The focus on "wide" stifles the game

[grommile]

If you're referring to my Pacifist Ascension suggestion,

Nah. It's a general thing.

 

[Ixal]

Being an SP-only person, I'd be interested to know how true that holds when the other empires in the galaxy are all clever squishy meatbags instead of dysfunctional AIs.

Considering that there are no options to incite rebellion from the outside it doesnt matter much. In competitive MP the lack of viable strategies is very obvious. Everyone races to expand and the largest empire (or player alliance) wins. If you stop expanding and focus on development you become a victim.

 

[Emraldis]

is not technically related to this, especially not in the context you mentioned, since this issue clearly existed before 1.5.
But I'll agree that the introduction of Unity did not change anything (as many might have hoped, albeit Wiz never said Unity was a mechanic supposed to support tall empires).



The big point you're missing here is the fact those games have TERRAIN. (Not in the 'terrain types' of way, to preemptively clear out that missunderstanding).
In Stellaris, there's nothing suchlike. Fleets can pretty much go anywhere from anywhere, except for Hyperlanes.
Thus, there's no 'splitting up troops' or 'defending chokepoints' or 'good defense positions' which would require and therefore promote tactical maneuvring. The best difference between System A and System B in Stellaris might be whether it has a colony in it to siege down for warscore, or not.

Therefore, this is an issue that I am not willing to simply attribute to tall vs wide, but to the inherent flaws with the extremely high mobility of the current FTL methods (excluding Hyperlanes).
And, which is at least some form of positive here, Wiz said he's fully aware of that issue and is intending to completely rework FTL to make these military maneuvring matters actually relevant once he has a patch worth of time to actually go in-depth to rework FTL without relying on bandaid fixes.

Until then, it's relatively pointless to complain about the overpowering strength of wide vs tall, and it might be more reasonable to focus your creative energy on devising a good concept to rework FTL to enable the need for fleet maneuvers and allow a warfare system that is in-debth enough to support 'the few standing against the many'.

Stellaris really does need some galactic terrain, it would help make galaxies more interesting, and restrict movement for all FTL types, not just hyperlane.