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[Telgin]

My problem largely stemmed from not investing more in mining early on.  I was used to space mining providing most of what I needed from previous games in 3.x, so I didn't build many mining districts early on.  That, in turn, meant that I ran into a major chicken and egg problem:

1. I'm in a consumer goods crunch because of too many pops.
2. I build a new industrial district on an industrial world (yeah, I did specialize) to help address it.
3. I'm low on minerals now because it's surprisingly steep to pay 400-500 minerals for a district early on.
4. I'm now getting less minerals per month because the industrial district is using them.
5. I find myself having to sell minerals to buy consumer goods to cover the shortage I ran into, because I'm also short on energy for various reasons, like 10 planets building robots...
6. Now I have to scrape to build a mining district.
7. Suddenly I'm short on food or energy and repeat having to sell minerals to buy what I'm short on.  Every planet has 5+ unemployed pops but I don't have minerals to build anything for them to do.
8. By now enough pops have grown that I'm short on food or consumer goods again, and the cycle repeats.  If I even managed to get in the black on consumer goods to begin with.

I was doing fine up until about 2240, but around then the pop growth was just too fast to keep up and I was constantly selling things to buy consumer goods and barely treading water.  It was a constant struggle to choose between building more industrial or mining districts.  I settled a lot of low habitability planets, which caused my food and consumer goods costs to be ridiculous.  The low habitability pop growth penalty didn't really keep this from spiraling.  I'd have been much better off if I built enough mining districts to get up to 200 net minerals a month before I started doing anything else.

A few other things I did that were probably mistakes would be that I normally build gene clinics and robot assembly plants as my first two buildings on new worlds.  The gene clinics are partly for RP since they kind of suck, but help cover amenities early on so it's not a terrible option.  The problem here is that they consume consumer goods for little benefit, and the robot assembly plant costs a ton of minerals that would have been much better suited to building industrial districts.  These problems weren't apparent for a while, by which point it was too late.

What finally got me out of the crunch was finally drawing some +% habitability techs in 2260, finally unlocking the first civilian industries upgrade + crystal plants, and completing the cybernetics project to give my pops the habitability bonus from cybernetics.  I'll keep going for as long as I can, but I tried setting this for a 10x Contingency crisis and I seriously doubt I'll recover in time to defeat that.

[Telgin]

As a follow up to that, as it turns out I did recover in time to not only defeat the 10x Contingency but actually stomp it.  By the time the Contingency spawned, I'd managed to assemble 12 fleets of 28 battleships, each with about 650k fleet power.  The fleets weren't optimal since I wasn't using penetration weapons, and consisted of 12 energy weapon loadout ships, 12 with kinetics and 4 with strike craft.  Strike craft are still buggy in a few ways, but I keep a few in my fleets for flavor.  I was lucky to get dark matter tech right before 2450, which bumped the fleets from 500k to 650k due to the shields.

Each Contingency fleet was about 850k in power, with the sterilization hubs having fleets of about 2 million power.  When engaging them I tried to fight individual fleets with 4 of my own, which typically led to only a few losses on my side that I was able to easily replace.  The sterilization hub fleets maybe destroyed 10-15 of my ships in those battles.

Leaving the logistic growth curve in place while removing the pop growth scaling penalty leads to absurd power creep, to the point it was so far outside of the norm I consider this game to have been more of a power trip than legitimate.  Without conquering anyone, I had about 5,000 pops when the crisis spawned and about 45k monthly research output from 3 ring worlds and a dozen or so tech worlds, which gave me about 50 levels of shields, energy and kinetic weapon repeatables, with a scattering of others like 15 levels of strike craft and resource boosting repeatables.  It was truly something to see 400 pops almost instantly migrate to these ring worlds as the segments were completed, as I was never able to keep up with unemployment.  Even 30 habitats, needed for the rare resource production and naval capacity, filled up instantly and started contributing to the pop explosion.

Funnily enough, despite all of that I don't think I would have been confident against a 25x Contingency.  If I were truly going as hard as possible to increase tech and fleet power I could have probably built 1 more ring world and a few dozen more habitats for naval capacity and rare resource production, but I was running into a hard mineral limit that would have made this either dependent on the mineral extraction repeatable or buying minerals off of the market.  Really, I guess more naval capacity for more ships would have mattered more than tech at that point.

[E. Albright]

Anyone have strong feelings re: the vaguely-announced scrapping of Admin Cap and replacing all sprawl mitigation with Unity costs/edicts? I really don't like the sounds of that - it feels like it's just going to make things less coherent and increase the abstract-resource bottlenecking/mandatory waiting effect - basically, moving Unity closer to functioning like Influence, which is already the most annoying mechanic in the game.

[Criptfeind]

My thought on it is that out of all the various admin caps and scaling empire size costs that the game has had, I enjoy the current one the most because it's the most easy to ignore and has the smallest impact on the game. The system they are thinking of implementing sounds an awful lot like... all of the empire sprawl mechanics that they've tried in the past that have failed to be fun. So... I don't have much hope. I understand that there's a desire to make the game have some sort of balance between tall and wide gameplay, but I really don't think the game has enough depth to put such mechanics in. Without a complex economy, almost no internal or even really much of an external simulation of societies and diplomacy and such, the game basically is just a map painter and trying to add mechanics to make it less of a map painter are going to feel bad until they give the game what it needs to be to not be a map painter. Basically I think stellaris has some deep cracks between the somewhat messy somewhat shallow 4x that it is and the science fiction space empire simulator that people want it to be, and slapping bandaids on those cracks doesn't actually fix the divide, just calls attention to it.

I'm open to being wrong on this. I HOPE they implement a good system, but the empire sprawl mechanics have had a pretty rough history imo and this sounds like more of the same.

[E. Albright]

Aye, that was my impression as well. It really feels like a return to the olden ways, which were not particularly enjoyable - but with even less variables in play so it's nothing but sprawl = floor((size * sprawlFactor), 1) - unityMitigation, where unityMitigation < (size * sprawlFactor). The dev diary complained that the admin cap was a flat, uninteresting, narrowly-defined mechanic that didn't interact with other systems, but if my impression is correct this'll be even flatter and will only interact with Unity, though not in any interesting way...

[Telgin]

I'm torn about it.

On one hand, the current admin cap system is straightforward and kind of does what it's supposed to.  It puts a tax on large empires to curb output, but with dedication it can be mitigated.  I like that it's easy to understand and deal with.  I also don't really care that much that it doesn't make tall competitive to wide, partly because everyone's definition of the two is different and partly because a large space empire really should just be better barring very exceptional circumstances.

But on the other hand, I think there really probably should be more difficulty in keeping a large empire cohesive, and I really like the idea that unhappy pops could matter.  Right now they really don't unless everyone is unhappy.  I also like the idea of unity having some long term use.

Yet, I'm not sure that mashing unity and admin cap together is really the right way forward.  It makes it kind of muddy and vague what unity would mean, as if it weren't vague enough considering that traditions and ascension perks really don't seem to have anything to do with a unified population.

[forsaken1111]

Personally I'd prefer some more work on internal politics. Factions are boring and never DO anything. Have a suppressed or underrepresented faction radicalize and start spreading subversion among your planets. Have minor factions lobby for increased representation, offering deals that are sometimes good enough for the player to accept in exchange for some slight compromises.

Imagine if the pro-xeno faction didn't just sit there passively and whine about your treatment of aliens, but instead lobbied for better treatment by proposing reduced work hours and better living conditions for you totally-not-slave-labor camps and in exchange they offer to pay for some portion of the maintenance of said camps, or something else which gives the player an economic incentive good enough not to simply dismiss them.

Imagine if you decline it anyway and some portion of the faction breaks off, becoming a radicalized terrorist cell that takes root on one of your worlds and begins attacking industries, stealing supplies, etc. Eventually growing large enough to lead a rebellion across multiple planets at the same time, fracturing your empire and forming a new nation with different ideals which you must now attack.

Big empires should have lots of wide-ranging ideas about what is right and wrong, and lots of very vocal people willing to follow calls to action. Rebellions are common in large empires in games like EU4 and CK3, why not in Stellaris? Invest in stability and unity of thought or see your populace rise up.

[E. Albright]

It makes it kind of muddy and vague what unity would mean, as if it weren't vague enough considering that traditions and ascension perks really don't seem to have anything to do with a unified population.

This bothers me too. To riff on forsaken's comment as well, it bothers me that e.g. factions give Influence - the most coherent attempt at a definition I've heard of Unity is "like Influence, but internal", but that doesn't even work since Influence affects a fair number of things that seem more like internal matters. Right now, both Influence and Unity feel more like Yet Another Currency rather than any sort of resource - and together they're the gamiest parts of the game. Tacking yet further functions onto vague resources that both function more like timers than like something you collect and expend makes the game feel less grounded and real. That feels a bit weird to say about a fairly-soft scifi game, but there it is...

[Shooer]

Influence is a mana resource that you get flooded when you don't need and shortages when you do.  Unity is a secondary research system that's super shallow when compared to the games base tech system(like maybe having a forced choice ala the Masters of Orion series as apposed to slowly filling out the form to get the same buffs every game).  Both could be a lot better.

I'd love to see a DLC dive into vassalage, sectors, internal politics and such.  Having to bribe your sector governors to be better at their job and to not accept bribes from foreign powers to defect.  Add subversion of sectors using the espionage that slowly makes them want to defect, possible join you but probably go indy.  Automation in forcing migration in pops with ethoses against your government to specific (prison)planets or foreign empires/vassals.  Expand criminal corps and pirates. Maybe anyone not pacifist (maybe xenophobic) can provide ships and tech to pirates to make them galactically stronger, criminal corps can get funds from pirates that are alive. 

[Nelia Hawk]

imagine if planets are auto assigned to factions... a bit like sectors or crusader kings vassals.
and they all do things and work against or with eachother and have their own little fleets.
and maybe if the "western outer rim faction" is too angry, they can "rebel" and fight the main empire and split up into a seperate empire.

maybe it could even work like crusader kings does the "liege terretory" (whatever it was called)... the whole empire spraw and admin cap change could also work into this then.
you govern 3-10 planets your self (upgradable with various means or civics) and all other planets are automatically sectors with a factions leading them. (you can still build stuff there but factions also have building slots where they can build faction buildings... Mining outposts, research bases, Pirate havens, markets, whatever fits to the faction)
maybe the "western outer rim faction" is made up of 40% prospectors, 20% xenophobes, 30% Pirates, 10% Scientists  and depending on what faction has the highest amout tha tone "leads" that sector.

maybe a faction lead by prospectors can send out their own mining civillian ships (like distant world does the automatic civillians that you cant control) and they fly to places with resources to mine for a month and then fly back to one of their planets and the minerals get added to their stockpile (and the player gets a little income from it too maybe?)

or a pirate/outlaws lead faction could send little smuggling ships into nearby neighbor empire space and steal resources or increase crime from smugling... or capture the other empires civillian ships (i.e. the prospectors)

science ones could have ships flying to research outposts and wormholes and neutron stars, nebulars, etc and "study" them for a month, then fly back and they add the research they gained to a pool where they research their own technology... and if they are in good standing with you they might share the tech with you.

and all the factions have their own patrol/military ships/fleets additionally to the civillians where they try to take over other factions planets or defend from pirates.

well all these civillian ships are probably a performance problem for this game. but could be cool to have more things flying around space than basically just military fleets.

no idea how a "internal politics DLC" could work with "owning it and not owning it".... maybe not owning it limits you to the vanilla 6 (8?) civic factions... but with the dlc you get all sorts of additional factions and faction buildings and faction politics screens (bit like federations politics maybe?)

also what do hiveminds and machine empires get then...

[Criptfeind]

A deep internal economic and political simulation like would give a lot of very reasonable ways to add balance between "tall" and "wide" that feel good for sure. Sadly I don't really think such an overhaul is in the cards, I think you'd need to change so much it'd make 2.2 look like a relatively minor tweek to the game. It'd also, frankly speaking, be really hard to actually design, and so far I don't think the stellaris team has really shown the capability (or possibly desire, I've certainly heard it expressed before that a lot of gamers don't really want such deep games often, which might be fair, stellaris is relatively popular as is.) to make really complicated and deep game mechanics.

[Telgin]

Something like that would definitely be a Stellaris 2 sort of overhaul.  Some of the ideas might be good for that.

maybe it could even work like crusader kings does the "liege terretory" (whatever it was called)... the whole empire spraw and admin cap change could also work into this then.
you govern 3-10 planets your self (upgradable with various means or civics) and all other planets are automatically sectors with a factions leading them. (you can still build stuff there but factions also have building slots where they can build faction buildings... Mining outposts, research bases, Pirate havens, markets, whatever fits to the faction)

It would be pretty funny if we did end up coming full circle back to the notion of the core sector with a planet limit that had to be put in other sectors.

In any case, I agree that the game really needs some depth or flavor to internal politics with sectors.  They're little more than a leader upkeep tax right now by encouraging you to pay for a leader to govern them, even the governors do give small bonuses to them.

The only thing about this is that I'd be surprised if they ever gave sectors any direct personality, since the game director has said multiple times that he thought leaders in the game were pretty good and didn't need anything else, and if leaders don't have personalities then I can't see sectors having them.  Rogue governors would be the obvious place to start with things like internal division, but at this point at most I'd expect them to add a "Disgruntled" negative trait that governors could get randomly that did something like apply a stability penalty to their sector.

[ChairmanPoo]

There are some mods that add interesting mechanics. With military leaders and governors potentially going rebellious. Limitation is that itīs only unrest based... what itīs missing is CK2īs faction mechanics...

[ventuswings]

I think it's Gateway that trivializes one of strongest drawbacks of wide Empire - its size itself.

I always play with x0 gates (which disables Gateway tech since having one is requirement) because I appreciate how difficult it is to cover entire territory with fleets, especially with player's tendency to clump entire fleets together. It makes sense as well; galaxy-spanning nation would have difficulty managing its large territory with fleets taking years to travel, making them more vulnerable to multi-front attacks and rebellions from backwaters. Instead one can simply spam Gateway and eliminate distance aspect of gameplay entirely, which benefits wide empiree much more than tall compact ones.

[ChairmanPoo]

Good point.


I think habitats are broken too, tbh