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It's different every game. If you get out to a huge lead and have colonized 1/3 of the galaxy without being challanged...well yeah the game is over. Time to move on to the next.

If it's multiplayer then you should have power blocs forming before that ever happens. If it's vs the AI then you need to increase difficulty. On harder settings the AI does a pretty good job ganging up on you.
 
I don't even really understand what the problem is with snowballing.

This is a 4x game. If you're able to gobble up territory and resources faster than your opponents, you should be rewarded for that. If you get too big and become too much of a bully, the galaxy can form coalitions against you like in EU IV. That's a great mechanic.

Don't just slap arbitrary per-Empire limits. That feels awful, it breaks immersion and it penalizes you for just playing the game well.
In my opinion, the best solution to snowballing would have been for empires to grow steadily more autonomous, unstable, and rigid with reforms and other sweeping changes growing more costly, or more time-consuming, the larger the empire grew, with outer worlds and sectors far more independent (and possibly rebellious) than your core sectors. You might be able to form a really large empire, but an increasing amount of resources would have to be spent on simply keeping it from fracturing, and you might have to do compromises such as letting some sectors become vassals. Would also add a lot of depth to the game as other empires would be able to interact with the splinter empires, so for example, if sectors break off from an empire I hate, it'd be in my best interest to aid the rebels to hurt that empire.

I don't neccessarily want it to be inevitable that your empire collapses if it grows too big, but it'd be nice if there were some challenging gameplay elements built around empire size.
 
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Because if its too easy to snowball as soon as you get a lead you might as well just end the game.

Its no fun if every time you snowball the coalitions against you are just there wasiting everyone's time because they can't stop you.
So to prevent players from taking over the galaxy too quickly. You like that taking over territory much less useful, not in a flavorful/RP way, but just by stagnating the empire. Not by making it harder or resource intensive to keep the territory, or making the remaining empires harder to conquer. Just causing your entire empire to grind to a halt because you took over more worlds.
 
In my opinion, the best solution to snowballing would have been for empires to grow steadily more autonomous, unstable, and rigid with reforms and other sweeping changes growing more costly, or more time-consuming, the larger the empire grew, with outer worlds and sectors far more independent (and possibly rebellious) than your core sectors. You might be able to form a really large empire, but an increasing amount of resources would have to be spent on simply keeping it from fracturing, and you might have to do compromises such as letting some sectors become vassals. Would also add a lot of depth to the game as other empires would be able to interact with the splinter empires, so for example, if sectors break off from an empire I hate, it'd be in my best interest to aid the rebels to hurt that empire.

I don't neccessarily want it to be inevitable that your empire collapses if it grows too big, but it'd be nice if there were some challenging gameplay elements built around empire size.

Well they sort of tried to do something with Empire sprawl, but it was half-baked and not very robust. As it stands, sprawl is basically a non-mechanic. You can practically ignore it with a few casual adjustments every once in awhile. You never really have to seriously invest in administrative capacity, and the penalties for sprawl were never really significant anyways. Something like you suggest would definitely help but Paradox hasn't really done anything with sprawl/amenities/happiness/political affiliation in years.

Another thing I think they could have done is make early expansion less effective. For example - If I have 3 core worlds that are not yet fully populated, and then I all of the sudden send out 5 colony ships simultaneously, why should all 5 new colonies grow at the same rate?

If there's perfectly good space on my core worlds with jobs/security/lebenstraum, why would I want to resettle on the dangerous frontier?

I would think you'd have a tougher time settling people on these new planets, and certainly have a hell of a time settling 5 at once. Those planets should just stall and go nowhere until the more developed worlds start crowding.
 
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Stellaris is held together by duct tape at this point. Rather than overhaul the pop system again, I'd rather they start working on Stellaris 2.
To see how patched-together Stellaris is at this point, just look at Administrators. They don't...administrate, don't produce Admin Capacity. They produce Unity and Amenities, like Entertainers.
 
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To see how patched-together Stellaris is at this point, just look at Administrators. They don't...administrate, don't produce Admin Capacity. They produce Unity and Amenities, like Entertainers.
A quite fitting representation of your average modern-day government, don't you think?
 
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No, actually, I don't. One office in the US government might mostly produce entertainment, but Unity? And the US government is hardly typical. And remember were talking about a whole Stellaris pop here, so at least 10s of millions of people.
 
So to prevent players from taking over the galaxy too quickly. You like that taking over territory much less useful, not in a flavorful/RP way, but just by stagnating the empire. Not by making it harder or resource intensive to keep the territory, or making the remaining empires harder to conquer. Just causing your entire empire to grind to a halt because you took over more worlds.
I was specifically replying to a poster who was claiming there shouldn't be any limitations on snowballing at all.
 
Because if its too easy to snowball as soon as you get a lead you might as well just end the game.

Its no fun if every time you snowball the coalitions against you are just there wasiting everyone's time because they can't stop you.
This I think is indicative of the games other major shortcoming and that is the AI, which really sucks at presenting a meaninful challenge later on.

Well and the fact PDX hates players being able to blob in any of it's games and introduces arbitrary mechanics to prevent it ;) Which can make sense in most of their titles ( and it does get boring once you blob in EU,CK etc) but the new pop mechanic all but assures conquerfest late game now. So map painting is back on the menu... only.... with a speed limit??? o_O
 
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People need to understand that the majority of Stellaris's playerbase isn't grand strategy players who want to stare at spreadsheets and pie charts, even though those players are obviously overrepresented on this forum.

Removing pops would take away a large amount of flavor and intuitiveness from the game and make it less interesting. Just like removing the tile system already did. I warned against that change back then, and ever since the change to the jobs system, the game has struggled to regain both identity and balance. Even worse: The very thing the tile system was removed to combat - micromanagement - only got worse after the change.

Having little alien dudes on your planets is at the heart of Stellaris. It always has been and always will be. A pop-free game would need to be Stellaris 2. Don't encourage the devs to ruin this game for a second time. Besides, even the relatively smaller overhaul for 3.0 has semi-broken the game yet again - another total overhaul would mean YEARS more of the game in a broken state.
 
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People need to understand that the majority of Stellaris's playerbase isn't grand strategy players who want to stare at spreadsheets and pie charts, even though those players are obviously overrepresented on this forum.

Removing pops would take away a large amount of flavor and intuitiveness from the game and make it less interesting. Just like removing the tile system already did. I warned against that change back then, and ever since the change to the jobs system, the game has struggled to regain both identity and balance. Even worse: The very thing the tile system was removed to combat - micromanagement - only got worse after the change.

Having little alien dudes on your planets is at the heart of Stellaris. It always has been and always will be. A pop-free game would need to be Stellaris 2. Don't encourage the devs to ruin this game for a second time. Besides, even the relatively smaller overhaul for 3.0 has semi-broken the game yet again - another total overhaul would mean YEARS more of the game in a broken state.
The tile system wasn't removed to combat micromanagement. It was removed to because a max 25 tile world is very limiting for the design space for the game. However, not enough thought was put into the user interactions to manage the new pop system. So where a tile world could be "completed" pretty quickly, the new worlds required constant attention, leading to micro hell. The growth now means that micro hell is gone, but the level of interaction in the game is unacceptable, read as, it's boring.
 
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The tile system wasn't removed to combat micromanagement. It was removed to because a max 25 tile world is very limiting for the design space for the game. However, not enough thought was put into the user interactions to manage the new pop system. So where a tile world could be "completed" pretty quickly, the new worlds required constant attention, leading to micro hell. The growth now means that micro hell is gone, but the level of interaction in the game is unacceptable, read as, it's boring.

So in other words, 25 tile worlds were too limited, so they removed the limits, which caused endless micromanagement and lag, so they put a different limiter back. By your own logic, they should have just kept or iterated on the tile system.
 
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So in other words, 25 tile worlds were too limited, so they removed the limits, which caused endless micromanagement and lag, so they put a different limiter back. By your own logic, they should have just kept or iterated on the tile system.
We will never know for certain what the exact rational behind the decisions for Stellaris 2.0 were, all we have to go off of is the official forum posts. Personally, I found the adjacency mini game of the tile system...irritating. Maybe in the end staying with the tile system would have been better, but that ship has pretty well sailed. At the end of the day though, we are all customers, and customers are not required to be rational about their expectations. We can want super fast performance and a galaxy spanning empire!
 
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So in other words, 25 tile worlds were too limited, so they removed the limits, which caused endless micromanagement and lag, so they put a different limiter back. By your own logic, they should have just kept or iterated on the tile system.

For the first time in a long time I'm starting to think the tile system should have stayed. It could have used improvements, sure, but it worked exceptionally well for both performance and AI difficulty.
 
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This is almost a word for word copy of my comments and suggestions on this topic, in the last few days but also much longer.

I agree, and I’m glad it’s finally getting community support, though this was suggested for years.

Well it’s never too late, Stellaris can be saved by a pop overhaul and streamlining, and I’m hopeful it will happen with enough community support.
 
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The tile system wasn't removed to combat micromanagement. It was removed to because a max 25 tile world is very limiting for the design space for the game. However, not enough thought was put into the user interactions to manage the new pop system. So where a tile world could be "completed" pretty quickly, the new worlds required constant attention, leading to micro hell. The growth now means that micro hell is gone, but the level of interaction in the game is unacceptable, read as, it's boring.
The tile system was not removed at all. Jobs are tiles, pops are tile-plugs. Where you had 25 before, now you have hundreds. It’s still all tiles and tile-plugs
 
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People need to understand that the majority of Stellaris's playerbase isn't grand strategy players who want to stare at spreadsheets and pie charts, even though those players are obviously overrepresented on this forum.

Removing pops would take away a large amount of flavor and intuitiveness from the game and make it less interesting. Just like removing the tile system already did. I warned against that change back then, and ever since the change to the jobs system, the game has struggled to regain both identity and balance. Even worse: The very thing the tile system was removed to combat - micromanagement - only got worse after the change.

Having little alien dudes on your planets is at the heart of Stellaris. It always has been and always will be. A pop-free game would need to be Stellaris 2. Don't encourage the devs to ruin this game for a second time. Besides, even the relatively smaller overhaul for 3.0 has semi-broken the game yet again - another total overhaul would mean YEARS more of the game in a broken state.
I don't entirely disagree with you here. Although I would argue that the term spreadsheet and pie charts, while seeming grey and dull, can be anything but, if the gameplay systems behind them are engaging, fun and have noticeable results, then they in turn can be fun to play around with.

But I think you are right, about the original problem, being the pop and job rework, from the original tile system.

I have said in other posts. I like micromanagement. IF it is done well. Otherwise, I would prefer a simple system, over a broken one.

The original tile system, wasn't anything to write home about, it wasn't very deep, it wasn't super engaging or hard, there were definate ways to maximise it, which meant that once a planet was "done" you never really went back to it. (<---Isn't that what we look for in automation of a game system??? Why did they change this?)

It worked. The problem was, that the AI wasn't very challenging, even then. The late game crises could be buggy and again, didn't present much challenge and as such, players wanted... more to do, more challenge and I think, the devs solution, was to diversify the economic game. But in doing so, they introduced more problems than they fixed, because the system they changed, didn't really have much to do with the underlying problems. It gave people things to do, because the new jobs/pops system was more busy work, than strategy and that is the worst kind of micro. It also introduced the worst hit to performance in any PDX game.

I say that last, as someone, who has had heavy issues with performance on multiple custom rigs with highly diverse specs and settings.

But instead of recognising that, if truth be told, the changes they made, only introduced more problems and instead of rolling back or finding a better fix, they have been trying to shore up the new system (and it's never going to work, because, to my belief, it is fundamentally flawed)

Some of us are now saying, we need something different, even if the realistic chances of getting such a change are slim, I think it's important to make it known, that the new system is not just suboptimal, but unfit for purpose. Not doing so, just invites PDX to make similar mistakes in the future (mistakes ofcourse, are okay! Everyone makes them, gods know I do, we get better and learn more from the mistakes we make than the successes, but only if we can face down those mistakes)

So I get what you're saying, that not everyone wants a Vicky2 style population and economic system. I reference that one, because it was pretty deep, sound and stable, but I would be open to practically any alternative to the one we have, including something more simple (because it's better to do simple and works, than complex and doesn't)

I'd also like to touch on what you say about different people looking for different things and you're entirely right.

I think those that are happy with the current POP system, are the sort that look for game balance, who are focused on "winning the game" in the traditional sense. They seem to be the ones who say "you're upset because you can't min/max anymore" yet they are the people, who are most likely to min/max, finding the optimal way to overcome the global pop growth modifier requires very specific mechanical workarounds to optimise your pop growth... min/maxing! They are the same people that wanted a more diverse pop/job system. More involved economics, because that's the numbers games they play. It literally did nothing for those of us, who wanted more scenarios, more opportunities to tell a narrative story about our races, their empires and the journey they were on.

The people who want to have an experience, are the ones saying, this isn't working. We didn't want a more complex system, we wanted more going on lategame (I think PDX have figured out that what people want is situational opportunity, stories they can tell, through the framework of the gameplay. We see it in the emerging design direction of Crusader Kings 3 and the theme of Stellaris latest DLC) but before the realised that, they listened to those people who wanted more "numbers"

So we go Megacorp. We got the new system and we got all the problems of balance and performance that come from those changes.

Now it's a battle to rebalance everything, to make the whole work together and frankly, I don't think it's possible.

So I hear what you're saying and I actually agree with you, but short of making a huge U turn on this (which I don't think PDX will be able to countenance) we need to make suggestions that might ameliorate the problems enough, that we can get back to the stories we like to tell (and ofcourse, play out.)
 
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I think those that are happy with the current POP system, are the sort that look for game balance, who are focused on "winning the game" in the traditional sense.
not from where i'm sitting

from where i'm sitting, a big slice of the overt minmaxers appear to be really grumpy because the minmax strategy is goofy shenanigans.

while the people who are happy seem to be all like "oh it's great i don't have to manage as many pops and there's less lag suck it minmaxers".
 
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not from where i'm sitting

from where i'm sitting, a big slice of the overt minmaxers appear to be really grumpy because the minmax strategy is goofy shenanigans.

while the people who are happy seem to be all like "oh it's great i don't have to manage as many pops and there's less lag suck it minmaxers".
Dunno. Min-maxers will always find a way. People who prefer to play specific builds (not talking about meta or extremely quirky builds) are shafted if you prefeed playstyle do not include constant conquest that involve integrating other Empires POPs. Before you can be competitive against AI by just properly managing your planets and growing POPs better than AI, but now, especially on bigger Galaxies you simply cannot outgrow several AI.
 
Min-maxers will always find a way.
they will and they have

and a bunch of them think that the ways found are particularly ridiculous