Contiguous Empire...

[joesocwork]

What are the pros and cons of keeping the boundaries of the empire together? The guides and discussions say to use outposts sparingly to get most out of resources. I know that trying to build an empire on star systems that don't contribute much just to keep the empire touching ended up wasting influence and limited my expansion. However, having pieces of my empire scattered here and there looks weird, seems to have encouraged piracy with unused systems nearby, and the AI empires keep all their systems together. Thoughts?

[LuNi]

Scattering around territory costs much more influnce and the areas harder to defend efficiently without gateways.

Scattered territory is hard to defend.

[Nemund]

The guides you are reading are pre 2.0 mainly.
It's changed significantly with regards to that.

[Jagothegamer]

Your chance of piracy will go up for every unowned system you have near your territory, so you should probably grab it up, yes.

[_ALuX_]

Grab all the systems!

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by _ALuX_:

Grab all the systems!

This

The galaxy is rightfully yours! Claim your inheritance!

[Sifer2]

It actually costs more influence to grab territory that isn't connected to your borders. As such I mostly only use to grab systems with habitable planets early so AI doesn't get it first. Then fill in my border later.

[joesocwork]

Cool discussion. How do you make up for lost Influence? In my games I had to give up on Edicts that used Influence and be more careful about diplomacy, but still couldn't get keep enough Influence to spread out.

[Sifer2]

Originally posted by joesocwork:

Cool discussion. How do you make up for lost Influence? In my games I had to give up on Edicts that used Influence and be more careful about diplomacy, but still couldn't get keep enough Influence to spread out.

If you were talking to me then yeah just use less edicts, and don't go too far. Like if it's got a nice world a few hops away I might grab it. But not 10 hops away. I mean I guess you could if you were going to keep a fleet to defend your remote territory for a while. Probably not that worth it though since taking more worlds does have drawbacks too like lower research/unity.

[_ALuX_]

Originally posted by xnadu27:

Originally posted by _ALuX_:

Grab all the systems!

This

The galaxy is rightfully yours! Claim your inheritance!

Grabbing all of the systems you can is pretty much necessary, lest you fall into economic recession, which is a BIG problem if you are playing on Grand Admiral.

[Chastity the Celibate]

Originally posted by _ALuX_:

Originally posted by xnadu27:

This

The galaxy is rightfully yours! Claim your inheritance!

Grabbing all of the systems you can is pretty much necessary, lest you fall into economic recession, which is a BIG problem if you are playing on Grand Admiral.

Purge the heretics! Suffer not the xeno!