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Metallichydra

Colonel
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Nov 2, 2022
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Every since Machine Age released, ascension paths have been getting progressively stronger.
First with the synthetic path and its ludicrously powerful virtual ascension and the insanely strong Dark Matter Engines trait, and now with Biogenesis we've got a bunch of, somehow, even more powerful ascension paths.

Before this update, I remember Psionic as the "efficiency" path, the one that lacked in pops but made up for with better pops. Because it could get +20% output for psionic pops. Robots were good because they could get upwards of 20 assembly each month (Which equated to around 0.2 pops per month if you did not account for the pop scaling effect, which would be 20 4.0 pops)

Now?
Now you can go genetics and get 30% efficiency and upwards of 30 assembly from genetics (before accounting for pop scaling), and more if you make the right choices.
Robots have dark matter engines, and cybernetic empires can get more than 400% efficiency with the right authority.

Purity Megacorps can even make all of your pops have a trader sidejob!
And if you want to you can easily get -100% empire size from pops.

As Stellaris is mostly a game of who snowballs first, these insane buffs to ascension paths means that ascending just a decade later can make it impossible to catch up. The benefits of ascension are simply too big.
 
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I think, considering the intended focus of each ascension and the power levels they are now at, a good start (and possibly entire solution) would be to remove 75-100% of efficiency buffs from every currently-updated ascension, depending on the specific ascension.

They don't need it to be strong, and them having it means Psionic is going to need literal orders of magnitude MORE of it to be competitive. A Biomorphosis ascension with 50% or more job efficiency without any real effort while also printing pops at the rate they all do is going to necessitate Psionic having AT LEAST 500% job efficiency. Same for Virtuality and Modularity, while Nanotech currently has obscene research buffs.

They don't need massive numbers of pops AND massive efficiency of pops. The design before any ascension updates was that Genetic had the most pops, Psionic has the best pops, and Cybernetic/Synthetic were kind of in the middle. Now Genetic and Synthetic have both harder than Psionic has just quality of pops, and Cybernetic ranges between also drastically exceeding Psionic and... kind of bland, based on which authority you have.

It's better for the game in general to not have power spikes this hard, and it's better for ascension balance specifically for them to each have broadly intended advantages and disadvantages over other ascensions - there's no reason for Synthetic/Machine and Biomorphosis (and some Cybernetic) to have a massive grab bag that pushes them to these ridiculous extremes.
 
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Hmm, there's another possibility. Change the system so it's more even. Have ascensions work more like becoming the Nemesis. Maybe automatically start after getting the first ascension perk? Various choices you make determine the ultimate path but there are a variety of ways to earn points. Heck, choosing to be a nemesis could be part of this and you'd have to give up regular ascension.

Some rebalancing could be worked in, but this way it isn't a total unity rush once you unlock it.
 
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Hmm, there's another possibility. Change the system so it's more even. Have ascensions work more like becoming the Nemesis. Maybe automatically start after getting the first ascension perk? Various choices you make determine the ultimate path but there are a variety of ways to earn points. Heck, choosing to be a nemesis could be part of this and you'd have to give up regular ascension.

Some rebalancing could be worked in, but this way it isn't a total unity rush once you unlock it.
That would undoubtedly be a better implementation, and is basically what making them situations is trying to do - slow them down.

They shouldn't be traditions OR ascension perks at all. In an ideal design, they should be progression paths that don't have anything directly to do with either system.

This would both allow improving them, and improving the ascension perk and tradition systems they're parasitizing. The current system is designed to give you 8 AP and 7 tradition choices, and I could say a lot about the balance of the choices making many of them never-picks (and have before), but relevant to this discussion is that you actually have 7 and 6 choices, because you WILL be taking a species ascension.
 
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Milking every single bonus possible to negate empire size and gain as much efficiency as possible doesn't mean something needs to be aggressively balanced just because you managed to come up with some ridiculous cheesy strat for it... Did we learn nothing at all from the cosmogenesis nightmare and the FE buildings?
 
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no


Milking every single bonus possible to negate empire size and gain as much efficiency as possible doesn't mean something needs to be aggressively balanced just because you managed to come up with some ridiculous cheesy strat for it... Did we learn nothing at all from the cosmogenesis nightmare and the FE buildings?
The thing is, you don't have to milk every single bonus to get these ridiculously overpowered numbers. You get 15% efficiency from genomic facilities no matter what choice you take during the genetics ascension situation, and then you can just slap down a medical building for 15% extra. That's 30% for free (And let's be real, this is free because the genomic researcher job is incredibly good. There's no way you don't want this job on every planet, especially if you pick just 1 purity choice during the situation to get pop growth from them as well.)

The FE buildings is an outlier when it comes to balance and reworks. The implementation was horrendous, and anyone should have been able to see how bad it would be.
 
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Milking every single bonus possible to negate empire size and gain as much efficiency as possible doesn't mean something needs to be aggressively balanced just because you managed to come up with some ridiculous cheesy strat for it... Did we learn nothing at all from the cosmogenesis nightmare and the FE buildings?
In this specific case, these are two separate problems but they do need to be addressed.

Species ascensions are way too strong, and additionally empire size reductions need to be entirely culled. Same reason as ship build cost reductions were: 5% off 100% is boring and nobody wants it, 5% off 5% is obscenely overpowered, so being able to stack it literally at all is bad for the game.

A maximum of one empire size reduction per category can exist reasonably. Adding more instances of it makes each one MORE valuable.

Don't throw out all mechanics adjustments because the FE attempt a few patches ago sucked. FE buildings and Cosmogenesis DO need adjustment, the attempt made having been terrible doesn't even mean that thing specifically shouldn't be reworked, just that it isn't a priority and needs more QA.
 
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In this specific case, these are two separate problems but they do need to be addressed.

Species ascensions are way too strong, and additionally empire size reductions need to be entirely culled. Same reason as ship build cost reductions were: 5% off 100% is boring and nobody wants it, 5% off 5% is obscenely overpowered, so being able to stack it literally at all is bad for the game.

A maximum of one empire size reduction per category and exist reasonably. Adding more instances of it makes each one MORE valuable.

Don't throw out all mechanics adjustments because the FE attempt a few patches ago sucked. FE buildings and Cosmogenesis DO need adjustment, the attempt made having been terrible doesn't even mean that thing specifically shouldn't be reworked, just that it isn't a priority and needs more QA.
Agreed in that I assume you mean they should get rid of size reductions (or perhaps cap them at some pretty easy to get level), and *then* the game rebalanced around that. Chasing Empire Size reduction bonuses hurts the game more than it helps.

Now, I can see the argument but a system that incorporates them in some way for maybe 20-30% max, to model an empire just becoming more efficient, but this should be able to come from a variety of sources -- civics, tech, some ascension perks, some traditions, edicts, etc, and basically the cost not be factored into things because it's assumed you'll hit that cap one way or another (and have the tech not come up if you've hit it with permanent choices). Have it be expected you'll be at the cap by mid game, I think, if this were done this way, with the average empire actually being well beyond the cap -- like 30%+ average reduction capped at 20%. This makes sure you don't need to plan on getting it, but still feels like you've made progress, I think. Though maybe all that's unnecessary.

Maybe there is a way to instead of having empire size give a malus, you instead got a huge bonus for a small empire, size just reduced the bonus. That might be hard to do, but I think it would feel a lot better.
 
Thinking about this some more, you could start the game with the 'Ascension Tracker' unlocked. Progression from, idk, pops, research, unity, and other stuff. Initial stage is figuring what path you want to take (one of the regular ascensions or a nemesis). It can spawn various events or situations. Once you progress enough for the next stage, you have to make a choice. You can also reject transformation and continue on the tracker and get no big pop-altering changes -- just some more boring bonuses or something. Each step gives you access to more options and research. Some might give you choices. Last is apotheosis where you (can?) fundamentally change in some way* if you didn't decide against it at the end of phase 1. First drafts of how this could work would just be copy and paste the existing traditions and other benefits to each stage.

Hmm, this seems like it might actually be moddable.

*I've been thinking about how the Wilderness mechanics naturally suit a Nanite empire. Bit disappointing it's very similar to Virtual though. But if both gave another option to avoid that mechanic by not completely transforming pops, that would be pretty nice. In any case, having choices would be fun.

Edit: Actually, I guess transformation stage should probably happen around halfway through a game on average? At least, that feels right to me. Maybe sometime between 75 and 100 years from game start, all being equal. So perhaps this system should need a couple steps beyond that so progression there didn't just stop, which might feel weird.
 
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A maximum of one empire size reduction per category and exist reasonably. Adding more instances of it makes each one MORE valuable.
So you can continue making cheese builds to exploit as many as possible and anyone trying to play normally gets to struggle? I gotta tell ya, its sounds like an absolute blast...
Don't throw out all mechanics adjustments because the FE attempt a few patches ago sucked. FE buildings and Cosmogenesis DO need adjustment, the attempt made having been terrible doesn't even mean that thing specifically shouldn't be reworked, just that it isn't a priority and needs more QA.
Cosmogenesis did NOT need to be balanced it was NOT forced on the player, did NOT affect the normal gameplay loop, and the AI NEVER took it anyways. It was completely optional, anyone crying about its strength just needed to not pick it, it really is that simple. Now because all these people just had to see it "balanced" we've got the devs trying to figure out how to introduce the FE buildings into the regular gameplay loop... Awesome! (no) It never should have been a priority at all.
 
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Agreed in that I assume you mean they should get rid of size reductions (or perhaps cap them at some pretty easy to get level), and *then* the game rebalanced around that. Chasing Empire Size reduction bonuses hurts the game more than it helps.
Right and wrong. That behavior is the result of empire size dramatically affecting how people play not the bonuses/negations. The reductions are a must have because empire size exists and its too punishing to ignore. People wouldn't be pursuing -100% empire size builds if it wasn't so ridiculously important to manage it. Seriously any other title would see how people are flocking to empire size reductions and probably change empire size to be less stupid. People are taking total crap traditions strictly because the empire size reduction is included. Its an unhealthy system for the game. I'm in the minority here but realistically the old system was just straight up better. Anyways point being, removing the negations and doing nothing about empire size itself is a massive mistake.

Maybe there is a way to instead of having empire size give a malus, you instead got a huge bonus for a small empire, size just reduced the bonus. That might be hard to do, but I think it would feel a lot better.
As if god whispered in your ear to give you this idea. A non intrusive system that wouldn't actively hurt playing the game normally. It would be way better. Sadly i doubt anyone would go for this.
 
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Agreed in that I assume you mean they should get rid of size reductions (or perhaps cap them at some pretty easy to get level), and *then* the game rebalanced around that. Chasing Empire Size reduction bonuses hurts the game more than it helps.

Now, I can see the argument but a system that incorporates them in some way for maybe 20-30% max, to model an empire just becoming more efficient, but this should be able to come from a variety of sources -- civics, tech, some ascension perks, some traditions, edicts, etc, and basically the cost not be factored into things because it's assumed you'll hit that cap one way or another (and have the tech not come up if you've hit it with permanent choices). Have it be expected you'll be at the cap by mid game, I think, if this were done this way, with the average empire actually being well beyond the cap -- like 30%+ average reduction capped at 20%. This makes sure you don't need to plan on getting it, but still feels like you've made progress, I think. Though maybe all that's unnecessary.

Maybe there is a way to instead of having empire size give a malus, you instead got a huge bonus for a small empire, size just reduced the bonus. That might be hard to do, but I think it would feel a lot better.
For the problem itself, empire size has the explicit purpose of limiting snowballing. If you can mitigate it to any non-trivial degree, either through literally removing it like this or via outsourcing it to vassals, it doesn't work at all.

The correct way to do a small/"tall" empire bonus, which Sovereign Guardianship is trying to be (instead of the current "really good" bonus) is to crank up the empire size penalty, but raise the threshold below which it doesn't apply at all.

Something like
"Empire size penalty increased by 400%

Empire size minimum before penalties are applied raised by 400%"
You would need to refine it to achieve the desired scale, but in this example it's very simple - empire size starts applying at all at 501, not 101, and applies five times the penalty. This means that at 600 empire size, the two have the same penalty (one is over at base scaling by 500, the other at five times base scaling by 100). The empire with the change becomes stronger if both are smaller, and weaker if both are larger.

You would want it to scale gradually, instead of at a hard point like that, but that is an easier example to understand. You would want something like no penalty up to 200, half penalty from 200 to 300, 75% penalty from 300 to 400, etc. This makes it work at any small sizes, instead of specifically being optimal to be at 500 empire size to receive no penalty (rather than smaller empires being no less penalized). You could even make it give a bonus from empire size below certain amounts. It just depends what the target size is/sizes are.

So you can continue making cheese builds to exploit as many as possible and anyone trying to play normally gets to struggle? I gotta tell ya, its sounds like an absolute blast...
I have no idea what you're talking about. If this is your response to some part of my post, would you mind explaining what exactly you mean by this and/or what it applies to? Removing empire size reductions is very specifically meant to remove "cheese builds" that completely negate the anti-snowball mechanic, so that you can play normally.
Cosmogenesis did NOT need to be balanced it was NOT forced on the player, did NOT affect the normal gameplay loop, and the AI NEVER took it anyways. It was completely optional, anyone crying about its strength just needed to not pick it, it really is that simple. Now because all these people just had to see it "balanced" we've got the devs trying to figure out how to introduce the FE buildings into the regular gameplay loop... Awesome! (no) It never should have been a priority at all.
Correct. It should never have been a priority.

I assume you'd be okay with an ascension perk that made your ships invulnerable for the rest of the game, as that would not be forced on the player? If you wouldn't, can you explain how Cosmogenesis isn't a problem at all but that is with the same logic applied?

It was not a priority and the "fix" was terrible for the brief time it survived, but it needed fixing then and it needs fixing now.
 
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Right and wrong. That behavior is the result of empire size dramatically affecting how people play not the bonuses/negations. The reductions are a must have because empire size exists and its too punishing to ignore. People wouldn't be pursuing -100% empire size builds if it wasn't so ridiculously important to manage it. Seriously any other title would see how people are flocking to empire size reductions and probably change empire size to be less stupid. People are taking total crap traditions strictly because the empire size reduction is included. Its an unhealthy system for the game. I'm in the minority here but realistically the old system was just straight up better. Anyways point being, removing the negations and doing nothing about empire size itself is a massive mistake.


As if god whispered in your ear to give you this idea. A non intrusive system that wouldn't actively hurt playing the game normally. It would be way better. Sadly i doubt anyone would go for this.
Yes, but since reduction stacking has a huge impact, I think it fundamentally has to be addressed as part of reworking the system. If we're going to try to balance building tall verses wide, there's going to have to pretty large swings in what tall verses wide gets. But I think we should also be ready for the fact that no system is perfect, it isn't like Stellaris tries to be carefully balanced. I am not saying some level of balance isn't a good goal, but tight balance is just never going to happen. Tbh, the whole system bothers my sense of aesthetics because realistically bigger is better. The overhead increase for management of bigger sizes scales really well in the real world. Though, in science fiction, we often see small empires that are just that good -- the Time Lords would be a classic example, even if they'd also be a fallen Empire (they were never large even before they became stagnant), but there are plenty of others. And a lot of players don't enjoy a lot of expansion or persuing it aggressively.

Stellaris does probably handle Empire Size in the most heavy-handed way of pretty much any game I've ever played. I know many have said it feels bad and it does. It makes you want to hit it with as many hammers as you can. Heck, the fact even small empires can easily go beyond 100 is something I still find strange.

And frankly, it's weird that the big things it affects are just tech and unity. If there was going to be a penalty, shouldn't there be some sort of administrative overhead at least from managing a large civilization?

I think some factors to consider are:
1. We can probably replace a lot of the current malus system with a system that starts positive, goes to 0 at a certain size (500, 1000, or whataver), and certain techs increase the bonus if it is positive or reduce it if it is negative, but the 0 point always stays at the same size.
2. Current system punishes players who have smaller planets or habitats, or small empires that get a lot of systems. There's no reason for this. It adds nothing to the game. They already have to micro more and defend more places. Get rid of the empire size effects of systems and number of colonies, or make the colony cost depend on how good the planet is (e.g. size and if it is a habitat, ring segment, ecu, regular planet, etc) -- but even then, what is really giving power isn't the planet existing, it's the districts and pop, so it seems to me size should mostly be just about those. Have the district effect modified by what kind of planet it is though, since that just makes sense. To make advanced planets still good, their bonuses and the cost and effort of getting them can be adjusted -- influence cost for an ecu could probably be removed, for instance.
3. Really need to get rid of how support districts make larger colonies exponentially better than smaller ones. It's just a bad idea. Sure it empowers civs with a small number of large colonies, but it also does so for large civs, and weirdly encourages players to not colonize good planets based on size -- which is just weird if we think about how a real empire would behave. Probably should just have a strict ratio of support to production district, say each one gives a +40% bonus to 4 districts or something, and more don't do anything.
4. Having increased admin costs, stability costs, and bigger organized crime would make sense though. Even machines can have problems with too much data flow for their capacity to manage, leading to erroneous behavior in various applications (I'm a network engineer in real life). I think a combination of energy, mineral, and trade overhead, as well as having jobs that provide stability more necessary and the ability to scale the jobs the buildings provide with policy or automatically with need, would make a lot of sense. So at a certain point, large empires need a building or two on each colony for management, basically, and proportionately have a much higher amount of resources going to keep things running smoothly. I say jobs should scale to an extent because I could see this becoming a little ridiculous if you need to keep putting in more buildings, so I'd think at most two different buildings would make sense, and they just do more jobs or maintenance goes up and output goes up for the jobs if you get bigger. It also means you don't have to micromanage old colonies so much. I do think there absolutely have to be effects that need to be managed locally.

And I don't think this would feel bad the same way that the current system does, which feels extremely arbitrary. But that's just me spending too much time thinking something up off the top of my head. It probably has problems, but I think it's good to think of other ways things could work.
 
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For the problem itself, empire size has the explicit purpose of limiting snowballing. If you can mitigate it to any non-trivial degree, either through literally removing it like this or via outsourcing it to vassals, it doesn't work at all.

The correct way to do a small/"tall" empire bonus, which Sovereign Guardianship is trying to be (instead of the current "really good" bonus) is to crank up the empire size penalty, but raise the threshold below which it doesn't apply at all.

Something like
"Empire size penalty increased by 400%

Empire size minimum before penalties are applied raised by 400%"
You would need to refine it to achieve the desired scale, but in this example it's very simple - empire size starts applying at all at 501, not 101, and applies five times the penalty. This means that at 600 empire size, the two have the same penalty (one is over at base scaling by 500, the other at five times base scaling by 100). The empire with the change becomes stronger if both are smaller, and weaker if both are larger.

You would want it to scale gradually, instead of at a hard point like that, but that is an easier example to understand. You would want something like no penalty up to 200, half penalty from 200 to 300, 75% penalty from 300 to 400, etc. This makes it work at any small sizes, instead of specifically being optimal to be at 500 empire size to receive no penalty (rather than smaller empires being no less penalized). You could even make it give a bonus from empire size below certain amounts. It just depends what the target size is/sizes are.
Yes, I basically had the same idea, but start with a large bonus. I was writing it out as you wrote this. Have that bonus decrease as you get bigger, going to 0 at some value. Wouldn't be so punishing if you decided to grab another planet, generally.

You could have civics adjust where the 0 point is if they were designed around especially small play. Or they could just add an extra factor like virtuality does. Or you could have other costs that go up rapidly, such an an exponential overhead. But I think it is important to have some wiggle room on size.
 
Stellaris does probably handle Empire Size in the most heavy-handed way of pretty much any game I've ever played. I know many have said it feels bad and it does. It makes you want to hit it with as many hammers as you can. Heck, the fact even small empires can easily go beyond 100 is something I still find strange.
I miss bureaucrats reducing empire size terribly. Stellaris was actually fun back then.
 
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I agree with the author of the post. Ascensions are really too strong.

Regarding empire size. Similar problems with zero empire size/ship cost are actually solved in a rather simple way and are often found in other games - diminishing returns. That is, each subsequent bonus gives a smaller and smaller result, and does not simply add up to the previous one.

This allows developers not to worry about problems of this kind, because regardless of the number of small bonuses, empire size/ship cost/any other problematic modifier will never be equal to 0%, but will only strive for it, and concentrate on more important aspects of the game.

To be honest, I was very surprised that this mechanic has not been introduced yet, considering how much Stellaris has "inflated" over the past years.
 
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Every since Machine Age released, ascension paths have been getting progressively stronger.
First with the synthetic path and its ludicrously powerful virtual ascension and the insanely strong Dark Matter Engines trait, and now with Biogenesis we've got a bunch of, somehow, even more powerful ascension paths.

Absolutely agree with the main point of your post, but I would say there's a key distinction between Virtuality and, say, Modularity.

Modularity is a very conservative ascension. It doesn't really disrupt anything you've got going on already, it's just a straightforward upgrade. Looking at it purely from a balance perspective, problem is simply that the numbers are too large and need to be toned down. But then if you just turn the numbers down to a balanced level, it becomes pedestrian and the different conservative ascensions kind of blur into each other, just another stack of modifiers lost in the sea of technology-based modifiers.

Virtuality is a radical ascension, a complete rethink of how your pops work. (The next most radical is probably Synthetic ascension, but even that is tame and pedestrian compared to Virtuality.) It has huge benefits but also severe and permanent potenial drawbacks that limit how you build your empire for the rest of the game. This means "balance" becomes a discussion of pros and cons that are much more complex to compare (in this case, tall vs wide and instant power vs growth potential), and it's tricky to get it right. But it also makes this ascension far more interesting to have in the game.

Overall, I'd like to see most of the non-Virtuality ascensions become *more radical*, but with a bit less of a *net* power boost, by introducing significant downsides. That way it feels like you've made a fateful decision about your species/empire that could end in triumph or disaster depending on how you play your cards, as opposed to it being just another upgrade.
 
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I agree with the author of the post. Ascensions are really too strong.

Regarding empire size. Similar problems with zero empire size/ship cost are actually solved in a rather simple way and are often found in other games - diminishing returns. That is, each subsequent bonus gives a smaller and smaller result, and does not simply add up to the previous one.

This allows developers not to worry about problems of this kind, because regardless of the number of small bonuses, empire size/ship cost/any other problematic modifier will never be equal to 0%, but will only strive for it, and concentrate on more important aspects of the game.

To be honest, I was very surprised that this mechanic has not been introduced yet, considering how much Stellaris has "inflated" over the past years.
That would solve the problem. Job upkeep reductions should be replaced with output increases for exactly that reason.

You COULD technically make ships or empire size work by making them multiplicative (two 10% reductions = 81% base cost, rather than additive =80%). But that still doesn't really work for empire size because being able to reduce it prevents it from actually working as an anti-snowball mechanism, and for ships it just doesn't seem necessary. The best equivalent for ships is realistically alloy (or food for bioships) output increases, which DO exist.
 
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And frankly, it's weird that the big things it affects are just tech and unity. If there was going to be a penalty, shouldn't there be some sort of administrative overhead at least from managing a large civilization?
It's there because otherwise a series of smaller empires has no way of standing up to a larger empire even when working together. Because without Empire Size penalties, an empire in Stellaris that is 10x larger also advances in technology 10x faster. That isn't realistic in the first place, so you have to introduce something like Empire Size to compensate, or overhaul the technology system.
Right and wrong. That behavior is the result of empire size dramatically affecting how people play not the bonuses/negations. The reductions are a must have because empire size exists and its too punishing to ignore. People wouldn't be pursuing -100% empire size builds if it wasn't so ridiculously important to manage it. Seriously any other title would see how people are flocking to empire size reductions and probably change empire size to be less stupid. People are taking total crap traditions strictly because the empire size reduction is included. Its an unhealthy system for the game. I'm in the minority here but realistically the old system was just straight up better. Anyways point being, removing the negations and doing nothing about empire size itself is a massive mistake.
So you want the game to snowball even harder? I think it's simple: remove almost all sources of Empire Size reduction other than those that come with another downside. Make people stop thinking about it as something that you should reduce as much as possible.
I miss bureaucrats reducing empire size terribly. Stellaris was actually fun back then.
Balance was horrific and snowballing rapidly. People were hitting repeatable techs in 50 years just by expanding. No, I don't think that was fun.
 
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I miss bureaucrats reducing empire size terribly. Stellaris was actually fun back then.
It's there because otherwise a series of smaller empires has no way of standing up to a larger empire even when working together. Because without Empire Size penalties, an empire in Stellaris that is 10x larger also advances in technology 10x faster. That isn't realistic in the first place, so you have to introduce something like Empire Size to compensate, or overhaul the technology system.
I also preferred the old framework in which bureaucrats reduced empire sprawl, and think that the issues that your describing would have been better solved within that framework. One approach would have been to have each bureaucrat increase the cost of bureaucrat upkeep, so that it becomes increasingly expensive to administer a large empire. Combine this with significant stability penalties for going over the administrative cap, and you might have had a system that is both conceptually reasonable and more robust that the current system.

But that's water under the bridge at this point.
Regarding empire size. Similar problems with zero empire size/ship cost are actually solved in a rather simple way and are often found in other games - diminishing returns. That is, each subsequent bonus gives a smaller and smaller result, and does not simply add up to the previous one.
I keep saying that it's better to use a system where negative modifiers give a multiplier of 1/(1+X) instead of (1-X). This would mean going from a 50% reduction to a 75% reduction would require increasing the modifier from 100% to 300% instead of just going from 50% to 75%. I'm skeptical that this could be successfully integrated at this stage of development, though.

The FE buildings is an outlier when it comes to balance and reworks. The implementation was horrendous, and anyone should have been able to see how bad it would be.
Don't throw out all mechanics adjustments because the FE attempt a few patches ago sucked. FE buildings and Cosmogenesis DO need adjustment, the attempt made having been terrible doesn't even mean that thing specifically shouldn't be reworked, just that it isn't a priority and needs more QA.
One of the reasons (probably the main reason) that I tend to look skeptically at just about any call for nerfs, even in areas where they're almost certainly needed, is that the FE buildings really wasn't an outlier. It was probably the most obvious example, but most of the 3.X balance changes, even when they were necessary, seemed at best to introduce clunky systems that felt bad even when they had their intended effects:
  • The unity rework made it impossible to reduce empire size, and if you were used to keeping under the cap, it felt like you were being punished for playing the game effectively. We're all used to it now, but I remember it being pretty controversial at the time, and I still don't like the way it feels.
  • The evolution of the leader cap was... messily implemented. I still don't like it, but it went through several iterations of systems that were really terrible before settling on something that's now at least tolerable.
  • The tech rework seemed like it also had a lot of growing pains, although I wasn't around for most of them. Regardless, the tech pacing now seems to be much worse than it was before the tech rework, in that the first techs can take 10-20 times as long to research as engame techs. (Particularly if you don't get the lab buildings on your first couple rolls.)
This is a clear trend of balance changes introduced in areas that (generally) needed to be balanced,* but introduced in a way that made the game feel worse to play. Even if they had their intended effect (which sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't), this is a poor trade. Based on this track record, I think it's ultimately a bad idea to nerf anything until there's a consistent process to make sure that the changes have the desired effect and don't have too many unintended consequences. This will probably require both more theory-crafting before even deciding what changes are needed and much more playtesting of those changes before they go live.

Ultimately, what's needed is a clear vision of what pacing and power progression should look like, and what range of performance is acceptable. Without that, balance changes will continue to be haphazardly putting out fires rather than strategic tweaks leading to an ever-improving game state. And the cycle of introducing something cool but clearly overpowered and then having to nerf it later will continue.
 
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