Driven Assimilator - how to deal with empire size?

[Bermag]

Haven't played as DA since long before unity rework. When playing DA (IMO) you need to play aggressivly and take out other empires because they all hate you. And all must be assimilated :). The downside with DA is that you can't vassalize so you take everything which makes your empire size grow a bit to much.

So technolgy and traditions get expensive real quick. Any good ways to deal with this or just emplo all those assimilated people in tech/utility jobs? I was thinking about maybe unsettle some colonies but majority of empire size come from pops anyway.

[Meewec]

just build more unity and science production to outpace the increased costs

[ScreamCon]

You don't, well you can build an empire that has lots of sprawl reductions. Sprawl reductions isn't really a pro expansion setup for say but an anti spy setup. Having good sprawl means enemy empires have a harder time racking up spy network on you.

You can't negate sprawl completely... I mean unless there is a combo of stuff that can but even if you could you would sacrifice many of your empire picks that like just to boost a stat that as Meewec said above is part of game mechanic.

Empire sprawl reduction stuff is best used if your sprawl is already very high, that way the % reduction scales over your empire efficiently. Its better to have a 15% reduction on 100 than a 100% reduction on 15.

[pete3great]

Originally posted by Bermag:

Haven't played as DA since long before unity rework. When playing DA (IMO) you need to play aggressivly and take out other empires because they all hate you. And all must be assimilated :). The downside with DA is that you can't vassalize so you take everything which makes your empire size grow a bit to much.

So technolgy and traditions get expensive real quick. Any good ways to deal with this or just emplo all those assimilated people in tech/utility jobs? I was thinking about maybe unsettle some colonies but majority of empire size come from pops anyway.

As a dedicated DA player, I have a relatively simple answer to this: consolidate pops. You just took a several new planets, but have a bunch of old planets in need of pops? Consolidate. Don't be afraid to micromanage pops to get them to your science planet, your unity planets, whatever you need to overcome that sprawl malus.

[Ryika]

Make sure to keep your empire efficient, and that's really about it. As long as your planets aren't garbage piles, population will always easily outperform any penalties from Empire Size.

[Bermag]

Yes you are right. Since I wrote that I incresed my unity/tech production. No need to worry about population it grows very fast. And economy is super strong. Don't remember DA being this good. Finding two pre-ftl civs and annihilating another empire helped a lot though.

[pete3great]

Originally posted by Bermag:

Yes you are right. Since I wrote that I incresed my unity/tech production. No need to worry about population it grows very fast. And economy is super strong. Don't remember DA being this good. Finding two pre-ftl civs and annihilating another empire helped a lot though.

Pre-FTL civs, especially early game, are an "I win" button for DAs.