Wouldn't this just buff wide play since more planets conquered would result in more admin buildings and more resources ?
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Why do some people not like Administrative Capacity?
- Thread starter ThePangaean
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That's a good point... if there were some way to significantly reduce the sprawl of large, well developed, long-term ownership planets that wasn't really feasible for lots of small planets that could get somewhere.
Or what if sprawl increased for every owned system, populated planet, built district, and pop, and admin cap was something generated by "stable" pops? So capturing planets full of angry pops would bump your sprawl without a matching bump in admin cap, while slow measured colonisation or kicking back on a few good planets would be very stable.
"Administration" could also be something that slowly generates to your admin cap. So I capture a planet, my sprawl jumps but the rebellious pops just sit there being angry so my admin cap stays the same. They eventually settle down or I otherwise gain control of the planet so my cap goes up to match my increased stable population, but my actual administration takes a few more years to actually "fill up" to sprawl negation level. Administrators could provide a much smaller amount of admin cap but also a boost to admin generation.
Completely unrelated but I'm guessing that the admin rework is going to cut out the middle man, make unity-per-perk scale directly with empire size and make bureaucrats into direct unity generators. Maybe with unity renamed to "cohesion" or something.
I like bureaucrats though. I want them in the game; I just want them to provide strategic choices instead of mechanical busywork.
Also I very much dislike universally applicable rules like "<18 size = do not colonize". It's bad on the gameplay side, because now small planets are basically traps for new players who haven't figured out the rule yet. Why leave them in the game if they are never worth it? And it's bad on the story side, because it's not modeling any concept in-universe. Wouldn't you expect instead that different empires and species exploit planets in different ways, so that sometimes it is worth it to colonize small planets?
There's a lot of very boring +X% Admin Capacity effects in the game (many techs, several civics, and Imperial Prerogative). If you start with 1 per planet office limit and replace a few of these flat capacity increases with +1 office limit per planet, an empire's ability to generate admin capacity dynamically increases over time and a player can choose to specialize in that. There's already a planetary specialization that focuses on bureaucracy, so a new Resort-style designation might not even be necessary. Either way, I strongly agree that full-on bureauworlds should be a more difficult and specialized thing to accomplish.
It would pair well with the conquered pop penalties you brought up. If the harsh penalties to production on conquered planets included not being able to produce admin capacity for several decades, then conquest would still be well worth it in the long run, but at least conquerors would have to pay a steep cost in the short run.
Yeah, requiring an upgraded capital building would be necessary to balance colonization vs conquest, as well as favoring empires that stick to fewer, high pop planets. As for feeling artificial: maybe, but that's fully subjective. I think the current system of limitless administration feels artificial, and I think the old system of no direct control over administration also felt artificial.
Anyway... it doesn't really matter what I think. Despite filling the game with things like Pacifism, Inward Perfection, and Megacorporation Branch Offices, the devs don't seem to have any stomach for checking expansion to allow those play styles to be viable. Maybe I should just make a mod for myself instead of writing novels on the forum.
Arbitrary limits, that's not what enriches the game. The problem is, administrative capacity can completely override empire sprawl penalties, as it's just an addition and subtraction system. Just make it non-linear and the problem will be solved easily. Obviously, it also depends on the formula, but it adapts and the possibilities are endless. Afterwards, we can choose or not to develop a more advanced gameplay around the administrative system. I quote my first message from the subject.
Why do some people not like Administrative Capacity?
You can't build something larger than McDonalds without at least some form of internal accounting system (bureaucracy). How are you going to have an Empire across multiple star systems without a few bureaucrats here and there. Like I'd welcome a...
Obviously, I know that I always tend to complicate things and think big. Just take this simple equation.
Forget everything I said and put the technology and other penalties according to this administrative inefficiency value.
But I didn't do that.
The empire sprawl affects the cost of technologies, traditions and campaigns/ edict.
These penalties cannot be reduced by administrative capacity. Why? Because we can already compensate for these penalties by increasing the outputs of science and unity.
This would also make a duplicate mechanism.
Instead, in my idea, the administrative capacity serves to counter penalties related to the internal management of the empire.
The administrative capacity is therefore to manage its empire and not to replace scientists and producers of unity.
In my formula, there is a voluntary imbalance.
The effect of the sprawl empire is diminished by a square root.
The effect of administrative capacity is diminished by a 5th root.
The roots are there to limit the growth of the penalties (because I put important penalties and I wanted to limit the number of stages) and also to introduce a non-linear growth.
At first, administrative inefficiency rises "rapidly", then it rises more "slowly", but continues to rise.
Administrative inefficiency is therefore a mechanism that also affects “small” empires, but to a lesser extent (the penalties for the first levels are “low”), so even small ones can choose an approach to administrative inefficiency.
"Ignore" in part, so you will have higher penalties, but fewer buildings and administrative workers who can be used for other things.
Have a moderate approach.
Or invest more heavily in administration to at least have one level less than the moderate approach. Each can have its advantages and disadvantages, depending on the situation of each empire.
The roots also make that the great empires are not over-penalized, they already have the penalties on technologies and others related to the sprawl empire.
And the growth and cumulative penalties end up destabilizing their empires and each of their planet.
Obviously, there is a stage where the penalties are undoubtedly too great and will have to choose other approaches to continue to grow, such as dependencies for example or federations.
Using roots (instead of just linear growth) will delay this and extend the range of viability of large empires.
This introduces an interesting choice + science and unity to counter the empire sprawl penalties or + administration to counter the administrative inefficiency penalties?
There, there really is a choice, it is not a simple mathematical calculation, is it more profitable for my scientific research to have at this time more scientists or bureaucrats?
It can also have an impact on the nature of empires.
For example, an empire with its empire sprawl equal to its administrative capacity will be level 4 between around 250 and 500 empire sprawl.
An empire that would have its administrative capacity equal to 3x its empire sprawl would also be level 4 between around 425 and 825.
These two quite different sized empires would therefore have the same administrative inefficiency penalties, but not the same empire sprawl penalties.
A third empire that would be the size of the second with an administrative capacity equal to its empire sprawl would be level 4 to 6 (average of 5).
It would therefore be more penalized for its internal management, but if it does not have to triple its number of bureaucrats, it will perhaps have more scientists and producers of unity, therefore possibly a technological and tradition advantage.
So these three empires are different.
The small empire has the lowest research costs.
The two great empires arguably have greater economic powers.
One undoubtedly has a technological advantage, the other has lower penalties and more stable planets.
Things i dont like:
Linear, i woudl rather have parabolic relation, if you cross the limit by 100 not big deal, but if cross by 500 the penalties will be more severe.
No bonus for having some bureocrats spare. There could be a small bonus if we run surplus.
Not a resource, there could be a cloud space resource which we can trade or buy. Outsource are bureaurocracy.
Linear, i woudl rather have parabolic relation, if you cross the limit by 100 not big deal, but if cross by 500 the penalties will be more severe.
No bonus for having some bureocrats spare. There could be a small bonus if we run surplus.
Not a resource, there could be a cloud space resource which we can trade or buy. Outsource are bureaurocracy.
Except that going over 100 out of 100 or going over 100 out of 1000, it shouldn't be the same.
In this case, you exceed by 100%, in the other, by 10%, it is not at all the same scale of magnitude.
This is for example why in my example, I have a division between the empire sprawl and the administrative capacity to take this proportion into account.
In this case, you exceed by 100%, in the other, by 10%, it is not at all the same scale of magnitude.
This is for example why in my example, I have a division between the empire sprawl and the administrative capacity to take this proportion into account.
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