Is it worth expanding?

[Sabarok]

I recently finished a game where I lucked out in my neighbours and had massive amounts of room to expand. I think I had somewhere around 20 sectors by the end of the game. I was even spending my massive amounts of energy on terraforming. This led to some really long research times, even with +400 in everything. My military capacity was so large that when the end-game events were happening, I struggled filling it halfway.

With the research cost increasing with population size, how much expansion is worth doing? Should I try and keep it minimalist to expand my territory to maximize stations?

My current strategy has been to leave sectors on balanced, and in the planets I have direct control to only build research buildings on research tiles.

I'm curious what people think are ideal empire sizes that give solid research speeds as well as a strong foundation for a military that can deal with fallen empires and end-game events.

[Desolator]

I always go with as large as I can get. The obscene bonus to minerals and energy means that you can produce a much larger fleet a lot faster than other empires. Even if you're somehwat behind in tech (it'll usually not be more than a couple of techs) you can still easily wipe the floor with them since you have overwhelming numbers. Also, as population increases you can build more research stations, keeping the increasing cost somewhat in line with your research gains. Stations also help with that, as you can build more research stations in all the territory you own compared to the smaller empires around you.

TL:DR: Ideal empire size: 1000 systems.

[Azunai]

set your sectors to research focus and have them respect tile yields. they'll generally build enough energy to sustain themselves and build mines on all the mineral slots. with the research focus, they will build (primarily) labs on "empty" tiles that don't have a natural resource. doesn't take that many labs to keep the tech pace roughly on par with the growing (exploding) population count.

how many planets/pops did you have? 400 research per field doesn't sound all that much for a large empire, to be honest.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Depends on his map size. For small or tiny it´s decent.

[AccidentByDragon]

if you do the maths you will find that if you build enough research labs you will easily be able to produce the required amount of research atleast so long as you colonise reasonably sized worlds.

[Ruinous]

Yup, its the quality of your colonies which counts more than the quantity of them (though quantity sure helps), imho.

[Sabarok]

Originally posted by Azunai:

set your sectors to research focus and have them respect tile yields. they'll generally build enough energy to sustain themselves and build mines on all the mineral slots. with the research focus, they will build (primarily) labs on "empty" tiles that don't have a natural resource. doesn't take that many labs to keep the tech pace roughly on par with the growing (exploding) population count.

how many planets/pops did you have? 400 research per field doesn't sound all that much for a large empire, to be honest.

I loaded my save to check. At the end of my game (2390.09.27) I had 831/665/648 for research with 77 planets & 1052 pops (+1800% research penalty) which I guess normalizes to 43/35/34. For the size of the galazy, domination victory triggered at 105 planets which I reached with my vassals/tributaries. The +400 was from a bit earlier before my final expansion, but I don't remember what my size was at the time.

My newest game is 2234 with 5 planets (49 pop), 43/74/47 normalized to 24/41/26. And that's with very incomplete development since I'm still early. I have another +22 in research to get through stations in my territory, 4 unpopulated research tiles on planets (totalling +16 at my tech level).

I really lucked out with this new start. Even with my small size, I'm already at +172 mineral with another +44 to be found in mining stations. This new one is a bigger map with domination at 176 planets.

[[TFM]bobcat]

Originally posted by Ruinous:

Yup, its the quality of your colonies which counts more than the quantity of them (though quantity sure helps), imho.

You really need both, because a huge number of really efficienty planned planets is better than either having a lot of ineffiecent planets or a few really efficeint planets. That is why, despite the grind that ensues, I don't sectorize planets until they are very far along the path to development (at least 10 pops).

As others have said, research can easily be made to keep up with population if you are careful enough about it

[Zi]

Since AI not trading techs and overall trading kinda very lame..
And pop+planets tech scale so wild what becomes prohibitive with 5+ systems and 150+ pops no matter how many labs you have..

So I feel like forced to do this simple strategy:

get torpedoes, and expand everywhere can get to. Do max minerals+energy. And warring with those who have more techs with maximum destructions of enemy spaceports and all possible ships, and one of the war demands definitely set to have open borders, then after win just survey all wrecks and bunch of techs is yours. Repeat. Let them research, you just crop them.

But I found way better and more peaceful.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=691255716
+Fanatic materialists. Gentle science win :)