Possible to keep empire size under or not far above 100?

[Chuddly]

I'm playing a game where my empire is small and I only have two planets and it's still 192. Now, I am a megacorp so that definitely is a factor, but 192 seems excessively high. That being said, the impact on research is only 9%. Is it generally better to have more planets, higher empire size, and more research labs to offset or even beat the empire size effect? Like, if you kept it at 100 or less vs getting 200-300 or more and a ton of research labs, would the higher empire size, higher lab amount beat the low empire size empire in research?

[Oakshadow]

Empire size goes up, per pop, per district, per colony and per system. Branch offices also contribute to empire size though at a fixed amount.

It's not that you're a megacorp, it's just that your branch offices, in conjunction with your two highly developed planets are pushing your empire size up.

The truth is the game is designed so that you WILL go over 100 empire size. The penalty is there to curb the tech and unity trees since not having that cost curve causes empires to snowball in power the larger they are.

Now that doesn't mean you can't mitigate empire size at all. The dev's still left a couple ways to reduce it. The obvious ones' being within the tradition trees for a flat percentage reduction.

But planetary ascension will also reduce the respective colony's impact on empire size. Similarly there are leader traits for governors that reduce empire size.
The catch is that it costs a ton of unity and RNG fishing to focus down empire size....

You'd basically have to go spiritualist / unity build to make it work competitively. In other words while lower empire size is in fact better. Realistically it's not worth trying to accomplish it. So you're better off not worrying about empire size and simply do what you'd normally do to keep your empire as efficient as possible.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Jay:

Empire size goes up, per pop, per district, per colony and per system. Branch offices also contribute to empire size though at a fixed amount.

It's not that you're a megacorp, it's just that your branch offices, in conjunction with your two highly developed planets are pushing your empire size up.

The truth is the game is designed so that you WILL go over 100 empire size. The penalty is there to curb the tech and unity trees since not having that cost curve causes empires to snowball in power the larger they are.

Now that doesn't mean you can't mitigate empire size at all. The dev's still left a couple ways to reduce it. The obvious ones' being within the tradition trees for a flat percentage reduction.

But planetary ascension will also reduce the respective colony's impact on empire size. Similarly there are leader traits for governors that reduce empire size.
The catch is that it costs a ton of unity and RNG fishing to focus down empire size....

You'd basically have to go spiritualist / unity build to make it work competitively. In other words while lower empire size is in fact better. Realistically it's not worth trying to accomplish it. So you're better off not worrying about empire size and simply do what you'd normally do to keep your empire as efficient as possible.

Oh interesting. Forgot all about planetary ascension actually. Makes sense, but don't megacorps get 50% more empire size from pops? But then pops are critical. Oh well, still fun and interesting. Thanks!

[Azunai]

You basically answered the question already. Think about it - you're almost twice the "allowed" size and the penalty is 9% (guess it would be 10% if you were at 200). You (roughly) doubled your economy by being twice the size and you only lose 10% research (and I think also some % penalty to traditions).

Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?

There's really no point staying below 100 size. Or any other arbitrary limit. The more you grow, the more you will outgrow the tiny penalties.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Azunai:

You basically answered the question already. Think about it - you're almost twice the "allowed" size and the penalty is 9% (guess it would be 10% if you were at 200). You (roughly) doubled your economy by being twice the size and you only lose 10% research (and I think also some % penalty to traditions).

Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?

There's really no point staying below 100 size. Or any other arbitrary limit. The more you grow, the more you will outgrow the tiny penalties.

It does, but all the other empires are 'equivalent' in tech, I was hoping to outpace them by having the capital and one relic world I found.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Lost Latios:

Generally, it's better to go big. Your ability to produce will outpace the penalties that come with it.

The mechanic is basically suppose to slow compounding growth. The 'snowball' effect.

Yeah that makes sense, been looking at it wrong.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Garlon:

I'm playing a game where my empire is small and I only have two planets and it's still 192. Now, I am a megacorp so that definitely is a factor, but 192 seems excessively high. That being said, the impact on research is only 9%. Is it generally better to have more planets, higher empire size, and more research labs to offset or even beat the empire size effect? Like, if you kept it at 100 or less vs getting 200-300 or more and a ton of research labs, would the higher empire size, higher lab amount beat the low empire size empire in research?

I usually forsake tech worlds as a way of ensuring some parity between myself and the AI. But in my experience, building no more than one research lab and a research directorate per world easily outpaces the costs of empire size inflation. Even if you don't increase your empire size, the cost of technologies are going to keep going up from level to level, so if you froze your development to keep under the empire size cap, I'm pretty sure you'd have no chance of remaining competitive over the long run.

[mss73055]

The other week I did a ring world origin, ending:
1150 pops, 1 sector, 3 + 4 ring segments, 3 ecumenopoles.
ultra peaceful egalitarian, 1 species, cybernetics.
Leaders rank X governors 1 on each planet.

Sprawl 237 (+17% tech)
14k research
6k alloys, pouring it all onto the market

The issue was fleet size. This empire did not produce the amount of trade to field 2500 fleet power. But my federation spanned the galaxy and with my empire spewing out 6k alloys per month for the better half of the game all fallen empires got mopped up before 2400.

When the unbiden spawned they got instantly obliterated by a 15M doom stack what did not include my (custodian) ships.

[ScreamCon]

You can play an anti sprawl strategy if you like. You likely won't be able to keep it at 100 but keeping it low does have the benefit of making it harder for other empires to build spy networks on you.

[Dustreaper]

Sometimes going over into a - isn't immediately bad you don't have to stop everything your doing and change it into a +. So many people see it as a hard negative when it isn't.

[Willem]

Unless you want to cheese it with 10X Grey Eminence Governors (In which case enjoy -50% Happiness across the board, along with getting your Leader Experience gain hit by a Administrative Torpedo), not really, you will go over it eventually, and unless you decide to blob uncontrollably, or just go full bore nuts and build Ringworlds in each system you have, it's better to just accept the Sprawl.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Garlon:

Oh interesting. Forgot all about planetary ascension actually. Makes sense, but don't megacorps get 50% more empire size from pops? But then pops are critical. Oh well, still fun and interesting. Thanks!

Seems like the recent patch changed the penalty to extra empire size from planets. Which is *probably* more of a buff, previously this was increased empire size effect for all your factors.

Basically just don't spam habitats, specialize planets, build branch offices.


The empire size itself is really nothing lethal, but merely a measure that costs for edicts, traditions and technology scale with your total empire expansion. Some empire builds can mitigate that better than others, though as (trade focused) megacorp you are already more efficient than others.

With decent trade value generation, you don't need any planets to produce energy, and only some basic consumer goods production. Branch offices can give crazy amounts of energy as well, and whatever other bonuses you get from the buildings (naval cap, amenities, immigration etc).

[Big mean bunny]

Take on vassals, to boost economy, if you have overlords you can specialise them further.
This will just keep your empire small.But even picking up traditions and unity perks to reduce empire size , gene modding your pops etc its really hard to keep at 100. Its a great early game tactic to get you flying through the tradition tree but likely you would be crippling your overall output if you took 100 empire size past 2250.

[Ryika]

There are strategies that allow you to stay below 100 empire size with semi-decent results, but they rely on having a tiny amount of planets - 1, later 2 - and a swarm of vassals. You start with the Relic World Origin, get Vassals to produce basic resources for you, convert the Relic World into an Ecu and spam Planetary Ascensions to keep the empire size low and improve the output.

It doesn't scale up well, but as long as you don't put the crisis on x25, you'll probably be fine.