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[axiomsofdominion]

Part of the issue is that they always end up coming at it from a perspective of "How can we make Tall Empires competitive" rather than "How can we make Tall Empires fun".

I'd rather see a bunch of things done to make Tall Empires better than any nerfs to Wide Empires, because nerfs to make another play style more competitive almost always make whatever you're nerfing less fun.

Stellaris is hamstrung from doing either of those things. Why did tall empires arise in the real world? What did they do and why? Even if Paradox knew the answers to these questions the game framework doesn't really allow you to implement the ideas.

[IronyOwl]

Stellaris is hamstrung from doing either of those things. Why did tall empires arise in the real world? What did they do and why? Even if Paradox knew the answers to these questions the game framework doesn't really allow you to implement the ideas.

The better question might be why players want to or end up making tall empires. Note that the cycle image posted above is entirely driven by player behavior.

They're also not terribly well set up for that sort of thing, but "is it physically possible to make small empires fun in Stellaris" is both a more feasible and more direct question than "why did some small nations in history not immediately get conquered by their neighbors."

[Telgin]

That actually gets to the heart of the matter I think.  Why would you want to make a "tall" empire in the first place?  I can see a few reasons.

1. You got boxed in early on and just don't have much territory.  This isn't something you generally want but it can happen, and I guess having some way for players to compete if it does happen is useful.  This is what sprawl helps with, but it's only part of a solution, and I think it's fair to say that an empire with less space really should have less potential than one that is bigger.

2. You don't want to administer a big empire, or find it too tedious.  This is more of a gameplay issue that would have to be addressed through better automation or just changing the way planets and pops work so that they aren't so tedious.

3. RP reasons, like wanting to be isolated in your corner of the galaxy or potentially playing as a fallen empire if the mechanics really supported it.  In this case I guess you just know what you're getting into when you play a small empire.  Maybe they could introduce new mechanics that made this more interesting, like the way megacorps work.

Number one is probably the main thing everyone thinks about, but as I've said I'm not sure how much of a problem it is from a gameplay perspective.  It doesn't help that nobody can really agree on what tall means.  Some people think that having fewer and more heavily developed planets means tall.  Some think it means having fewer systems with dozens of habitats.  Those both would play very differently.

[Criptfeind]

I think your third reason there is the most important/common and it's a touch unfair to say you know what you're getting into as if it's some sorta weird niche decision to not expand. Most states are not ravenously expansionist, and are happy to have their certain territories that they exist in, and it's  really weird that there's not really support to play as that in stellaris, at least if stellaris is suppose to be anything but a space war simulator. Not to mention that when the AI is roleplaying they sorta do roleplay as non expansionist states often, at least if they like their neighbors.

[Telgin]

My perspective is probably skewed because of the typical galaxy settings I use, which has fewer AI empires to give everyone more space.  I was specifically referring to cases where there is space to peacefully expand into and you just choose not to.  I agree that the game shouldn't operate under the expectation that everyone conquers their neighbors for territory, and I never do.  For cases where you get boxed in or just don't have enough territory because of other empires, that was point 1 as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe it's still unfair to say that choosing to not expand into territory that's available to you peacefully is deliberately crippling yourself, but I'm not sure how else to really see it.  If you want to do it for RP reasons, that's fine, but it's still what it is.

It isn't like on Earth where every speck of land is either already owned by someone or protected by international treaties.  One can conceive of reasons on Earth that a nation might still choose to not take territory if it was available and unowned (such as difficulty with defending or policing it), but those concerns aren't really modeled well in Stellaris.  There might be random systems you might not want because it would require extra defensive stations but it's not like those handful of systems really change the power level of different competing empires much compared to where you end up starting in the galaxy and how much space that affords you from the beginning.

[EuchreJack]

Wide empires should break out in Civil War every once in a while like every other Paradox game. That is what keeps things competitive if you're not the Largest in all their other games.

They also have to make it easier to group together and backstab. It's the tried-and-true technique to growth in every other Paradox game, but quite hard in Stellaris.

[axiomsofdominion]

Stellaris is hamstrung from doing either of those things. Why did tall empires arise in the real world? What did they do and why? Even if Paradox knew the answers to these questions the game framework doesn't really allow you to implement the ideas.

The better question might be why players want to or end up making tall empires. Note that the cycle image posted above is entirely driven by player behavior.

They're also not terribly well set up for that sort of thing, but "is it physically possible to make small empires fun in Stellaris" is both a more feasible and more direct question than "why did some small nations in history not immediately get conquered by their neighbors."

It is about a framework. And for Paradox and stuff like Civ these are history games and people are primed to go tall cause of history. Similarly fantasy "tall states" drive player desire. You can't play the great game/game of houses, like the First Of Mayene if the political and diplomatic sim is too simple.

[Rolan7]

Stellaris Discord was talking blocked-off starts and limericks, here's mine:

I encountered a marauder faction
Who believe in bloodthirsty action
They stay on their side
While I abide
But I fear their defining axiom

[Telgin]

I've been playing a game in the new patch and maybe it's a fluke but I'm impressed at how much better the AI seems to be.  To my surprise, the AI has kept up with me through 2300, and I'm not even the strongest empire.  To my surprise, I've even been drawn into 3 competitive wars.  I think part of this is me playing pacifists with the Life Seeded start, so I have severe economic handicaps until I unlock World Shaper, but in previous patches I was always the strongest empire at this point regardless.

Overall I think I like the changes, even if it's a bit funny to see them do a 180 on the admin cap.  The game feels better paced, and it's good to have a reason to build unity generating buildings.  I really like the edict changes, which feel much more natural than before, and it actually gives me some pause before enabling the strategic resource combat edicts since they cost quite a lot per month.

[Criptfeind]

I've played some as well. The AI does seem to be a little bit better for sure, although it's hard for me to tell how much of that comes from it getting smarter and how much of that to it getting even bigger bonuses from the difficulty setting now, considering it still seems to crumble and death spiral a bit when you take away it's bonuses via vassalization I think it might be more of the later and less of the former. Although any increase in intelligence is a welcome change.

As for the admin cap, I think this attempt might get over the subterranean bar of being better then the last time they tried to make empire sprawl a thing that actually mattered but I'm still not sure if I actually like it as a mechanic. Frankly, I'm not sure either way yet on these changes. And probably need more games with different set ups to see how it works out because I'm too lazy to do the actual math behind it and figure out what's best.

[Telgin]

So, the latest patch was supposed to adjust the frequency of the Unbidden spawning as the crisis, but naturally I still got them 45 years early just like in the last patch.  With the nerfs in this patch I was totally screwed at even 5x.

I hate manually choosing crises because I like it to be random, but I guess it's still going to be mandatory.  It's just one data point and maybe they did really change something, but I still despise the early spawn mechanic if you research jump drives.

[MrRoboto75]

funbidden

[Robsoie]

So let's be a martial fanatic xenophobe empire !


Early in the empire expansion, we met 3 AI empires and we filled the space we could with starbases before everything was blocked by AI closing borders as soon as they could.

Only way out to continue expansion is walking over one of those guys, so let's plan the invasion of the smaller empire, making claims in its sector. 
Starting to build up the corvette fleets (as nothing more was yet available in researches) and some assault troops to occupy planets. 

But before i got to a decent enough fleet size for the plan, the 3 empires decided to take turns in declaring war on me (despite my attempts to delay that inevitable by trying to improve the starting catastrophics relations with envoys), none of them is allied to another, they just all hate me more than i hate them apparently.


And here we are, each empires have corvettes fleets that are roughly equals to mine (i guess they planned to attack even before i did ) , but they're 3 (and one of them is already absurdly big and his fleet hit slightly harder) so they have more than 3 times more fleets than me, and they're invading from 3 different zones on my borders making it so it's impossible to defend everywhere at once (and pitiful starports can't do a thing against even a simple basic fleet that early) .

And with technology being still early (and alloys does not grow on trees to replace the ship losses) , the less i can say is that my empire is simply screwed, man the life of a fanatic xenophobe empire is hard

[Telgin]

What difficulty are you playing on?  I've found that with the AI improvements, even Captain makes the AI pretty competitive now.  But even on Ensign if you have 3 roughly equal empires who hate your guts, that's pretty much game over at that stage of the game.

After my disastrous run in with the Funbidden, I started over and got a fairly strange galaxy.  This time there are at least 4 fanatic purifiers in my vicinity, and so far I've only seen friendly empire.  In fact, there's not even a galactic community by 2270, which I'm not sure I've seen outside of unusual galaxy parameters like having no AI empires.

Oddly, despite there being so many purifiers, nobody has declared war on me yet.  I don't directly border anyone, so that's probably the main reason.  I was also lucky enough to have the Sanctuary special system on one border, so if someone does declare war and try to attack through that direction they'll probably decide to take the long way around or just path through the hostiles and die.

[Robsoie]

Lowest difficulty, i previously made a complete game (even defeated the crisis , though only by myself as disapointingly no AI , even the guy that was in a federation with me, ever tried to fight it back)  but i'm still new to Stellaris so i'm probably far from having the perfect economy/fleet build necessary to prepare against this kind of early "everyone hates you" type of war

edit : discovered how to work around the lack of salvaging in that game (as disbanding ships does not give back at least some material for some reason).
in the fleet editor, make sure "auto best" is disabled, and by example if you want to salvage all your corvette, edit the corvette design and remove everything that can be removed (or press the clear button) , save the design.
Now for your corvetters fleet, select the "upgrade" button, and they will then strip themselves of everything. Then you can finally disband them.

Doing so will give you back some materials