Administrative Capacity

[Maxibir 🐈]

i didnt like the new gameplay mechanics of 2.2 when its released so i was playing 2.1.3. Now im trying to understand new mechanics. I find administrative capacity very low, i cant expand with many worlds and systems, but ai empires does. Is suffering a little penalty okay? or what should i do?

[Teralitha]

Originally posted by Meewec:

Originally posted by Teralitha:

If its so irrelevant of a feature, then why have it at all? Youve made a pretty poor arguement.

it's only irrelevant if you keep up with science and unity production. if you don't it'll punish you for expanding.

Thats why I said its an artificial feature to stop you from doing what you want to do. The same with the influence resource. All that is designed to do is slow your progress in the game. There is no other reason for those 2 to exist. Keeping up with technology and the expenses of maintaining a fleet and planets/stations is already enough to slow down progress without those extra unnecessary features. And also war exhaustion.

[Schanez]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

Originally posted by Meewec:

it's only irrelevant if you keep up with science and unity production. if you don't it'll punish you for expanding.

Thats why I said its an artificial feature to stop you from doing what you want to do. The same with the influence resource. All that is designed to do is slow your progress in the game.

Influence is representing your political power. If a country now starts to proclaim to everyone they are best buddies, no one will believe them. But if they go to two other countries to be best buddies, it has credibility.

Administrative Capacity shows just how well your spaceweb works. If you are spread too wide, your Empire will struggle with exchange of information. It is a feature that is present in every such game. Stellaris does it well by not enforcing a hard cap, but a soft one. You can go over, there are just penalties for it. Which for a Wide Empire are not too troublesome.

What Admin Cap does is reward you for focusing on Alloys and Minerals over focusing on Tech and Science. I am a Tall player. Life Seeded is something I want to make work. The Civic is much weaker, than other options right now, but it is something I enjoy playing. You really have to think, about what you want to do. Bcause a Wide Empire that tries to keep up with Tech and Unity while going overboard with Admin Cap will lose against a purely Alloy focused one in sheer fleet power. And it will lose with a Tall Empire in tech level, where a much smaller fleet will demolish a more numerous one.

To all its own. The cap is just an information, not a limitation.

[Teralitha]

But that isnt the reality. Thats just your own personal rationalization for it to exist. You cant even compare it to anything in reality. And no its not present every such game. CK2 another paradox game with the same engine, does not have it. I cant even think of any other game with a feature like it. But regardless, its likely not a feature that will ever be removed from this game.

[Meewec]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

Originally posted by Meewec:

it's only irrelevant if you keep up with science and unity production. if you don't it'll punish you for expanding.

Thats why I said its an artificial feature to stop you from doing what you want to do. The same with the influence resource. All that is designed to do is slow your progress in the game. There is no other reason for those 2 to exist. Keeping up with technology and the expenses of maintaining a fleet and planets/stations is already enough to slow down progress without those extra unnecessary features. And also war exhaustion.

it's not a new feature, it's been in the game since the beginning and it used to be a lot harsher. besides how much it affects your empire the only change to the mechanic is that you can now see the effects that it is having on your empire and you can see how close you are to starting to incur the increased costs of things if you want to avoid that for a while still

Originally posted by Teralitha:

But that isnt the reality. Thats just your own personal rationalization for it to exist. You cant even compare it to anything in reality. And no its not present every such game. CK2 another paradox game with the same engine, does not have it. I cant even think of any other game with a feature like it. But regardless, its likely not a feature that will ever be removed from this game.

ck2 has demesne limit, vassal limit and de jure territory issues to worry about. these are strategy games and strategy games require you to work with limited resources of some kind and other restrictions otherwise they don't work.

your arguments are like complaining that the bishop in chess only moves on diagonals when the queen can move any direction.

[bea.hirtes]

Who ever beliefe that empire_size and admin_cap need a chance. Just do it, in common/defines:


EMPIRE_SIZE_BASE = 30 # No penalties at this empire size or below
EMPIRE_SIZE_FROM_DISTRICTS = 1 # Per district
EMPIRE_SIZE_FROM_SYSTEMS = 2 # Per system
EMPIRE_SIZE_FROM_COLONIES = 2 # Per planet
EMPIRE_SIZE_FROM_BRANCH_OFFICES = 2 # Per branch office
EMPIRE_SIZE_FROM_POPS = 0 # Per pop

I prefer the vanilla version here...

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

But that isnt the reality. Thats just your own personal rationalization for it to exist. You cant even compare it to anything in reality. And no its not present every such game. CK2 another paradox game with the same engine, does not have it. I cant even think of any other game with a feature like it. But regardless, its likely not a feature that will ever be removed from this game.

When was the last time you tried to bring every province you own in CK2 to the same tech level? how much research would it take? - that's what administrative capacity represents.

Influence is even easier: can't expand without claims/assassinations, and it takes time to make them happen.

[76561198042686546]

Staying under capacity is only for the 'tall' builds, where you're supposed to have small but very efficient economy. If you're doing 'CRUSH EVERYTHING', then go over the cap as much as you want.

[Schanez]

I am checking some other topics and it seems Teralitha is fishing to argue with people. There is some talk about her/him being banned before. So I would take his posts with a dose of scepticism.

To the OP, Admin Cap is there to differentiate the playstyle between various approaches to the game. You can go Devouring Swarm style with Minerals/Alloys/Massive Fleet, or you can go Peaful Explorers style, with a small and efficient bureaucracy.

Base Admin Cap is 30.
Efficient Bureaucracy raises it by 20.
Pacifist and Fanatic raises it by 10 each.
After you research Planetary Unification and Adaptive Bureaucracy, and colonise a second world, you will unlock Colonial Bureaucracy tech which raises the Cap by 20.
It has a followup with Galactic Bureaucracy for another 20.
And finally the repeatable tech Administrative Efficiency, which gives you 15 each time.

So you can start small but go wide later without risk to your Research and Unity costs.

EDIT:
I totally forgot the +20 from Expansion Traditions.

[Teralitha]

LOL what? You know, with a single planet, and like, 5 systems and their stations, you reach that cap. Do you stop expanding there? Of course you cant, because if you do, the AI will take everything and then you are screwed. The game practically forces you to break it. Its true that the penalties are not signifacnt and dont really stop you from expanding, but my point is that its an artificial restriction with no basis in reality. You already pay maintenance fees for everything.

The game is set up to assign 33.3 systems to each starting empire. By simply claiming your 33.3 systems you already go well over that limit.

[Schanez]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

LOL what? You know, with a single planet, and like, 5 systems and their stations, you reach that cap. Do you stop expanding there? Its true that the penalties are not signifacnt and dont really stop you from expanding, but my point is that its an artificial restriction with no basis in reality. You already pay maintenance fees for everything. The game is set up to assign 33.3 systems to each starting empire. By simply claiming your 33.3 systems you already go well over that limit.

Life Seeded Gameplay plan:
1. Scout chokepoints.
2. Capture chokepoints.
3. Expand to 8-10 best sectors.
3a. Grab Expansion Traditions.
3b. Fill in your space pocket.
4. Research Droids.
5. Colonise with Droids.
6. Research Admin Cap tech.
7. Research Admin Cap tech again.
8. Research Habitats.
9. Build Habitats.
10. Enjoy your insane Research while having great economy and massive chokepoint bastions.
11. Profit.

Edit:
I would have to add...

4a. In case of Baol Relic, skip Droids and go straight for colonisation.

[76561198042686546]

12. Submit to the Great Khan because while you're doing that, you neglected your alloy income and fleet management and you can't sustain a serious war.

[Teralitha]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

When was the last time you tried to bring every province you own in CK2 to the same tech level? how much research would it take? - that's what administrative capacity represents.

Influence is even easier: can't expand without claims/assassinations, and it takes time to make them happen.

I dont think administration is anything like tech levels in ck2. You dont even have any mainetence costs in ck2 unless you have levies raised. Demese and vassal limits is similar. But it doesnt make anything cost more if you go over. In fact the more you have the more fame you get.

Originally posted by Bloodgay:

12. Submit to the Great Khan because while you're doing that, you neglected your alloy income and fleet management and you can't sustain a serious war.

But he has a plan!

[Valerian]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

LOL what? You know, with a single planet, and like, 5 systems and their stations, you reach that cap. Do you stop expanding there? Of course you cant, because if you do, the AI will take everything and then you are screwed. The game practically forces you to break it. Its true that the penalties are not signifacnt and dont really stop you from expanding, but my point is that its an artificial restriction with no basis in reality. You already pay maintenance fees for everything.

The game is set up to assign 33.3 systems to each starting empire. By simply claiming your 33.3 systems you already go well over that limit.

You call it a "restriction" but really it's not, and the game always had a similar mechanic before that increased technology costs the wider your empire became, and other things.

And don't forget that the AI also get the same penalty.

The whole purpose of this mechanic is to prevent snowballing, so that smaller empires have a better chance to catch up with larger ones. You see that as something bothersome for your empire, but keep in mind that it also prevents the AI empires that are larger than you to become too strong as well.

Without that administrative capacity penalty, within a short time the bigger AIs would eat up the small ones, and you would quickly end up with an unbalanced galaxy where you are either overpowered and there is no more challenge, or an AI will become overpowered and you will have no way to beat it ever.

And really again, as everyone said, don't worry about going over that limit, it's quite common to go like 3x over the limit or even more, in one of my games I have an empire sprawl of 400 while my administrative capacity is 140, and my empire is quite powerful compared to my neighbors.
It's just a tradeoff you need to live with.

[Teralitha]

So, is 140 the max you can ever get?

[Valerian]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

So, is 140 the max you can ever get?

No it's just an example mid-game, you can go beyond that, there is an infinitely researchable technology for that at some point.

Regarding the basis in reality (from your earlier comment), it actually makes sense, since the larger a group of people working together becomes, the more work is needed to organize the group. Think about something like working on a task alone, and then think about how working on it with two people would require time to decide how you want to split the tasks etc... and then how much more of that is needed in a company of like 15 people, then 100 people, then 1000 people, where a big part of the employees are dedicated to organizing and managing how the others work. And then think about a whole country, about the whole mess that is a working government.