Do you colonise every planet that you have +50% habitability on?

[Alxndr]

I'm so conscious about empire size that I often ignore low district planets, even if they have good habitability for the simple reason that a new colony adds a lot of empire size, then you'll have new pops growing on that planet and all the new districts.

This all stacks and starts weighing down your empire size into the hundreds and eventually after about 8 planets and a couple hundred pops and 30 or so systems I'm sitting at a +40% tech and tradition cost due to empire size.

And I can't just spam research labs on every planet because that costs a lot of consumer goods and if I'm making consumer goods that means I'm not making as much alloys and both consumer goods and alloys cost minerals.

Basically it seems like the game pushes you into playing tall and relying on vassals rather than independent growth.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Pops = power. More planets = more pops growing at once, therefore the more planets you colonize, the more powerful you will be.

The Empire Size cap is not a hard limit. You are not intended to stay under it at all, and the rather minor penalties you get from going over it can simply be out-produced by the extra jobs you can create on those planets that are pushing you over the limit. Having +100% tech cost is irrelevant if you're producing 3 times as much science per month as you would be if you were tiny enough to not have a penalty.

Early on in your expansion, you should plan ahead by selecting one medium-to-large sized planet that will serve as your primary Consumer Goods-producing world for the rest of the game. Once your economy can support it, manually set its Designation to be a Factory world, and set it up to have mostly if not exclusively Industrial districts. Other worlds' Mineral income will support it, and you can focus on just having that planet pump out as many Consumer Goods as your empire needs (coincidentally, you should do the same for Alloys on at least one other world). If you have the DLC for it, later in the game you can pick up the "Arcology Project" Ascension Perk and turn this planet into an Ecumenopolis, which will produce absurd amounts of Consumer Goods to feed an entire galaxy-spanning empire (without this perk, you may simply need to have a second or third planet devoted to Consumer Goods production instead).

Planetary Designations and Planetary Ascensions are incredibly important tools. Limited resources in the early game may temporarily force you to adopt a "jack-of-all-trades" setup for your worlds, but this should never be the case long-term. You should plan to have each planet be heavily focused on one resource, with the appropriate Designation for the job type associated with that resource. Tech-Worlds, for example, reduce the upkeep of Researcher jobs by a whopping 20% (plus an extra 5% every time you Ascend that planet), saving quite a bit of the Consumer Goods you're having issues with; Factory World and Forge World meanwhile reduce the upkeep of the Consumer Goods and Alloys-producing jobs respectively, cutting down on the number of Minerals you need.

Vassals are a powerful tool in their own right, but the game very much does not "push you into playing tall" - quite the opposite, in fact. I hate even using the terms "tall" and "wide" for Stellaris, because they really don't even apply here - pops are the main resource for making your planets better, and the best way to get more pops is to just have more planets; therefore the most effective way to become "tall" is by becoming "wider". There is no resource that you have to pick and choose between either getting more stuff or improving what you already have (the traditional tall vs. wide dichotomy) - in Stellaris you can and should do both, constantly, at all times.

[D-Black Catto]

I colonize everything I can, low habitability planets can be populated by robotic workers.

[Alxndr]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

Pops = power. More planets = more pops growing at once, therefore the more planets you colonize, the more powerful you will be.

The Empire Size cap is not a hard limit. You are not intended to stay under it at all, and the rather minor penalties you get from going over it can simply be out-produced by the extra jobs you can create on those planets that are pushing you over the limit. Having +100% tech cost is irrelevant if you're producing 3 times as much science per month as you would be if you were tiny enough to not have a penalty.

Early on in your expansion, you should plan ahead by selecting one medium-to-large sized planet that will serve as your primary Consumer Goods-producing world for the rest of the game. Once your economy can support it, manually set its Designation to be a Factory world, and set it up to have mostly if not exclusively Industrial districts. Other worlds' Mineral income will support it, and you can focus on just having that planet pump out as many Consumer Goods as your empire needs (coincidentally, you should do the same for Alloys on at least one other world). If you have the DLC for it, later in the game you can pick up the "Arcology Project" Ascension Perk and turn this planet into an Ecumenopolis, which will produce absurd amounts of Consumer Goods to feed an entire galaxy-spanning empire (without this perk, you may simply need to have a second or third planet devoted to Consumer Goods production instead).

Planetary Designations and Planetary Ascensions are incredibly important tools. Limited resources in the early game may temporarily force you to adopt a "jack-of-all-trades" setup for your worlds, but this should never be the case long-term. You should plan to have each planet be heavily focused on one resource, with the appropriate Designation for the job type associated with that resource. Tech-Worlds, for example, reduce the upkeep of Researcher jobs by a whopping 20% (plus an extra 5% every time you Ascend that planet), saving quite a bit of the Consumer Goods you're having issues with; Factory World and Forge World meanwhile reduce the upkeep of the Consumer Goods and Alloys-producing jobs respectively, cutting down on the number of Minerals you need.

Vassals are a powerful tool in their own right, but the game very much does not "push you into playing tall" - quite the opposite, in fact. I hate even using the terms "tall" and "wide" for Stellaris, because they really don't even apply here - pops are the main resource for making your planets better, and the best way to get more pops is to just have more planets; therefore the most effective way to become "tall" is by becoming "wider". There is no resource that you have to pick and choose between either getting more stuff or improving what you already have (the traditional tall vs. wide dichotomy) - in Stellaris you can and should do both, constantly, at all times.

Thanks for the help. I usually make my industry heavy planets into industry designation type so they produce both consumer goods and alloys but maybe having 1 planet of each is the way to go.

[Råb!d]

I've always preferred to wait until it is at least green. But I can see why one would want to populate every eligible planet.

[Sabaithal]

If I'm playing wide, sure. Expanding early is rarely a drawback, and trying to manage empire size is a lost cause so don't worry too much about it.

If I'm playing tall I only get 3 planets at most. Anything more usually defeats the purpose.

[RCMidas]

If I can settle it, I do so. A simple gene clinic can offset any delay in rolling habitability techs, particularly once the astral rifts start opening. The Entertainment Nexus can provide a +50% boost to medical workers, and that alone can work out to a fully staffed tier 2 building being worth the equivalent of an extra five technologies AND more amenities.

I can have practically 100% Tomb World habitability despite Gaia World preference with just a little work in this way. Opening up pretty much every single planet for development in this way means no matter how little any individual one contributes to the empire, none of them are an actual drain on my aggregate resources.

Plus I can quietly ship unwanted species to the frontlines even as a 'no-purges-allowed, wink wink nudge nudge' Xenophile and if the worst should happen, I don't lose anyone I can't live without.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

I colonize everything that is yellow (so 40+), but I also take imperial prerogative for 50% less empire size from colonies, and usually I'll take expansion tradition for another 25 % less.

I find you're so limited on pops if you want to grow your own that you basically must do this. I hate that the optimal way to play is to steal pops.

My last game I had 5 research worlds and even then I felt I could have used a sixth and even more. Eventually I built a ringword for research. But then again filling the ringworld Is the problem.

[EnemigoDeLaMafia]

I think that people do not give the sprawl penalties enough credit. At 500-600 sprawl you are already at 100% tech cost. That means your effective tech number is half of what is shown. So if you have 6k research, that is actually 3k and that might not be enough to reach late game milestones to beat high level crisis and such.

If you can get vassals to subsidize your basic economy this goes a long long way into allowing most of your pops to work the important jobs. Also both your forge and factory world should be ecumenopolis, so that you can ascend that world to level 10, and put a great governor there. This helps tremendously too. I even make the tech worlds into ecumenopolis.


As far as late game goes, I think the only tech solution is a ringworld and vassal spam. I currently managed to beat a 5x crisis but it wasn't as smooth as I'd have liked. So yeah, with all these changes pop efficiency is the key.

[Alxndr]

Originally posted by Disciple.:

I colonize everything that is yellow (so 40+), but I also take imperial prerogative for 50% less empire size from colonies, and usually I'll take expansion tradition for another 25 % less.

I find you're so limited on pops if you want to grow your own that you basically must do this. I hate that the optimal way to play is to steal pops.

My last game I had 5 research worlds and even then I felt I could have used a sixth and even more. Eventually I built a ringword for research. But then again filling the ringworld Is the problem.

Yeah I'll start a game with the intention of being an empire consisting of just my original species for role play reasons and then half way through the game I end up waiting years for 1 pop to grow and get frustrated so I always end up stealing 100 pops and insta filling my planets.

[Kufesska]

go synth ascension and assimilate everyone onto your species :D

[Kufesska]

Originally posted by Alxndr:

Originally posted by Disciple.:

I colonize everything that is yellow (so 40+), but I also take imperial prerogative for 50% less empire size from colonies, and usually I'll take expansion tradition for another 25 % less.

I find you're so limited on pops if you want to grow your own that you basically must do this. I hate that the optimal way to play is to steal pops.

My last game I had 5 research worlds and even then I felt I could have used a sixth and even more. Eventually I built a ringword for research. But then again filling the ringworld Is the problem.

Yeah I'll start a game with the intention of being an empire consisting of just my original species for role play reasons and then half way through the game I end up waiting years for 1 pop to grow and get frustrated so I always end up stealing 100 pops and insta filling my planets.

go synth ascension and assimilate everyone onto your species :D

[Bloodartist]

Originally posted by Alxndr:

Basically it seems like the game pushes you into playing tall and relying on vassals rather than independent growth.

The idea behind empire size modifier is that its not a "cap" as much as something that forces you to balance it out with extra research and unity production. In other words: build smart. You cannot really affect the empire size modifier directly, but you can counteract it.

Ive just built an administration building or whatever the empire equivalent is to it, to every world, and that already does a lot.

[Alxndr]

Originally posted by Kufesska:

Originally posted by Alxndr:

Yeah I'll start a game with the intention of being an empire consisting of just my original species for role play reasons and then half way through the game I end up waiting years for 1 pop to grow and get frustrated so I always end up stealing 100 pops and insta filling my planets.

go synth ascension and assimilate everyone onto your species :D

So when you conquer a planet that has pops, those pops will end up gaining your original pops traits? Or will they also physically turn into your original pops too?

[Kackstift]

every planet produce pops.. so yes.. even if you didnt use the planet.. migrate the pops to another

[Lorethys]

I only avoid small planets initially. Eventually I scoop them all up because they make incredibly convenient building-based powerhouses. Don't have to think about what districts to make when it's only got 10 to work with. Crank out the cities and pump up the tech.

It's only early-game that colonization needs to be debated because, unless you mitigate their impact on size, 10 pops have the same influence as a new colony. Same with 10 systems, or 20 districts. Size isn't a limit, it's just a moderator. You eventually (ideally) should reach a tipping point in your production capabilities where increasing the cost by 2% at the most is just a drop in the bucket.