Staying small ;-P

[failsafe]

I did small test, for science purposes ;-P. How to play this game being small. So far I have three planets, 162 pops and 237 sprawl - after exactly 100 years.

Now, this sprawl gives:
+13% technology cost - with combined tech lev ~300 it is okay
+27% tradition cost - with ~300 unity growth seems okay as well

I have almost completed fourth tradition, need one and a half year to do so. Hard to say about technology, since there is no figure showing current level (I think game should have thing like this, the easiest way would be to sum up all technology developed calculated by basic cost of technology - without penalties and bonuses, but never mind that).

I have only four mineral mining districts and five energy districts with total capacity of planets around 59. I get most of minerals from mining stations (79 / 171 - "most" because I don't calculate "base" that is 22 for empire) and only 145 energy out of 490 from "work" - rest is being produced by trade and stations. Right now I need to find some techs to unlock land on planets and I'm already transfering districts from "mining" into "industrial".

Mining districts give more output than stations, while they cost more or less the same (district costs 1,01 "sprawl" while station - or solar system - costs 0,75. I got 6,15 mineral units on avarage per solar system and 16+ per each mining district, so it is easy to see that it is better to mine on planets... but in the same time planets can be filled with better stuff.

My idea is to get as soon as possible Galactic Wonders and invest all assets to Dyson Sphere and then into Matter Decompressor. And then remove all mining districts from planets - turning them to Ekumenopolis.

The good thing about such a small sprawl is that doing techs is really easy - just like in 3.2. I already see a difference when comparing to my recent gameplay, where I had huuuge sprawl and have suffered from huge penalties. I dont think that going all the way with three planets makes sense. I will go on with this gameplay but the very sense of all this is just playing math - afterall it is all about figures, right?

I believe that best solution would be somewhere between this tine empire and typical, huge empire. This is pretty obvious, but why not give a try to playing really small and tall?

[MrFreake_PDX]

Wide is still more powerful than tall. Its simply that you need to build more researchers to get the same tech progress as previously, which is fine, because you're wide, and you have more space. :)

[failsafe]

I'm still not sure about this. Keep in mind that being wide means a lot of planets. All those planets + districts add a lot of sprawl, even before pops kick in. So you have to start growing quickly, you get your penalties quickly, but only after long time - when planets are filled with pops - you can discount those planets into certain profits. Meanwhile AI seem to do better job... because somehow they have smaller sprawl, even with more pops and planets. It also means that AI can be more efficient with techs and traditions.

One more thing - give us a better "empire management screen". I would love something based on current list we have (the one on the right part of screen - with planets, fleets ect). I wouldnt mind seeing how many vacant jobs are left on each planet, what is the stability, crime level. Also, planets with "issues" could be sorted to separate tab in the list, so that one doesn't have to scroll the list. With 30+ planets empire management looks like this: u have to constantly scroll the list from bottom to the top, and from the top to the bottom. So much fun ;-). And I kind of feel that this changes the focus of the game. Sometimes I feel that I'm no longer playing 4X game but rather district management game.

[FourteenFour]

Besides the sprawl penalties being just stupid the issue with trying to stay single planet tall is you only have 15 building slots you can choose which can put a crimp in your play depending how few planets you decide to stay with.

and your still stuck with the fact that the pops are your single worst source of sprawl.

every five sprawl is one percent tradition tax and every ten does the same to research let alone the idiot penalty to edicts day one.

at this point with the improvements to the AI; almost all personalities go wide and massively build out labs; it would be better to just have some form of penalty on traditions since they are more metaphysical than real like technologies are,

It is simply too easy to reach a point of diminishing returns because of idiot level of penalties associated with empire size. As soon as you reach a tradition or tech cost where the penalty is adds more than 400 on average you cannot get ahead of it... because it will take on average five jobs to get 40 points per month of unity or research - on average please note that term - and adding those five bumps it again in costs.

[ScreamCon]

Its better to go wide and have 5 fewer pops on each world to make up for the systems sprawl. That way you get more access to goods alloys and building slots.

[The Grand Mugwump]

Playing as an aquatic species with the ocean planets trait is amazing for playing tall.

[failsafe]

Originally posted by FourteenFour:

Besides the sprawl penalties being just stupid the issue with trying to stay single planet tall is you only have 15 building slots you can choose which can put a crimp in your play depending how few planets you decide to stay with.

and your still stuck with the fact that the pops are your single worst source of sprawl.

every five sprawl is one percent tradition tax and every ten does the same to research let alone the idiot penalty to edicts day one.

at this point with the improvements to the AI; almost all personalities go wide and massively build out labs; it would be better to just have some form of penalty on traditions since they are more metaphysical than real like technologies are,

It is simply too easy to reach a point of diminishing returns because of idiot level of penalties associated with empire size. As soon as you reach a tradition or tech cost where the penalty is adds more than 400 on average you cannot get ahead of it... because it will take on average five jobs to get 40 points per month of unity or research - on average please note that term - and adding those five bumps it again in costs.

Never said a thing about going with one planet. I'm testing three planets, but this is just for... well... testing purposes ;-P. As mentioned before, I think optimum is somewhere higher, maybe 10-15... don't know.

Regarding penalties - yes, with those three planets and very limited production of unity and techs I'm easily at least 1 or 2 traditions ahead compared to big empire. Traditions just bang, one after another, just like in 3.2.

[yuzhonglu]

They need to quintiple the sprawl for planets and systems and half the sprawl from pops.

[Jaw]

Voiddweller ftw

[pipo.p]

Originally posted by failsafe:

Keep in mind that being wide means a lot of planets. All those planets + districts add a lot of sprawl, even before pops kick in. So you have to start growing quickly, you get your penalties quickly, but only after long time - when planets are filled with pops - you can discount those planets into certain profits.

Why so? Playing wide is just to expand and colonize as it comes, without imposing on self any restrictions.
During initial phase, I could secure a fair domain the size of four sectors. I had three planets too for a long time, now five, but it's only because I played Clone Army and Fanatic Xenophobe, so no immigration from aliens, and robots. are slow to supplément the 20 pops per world limit, plus I refused the procreation choice..
What do you think will happen when I'll start to have normal organic immigrants (or decide to enlight my only primitive world), and can terraform+colonize a dozen worlds more (I just started my first droid colony)? Unity penalties? Well, my fourth building on each new colony will be a unity building then. Research penalties? Well, on top of my current Relic technical world, I'll dedicate one of those colonies to research. It's just slower than before. Playing tall for half a century to a century was just forced on me by random and neighbours.

As a side note, if you want a quick start while self-imposing the challenge of a tall management, Clone army can ensure a 40/40/20 population on three worlds in no time.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by failsafe:

As mentioned before, I think optimum is somewhere higher, maybe 10-15... don't know.

Optimum is as high as you can get, ideally by conquering. More is always better, unless "more" means empty planets.

This thread may be interesting for you though, since it goes in a similar direction:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/supertall-challenge-stay-below-size-100.1512915/

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by FourteenFour:

at this point with the improvements to the AI; almost all personalities go wide and massively build out labs; it would be better to just have some form of penalty on traditions since they are more metaphysical than real like technologies are,

Spenglerian cyclic model of civilizational collapse feature when?

[failsafe]

At the end of the day it is better to play wide, I know that. My experiment is nothing more than experiment, though I'm going to render some profit from this, simply by doing practical calculations. So I will play wide, don't worry about this. Playing tall/small constitutes issues - it is better to be unefficient but go wide.

Case of "empty planets" is one of the issues that I want to re-calculate. This is a major problem in many empires, since pops grow very slow - too slow to bring profit (by massively adding production, unity or research). So colonising too many planets too early ends in having many planets with basic districts, and as a result very high sprawl with no benefit.

Honestly, I still don't know how to deal with this - I mean there must be a curve showing optimum moment for colonising other planets. I think that starting with 3-4 planets should be more or less fine until some techs/traditions kick in. Then spreading to other planets and growing them rapidly (thanks to techs/buildings) may do the trick.

Lets say that I'm just thinking loud.

[BigTurnip]

If you are trying to play small you need to be using only Arcology + Ring Worlds nothing else.

You need to AI resource trade for basic resources using consumer goods and use vassels to get 25%/25% of there energy/minerals.

The best builds are
normal or mega corp fanatic pacifict, egalatarian and Rogue Servitor.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by failsafe:

Honestly, I still don't know how to deal with this - I mean there must be a curve showing optimum moment for colonising other planets.

The optimum moment to colonize is still the same it has been before: As early as possible.

There's nothing in 3.3 that would make early colonization a bad thing. Every planet increases your research costs by 1%, and your unity costs by 2% at baseline. That's the "price" you pay for the growth you're getting - a very mild price. Everything else - sprawl from pops and districts - scales directly with the pops you have available to you, and will always be outpaced by your industrial development if you're doing it properly, meaning, you're converting the additional resources into research or alloys, instead of overproducing basic resources.

So the earlier you colonize, the earlier your investment costs will be recouped, and the more time a colony has to grow pops and generate profit. That's pretty much independent from how you're playing, unless you can use the resources you'd otherwise have invested into expansion for conquest.

[failsafe]

True, from one perspective. From other... still don't know ;-P

Sprawl from planets is not a problem. Penalties around 5% are not a problem as well. The only real problem is hitting the area where you have 5-6 planets, each with 2 districts and several pops, but all you gain as a benefit... is nothing. Recently I had game - being a robot - where I could early colonise many planets. As a robot I could claim all planets, no matter what type they were. It didn't seem to work, since I didn't have proper techs to grow pops early - most of the planets were nothing but a burden and they all slowed me down. As far as I remember I have finished third tradition tree around 2330 because my penalties started growing much faster than techs and unity. U cant produce additional unity or tech when pops grow very, very slow. Now I think it is good to claim solar systems, but slow down taking planets at least to the point when we get certain techs, like some colony growth bonus and buildings and maybe some bonues from tradition.

What you are saying is more or less true, but it would be absolutely true only in one condition: if colony grows always in the same tempo. And this is not true. Colony without proper tech grow slower, while those with bonuses grow faster. If you secure bonuses before spreading, that this migh give a little advantage.

But okay, this is just me... looking for something that does not exist ;-P.