient stay using tier 1 technology after having researched tier 2 is enough proof that the system is broken.

What do you mean by "beat" exactly? I mean, it's fairly easy to stay alive using Diplomacy and have superior tech to everyone else in the game.

When AIs are playing around with Corvettes and destroyers, you can be playing with battleships with tachyon Lances

 

[grommile]

Advances in military technology need be more powerful and unrest for warmongering wide civs need be more hard for manage, how many successful rebellions have you suffered as a player? The unrest really need be fixed.

Spiritualist (or going full control-freak with Hive Mind or Fanatical Purifier) should not be compulsory for wide empires.

"How many successful rebellions have you suffered as a player?" is not an interesting question, since the only Paradox titles I've ever suffered a successful rebellion in were CK1 and CK2. (I have deliberately allowed rebels to succeed on occasion in EU3 or EU4, and considered doing so in Vicky 2, but that's a different kettle of fish.)

 

[redharo]

Fanatic Xenophobe/military + nationalistic zeal + adopt supremacy + intergalactic ambitions + galactic ambitions is ideal for going tall as you have so much space to do stuff without going beyond the borders...

Then again, it's not called isolationism for nothing

 

[Sapa Inca]

Spiritualist (or going full control-freak with Hive Mind or Fanatical Purifier) should not be compulsory for wide empires.

"How many successful rebellions have you suffered as a player?" is not an interesting question, since the only Paradox titles I've ever suffered a successful rebellion in were CK1 and CK2. (I have deliberately allowed rebels to succeed on occasion in EU3 or EU4, and considered doing so in Vicky 2, but that's a different kettle of fish.)

In Stellaris you dont even see rebellions or other unrest events in your empire simply because keeping unrest low is very easy, unrest currently seems like a wasted mechanic because unless you play badly on purpose you dont have the opportunity to interact with them or defeat them.

 

[Cattlehunter]

...

It would actually be ridiculous if small empires were able to take down galaxy sprawling giants. Or if the game was intentionally skewed in such a manner than it was more rewarding to sit in your nearby systems for 300 years rather than expand and conquer to the far edges of the galaxy. Instead of hopelessly trying to weaken wide gameplay which is the natural outcome in 4X, the only solution I would see is to expand victory conditions to include economic/religious/cultural. Unfortunately the systems for any of those 3 are not even place yet, let alone fleshed out to the point where you could build win conditions around. So maybe in a year or 2 with 6+ full expansions under our belt it'll be possible.

For now you are left roleplaying a small empire or expanding.

It would be ridiculous if small empires were able to take down sprawling giants, eh? Like when the british took on china and won? Or when the mongols took on china and won? Or when the japanese took on china and won? Shit, who hasn't taken on china and won? Size doesn't count for much if you don't know how to use it.

Germany took on like 70% of the planet's surface pretty much on its own during WW1. British conquered a lot of that from a tiny island. Revolutionary france took on literally everyone in range all by themselves. Genghis Khan took the people of a backwater and built the largest land empire in history out of them. Romans started as a tiny city in italy that just refused to give up after series of defeats that would've left others at their knees. Alexander conquered the entire known world with just one army.

On the other hand, you have places like, yeah, india and china, which were huge places with massive populations and advanced civilizations. Who got their asses handed to them by tiny islands.

Lots of massive powers weren't massive powers because they were wide, they became (or had the potential to become) wide because they were massive powers. And lots of powers that were enormously wide failed to amount to anything because they didn't know how to (or care to) exploit the resources available to them.

 

[redharo]

To have resources to exploit in the first place, you need to build wide... Or be sufficiently big enough that you are sure it won't run out any time soon

 

[Nussor]

The focus on wide is the result of the game's extreme linearity and the unwillingness of the devs to make it more complex and diversify gameplay. Some strong steps would be needed to deal with this. it's helpful to think about what "wide" empire actuall means in Stellaris: The ability to exploit an asteroid for 4 units of minerals for eternity and call yourself lucky. The same goes for production capabilities, which are arbitrarily bound to colonized worlds. Or the colonies themselves, which can't be developed past a +4 bonus on any resources and definetely won't hold more Pops than they have tiles. The option to go tall isn't even included, so of course "tall" empires are always inferior.

 

[WhiteWeasel]

Lots of massive powers weren't massive powers because they were wide, they became (or had the potential to become) wide because they were massive powers. And lots of powers that were enormously wide failed to amount to anything because they didn't know how to (or care to) exploit the resources available to them.

This video pretty succulently explains the tall vs wide debate with real world examples. Tall has issues in stellaris because you can play wide without much of the real world disadvantages it brings, or that they are downplayed. More numbers = better. Which is not always the case in the real word, case in point, @7:04 with their Japan V China example.

The fact that it is more cost efficient stay using tier 1 technology after having researched tier 2 is enough proof that the system is broken.

Ohhhh boy, tell me about it. I did some quick numbers, and when it comes to damage, weapons damage scales very poorly, with the difference from beginning FTL tier I to endgame Ringworld factory with top tier weapons being a mere 2/3s difference in performance. Numbers are derived from Large slot equipment, and their listed damage averages. I have yet to calculate their damage vs cost ratio, but weapons do cost more directly when going up a tier, and indirectly by needing more advanced power plants to feed them. So yeah, it's easy to see why quantity over quality is so good in stellaris since techs progress so little and you are paying a premium for marginal improvements.

 

[ringhloth]

I don't agree that tall and wide should always be equitable playstyles, because ultimately it's basically impossible to make them equitable (just look at Civ 5, which tried to make them equitable and instead set to a lot of players a hard city cap of 4; to a very, very skilled player you can work around this, but it also requires a lot of luck. Ultimately, a worse situation). But there should be ways for tall to compete, so someone who fell behind isn't always behind. To some extent, we did get some of this with Utopia. Unity is harder to manage for a rapidly expanding empire, and someone who's colonized just a handful of planets can choose to stack unity to try and close the gap. It won't let you take on a goliath empire all by your lonesome, but you can close the gap on someone who has 2-4 more colonies than you. However, I do think there needs to be more ways for empires to get fleet supply rather than just settling new colonies. That's pretty bad, imo. Maybe a special spaceport-like station constructable around any planet, that together can provide a maybe a maximum of 20 fleet capacity, increasing to 40-50 with tech?

 

[Ixal]

And the problem with your examples is that they are cherry picked and ignore the massive historical success of "wide" nations. The US went from a sliver on the east coast to controlling the better part of a continent. Russia, China, India... all owe their great power status the massive territories and/or populations they control.

Russia has a smaller economy than Italy and their time as military juggernaught was rather short. And I do not see anyone who would consider India a great power.
And while the US and China are the worlds top economies, who comes after that? Germany and that is hardly a territorial giant. Also there are many examples in history where a small country outperformed a large one. The Netherlands fought off the spanish and then proceeded to dominate world trade.

I don't see a problem here.

Tall = faster tech, smaller fleet but higher quality ships, reach voidborn faster. More advanced infrastructure. Compact, But you can only cram so much into a tiny space.

Wide = more raw resources, less tech, but enough room to grow infrastructure

Because thats not how it works. Bigger is better affects every part of the game including research as the additional output from more planets more than makes up for the size penalty and large low tech fleets beat small high tech fleets while costing roughly the same.
Maybe unity is different but a large empire can build a lot ot unity buildings especially as spiritualist.

The focus on wide is the result of the game's extreme linearity and the unwillingness of the devs to make it more complex and diversify gameplay.

This is what worries me. From the things I heard from Wiz I am not sure if the devs even consider this to be a problem or "working ad intended".
So I would really like some comment from Paradox on that issue.