Unity Rework - Bureaucrats vs. Culture Workers

[Stardance]

It's a bit hard to comment without seeing the beta in action: only those having access and playing it really know what you're referring to (no beta access for GOG players, sadly).

But anyway, one of the changes I am most looking forward to is the removal of 100% sprawl compensation! I don't fully understand how it's been implemented now, but I feel anything that removes admin spam is an improvement.

Back in the time when we didn't have bureaucrats, and sprawl had a meaning, I had learned to optimize my empire for sprawl:
1. minimize number of districts:
...
2. minimize systems:
...
3. minimize sprawl from pops
...
4. plan your habitats and megastructures
...
I'm sure I need to rework that list with the current changes, but as you can see there is a lot you can do, and I appreciate the challenge to actually do all these things!

Perhaps the biggest change in the beta is that there is no longer anything you can build on your planets to mitigate sprawl. Short of more efficient districts (ecumenopolis, to some extent habitats, megastructures) and some early choices like species traits, civic choices, and later a few traditions, sprawl is just ... present. Most of the choices above emphasize slower growth in some form or fashion. If you select all of these approaches, just doing a ballpark you can achieve ... maybe 20% compensation on average? I agree 100% compensation is not needed, but having a bit more agency would be nice. Like how medical workers increase habitability, what if high stability planets reduced overall sprawl for the planet? Or building say a unique land management building reduced sector/colony sprawl by 10%? Or a unique cultural monument that reduces population sprawl by 10% for the planet it is on? Little things that could expand choice would I think be a good thing. And this feature is something that could tie into the job discussion of the roles for culture worker / politician / bureaucrat / administrator, as discussed above.

 

[Franton]

If you select all of these approaches, just doing a ballpark you can achieve ... maybe 20% compensation on average?

I didn't keep track, but I remember that just optimizing districts let me reduce sprawl from districts by around 60-70%. Given that this makes up about 40% of my total in late game, that's >20% already, just from that. Unfortunately there's much less you can do in the other categories - the most you can probably get from deliberately limiting the number of systems you actually claim. I. e., rather than expanding by conquest or just by claiming unclaimed territory, leave those systems alone and either vassalize or raid your enemies (I learned to love Nihilistic Acquisition ever since the change to pop growth)

So, I guess in total you can streamline your empire sprawl down by somewhere around 40%. But you're right, doing so does cost time and effort, and also resources for rebuilding stuff in other places and resettling pops, as well as pop modifications.