Stellaris Dev Diary #153 - Empire Sprawl & Administrative Capacity

[Bl0wf1sh]

I have to agree with various commenters that this change is not for the better. It does not solve any problems, does not improve immersion/lore/etc, and increases micro-management: in addition to managing consumer goods, I also now need to manage admin cap by building as many bureaucrat buildings as I can afford and build.

I am wondering if a more differentiated approach to penalties makes more sense, as opposed to a flat "admin cap":

• Research penalties linked to empire size (planets, systems, max travel distance), to some extent reduced by shorter paths (gateways) between planets. Higher penalties for empires that restrict free thought (machine, hive mind, authoritarian).
• Unity penalties more linked to number of pops and empire width, to some extent reduced by shorter paths (gateways) between planets. Higher penalties for empires that encourage free thought (e.g., egalitarian).
• Increased edict cost linked to pops primarily.
• Penalties for planets that are difficult to manage. I am thinking crime/deviancy growth should increase with distance from the empire/sector capital, and should be more punishing (reduce all resource generation). This would make non-sector planets much less desirable as well. More centralized government types would have higher penalties.
• Admin cap calculated based on owned systems and penalizing ownership of new systems, i.e. significantly increase influence and build cost for outposts above admin cap, and increase mine/research station cost with increasing number of systems above admin cap. Higher penalties for hive mind and machine empire.
• I like the idea of bureaucrat buildings - maybe bureaucrats could increase admin cap and reduce edict cost. That would give more choice between building bureaucratic buildings and expanding. Stronger benefits for centralized empires. Building should be upgradeable.

 

[Roddo]

I see the hype train is back.
*shrugs

 

[Dmitrius]

Thanks for the answer. I see the problem, and i know it might actually be impossible to solve (even though i find the "impossible" hard. Being a programmer myself, a huge part of this job is actually solving problems). But why are the developers not being honest about that? I just want a genuine answer for once. They are behaving like another gaming company i know well: they have a pretty unique game (tanks mmorpg for the other company, space grand strategy/exploration for this one) which is becoming terribly balanced and badly optimized, but because of the game uniqueness they "don't care" about futile things like balancing or performance improvement.

I'm starting to think stellaris is still successful just because there is no alternative, you either change genre or stick to the game's problems. But we all know what happened to simcity, right? We all know what the players chose between simcity and cities skylines, right?

Paradox is a fantastic company, look at what they are doing with imperator: it was a flop, they aknowledged it, now they are working to fix it asap. Look with EU4: The players felt the DLCs were getting lazy and money-grab like, now they are working on a huge feature-rich DLC. Look with stellaris: They took the courage to change their game entirely with 2.0, but why they are

How it'll affect you will depend upon how you prefer to play of course. As you note, more info will be coming but here's my current expectations:

In my case, I prefer to stay within the admin cap. Which generally means getting tech/traditions that increase admin cap as quickly as possible. This gives me an entirely new way to get admin cap. Previously, if I had hit the admin cap before I had reached the tech repeatables then I would have to work hard to minimalise my admin cap, which isn't that fun. This way, I can adjust my expansion style more to the situation I find myself in. Eg, if there's lots of opportunities in expansion I can grab them and invest in extra beaurocrates to counter this until I hit the tech repeatables instead... Of course, I could just take the admin penalty on the chin instead.

Here's another consideration: let's say you prefer to use force. If you literally conquer an empire that means taking on the admin cap burden as well so it can in fact be more efficient to turn them into vassals or tributaries. With this new option, on conquering another empire (or some of it) you could convert some of their buildings (or your buildings) to increase your admin cap, if necessary. If the they already have such buildings then you'd get the extra admin cap as soon as you conquer the planet.

The mechanic makes sense as is, my point is expanding and complicating it doesn't seem to add much.

 

[Abakus]

The stated goal is to make Empire Sprawl more interesting, which this certainly seems to do. On the other hand, does this make Empire Sprawl more fun?

I really like the 2.2 economy, but I admit I'm having trouble seeing how another Consumer Goods sink with additional micromanagement is a step forward. I'm not certain I'm seeing how to find the fun in the information that's been shown.

Moreover, this makes research even more dependent on Consumer Goods. Will the CG upkeep cost for researchers be decreased to account for this?

 

[Latheloi]

Yes, it would be cool if sprawl exceeding admin cap would increase your susceptibility to spy actions and similar. It would also be cool if having large institutions like a massive secret police or diplomatic corps would increase your sprawl (since those institutions would increase bureaucracy).

What if "institutions" formed the top tier of building types and did actually increase sprawl? That actually would give some interesting tall v wide decisions as you have the choice between higher job density using institutions versus more building slots (thus planets) to get the same jobs.

I think having the planetary capital buildings be one of the key sources of administrative capacity would give more interesting choices -- and clear differentiation between the different capital building job-modifying civics. (technocracy, priesthood etc).

 

[Pancakelord]

I see the bit about making robots tall and hiveminds wide, I have 2 questions:

1 will rogue servitors have any special sprawl mechanics that are distinct from the other robot types?(e.g. biotrophies reduce sprawl of each planet they are on or whatever)
2 I remember when MegaCorps came out they were touted as being more of a tall playstyle - how are they changing here? Will they be made like machines with high admin cap debuffs but, for example get a method to reduce overall sprawl with special corporate buildings.

 

[Ridixo]

The current plan is for machine empires to be more reliant on keeping their administrative capacity in line with their empire sprawl, so machine empires will suffer a much harsher penalty for exceeding their cap. We want machines to feel “centralized” and to perhaps favor a more “tall” playstyle.

Hive Minds, on the other hand, should be more tolerant of a sprawling empire where unmanaged drones are able to fall back on their instincts whenever they cannot maintain a responsive connection to the hive mind. Therefore, hive minds should be more tolerant of a “wide” playstyle.

What i can say about the above two that have not already be said? Nothing, this is a bad idea, don't force playstyles upon the players. A tall Hive-Mind or a wide Machine Intelligence should be as possible and viable as the other way around.

I agree that it might seem odd that administrators don't give admin cap, but I wanted to keep admin cap straight-forward by having it come from one job.

That administrators give a small amount, lets say +5 half what a dedicated bureaucrat can produce is not a bad idea. After all isn't the administrators administrating the empire? Or are they now the ones who administrate the real administrator?

For machine empires, the coordinators have changed roles from producing unity to now increasing administrative capacity instead, and they are more effective than bureaucrats. A new job called Evaluators now produce unity for machine empires.

Bad idea, see below

For regular empires, the bureaucrat is a new job that increases your administrative capacity at the cost of consumer goods. This is also a specialist job, and has needs accordingly. Administrators are unchanged, and do not currently affect administrative capacity or bureaucrats.

See here is a big problem Stellaris have: There are a lot of mechanics interacting among themselves. Behind the UI Stellaris is just mechanics, mathematics and rules, now all this systems interact. Districts affect your economy but also your empire sprawl, which affects unity cost, which affects your unrest, which affect your pops, which affects your economy. All this mechanics are like a clockwork machinery, they need to work in tandem and without problem for all of them to work. While i like new and interesting things in the game you should see that everything works before adding more. I mean, adding news buildings and jobs isn't a bad thing by itself, but if this additions are the way to solve a problem that a simple rework could fix then a rework should have a bigger priority than adding more pieces to the clockwork machine. Lets say that instead of this jobs we get admin capacity from the capital buildings of your planets, or maybe of the administrators jobs that buildings create. This way you could have the very same result without needing to take away building slots of the planets, buildings slots that become more rare as we get more and more buildings for the necessary jobs your empire needs to, well, function.

As for what, i for one have seen, the bureaucrats job don't make anything other than take buildings slots and nullify the empire sprawl of the pops necessary to make the buildings for the bureaucrats. See the image the pops take away -28.8 ES, and that with the Harmony traditions finished bonus, while your bureaucrat jobs just add +20. So we get -8.8 empire sprawl from our pops necessaries to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. The jobs alone are terribly inefficient and lets not speak of what any species needs to think to send their bureaucratic paperwork off planet in the first place.

In short rework the mechanics instead of add more, please i beg you, Bureaucracy and Efficiency demands it

 

[Methone]

Two out of four does not a Race Make. You discount Rogue Servitor and... *Gasp* Not picking one of those two Genocidal Civics or the one civic that ruins the best economical advantage of playing a Machine Empire!

Those two don't matter because Exterminator and Assimilator still exist, and would still get punished by the same Admin Cap penalty that Servitor and Generic can live with.

 

[Cawi]

I believe, as other people have mentioned, that having pops influence Empire Sprawl may be too much of a nerf to the tall playstyle, potentially rendering it inviable. But on the other hand having pops influence Empire Sprawl makes a lot of sense and it's one of those things that make the whole Empire simulation more realistic

I think Stellaris naturally favors a wide playstyle. Playing tall is a viable strategy only because the devs have deliberately buffed it. I think we could use the "pops contribute to Empire Sprawl" concept and favor tall playstyles at the same time, as long as we say pop contribution to Empire Sprawl is indirect. Lemme explain.

There would be no direct pop contribution to Empire Sprawl, just as it is right now. However, the contribution of planets to Empire Sprawl would vary according to the following formula.

α = β + δ, where

α is the planetary contribution to Empire Sprawl.
β is a fixed, base value. By the way, I think Habitats should have a significantly lower base value than planets, but I digress.
δ is a variable value that increases as the planet's population grows, but with diminishing costs.
For example: In a planet with 20 pops, δ would be x; in a planet with 40 pops, δ would be 1,6x; 80 pops, δ = 2,56x and so on. (If you're looking at these numbers and unsure of the relationship between them, notice how every 100% increase in population results in a 80% increase in δ.)

While I understand this makes things more complicated and abstract, I like this concept because:

1) It fits and buffs tall empires.

Tall empires are all "Yes, our fleets and population are smaller than yours, but our ships are more advanced and our citizens are better fed". Having a advantage in Empire Sprawl helps tall empires when it comes to research and tradition.

2) It forces players to make strategic decisions.

"Should I expand and benefit from more pop growth and more strategic resources or should I cram as much pops as I can into a single planet to benefit from lower Empire Sprawl?"

3) It makes sense.

The idea of having pops contribute to Empire Sprawl makes sense, but there is also the fact that high-density populations result in more efficient bureaucracy when compared to spread-out, low-density ones. In real life, Singapore has an easier time administrating their 5,5 million citizens crammed up in a city than Finland has administrating their 5,5 million citizens spread out in a relatively large territory.

 

[Cawi]

The machine empire/hive mind thing feels weirdly backwards to me.

Wouldn't a drone cut off from the hivemind be completely useless? There's literally a mechanic in the game right now that hive mind pops that fall into another Empire and thus are separated from the hivemind automatically die.

On the other hand, wouldn't a machine be perfectly able to continue working cut off from the core? It would just keep doing what it's doing, like a PC without internet access can't update, but still basically functions just fine.

Also this.

 

[FrozenIceman]

I appreciate what you are doing, trying to differentiate each government type, however it seems more of a distraction that anything else. As of right now due to the transition from the tile system to our current system the game's performance is exponentially handicapped as the game goes on due to dairly checking of each Pop's job and strata. The result is that on mid size galaxies at mid game the game is about as fast as normal speed on the fastest setting even on a new Ryzen. I would like to see Dev ideas and experimentation (without adding overhead and extra systems) on how to fix this or at least some kind of statement as to why it isn't feasible. Ideas that could help:

1. Reduce daily checks to once a month or once every other month
2. Reduce the number of pops and jobs (Example Double production, cut pops in half, cut growth speed in half, change building pop limit requirements)
3. Condense Pops, If someone has 16 jobs doing the same thing, can the Pop system condense 15 of those Pops into a single 'mega pop' in which the single pop is treated as 1 pop with the production of 15. The last pop could be a 'floater.' Break up the 15 pops into smaller sub pops as required
4. Ignore checking 3/4 of the Pop's in a single job. Assume that the economy won't drastically swing and only evaluate and shift around 1/4 of the pops per month.
5. Reduce Strata Shift cooldown and eliminate checking any pops with a strata cool down (or allow players to shift without cooldown while keeping the cool down for the auto pop shuffle)
6. Remove Poll system and switch to event system for pop checking (for example for strata cool down write the date at which the pop will be able to shift to memory and don't check that pop until it occurs.
7. Have a mechanic to combine dissimilar jobs mid to late game. Say combine the administrator and the Ruler job into a single job choice to reduce the pops needed
8. Sort pops based on their traits. Have a Pool of don't care what they do, have a pool of good at X, have a pool of bad at Y. Limit number of categories and assign good pops first, then don't care, then bad.
9. Combine the resource production traits: Energy Production, Minerals, Food into a single resource bonus trait to reduce sub categories
10. Have multiple levels of pop checking based on resource production of planet or empire. If all Resources are in the green shift pops around once every 5 months. If any resource is red shift pops around once every month. Only evaluate new pops to available jobs once.
11. Reduce or remove resource penalty for running out of resources (They are already doing bad running out of resources, penalizing them again once they hit 0 just makes it harder to recover, would help AI far more than players) Or possibly only have it only affect happiness only (which will reduce output and have a similar affect).
12. Reduce particle affects/graphics in large fleet battles for mid and late game or have it automatically shift is FPS is impacted. Like Levels of Detail
13. For Trade routes and gateways, reduce the amount of time optimal trade routes and routes are calculated. Perhaps once every 6 months to reduce the FPS hit
14. Remove or augment the build order approach and instead build by need. If Negative in resource X on a planet build building Y then once stable resume build order. Perhaps do this check once every 3 months or schedule it for when a building is complete
15. Once every year or so, remove all workers in a strata and re-assign based on resource needs (scheduled). Assign 1 to each until a resource generation is negative then assign pop to jobs that would make resource positive. Assign jobs bottom up (lowest strata first)
16. Combine Leader and Tech Strata to reduce categories
17. Multithread the poll or schedule tool, assign different pop assignments or categories to different cores.
18. Multithread the poll or schedule tool based on each empire
19. Multithread the poll or schedule tool based on each sector
20. Distribute threading off of CORE 1 for, move threads to Core 2 through 4 if available.
21. Evaluate Happiness Impact of pops once every month or once every 2 or 3 months rather than daily
22. Combine all Leader Jobs into a single job run by one Pop to reduce job categories (with all of the output of multiple jobs) that is always filled first and focus on the specialist and worker strata for evaluation
23. Remove Leader Strata all together give all of the bonus' to a planet without having to have a pop in it (to simulate the Sector governor and Staff). Or make it that if a Sector Governor is assigned they get those bonus'
24. Remove the Pop operator for buildings that only generate a single pop (Hospital, Gene Clinic, Robot Factory, efficiency buildings, ect) and remove that job from the evaluation pool. Make the buildings operate without a worker. This would remove the number of unique jobs that are 1 or 2 per planet (reducing categories and CPU checks).

 

[Kuronan]

Those two don't matter because Exterminator and Assimilator still exist, and would still get punished by the same Admin Cap penalty that Servitor and Generic can live with.

This is the equivalent of saying 'Unspecialized Hive-mind doesn't matter because Devouring Swarm exists.' Maybe I don't want to kill, assimilate or devour everyone I meet? I'd Pamper them, but I don't like farms on principle that if I wanted to have farms, I'd play Default.

"Plays Machine empire"
- Complains about population growth.
?????
Have you ever actually watched pop counts and growth of empires? Aswell as getting the Cybrex war forge for 50% pop growth boost?

Synth Ascension is obviously ridiculous and should get nerfed because it grows at 2-3 times that of any other empire. But so are normal Machine empires. DA starts with around 6 pop growth.

Also Machine empire technicians being 50% better is a huge deal, its so much better than making 6 food.

Okay I've tried to think of something and I really can't. I don't like adding Cybrex War Forge into the relics being considered, but I'm doing that shit for my argument that Organics can have legit double our traits.

IDK, I'm not playing Machines to be Wide, I WANT to be Tall (and later transition into Wide when I've maxed out my traditions and decided my neighbors aren't being resource efficient) but I can't exactly come up with a way to make Machines/RS fair without making Exterminators/Assimilators even more broken than they currently are.

 

[Pancakelord]

In real life, Singapore has an easier time administrating their 5,5 million citizens crammed up in a city than Finland has administrating their 5,5 million citizens spread out in a relatively large territory.

By that logic it should be something like:

X=1/(#Pops/(#Districts/#Systems)

(Or the reciprocal of your pops / the average number of districts on any planet in your empire)

With a weight for planets & systems, where you're actively encouraged to stack up as many pops in as small an empire as you can, provided it's well built. And are instead, essentially, punished for having too much unused infrastructure or unstaffed jobs.

 

[Practical Mustache]

Any news of when the next patch is coming? And if this patch would fix the Mac multiplayer issue?
Would like to join in the multiplayer carnage peaceful coexistence again

 

[Ikurok]

I believe, as other people have mentioned, that having pops influence Empire Sprawl may be too much of a nerf to the tall playstyle, potentially rendering it inviable. But on the other hand having pops influence Empire Sprawl makes a lot of sense and it's one of those things that make the whole Empire simulation more realistic

I think Stellaris naturally favors a wide playstyle. Playing tall is a viable strategy only because the devs have deliberately buffed it. I think we could use the "pops contribute to Empire Sprawl" concept and favor tall playstyles at the same time, as long as we say pop contribution to Empire Sprawl is indirect. Lemme explain.

There would be no direct pop contribution to Empire Sprawl, just as it is right now. However, the contribution of planets to Empire Sprawl would vary according to the following formula.

α = β + δ, where

α is the planetary contribution to Empire Sprawl.
β is a fixed, base value. By the way, I think Habitats should have a significantly lower base value than planets, but I digress.
δ is a variable value that increases as the planet's population grows, but with diminishing costs.
For example: In a planet with 20 pops, δ would be x; in a planet with 40 pops, δ would be 1,5x; 80 pops, δ = 1,75x and so on.

While I understand this makes things more complicated and abstract, I like this concept because:

1) It fits and buffs tall empires.

Tall empires are all "Yes, our fleets and population are smaller than yours, but our ships are more advanced and our citizens are better fed". Having a advantage in Empire Sprawl helps tall empires when it comes to research and tradition.

2) It forces players to make strategic decisions.

"Should I expand and benefit from more pop growth and more strategic resources or should I cram as much pops as I can into a single planet to benefit from lower Empire Sprawl?"

3) It makes sense.

The idea of having pops contribute to Empire Sprawl makes sense, but there is also the fact that high-density populations result in more efficient bureaucracy when compared to spread-out, low-density ones. In real life, Singapore has an easier time administrating their 5,5 million citizens crammed up in a city than Finland has administrating their 5,5 million citizens spread out in a relatively large territory.

I was thinking on something like this but a little bit more simple, just having the pop contribution with lower values and multiplied by the number of colonies on your empire.

 

[Tech Noir Synth]

I'm pretty sure it would make people a lot happier to give additional info the fixes that are being worked on, in addition to the experimental changes.

• Tell us about your progress on Hivemind civic reworks or upcoming civic reworks/ changes to background civics.
• What is your stance on current balance between Machine empires and non-Machines? And especially Hiveminds vs Machine empires.
• What do you want pop growth to be? Should Synth empires really grow 2-3 times as quick as everyone else? Should Hiveminds grow the slowest and be the worst at energy and alloy output? Should we be able to funnel pop growth from developed planets into new colonies via automated resettlement? Why/Why not? Currently this is a huge micromanagement burden.
• Should Crisis like Khan and Endgame Crisis have to be set to earlier spawn dates and increased vastly in strength just so players can have a challenge?
• And please tell us when you will make micromanagement like resettling lategame easier and when we will be able to set our own buildorders for planet automation.

 

[kalauer]

Increasing your administrative capacity will now be a part of planning your empire’s economy.

I like the concept, but can you elaborate more on the design goal for generation of administrative capacity? In particular, I am concerned that this now means for expansive empires, they just build a new building on every planet they settle on and thus achieve the same performance (sprawl-penalty-wise) as tall players: Because if administrative capacity is tied to building slots, this favors playstyles with lots of them.

On the other hand, if you need too many buildings to compensate for new colonies/systems, it may be more rational to not colonize something at some point even for the 'widest' playstyle. Also not desirable. So yes, balancing stuff. But still, some ideas for the goal here?

Also, what is the relation to the repeatable admin-cap techs? This was my approach for 'tall' until now: tech fast and in a small empire to reach those and then expand when admin cap can be generated. I assume this will no longer be necessary?

 

[Ebonburn]

Having pops add sprawl would absolutely cripple rogue servitors into an unplayable state. Currently we already run almost twice as many pops as most other empires.
In addition, machines in general focusing on tall builds kinda contradicts what their 100% habitability encourages, settling on a wide variety of planets.

 

[Metroidkirby]

There is something that feels repetitive. Why are districts and populations count in Empire Sprawl?
I mean, districts are directly tied to population.

Also, I hope if there are planet focus on administrative activities, we could have more than one per empire.

 

[Tobasco da Gama]

This change seems fine to me, but IMO it doesn't address the fact that there's no benefit to playing "tall" in the first place. I don't think this will change the current metagame where if you're not settling every single planet you find you're just leaving potential production capacity on the table.

The sprawl penalties would have to be way, way more punishing to make "tall"-style colonization viable compared to unchecked expansion, but actually doing that would just make the game miserable for everybody.