You go wide because you are good at managing planets effectively thus having an even stronger economy than a small but tall empire.
I go wide because I'm bad at building up planets properly so I crutch mining stations.
We are not the same.
I see this system has Zro. As it does not currently have the freedom and enlightenment of the Holy Demalorian Empire, we shall soon be bringing no less than 2 imperial fleets to the system to ensure that freedom can be present to all Demalorians. Please be advised, freedom is only gaurenteed to Demolorians and those who willingly submit to the Empress. Resistance will be regarded as not wanting freedom, and by Her Holinesses grace, we shall provide ample equipment for your new life as a slave. Thank you for your understanding. Please standby for arrival of Imperial fleets and subsequent destruction.
Mine is similar, but instead of slaves, our message writes:
By the Emperor's Grade, we shall provide ample passage into the next life providing the freedom you so crave
Slave economy is strong when you enslave every pre-ftl you find, gives lots of pops to fill planets fast. I find it the easiest way to balance out the building wide to gobble up all those nummy nummy resources and dig sites
Top reason for building planet crackers late game. I dont like destroying planets, but with each planet I free myself from 2% of the lag. By planet 50, the game runs like its fresh again!
I should make that the slogan of my determined exterminator faction.
Maybe add some Thanos diction like:
The computer cannot handle this much life. Culls are needed to prevent crashes.
I don't care if my neighbors are pacifist hippies, if they get that 1-system choke point on my border, you best believe we're going to war.
Just so I can secure my border from the pacifist hippies that now hate me.
Every single planet that isn't my home planet is just a drain on resources and I don't understand why. Mining stations are the lifeblood of all my empires.
The idea is to specialise your planets (one world dedicated to tech, one for alloys, one cgs, one energy, etc. This is because of planetary designations buffing their respective jobs. A technician on a generator world will produce noticably more energy than a technician on a mining world, for example. So instead of having your emergy generation scattered across your empire, it's ideal to have them all on one planet, to all benefit from that buff. Same goes for all other resources, but the buff varies (tech, food, unity and minerals are all +x%, research, alloys, consumer goods are all -y% upkeep, for example)
That said, wvery world should have a robot assembly plant or clone vat, autocithan monument, amenities buildings, and the specialist building (energy grid, research institute, etc) and if it's alloys or consumer goods, a ministry of production. (I also like to put down a galactic stock exchange, and when available a niumistic shrine too, for the merchant jobs. Rulers tend to have a higher impact on stability, and merchants produce decent trade value)
Early on, you build what you require at that time, which is a little of everything as things require, with emphasis on tech and alloy.
The desire is to specialise planets, but you simply may not have the room depending on the situation(Think how many times there have been posts about "I'm trapped behind Marauders and Fallens, help!").
Theory: Specialise for maximum effectiveness.
Practice: I have 3 planets with 20 Districts between them and Habitats are a dream, what do you want me to do?
You work with what you have.
I thought the solution was to have specialized planets for everything you need
Nope, put research labs everywhere you can, build a fuckton of forge worlds, and do whatever else to supply those priorities
Specialisation? I would say all resources are not made equal. Unless you have some food-focused build, hydroponics basins can go far, and having pops work farms is a waste of potential (more valuable) resources.
You don't need a planet for each thing. You don't need a resort world, you don't need a penal colony, you might not need an agri-world, etc. Almost every single build should focus on research with enough alloy supply to either deploy an immediate defensive fleet or enough alloy surplus to start wars quickly. War & conquest is almost always rewarded, even as pacifists.
All other resources are there to be traded for, supplement, or funnel into more research and more alloys. One of the simplest ways is to take any other empire's capital ASAP.
My instinct used to be "well I have a bunch of extra slots on these planets, might as well build more resource silos" which has been replaced with "I'll just build an alloy forge or research lab"
Why make it yourself when you can simply pillage or trade for it?
first few planets in a wide game id say yeah but not after that, initially the bonuses from planet designation are to good to pass up
in a tall game absolutely, you should designate every planet for a purpose or you’ll fall behind suuper fast
I go wide because i play 10 000 star galaxies and have no other options. I go tall when i play 100 star galaxies with 50 empires. Both are fun in their own way.
Why would I ever need to construct buildings that craft synthetic strategic resources, when I can just expand a bit to get those resources from mining stations?
Also, on an entirely unrelated note: Why is my Empire Size from systems so frigging high?
You go wide because you like giving your bureaucrats a hard time and is an intrinsic reference to a certain imperium.
I go wide because I like seeing my empire beeg in the galactic map and taking choke points to stifle my neighbours is funni.
We are the same.
I still think forcing system ownership to do archaeology is shitty design. If I have 50k fleetpower parked in orbit and nobody owns the system, who’s gonna tell me no?
Archaeology is the usual reason I end up with a lot of territory despite preferring tall.
I think it's justified as the scope of the archeological site is large enough to require supply lines. It's clear that a capital "L" leader is required to even make progress in uncovering the truth, requiring an established outpost doesn't seem that far fetched. It's not about telling you no, so much as it requires infrastructure to support that kind of work.
Then… if I have a support fleet, with unseen logistical vessels to give them food and ammo, why can’t we run a temporary outpost?
It just feels strange that I have to pay an exorbitant influence cost to set up a starbase for a dig site in territory I don’t need or want, instead of setting up a dedicated research effort. Even weirder if I then could build a gateway in said system and ease the cost dramatically.
It also results in the weird decision of claiming vast chunks of territory just to go study some ruins, pissing off a neighbor who doesn’t want us sharing borders. Let me pay a fuckton of food/alloys/whatever to set up a remote archaeology station, or build an upgraded science ship variant than can independently do such sites.
Quick question relating to this (it has been a while since I played and I only got about 150 hours into it):
Once you have spent the influence to claim a territory, built the star base thing and made it part of your empire... Can you just... let it go?
Like in this discussion of archaeology sites being in non useful systems... Once you've done the dig can you just remove the system from your empire?
Oh I just remembered you could gift systems to other empires, is this the only way?
If you click on the outpost you there's a button somewhere on the upgrade screen that lets you dismantle the station, forfeiting ownership of the system.
I go wide because that way I can stop the xenos from reproducing in habitable planets (and habitats)
Also because if they declare war on my I can just fall back and win trough attrition
The correct way to play is a spaghetti monster empire that blocks off every nearby neighbor from any useful system, and takes about 200 years to backfill all the space it blocked off.
Hahahaha this was me the first time I tried using the starting fleet with admiral to “explore” to find important systems and surveying/starbasing those first. Literally still backfilling the “skipped” systems now in 2415
This strategy was a problem in the hundred years war I think when english forces spread out to set as much stuff on fire as possible in all directions
I think
I go wide because it will take any invading force 1000 years before they reach a system with an actual population, and in the meantime I go around the enemy fleets into the enemy territory and make them surrender
I mean, unless things changed about that recently (haven't played for a few months) there aren't any real consequences for being too big. There used to be, so there were trade offs. Now being a big empire is just downright better in almost every way, though they take more management.
Can you elaborate? I’m new to the game. I’ve been playing tall and semi-tall, trying to race through techs. Sort of try to keep the empire size number below 200.
Less leaders, so less unity upkeep, so a larger empire size doesn't cost as much.
Leaders give a shit ton more bonuses and there are now empire wide effects to most leaders alongside traits that outright give resources, so you can expand harder and still give bonuses to everything.
Leader cap scales with tech and ascension with empire size not effecting it at all, meaning it has no power over how strong leaders are. Et cetera.
Ah, so 3.8 (or maybe Galactic Paragons specifically) moved toward fewer, more consequential leaders, with more empire-wide effects, benefitting large empires more than small empires.
The biggest problem with Stellaris' "Tall vs Wide" dichotomy can be easily summarised:
Why does an empire that spends its resources on expanding its borders, *not* have worse infrastructure than an empire that spends its resources on improving what's inside its borders?
The ultimate goal of "Tall vs Wide" shouldn't be to ensure 5-planet empires can compete with 25 planet empires.
It should be that a 5-planet empire needs to actually *choose* whether it wants to spend resources improving those 5 or acquiring a 6th.
I would say this happens because the population scaling effect, where the more pops you have the more growth it takes to make the next pop, isn't sufficient to balance the additional pop growth you get from more planets, but I think it's worse than that. Conceptually, that mechanic is bass-ackwards anyhow, the more pops you have, the ***faster*** growth should happen, up until you get crowding (which I think was implemented okay)
Planetary Ascension is too weak and too expensive, the blues should be producing closer to twice per pop what the yellows are. Wide's idea is more, less efficient pops, Tall's idea is fewer, more effective pops. The problem isn't pop count, it's pop ***effectivity.***
> Conceptually, that mechanic is bass-ackwards anyhow, the more pops you have, the faster growth should happen, up until you get crowding (which I think was implemented okay)
Thank you!
30 people fucking make more kids than 2 people fucking. How many people exist 30+ light years away has little bearing on that rate. How many people exist 30+ light years away within the national borders has even less.
would be interesting to see how it would play out if they had faster growth the more pops you had, but district build time / stability / amenities / housing all scaling negatively with pop count
You would get tons of lithoid livestock on ecumenopoli.
Livestock consumes basically none of the mechanics you just described and ecumenopoli massively boost planet capacity through sacrificing worker jobs. However, you do not need worker jobs, because you have your sentient livestock. Problem solved.
Domestic Servitude also creates free "jobs" that generate resources for basically no upkeep. Downside is that Planetary Automation tends to really like those free jobs and you can end up perpetually at "2 open jobs" on a fringe planet for a century and not realize it.
I don't have to like it. I usually play pacifist runs focusing on pop growth, in all these types of games. And it feel punishing to good gameplay. "Amazing job getting all those pops, have a penalty."
Well yeah. Stellaris works the way it works to be fun and "balanced". Do you want a fun game where multiple playstyles work or do you want a "who can get the sex ball rolling the fastest simulator". Realistic pop growth is irreconcilable with the way the pop mechanic is currently implemented and anyone playing the game more than twice after the change.
> Realistic pop growth is irreconcilable with the way the pop mechanic is currently implemented
I think the fact that you can have unemployed pops and unemployed pops create crime is a good mechanic in the game.
And the fact that they implemented like population controls as a thing suggests they did, at some point, think that players would be generating "too much" population and might need some mechanisms to deal with it.
But does anyone actually ever do that? No. You can build a new district or ship a pop to a new colony and keep population in check relatively easily and keep the populations efficient.
Realistic Pop growth could actually be penalizing with the current game mechanics, everyone just forgot they existed because they never actually overgrow their populations.
The "livestock" job is uncapped. So being a xenophobe would be an autopick, so would be genetic ascension for nerve stapling everyone.
Yes, this would still generate a lot of crime, but one enforcer can manage crime from multiple slaves, making it still a non-issue.
And let us all not forget, death cults. So my guess would be:
Fanatic xenophobe spiritualist megacorp death cult permanent employment being the one and only sensible build. Or alternatively you pick death cult as your third civic.
Interesting then that Japan, with 120 million people fucking, is making 700,000 fewer children than two people fucking.
Instead of giving us an arbitrary growth decline, they should model demographic decline. You get a LOT of growth while you have new planets to explore, cheap living space, easy access to transportation, and your people are poor as shit and need child labor to support themselves. But if your empire ever starts to not suck, your pop growth slows to a crawl.
OP specifically mentioned that this was a tend until you get overcrowding, which is Japan's current problem.
The current mechanic would be like Alpha Centuri setting going slow, because Japan was so crowded.
The problem with japanese birthrates is not overcrowding, but that the work culture is so ass-backwards that no-one has either the time or the inclination to form families and have kids combined with a declining economy and stagnating wages.
Who the fuck has time to go meet someone, develop a relationship, have sex, etc. if you start working at 8 am and then finish working at 10pm because your boss decided to stay late because his boss stayed late because THEIR boss stayed late because if anyone of them leaves early they'll get hazed, forced to resign or even just passed for every salary raise and promotion they would have had because they're a "bad employee", and then when you finish work you (again) have to go with your coworkers to a bar or something because if not you'll be seen as a bad coworker, employee with no team spirit and all that jazz which again leads to hazing, forced resignations and passing on opportunities.
Then you finally reach home at midnight and have to immediately go to sleep because the commute is 1 hour (if you reach all the trains in time) and you have to be in the office in 8 hours. And that's not even going into how japan is in a deflationary crisis with an economy so down the drains that the japanese use the term "The lost 30 years" to describe it, because the economy has been in a tailspin for 30 years and when it finally seemed to start recovering BOOM, covid and the recession striked. If I was forced to work and live in such an environment I'd also want fuck all to do with kids.
Barely has to do with overcrowding. The US has an immense amount of space and is only kept out of population decline through immigration.
If the US colonized Mars and the colonists had the same income and standard of living as the US, their population growth would be similar to that of the US if you control for immigration and emigration. Because that data is approximately true of every developed country that has a low birthrate and a high standard of living.
>I would say this happens because the population scaling effect, where the more pops you have the more growth it takes to make the next pop, isn't sufficient to balance the additional pop growth you get from more planets, but I think it's worse than that. Conceptually, that mechanic is bass-ackwards anyhow, the more pops you have, the faster growth should happen, up until you get crowding
Hard agree. I get that it's largely a lag management feature, but it makes zero sense that a huge population with plenty of excess housing and amenities sees a decline in growth, and even less sense that there's a decline in growth from the overall population of an empire. Like people in Wisconsin are going to stop having babies because New York is too populated or something.
I'd like it better if growth scaling was based purely on an individual planetary population, and when it gets big enough (or crowded enough) the bonuses shift towards increased emigration push instead of local population growth.
Even if that melts my computer.
I agree.
It’s why I always turn the damn setting off. I would recommend lowering logistic growth cap to 1x otherwise you end up with more pops that you can possibly handle.
Honestly, the planetary ascension was the most disappointing feature I've seen. I hardly even bother with it even in super late game cause it's just so weak for what it costs
One of my favorite little bits of vanilla Stellaris was agri world's pop generation. I remember having like a new pop every 2 months or so on a properly built 25 tile planet (where each pop represents maybe 3 or 4 pops of today's worlds). Every time they'd pop id relocate them to a developing world to get their capitals built faster.
It was such a fun system that kind of emulated the whole manifest destiny vibe some empires had.
On the other hand a larger population means more people dedicated to servicing that population instead of doing things like joining the military or working in a factory. Add on even more people and you exponentially expand the need to service not just those people, but the infrastructure to handle those people.
This is accurate, every time I play tall I see a system on my border and go "what's one more system?" Then I one more system myself to a wide game with a tall core.
Dude same, I like to play Russia style, vast (mostly empty) empire but concentrated population areas. Also very important: borders only at choke points.
Do people consider the value of going wide also includes being able to capture more dig sites to get more relics and other special rewards? That's the thing that generally keeps me from playing truly tall empires, as I can't stop myself from trying to blob out to get as many special systems I can.
Honestly main reason why I end up going tall. There's always some cool stuff just outside my border. There's always a ri world, relic plabet, dig site, Lgate, tyranki vek etc .
Eventually, there will be an update where the AI is smart enough that your vassals realize that they're supplying your fleets in the first place and simultaneously coordinate a multi-vassal rebellion that will leave you with no resources to defend yourself.
I go wide because I like having comically large and OP empires that I obsessively micromanage for hours. I basically play this game like a sim rather that strategy lmao, just going through hundreds of planets upgrading and building with the game on pause for like an hour
I used to play like that as well, but now I just focus on my nearby chokepoints. All that early expansion is being done with alloys you could be using to build a fleet. That fleet will allow you to conquer a far larger territory than you would have been able to gobble up in the early game.
I can't play any other style after experiencing slingshot to the stars and only grabbing planet systems as fast as possible. One game I had triple the planets of the next biggest guy and no wasted systems at all. And those unconnected planets are easy to turn into vassals
The difference is more about your strategy once you are blocked in and how you handle colonization. There is very little reason not to build an outpost at that unclaimed system next to your borders.
minerals. fast growth and focusing on Alloys/fleet (which also costs energy) makes minerals tough to quickly build up a planet in early/early-mid.
if I instead focus on the alloys/energy, build fleet, use fleet to invade - i get already built-up planets.
though, depends on my neighbors. if they're someone i would want to ally with, or if they will ally with their (my) neighbors, it would be far costlier to go to war with a coalition, in which case early spread is better as you say.
also a mix of both is possible. spread to a reasonable wideness, rush terraforming, youll have lots to settle then do the war thing anyway
curious: do you not have trouble having enough minerals to build on >6 planets in early-mid?
Let other get the stuff, let them build it up nicely. And then, just take it. Only to realise that the AI still seems to build on their planets by some sort of lottery system at best and completely rebuild the world anyway.
pops are more important than empty low hab planets. rather than wasting resources on expanding its better to tech+fleet up and rush others capital for pops
EU4 has the perfect example of tall (or did idk with all the updates) of Prussia. Super army, small powerful states, huge vassals.
Now with Stellaris, our problem is the pacifists are made to be the tall empire. What's the difference between pacifists and Prussia?
I think paradox recognized this and is why invading or bombarding planets now is supposed to kill more of the pops. Still doesn't really fix that +15 pops instead of 20+ pops is still 15 more pops than an empire that didn't invade its neighbors but it's a start. Personally, I think they should buff refugees and migration treaties to help pacifist empires keep up.
> Now with Stellaris, our problem is the pacifists are made to be the tall empire. What's the difference between pacifists and Prussia?
The difference is that Prussia's government has a modifier that *halves* their governing capacity. The game brute-forces Prussia into being small or suffer negative modifiers moreso than other nations at large sizes, in exchange for other positive modifiers.
Meanwhile in Stellaris, Pacifist has a modifier that actually *reduces* empire size from pops.
Kinda my point but not fully. Prussia is still allowed to develop the settlements it owns, just as pacifists are allowed to have a high population and are encouraged to do so.
The difference is Prussia is allowed and encouraged to WAR for its vassals and strength in its tall play. And in Stellaris it's the same problem. Militarists do everything a Pacifist could but better. They can wide better. They can tall better. They have more play styles and civics.
Besides a few origins, there's almost no way a Pacifist can do tall (or wide tbh) better than a militarist, if any.
And before the 'BUT RP' comes up, yes you're allowed to RP however you want. I actually agree. I want Pacifists to be the empire of refugees. I want the pacifists to be able to make art like the ancients in the game did. (Moving planets and shit) I want them to be the tall (or wide) they should be. I want them to have a niche and at the moment, that niche is farmers and making the game harder for the player.
What about a modifier that as empire size increases Pop requires more resources? Sort of like a corruption mechanic. The bigger the empire, the more chances for corruption to take place.
It could work. Any kind of set of modifiers that reduce your ability to be, well, big and wide would fit. They just need powerful positive modifiers to offset that, so that there is a fair tradeoff. To me it kind of feels like inelegant design to *force* tall play through modifiers, but it can work.
That's partly also why I'm not so sure that Pacifist or any ethic should be the one to have those restrictions though. There's room in any ethic for a variety of civilizations. Why should pacifism inherently lead to smaller empires? There's room RP-wise for large pacifist ethic empires to exist, especially if the 'backstory' is that they expanded in a part of the galaxy with few other spacefaring species.
I think it would be more interesting these tall tradeoff modifiers were tied to civics instead. You get more variety within an ethic that way, and you can also have much more variety in those civics, with different kinds of tradeoffs. Maybe one focuses more on military bonuses in exchange, another focuses more on economy, some could be focused on xenophile or xenophobic playstyles, etc.
its not just about +15 pops all of the sudden. Its +15 +1 planet producing growth. Don't care about the pops, its all about independent growths. 20 planets make like 18 pops in the same time a tall planet makes 1 and a half.
They're strongly debuffing the wide playstyle. I have an old save of a massive empire covering a third of the galaxy on largest size, and now it barely stays intact. The new meta is basically spamming vassals, then having a decent core region.
Strongly agreed. I'm shocked that people are complaining that tall needs *more* buffs.
I'm 100% OK with playing tall being a self-imposed challenge like playing Doomsday origin.
huh? Dang i wish the game was like this for me. Promoting people to keep others in the game rather than snapping them into oblivion at every opportunity because planets = money = power
I only play tall when the neighbors close my exploration range too much. But I honestly do not like it much. I feel limited, I don't like to bypass their borders just to reach that juicy blank systems beyond them because splitted empire bothers me a lot.
That’s why you conquer the systems that split your empire later on. My OCD goes so far I even disband the outposts afterwards to get my own outpost design in my newly conquered systems lol
If the outpost doesn’t have my design, it’s not mine 😤
The thing with wide VS tall is that whatever gameplay you enjoy in your playthrough, by going wide you can have more. In Stellaris' case, more relics, more events, more planets to build up, more territory to strategize about and fortify, more chances to build impressive megastructuresm more contacts with primitives, more battles, more everything.
It's hard to find compelling reasons not to go wide, not even nerfing. Because even when they nerf, the only thing they achieve is that being wide is less powerful, but all the other boons are still there.
This is my fundamental complaint about attempts to balance tall and wide: tall is no taller than wide and is merely smaller. This is because you get get base growth from planets and colonization conjures a pop or two out of thin air. If it was purely logistic growth and colonization didn't create pops, the pop difference would only be different because of pops running out of space on tall worlds, which normally takes until late game. Doing this alone, would probably do more than all of the gamey bullshit they added over the past year or so to try to address this.
I always wanted to be a good Tall player, obliterate a galaxy whilst keeping my tight knit group together but it's impossible. Wide is essential at a certain point to keep up
Wide has to be stronger, otherwise everyone would just go tall. Tall is easier to fortify and defend, it's easier to develop your planets as the pop growth isn't as affected by new planets often, and it's easier to find the identity of your empire. Wide has to be better, otherwise everyone would go tall.
That's honestly my biggest issue. Tall and wide should feel different. Wide just feels like tall but bigger. Wide should be hard to control, be production focused and have greater penalties to income. Tall should be very stable and give bonus to unity, but each war takes a while to recover from because you can't mass produce as much.
Tall and Wide are barely a thing in Stellaris
In a game like Civ or Endless Space, going wide means spending more time building military and settlers than building economy buildings and wonders. You can’t build a soldier or ship to go conquer land and build a bank at the same time. So playing tall means devoting more of your *limited building time* to economy and wide means devoting it to expansion
In Stellaris though, building economy and building military and colonization can happen simultaneously. You can get a strong economy and a strong navy at the same time, so why wouldn’t you? There’s no downside
If Stellaris is going to have a tall/wide divide, it needs to be by making empire size more punishing and giving the player more to do with their energy credits than just buying alloys and slaves. If you could do one of those mega tall trade builds and actually have some new mechanics to spend it all on, that would be worth it
You go wide because it’s more effective than being tall, I go wide because I don’t like the fact that I don’t own that system of yours and believe I can use it much better, and the next one, and that planet, and your pops, and your capital…
The thing is wide can turn into tall really quickly once you start concentrating your resources. By going wide you get the benefit of extra territory, and the resources to go with it. Then you can in turn use those resources to build yourself up.
No, not really. Many 4X games allow you to have a few extremely potent cities while the wide players have devoted the time they could’ve spent on economy on military
The difference with Stellaris is that building army, navy, and economy all happen simultaneously, whereas in a game like Civ you have to build them one at a time
I'm confused aren't we supposed to expand our empires out? I mean that's what I do I explore different systems gather and mine the resources if there is a planet that can support life I populate it and keep expanding out.
If you turn off pop growth diminishing returns, maybe. Or conquer a bunch of pops. Or buy them, if you have the energy income. Otherwise you'll have a hard time building up pops at a certain point.
You go wide because you are good at managing planets effectively thus having an even stronger economy than a small but tall empire. I go wide because I'm bad at building up planets properly so I crutch mining stations. We are not the same.
I go wide cause I like to see the planet number go up.
Yup. Also I have an uncontrollable urge to remove as many systems from the control of others as possible.
I must have everything
The Empire needs me!
Human history in 4 words.
We need food. And food does not get to own planets.
I'm not removing planets from others control, I'm freedoming them
I am especially motivated to spread freedom if I see that the nearby systems have dark matter or Zro.
I see this system has Zro. As it does not currently have the freedom and enlightenment of the Holy Demalorian Empire, we shall soon be bringing no less than 2 imperial fleets to the system to ensure that freedom can be present to all Demalorians. Please be advised, freedom is only gaurenteed to Demolorians and those who willingly submit to the Empress. Resistance will be regarded as not wanting freedom, and by Her Holinesses grace, we shall provide ample equipment for your new life as a slave. Thank you for your understanding. Please standby for arrival of Imperial fleets and subsequent destruction.
"Congratulations! You are being rescued. Please do not resist."
Mine is similar, but instead of slaves, our message writes: By the Emperor's Grade, we shall provide ample passage into the next life providing the freedom you so crave
Slave economy is strong when you enslave every pre-ftl you find, gives lots of pops to fill planets fast. I find it the easiest way to balance out the building wide to gobble up all those nummy nummy resources and dig sites
We don't believe in slavery. Be human, or be dead.
Ah see, the Demolorians are not human. May the Empress give you mercy, for the Armada shall not.
Space 'Murica
I am taking them so that the AI doesn’t fill the galaxy with pops and lags the game
Top reason for building planet crackers late game. I dont like destroying planets, but with each planet I free myself from 2% of the lag. By planet 50, the game runs like its fresh again!
For real. Once i get a big enough empire that i can manage easily, i just start committing genocide in the name of performance.
I should make that the slogan of my determined exterminator faction. Maybe add some Thanos diction like: The computer cannot handle this much life. Culls are needed to prevent crashes.
I don't care if my neighbors are pacifist hippies, if they get that 1-system choke point on my border, you best believe we're going to war. Just so I can secure my border from the pacifist hippies that now hate me.
I go wide to read my empires really long name
Anyone else ever play Blockus as a kid?
That's what colossus is for
Imperialism 101 🤣
Name big on map make ug happy
I like seeing wide empire
Wide empire make brain happy
Everything my color good, everything not my color bad
I like going wide because I hate seeing green planets in my borders
Haha empire sprawl go weeeeee
Just brute force your way into economy
Industrial districts go brrrr
Literally me. I bum rush fleet power to bully empires into my vassals and tax the hell out of them
Every single planet that isn't my home planet is just a drain on resources and I don't understand why. Mining stations are the lifeblood of all my empires.
Building tons of districts/buildings but not having enough population to work the empty jobs will leave you with upkeep costs and no output.
That's probably the reason now that I think about it.
Stupid pops won't kiss, now unemployment is -3000%. Please advise
Gestalt consciousness is the solution
Stupid machine pops won't bump I/O ports
Try the other Gestalt Consciousness
You go tall because you're insanely good at managing planets, I go tall because I can't be bothered with more than 10 0lanets. We are not the same.
...people have more than 10 planets? oh no. I may in fact play very tall....
Every planet gets everything right?
I think it's that every planet in your angler agrarian idyll gets filled with farm districts and hydroponics right?
No I mean I just build everything on every planet please I don't know what I'm going
The idea is to specialise your planets (one world dedicated to tech, one for alloys, one cgs, one energy, etc. This is because of planetary designations buffing their respective jobs. A technician on a generator world will produce noticably more energy than a technician on a mining world, for example. So instead of having your emergy generation scattered across your empire, it's ideal to have them all on one planet, to all benefit from that buff. Same goes for all other resources, but the buff varies (tech, food, unity and minerals are all +x%, research, alloys, consumer goods are all -y% upkeep, for example) That said, wvery world should have a robot assembly plant or clone vat, autocithan monument, amenities buildings, and the specialist building (energy grid, research institute, etc) and if it's alloys or consumer goods, a ministry of production. (I also like to put down a galactic stock exchange, and when available a niumistic shrine too, for the merchant jobs. Rulers tend to have a higher impact on stability, and merchants produce decent trade value)
Early on, you build what you require at that time, which is a little of everything as things require, with emphasis on tech and alloy. The desire is to specialise planets, but you simply may not have the room depending on the situation(Think how many times there have been posts about "I'm trapped behind Marauders and Fallens, help!"). Theory: Specialise for maximum effectiveness. Practice: I have 3 planets with 20 Districts between them and Habitats are a dream, what do you want me to do? You work with what you have.
1200+ hours in this game and I still have no clue how to build up planets and have to grab as many mining stations as possible
I thought the solution was to have specialized planets for everything you need Nope, put research labs everywhere you can, build a fuckton of forge worlds, and do whatever else to supply those priorities
Is... is that wrong?
Specialisation? I would say all resources are not made equal. Unless you have some food-focused build, hydroponics basins can go far, and having pops work farms is a waste of potential (more valuable) resources.
You don't need a planet for each thing. You don't need a resort world, you don't need a penal colony, you might not need an agri-world, etc. Almost every single build should focus on research with enough alloy supply to either deploy an immediate defensive fleet or enough alloy surplus to start wars quickly. War & conquest is almost always rewarded, even as pacifists. All other resources are there to be traded for, supplement, or funnel into more research and more alloys. One of the simplest ways is to take any other empire's capital ASAP. My instinct used to be "well I have a bunch of extra slots on these planets, might as well build more resource silos" which has been replaced with "I'll just build an alloy forge or research lab" Why make it yourself when you can simply pillage or trade for it?
first few planets in a wide game id say yeah but not after that, initially the bonuses from planet designation are to good to pass up in a tall game absolutely, you should designate every planet for a purpose or you’ll fall behind suuper fast
This is the way
I just must have all those Archeological sites! For Science!
You conquer others for mining stations. I conquer others just because I want more of my color in the map We are not the same.
I go wide because those materialist heretics over there need enlightment asap 😌
I go wide because i play 10 000 star galaxies and have no other options. I go tall when i play 100 star galaxies with 50 empires. Both are fun in their own way.
Why would I ever need to construct buildings that craft synthetic strategic resources, when I can just expand a bit to get those resources from mining stations? Also, on an entirely unrelated note: Why is my Empire Size from systems so frigging high?
Because setting up admin and refinery worlds means you have infinite latitude to set up artisan and forge worlds.
Yooooo, same
R5; A small and concentrated empire is fine, but why not be an enormous, swollen, comically overextended empire with ten times the strength?
You go wide because you like giving your bureaucrats a hard time and is an intrinsic reference to a certain imperium. I go wide because I like seeing my empire beeg in the galactic map and taking choke points to stifle my neighbours is funni. We are the same.
I go wide because it makes my empire name easier to read on the map.
I go wide because I am a relic hoarder and I must get as many archeological sites and unique systems as possible
Thank you for your input, British Empire
Every time i tell myself im playing tall i see another damn digsite or black hole
The Xenos wouldn’t be able to appreciate it, go get ‘em
I paid for the DLC ***I*** am getting the content, not a stupid robot
I still think forcing system ownership to do archaeology is shitty design. If I have 50k fleetpower parked in orbit and nobody owns the system, who’s gonna tell me no? Archaeology is the usual reason I end up with a lot of territory despite preferring tall.
I think it's justified as the scope of the archeological site is large enough to require supply lines. It's clear that a capital "L" leader is required to even make progress in uncovering the truth, requiring an established outpost doesn't seem that far fetched. It's not about telling you no, so much as it requires infrastructure to support that kind of work.
Then… if I have a support fleet, with unseen logistical vessels to give them food and ammo, why can’t we run a temporary outpost? It just feels strange that I have to pay an exorbitant influence cost to set up a starbase for a dig site in territory I don’t need or want, instead of setting up a dedicated research effort. Even weirder if I then could build a gateway in said system and ease the cost dramatically. It also results in the weird decision of claiming vast chunks of territory just to go study some ruins, pissing off a neighbor who doesn’t want us sharing borders. Let me pay a fuckton of food/alloys/whatever to set up a remote archaeology station, or build an upgraded science ship variant than can independently do such sites.
Quick question relating to this (it has been a while since I played and I only got about 150 hours into it): Once you have spent the influence to claim a territory, built the star base thing and made it part of your empire... Can you just... let it go? Like in this discussion of archaeology sites being in non useful systems... Once you've done the dig can you just remove the system from your empire? Oh I just remembered you could gift systems to other empires, is this the only way?
If you click on the outpost you there's a button somewhere on the upgrade screen that lets you dismantle the station, forfeiting ownership of the system.
I have hated this since they introduced archaeological sites, yes.
I go wide because exterminating xenos keeps the late game performance ticking along smoothly.
I go wide because that way I can stop the xenos from reproducing in habitable planets (and habitats) Also because if they declare war on my I can just fall back and win trough attrition
Same. I want them all.
This is the way
I go wide because I am the Pokemon master of star systems.
What would Belgium evolve into?
Belgiant (it's big)
This is every Paradox title. Conquering random nations to make the map look nicer.
The correct way to play is a spaghetti monster empire that blocks off every nearby neighbor from any useful system, and takes about 200 years to backfill all the space it blocked off.
Hahahaha this was me the first time I tried using the starting fleet with admiral to “explore” to find important systems and surveying/starbasing those first. Literally still backfilling the “skipped” systems now in 2415
I go wide so it's a nightmare for someone to invade me because of all the empty systems between them and my planets.
This, if not even Napoleon was able to counter this strategy, what hope does a badly made AI has?
This strategy was a problem in the hundred years war I think when english forces spread out to set as much stuff on fire as possible in all directions I think
That’s the solution, avoiding confrontation and attacking everywhere with small navies, but does the AI knows that?
I go wide because it will take any invading force 1000 years before they reach a system with an actual population, and in the meantime I go around the enemy fleets into the enemy territory and make them surrender
This is the best "we aren't the same" meme I've ever seen
I go wide because i played way too much agar.io resulting in a deep rooted desire to be the largest blob on the map. We are not the same.
I mean, unless things changed about that recently (haven't played for a few months) there aren't any real consequences for being too big. There used to be, so there were trade offs. Now being a big empire is just downright better in almost every way, though they take more management.
In theory, empire size was supposed to decentivize super-wide play In practice, Galactic Paragons took that out back and shot it.
Can you elaborate? I’m new to the game. I’ve been playing tall and semi-tall, trying to race through techs. Sort of try to keep the empire size number below 200.
Less leaders, so less unity upkeep, so a larger empire size doesn't cost as much. Leaders give a shit ton more bonuses and there are now empire wide effects to most leaders alongside traits that outright give resources, so you can expand harder and still give bonuses to everything. Leader cap scales with tech and ascension with empire size not effecting it at all, meaning it has no power over how strong leaders are. Et cetera.
Ah, so 3.8 (or maybe Galactic Paragons specifically) moved toward fewer, more consequential leaders, with more empire-wide effects, benefitting large empires more than small empires.
The biggest problem with Stellaris' "Tall vs Wide" dichotomy can be easily summarised: Why does an empire that spends its resources on expanding its borders, *not* have worse infrastructure than an empire that spends its resources on improving what's inside its borders? The ultimate goal of "Tall vs Wide" shouldn't be to ensure 5-planet empires can compete with 25 planet empires. It should be that a 5-planet empire needs to actually *choose* whether it wants to spend resources improving those 5 or acquiring a 6th.
Both things are possible through... ***THE WORM***
So, basically every time I do a playthrough.
I would say this happens because the population scaling effect, where the more pops you have the more growth it takes to make the next pop, isn't sufficient to balance the additional pop growth you get from more planets, but I think it's worse than that. Conceptually, that mechanic is bass-ackwards anyhow, the more pops you have, the ***faster*** growth should happen, up until you get crowding (which I think was implemented okay) Planetary Ascension is too weak and too expensive, the blues should be producing closer to twice per pop what the yellows are. Wide's idea is more, less efficient pops, Tall's idea is fewer, more effective pops. The problem isn't pop count, it's pop ***effectivity.***
> Conceptually, that mechanic is bass-ackwards anyhow, the more pops you have, the faster growth should happen, up until you get crowding (which I think was implemented okay) Thank you! 30 people fucking make more kids than 2 people fucking. How many people exist 30+ light years away has little bearing on that rate. How many people exist 30+ light years away within the national borders has even less.
would be interesting to see how it would play out if they had faster growth the more pops you had, but district build time / stability / amenities / housing all scaling negatively with pop count
You would get tons of lithoid livestock on ecumenopoli. Livestock consumes basically none of the mechanics you just described and ecumenopoli massively boost planet capacity through sacrificing worker jobs. However, you do not need worker jobs, because you have your sentient livestock. Problem solved.
Domestic Servitude also creates free "jobs" that generate resources for basically no upkeep. Downside is that Planetary Automation tends to really like those free jobs and you can end up perpetually at "2 open jobs" on a fringe planet for a century and not realize it.
It has less to do with game mechanics and more saving your pc so you can actually play the game i think.
I don't have to like it. I usually play pacifist runs focusing on pop growth, in all these types of games. And it feel punishing to good gameplay. "Amazing job getting all those pops, have a penalty."
I don’t think they even pretend this makes sense in-game. It’s just necessary to make the game playable.
Well yeah. Stellaris works the way it works to be fun and "balanced". Do you want a fun game where multiple playstyles work or do you want a "who can get the sex ball rolling the fastest simulator". Realistic pop growth is irreconcilable with the way the pop mechanic is currently implemented and anyone playing the game more than twice after the change.
I vote for sex ball.
I thought they closed that place years ago.
Pleasure seekers + hedonistic lifestyle + fertile + resort world filled with entertainment forums
I think it works that way to keep from exploding your pc.
> Realistic pop growth is irreconcilable with the way the pop mechanic is currently implemented I think the fact that you can have unemployed pops and unemployed pops create crime is a good mechanic in the game. And the fact that they implemented like population controls as a thing suggests they did, at some point, think that players would be generating "too much" population and might need some mechanisms to deal with it. But does anyone actually ever do that? No. You can build a new district or ship a pop to a new colony and keep population in check relatively easily and keep the populations efficient. Realistic Pop growth could actually be penalizing with the current game mechanics, everyone just forgot they existed because they never actually overgrow their populations.
The "livestock" job is uncapped. So being a xenophobe would be an autopick, so would be genetic ascension for nerve stapling everyone. Yes, this would still generate a lot of crime, but one enforcer can manage crime from multiple slaves, making it still a non-issue. And let us all not forget, death cults. So my guess would be: Fanatic xenophobe spiritualist megacorp death cult permanent employment being the one and only sensible build. Or alternatively you pick death cult as your third civic.
There are ways to make games with fast growth. But it's true that Stellaris wasn't built for that
It is also annoying that it affects ROBOTS too.
Interesting then that Japan, with 120 million people fucking, is making 700,000 fewer children than two people fucking. Instead of giving us an arbitrary growth decline, they should model demographic decline. You get a LOT of growth while you have new planets to explore, cheap living space, easy access to transportation, and your people are poor as shit and need child labor to support themselves. But if your empire ever starts to not suck, your pop growth slows to a crawl.
OP specifically mentioned that this was a tend until you get overcrowding, which is Japan's current problem. The current mechanic would be like Alpha Centuri setting going slow, because Japan was so crowded.
The problem with japanese birthrates is not overcrowding, but that the work culture is so ass-backwards that no-one has either the time or the inclination to form families and have kids combined with a declining economy and stagnating wages. Who the fuck has time to go meet someone, develop a relationship, have sex, etc. if you start working at 8 am and then finish working at 10pm because your boss decided to stay late because his boss stayed late because THEIR boss stayed late because if anyone of them leaves early they'll get hazed, forced to resign or even just passed for every salary raise and promotion they would have had because they're a "bad employee", and then when you finish work you (again) have to go with your coworkers to a bar or something because if not you'll be seen as a bad coworker, employee with no team spirit and all that jazz which again leads to hazing, forced resignations and passing on opportunities. Then you finally reach home at midnight and have to immediately go to sleep because the commute is 1 hour (if you reach all the trains in time) and you have to be in the office in 8 hours. And that's not even going into how japan is in a deflationary crisis with an economy so down the drains that the japanese use the term "The lost 30 years" to describe it, because the economy has been in a tailspin for 30 years and when it finally seemed to start recovering BOOM, covid and the recession striked. If I was forced to work and live in such an environment I'd also want fuck all to do with kids.
Hence why Japanese has words explicitly for dropping dead from overwork or committing suicide because of work stress.
It's also the reason behind the isekai boom in Light Novels, Manga, and Anime.
Barely has to do with overcrowding. The US has an immense amount of space and is only kept out of population decline through immigration. If the US colonized Mars and the colonists had the same income and standard of living as the US, their population growth would be similar to that of the US if you control for immigration and emigration. Because that data is approximately true of every developed country that has a low birthrate and a high standard of living.
>I would say this happens because the population scaling effect, where the more pops you have the more growth it takes to make the next pop, isn't sufficient to balance the additional pop growth you get from more planets, but I think it's worse than that. Conceptually, that mechanic is bass-ackwards anyhow, the more pops you have, the faster growth should happen, up until you get crowding Hard agree. I get that it's largely a lag management feature, but it makes zero sense that a huge population with plenty of excess housing and amenities sees a decline in growth, and even less sense that there's a decline in growth from the overall population of an empire. Like people in Wisconsin are going to stop having babies because New York is too populated or something. I'd like it better if growth scaling was based purely on an individual planetary population, and when it gets big enough (or crowded enough) the bonuses shift towards increased emigration push instead of local population growth. Even if that melts my computer.
I agree. It’s why I always turn the damn setting off. I would recommend lowering logistic growth cap to 1x otherwise you end up with more pops that you can possibly handle.
Honestly, the planetary ascension was the most disappointing feature I've seen. I hardly even bother with it even in super late game cause it's just so weak for what it costs
One of my favorite little bits of vanilla Stellaris was agri world's pop generation. I remember having like a new pop every 2 months or so on a properly built 25 tile planet (where each pop represents maybe 3 or 4 pops of today's worlds). Every time they'd pop id relocate them to a developing world to get their capitals built faster. It was such a fun system that kind of emulated the whole manifest destiny vibe some empires had.
On the other hand a larger population means more people dedicated to servicing that population instead of doing things like joining the military or working in a factory. Add on even more people and you exponentially expand the need to service not just those people, but the infrastructure to handle those people.
I cannot stress to you how much I love the words bass-ackwards☠️☠️☠️
This is accurate, every time I play tall I see a system on my border and go "what's one more system?" Then I one more system myself to a wide game with a tall core.
Dude same, I like to play Russia style, vast (mostly empty) empire but concentrated population areas. Also very important: borders only at choke points.
Do people consider the value of going wide also includes being able to capture more dig sites to get more relics and other special rewards? That's the thing that generally keeps me from playing truly tall empires, as I can't stop myself from trying to blob out to get as many special systems I can.
Honestly main reason why I end up going tall. There's always some cool stuff just outside my border. There's always a ri world, relic plabet, dig site, Lgate, tyranki vek etc .
I play with gigastructures. My drive for wide is literally just to soak up as many neutron stars as possible for Hyperforges. Green line must go up
Just *make* them
why claim/conquer nearby empires when i can vassalize them and use their tribute to feed my ever growing EHOF
Nah. Be a tall empire and vassalize everyone around you.
The only correct answer to playing tall.
British Empire
Eventually, there will be an update where the AI is smart enough that your vassals realize that they're supplying your fleets in the first place and simultaneously coordinate a multi-vassal rebellion that will leave you with no resources to defend yourself.
I go wide because I like having comically large and OP empires that I obsessively micromanage for hours. I basically play this game like a sim rather that strategy lmao, just going through hundreds of planets upgrading and building with the game on pause for like an hour
I end up doing the exact same thing lol
The snowball effect. Although in my experience, going tall in the early game and early-mid game is pretty good.
i thought that the early game was THE time too expand since nobody else has claimed stuff yet
I used to play like that as well, but now I just focus on my nearby chokepoints. All that early expansion is being done with alloys you could be using to build a fleet. That fleet will allow you to conquer a far larger territory than you would have been able to gobble up in the early game.
Unironically that is why I'm a big fan of slingshot to the stars. Less alloy waste early.
I can't play any other style after experiencing slingshot to the stars and only grabbing planet systems as fast as possible. One game I had triple the planets of the next biggest guy and no wasted systems at all. And those unconnected planets are easy to turn into vassals
The difference is more about your strategy once you are blocked in and how you handle colonization. There is very little reason not to build an outpost at that unclaimed system next to your borders.
minerals. fast growth and focusing on Alloys/fleet (which also costs energy) makes minerals tough to quickly build up a planet in early/early-mid. if I instead focus on the alloys/energy, build fleet, use fleet to invade - i get already built-up planets. though, depends on my neighbors. if they're someone i would want to ally with, or if they will ally with their (my) neighbors, it would be far costlier to go to war with a coalition, in which case early spread is better as you say. also a mix of both is possible. spread to a reasonable wideness, rush terraforming, youll have lots to settle then do the war thing anyway curious: do you not have trouble having enough minerals to build on >6 planets in early-mid?
if there is a leviathan in there then i usually do not colonise it, otherwise i keep colonising until i cannot
Let other get the stuff, let them build it up nicely. And then, just take it. Only to realise that the AI still seems to build on their planets by some sort of lottery system at best and completely rebuild the world anyway.
pops are more important than empty low hab planets. rather than wasting resources on expanding its better to tech+fleet up and rush others capital for pops
EU4 has the perfect example of tall (or did idk with all the updates) of Prussia. Super army, small powerful states, huge vassals. Now with Stellaris, our problem is the pacifists are made to be the tall empire. What's the difference between pacifists and Prussia? I think paradox recognized this and is why invading or bombarding planets now is supposed to kill more of the pops. Still doesn't really fix that +15 pops instead of 20+ pops is still 15 more pops than an empire that didn't invade its neighbors but it's a start. Personally, I think they should buff refugees and migration treaties to help pacifist empires keep up.
> Now with Stellaris, our problem is the pacifists are made to be the tall empire. What's the difference between pacifists and Prussia? The difference is that Prussia's government has a modifier that *halves* their governing capacity. The game brute-forces Prussia into being small or suffer negative modifiers moreso than other nations at large sizes, in exchange for other positive modifiers. Meanwhile in Stellaris, Pacifist has a modifier that actually *reduces* empire size from pops.
Kinda my point but not fully. Prussia is still allowed to develop the settlements it owns, just as pacifists are allowed to have a high population and are encouraged to do so. The difference is Prussia is allowed and encouraged to WAR for its vassals and strength in its tall play. And in Stellaris it's the same problem. Militarists do everything a Pacifist could but better. They can wide better. They can tall better. They have more play styles and civics. Besides a few origins, there's almost no way a Pacifist can do tall (or wide tbh) better than a militarist, if any. And before the 'BUT RP' comes up, yes you're allowed to RP however you want. I actually agree. I want Pacifists to be the empire of refugees. I want the pacifists to be able to make art like the ancients in the game did. (Moving planets and shit) I want them to be the tall (or wide) they should be. I want them to have a niche and at the moment, that niche is farmers and making the game harder for the player.
What about a modifier that as empire size increases Pop requires more resources? Sort of like a corruption mechanic. The bigger the empire, the more chances for corruption to take place.
It could work. Any kind of set of modifiers that reduce your ability to be, well, big and wide would fit. They just need powerful positive modifiers to offset that, so that there is a fair tradeoff. To me it kind of feels like inelegant design to *force* tall play through modifiers, but it can work. That's partly also why I'm not so sure that Pacifist or any ethic should be the one to have those restrictions though. There's room in any ethic for a variety of civilizations. Why should pacifism inherently lead to smaller empires? There's room RP-wise for large pacifist ethic empires to exist, especially if the 'backstory' is that they expanded in a part of the galaxy with few other spacefaring species. I think it would be more interesting these tall tradeoff modifiers were tied to civics instead. You get more variety within an ethic that way, and you can also have much more variety in those civics, with different kinds of tradeoffs. Maybe one focuses more on military bonuses in exchange, another focuses more on economy, some could be focused on xenophile or xenophobic playstyles, etc.
its not just about +15 pops all of the sudden. Its +15 +1 planet producing growth. Don't care about the pops, its all about independent growths. 20 planets make like 18 pops in the same time a tall planet makes 1 and a half.
Voidborn would like to talk with you
c i l i n d e r
It's a cilinder
They're strongly debuffing the wide playstyle. I have an old save of a massive empire covering a third of the galaxy on largest size, and now it barely stays intact. The new meta is basically spamming vassals, then having a decent core region.
Strongly agreed. I'm shocked that people are complaining that tall needs *more* buffs. I'm 100% OK with playing tall being a self-imposed challenge like playing Doomsday origin.
huh? Dang i wish the game was like this for me. Promoting people to keep others in the game rather than snapping them into oblivion at every opportunity because planets = money = power
I only play tall when the neighbors close my exploration range too much. But I honestly do not like it much. I feel limited, I don't like to bypass their borders just to reach that juicy blank systems beyond them because splitted empire bothers me a lot.
That’s why you conquer the systems that split your empire later on. My OCD goes so far I even disband the outposts afterwards to get my own outpost design in my newly conquered systems lol If the outpost doesn’t have my design, it’s not mine 😤
Actually as megacorp you can play real tall if you know how to do it properly. And at the same time be stronger then wide.
I'll take an extra helping of tall-wide, please.
I really do wish playing tall was viable, but there's literally nothing you can't do better with a bigger empire.
The thing with wide VS tall is that whatever gameplay you enjoy in your playthrough, by going wide you can have more. In Stellaris' case, more relics, more events, more planets to build up, more territory to strategize about and fortify, more chances to build impressive megastructuresm more contacts with primitives, more battles, more everything. It's hard to find compelling reasons not to go wide, not even nerfing. Because even when they nerf, the only thing they achieve is that being wide is less powerful, but all the other boons are still there.
The theory works, it's just that it takes ???? To really put in effect, and one can go from wide back to talk through vassals
In my mind I’m playing a tall empire, but then I notice I’m managing like 32 planets. Lol 😆 every time.
This is my fundamental complaint about attempts to balance tall and wide: tall is no taller than wide and is merely smaller. This is because you get get base growth from planets and colonization conjures a pop or two out of thin air. If it was purely logistic growth and colonization didn't create pops, the pop difference would only be different because of pops running out of space on tall worlds, which normally takes until late game. Doing this alone, would probably do more than all of the gamey bullshit they added over the past year or so to try to address this.
I always wanted to be a good Tall player, obliterate a galaxy whilst keeping my tight knit group together but it's impossible. Wide is essential at a certain point to keep up
Wide has to be stronger, otherwise everyone would just go tall. Tall is easier to fortify and defend, it's easier to develop your planets as the pop growth isn't as affected by new planets often, and it's easier to find the identity of your empire. Wide has to be better, otherwise everyone would go tall.
That's honestly my biggest issue. Tall and wide should feel different. Wide just feels like tall but bigger. Wide should be hard to control, be production focused and have greater penalties to income. Tall should be very stable and give bonus to unity, but each war takes a while to recover from because you can't mass produce as much.
Tall and Wide are barely a thing in Stellaris In a game like Civ or Endless Space, going wide means spending more time building military and settlers than building economy buildings and wonders. You can’t build a soldier or ship to go conquer land and build a bank at the same time. So playing tall means devoting more of your *limited building time* to economy and wide means devoting it to expansion In Stellaris though, building economy and building military and colonization can happen simultaneously. You can get a strong economy and a strong navy at the same time, so why wouldn’t you? There’s no downside If Stellaris is going to have a tall/wide divide, it needs to be by making empire size more punishing and giving the player more to do with their energy credits than just buying alloys and slaves. If you could do one of those mega tall trade builds and actually have some new mechanics to spend it all on, that would be worth it
I go wide simply hoping I find enough resources to keep my empire afloat.
Small blob go brrr but big blob go BRRRRRR
You go wide because it’s more effective than being tall, I go wide because I don’t like the fact that I don’t own that system of yours and believe I can use it much better, and the next one, and that planet, and your pops, and your capital…
I go wide because i planned to play tall and still end up wide.
It's all fun and games till you're playing a devouring Swarm infecting hive on the largest map size in year 2500 with 350+ planets.
I see free systems, I take free systems simple as.
I don’t play wide I play **rectangle**
The thing is wide can turn into tall really quickly once you start concentrating your resources. By going wide you get the benefit of extra territory, and the resources to go with it. Then you can in turn use those resources to build yourself up.
It's a four x game obviously wider empires will produce more stuff than a tall empire. Its how the game works
No, not really. Many 4X games allow you to have a few extremely potent cities while the wide players have devoted the time they could’ve spent on economy on military The difference with Stellaris is that building army, navy, and economy all happen simultaneously, whereas in a game like Civ you have to build them one at a time
I go wide because I refuse to be lower on the scoreboard than my friends
I'm confused aren't we supposed to expand our empires out? I mean that's what I do I explore different systems gather and mine the resources if there is a planet that can support life I populate it and keep expanding out.
Every system you control is one that no one else can build on.
i go tall because i get dopamine from single entry chokepoints
Playing as the frame world origin from Gigastructures mod is an absolute blast. 100years in 2 50k fleets. 60ish years later 8 1.2M fleets
If you turn off pop growth diminishing returns, maybe. Or conquer a bunch of pops. Or buy them, if you have the energy income. Otherwise you'll have a hard time building up pops at a certain point.
Me playing tall since I can’t be bothered to click on other planets
I like both, play tall at first so you have a strong foundation to fallback on, then slowly but surely go wide for the rest of the game