To be fair there used to be an even simpler system before bureaucrats called not having bureaucrats and it just worked fine. An elegant solution for a more civilized age
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Why do some people not like Administrative Capacity?
- Thread starter ThePangaean
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Even going peaceful-wide pays back the resources in a few years. I play peaceful-wide until I'm basically forced to kill the Spiritualist FE.
Really, the only constraint I face after about 2250 is influence. From bare colony to alloy producer is a year building the infrastructure and then waiting for pops to appear. I can have all the habitats and megastructures my influence gathering will support in addition to building up a fleet capable of wiping out a FE before 2300. One habitat every 18 months or so is hardly a drain on alloys. After all traditions are acquired and Will to Power ambition is picked up, it still takes about a year per habitat / 2 years per megastructure. By this time alloy production is in the thousands per month and I'm selling excess on the market.
I don't think I've ever snowballed that fast, but it's stupidly quick now and the penalties are pretty pathetic. A few pen pusher planets for admin and it's sorted.
This new edict change also means I don't need to worry about turning edicts on every 10 or so years like in the older version. Now I can pick up executive vigor as my first pick, turn on the main edicts that I need and just expand like crazy. Feels pretty broken to me to be honest.
This new edict change also means I don't need to worry about turning edicts on every 10 or so years like in the older version. Now I can pick up executive vigor as my first pick, turn on the main edicts that I need and just expand like crazy. Feels pretty broken to me to be honest.
A couple of base traditions also offer extra edict slots too. I ran out of edicts I wanted to bother running, actually. Next time I probably won't get Imperial Prerogative. With that and Arcology being mostly useless now that all colonies get industry districts really thins the herd of valuable ascension perks.
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Mh. The old system had it flaws, but from todays point of view it needed some fixes to get a better way to balance snowballing. Sprawl itself is good way to calculate somekind of cohesion in my empire. But the live version misses things like unhappy pops, science and worlds far away from the capital.
Pop happiness should have an impact on how much sprawl they produce. Science could or should become a more interactive entity in the game by getting consumed not only for scientific progress. You need to balance this out.
Next thing could be a comeback of a real core sector. The core sector reduces sprawl, is easy to handle and very productive. The farer a sector capital is from the core sector, the more sprawl it produces.
Just some ideas to counter wide and snowballing.
Pop happiness should have an impact on how much sprawl they produce. Science could or should become a more interactive entity in the game by getting consumed not only for scientific progress. You need to balance this out.
Next thing could be a comeback of a real core sector. The core sector reduces sprawl, is easy to handle and very productive. The farer a sector capital is from the core sector, the more sprawl it produces.
Just some ideas to counter wide and snowballing.
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This can help limit exponential growth for longer and avoid reaching absurd values, depending on the formula used depending on the size that can be achieved in the game.
But I'm not sure that each pop has a different value is really any easier for the player and the game.
So if we limit this growth too much, it will just be non-existent for the majority of empires, except for the very big ones. If it grows too fast, big empires will suffer absurd values.
This is why my formula, I used roots (a square and a 5) to flatten the effect of the empire sprawl and the administrative capacity, while maintaining an inequality between the two so that the great empires tend towards an increase in administrative inefficiency.
Administrative overhaul: empire sprawl penalty and administrative inefficiency level
However, it is true that it is not "easy" for a player (I do not know about the game).
But precisely, the result of the equation is clear, it is a simple number.
My empire has level "X" administrative inefficiency here are the consequences.
It can be frustrating that the rise in administrative inefficiency seems to be inevitable (but this depends heavily on its growth, traditions and the like, and the development of its administrative apparatus).
But going down a level can be rewarding, this descent, you can see its effect on your empire, it's not just "a few decimals" that change.
Also, even if your empire sprawl grows, you are not in “Oh! no, quickly, I must increase my administrative capacity, the cost of my research has just increased by 0.5%! ”
As long as you don't change level, the penalties are fixed and the level change is not instantaneous.
This leaves you a little time to adapt your administrative capacity or to prepare yourself for the second level of penalties which will hit your empire in a visible way.
When we look at the curves that I posted, we can see that the system affects everyone, small as well as large. So it's a game mechanic from the start and not just something that will only really affect the very big empires. It can therefore have a whole gameplay around and different strategies.
A system of administrative inefficiency level can also allow a clearer definition of what a big empire is (and the different levels of bigirs), for example by taking as a reference an empire having a empire sprawl equivalent to its capacity administrative.
We can therefore give clearer references to establish gameplay around.
This does not necessarily mean forcing players to adopt a particular style of play, but "forcing" them to choose a path among the various choices and combinations of choices.
For example, if you want to keep a unique empire as long as possible, while remaining viable, you can choose traditions, perk ascents and more to help you improve your administration, decrease your empire sprawl, offset penalties. and obviously to invest your administration.
You can also choose to favor a gameplay with dependencies and make choices accordingly.
Each approach can have its advantages and disadvantages.
Just like, you can have a hybrid approach.
Just as we could introduce the notion of central and peripheral sectors.
The central sectors provide all their resources to the empire and the player has full control over them. Peripheral increase the empire sprawl less, but contribute less to the empire and the player has less control over it.
You can also tell yourself, I am happy at level 6, that's fine with me, I stay at level 6, so I act accordingly to stay at level 6.
Big empires can't just say I'm bigger, I can spend more resources to avoid penalties.
The penalties you will necessarily suffer, even if you can mitigate them.
But you keep an economic powerhouse unless your empire really sinks into chaos.
Oh come on, you don't really believe that's a good argument. I'm going to let you imagine the 'this is how the game would look if we applied that logic to everywhere' words.
No, they weren't. Larger empires were still more powerful than smaller ones, but they didn't simply absolutely run out of control in an unstoppable snowball.
Which is why Russia is ten times more technologically advanced than Japan, right? ... right?
Because the further away something is from the capitol the harder it is to police. This is not a new idea. History is filled with territories breaking off from Mama Empire because they were far enough away that there was no significant reprisal.
So your argument now should be "If you select the Have Strife trait you'll have strife no matter what, and if you select the No Strife trait you'll be paradise no matter what"? Surely you can see how... bad that argument is.
Nope, you got me in a tizzy. Your IQ is just too high, I couldn't understand your blinding brilliance as it washed over me like a tidal wave. /s
I agree with the following lists, except perhaps the 'Special constructions' since those would already be covered under other items.
Yes... that's the current system, correct.
You... you LITERALLY JUST DESCRIBED WHY A LARGER EMPIRE WOULD SUFFER DIFFICULTIES. The thing you practically went nuclear over, and you're recommending it!
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Tbh I don't see that as a problem, personally. If you have a planet dedicated to bureaucracy, then why wouldn't your galactic empire's admin needs be covered?
I just wish they make it a bit more complex and include more classic sci-fi tropes about it.
Perhaps because the administrative apparatus "implodes" under its own weight.
You end up having a galactic administration which manages the intersectoral administration which manages the sectorial administration which manages the planetary administration which manages the regional administration which manages the municipal administration which manages the district administration ...
Obviously, it is a caricature, but it is the idea, it is for that when my idea, I speak about gains of administrative inefficiency.
You end up having a galactic administration which manages the intersectoral administration which manages the sectorial administration which manages the planetary administration which manages the regional administration which manages the municipal administration which manages the district administration ...
Obviously, it is a caricature, but it is the idea, it is for that when my idea, I speak about gains of administrative inefficiency.
And what we are waiting for to change the sprawl formula to be bigger for bigger empires? Since the release of this system, multiple people already talked about it.
Now that we have a Custodian Groups, it should be trivial for them to change the formula. They can use whatever they seem fit, it just need to cost more for bigger empires.
For example, currently it gives:
- 5 for each colony (correct, colonies are the strongest asset)
- 1 for each system
- 1 for each district
- 0.5 for each pop
- 2 for each Branch Office
Bureaucrat produce 10 admin cap. We have a lot of bonuses to admin cap, but generally we need 1 Bureucrat for every 20 pops. So just increase it, like a formula 0.5*Pops^1.1
So currently if you have 100 pops, it's 50 sprawl. New formula, 79.
If you have 500 pops, it's 250, new formula, 465. And so on.
The formula can be whatever and we can put the higher cost on other things like Colonies too (otherwise pop sprawl reduction would be the better bonus). Bu the idea remains: bigger empire need more admin cap.
Just because a bunch of users think something is dumb and can articulate why, doesn't mean the system isn't working as intended. Remember the order updates were done: adopt the admin penalty system THEN update bureaucrats to negate it. So the devs want it easily negatable however much I think that's silly.
The idea behind the science inefficiency is duplicated effort. A bunch of scientists on Gorblax Prime spend months researching more efficient plasma coils only to find their colleagues half a galaxy away have just published a full set of schematics in this months' plasma quarterly. Given you've spent time in academia you must have seen this at least once. While confirmation of results is obviously hugely important, and multiple people working on the same problem may have different insights, there's also going to be a lot of duplicated effort. And the more sprawling (heh) your infrastructure and the worse the communication between them is the more likely it is to fall into the latter.
Your objection doesn't really contradict this; spending more money does still mean more science. If my tech is at 200% cost due to sprawl then going from 90 labs to 100 labs still means more science and faster research. It's just that your total progress will not be as fast as 100 labs in a smaller, leaner, more efficient empire. In game the bigger empire could still choose to research faster overall because while it needs twice the research it can afford three times the scientists, but thry will probably focus in something more linear, like more ships.
Of course this all falls apart if both empires have almost all their researchers crammed into a single system full of research habitats but unless you want to some kind of trade route mechanic for research it's an acceptable level of abstraction.
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Imo it's three reasons.
First, you can ignore the sprawl entirely. It has teeth, certainly, but the economy is so poorly balanced that the benefit of a single planet virtually always outweighs the harms of taking it. At all times you are better off expanding. So sprawl doesn't actually do anything in the game, because it doesn't actually change a player's incentives or decisions. You make the exact same choices with sprawl that you would make without it.
Second, you can negate sprawl entirely. The bureaucrat system that they put in place lets you meet your admin requirements fairly easily. Yes, a Trantor-style planet is a cool sci fi trope. No, it does not make for good gameplay when players can completely solve a mechanic meant to shape their decisions. Worse, it makes for irrelevant gameplay when players can very easily solve that mechanic.
Third, sprawl is solved by going wide. The point of sprawl as a mechanic is to push back on unlimited expansion. It's supposed to both balance the game for tall empires and push back on empires just grabbing territory and filling the map right away. But the way to solve sprawl is to get new planets and fill them with bureaucrats. In other words, sprawl is meant to push back on unlimited expansion but the way to solve it is by expanding.
I don't think this was a very well designed system. (Which is okay! As a wise man once said, it's 100 floors of frights. They can't all be winners!) These problems didn't emerge from hours of playing the game and min/maxing. They were pretty obvious from the mechanic's basic design.
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Worst problem is you can just employ the bureaucrats when you finish a tech or a tradition, then let them do other specialist jobs in between. Very exploitive. Not sure why Paradox didn't think of that.
Well, the penalty *is* the beurocrat planet. It's a pop tax for large empires, which makes sense to me. The system could definitely be better though.
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PDX should add an anarchist authority in the same patch they rework admin cap. It's too golden of an opportunity to pass up.
Which is way way too small and easy to mitigate.
Before Bureaucrat there was also pops tax, it called more researcher and unity job.
And they were harder than this, not this easy to trivialise the entire mechanic and perfectly serviceable.
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Thing is that a big empire can more easily pay this tax than a small one. It's like an inverse progressive tax.
Not only that, but even if the "tax rate" were exactly the same for everyone, we'd still be in a situation where large empires get out ahead massively.
If every empire had to have 20% of its pop as tax, then those other 80% would still scale directly with the empire size. So if one empire produces 2000 science, then an empire three times that size will produce approximately 6000 science or more - which directly translates into three times faster tech progress.
That is, in my opinion, the main problem with the current system, and that's what the old system did better: A progressive increase in tech costs meant that the the time it took to research a tech scaled with the size of your empire. It was quite simplistic, but it made sure tech progress wasn't absurdly fast for large empires. The current system just doesn't do that at all.
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