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In the early and mid game, there is some strategic and tactical depth. You can win a battle/war even if you are weaker by using the better strategy. You can see how the battles progress.
Late game is just... enormous fleets that wipe the other in seconds. And ususally the winning side doesn't even take that much losses, so it's not like the sacrifice of that destroyed fleet meant something.
So, depending on RNG and how your game went crisis can be "that's too easy and boring, I should have set crisis multiplier to higher value" or "rage quit, there is no way to defeat that!". If the crisis spawns on the other side of the galaxy, you will win easy while it wipes out your opponents. If it spawns right in the middle of your empire... rage quit. That's not fun.
Three original crisises are just "let's flood the galaxy with huge fleets of enemies".
This was a huge problem with Army Combat early after it was introduced to the game, which they solved by adding "Combat Width" to Planets, meaning that only so much of your Army could directly engage with their "front lines" at once.
Nothing like Combat Width exists for space battles, as you can literally poile your doomstack fleets one on top of the other. It's my one big criticism of Stellaris, that for the most part Doomstacks become the solution to everything. Endgame Crisis: Doomstacks. Invading your neighbours: Doomstacks. Federation Fleets: Organized Doomstacks.
I don't know what the solution is, and I don't know how you'd implement combat width into the space battles with the way space is implemented. Maybe some sort of "friendly fire" mechanic when you have 2+ of your fleets on top of each other might be needed. Because right now all fleet limits do is split up the bonuses from Commanders, because you just put multiple fleets on the same Ctrl-group and they otherwise act as one.
What annoys me: You fight a subjugation war against one member of a federation. You conquer them all and all their planets and the only one subjugated is the one war target. Hey! The f..g whole federation was conquered and lost the war! I cant declare the subjugation war goal on the federation.
What annoys me: You fight a subjugation war against one member of a federation. You conquer them all and all their planets and the only one subjugated is the one war target. Hey! The f..g whole federation was conquered and lost the war! I cant declare the subjugation war goal on the federation.
I feel like in general it should be possible to interact with federations more like they were empires sometimes. Federations making defensive pacts with each other, using a wargoal on the whole federation at one, etc.
Hyperlane creation for newly created systems. Normally, hyperlanes never cross each other, but when a new system gets added during a playthrough its hyperlanes can cross other hyperlanes. Seeing this happen breaks something inside of me*, and makes me savescum until the abomination is gone. It is even a minor supporting reason of why I play without precursors, as their home systems are some of the most frequent offenders.
* (Hyperlane crossing results in total protonic reversal, causing all life as I know it to stop instantaneously and every molecule in my body to explode at the speed of light.)
Given that space is 3d and the stellaris galaxy maps (theoretically) have a z axis its arguably weirder that there's not more visual crossing when viewed from above.
From a gameplay and aesthetics point of view yeah it's visually confusing and looks gross.
This was a huge problem with Army Combat early after it was introduced to the game, which they solved by adding "Combat Width" to Planets, meaning that only so much of your Army could directly engage with their "front lines" at once.
Nothing like Combat Width exists for space battles, as you can literally poile your doomstack fleets one on top of the other. It's my one big criticism of Stellaris, that for the most part Doomstacks become the solution to everything. Endgame Crisis: Doomstacks. Invading your neighbours: Doomstacks. Federation Fleets: Organized Doomstacks.
I don't know what the solution is, and I don't know how you'd implement combat width into the space battles with the way space is implemented. Maybe some sort of "friendly fire" mechanic when you have 2+ of your fleets on top of each other might be needed. Because right now all fleet limits do is split up the bonuses from Commanders, because you just put multiple fleets on the same Ctrl-group and they otherwise act as one.
It sounds like the new logistics system has some plans where combat with doomstacks in will chew through your logistics stockpile. If the trade lost to doomstacking your fights is comparable to the alloy attrition from not doomstacking then at least that will even out the economy side of things.
Time to add some more red x's to the pile: the ship customisation system
Not ship customisation as a concept or even in stellaris - I love me some good ship building - but the existing designer is yet another stellaris system where you make a dozen little decisions one after another that mostly don't matter and are just you restating the big decision you made earlier.
I'd love someone to sit down with instructions to ignore what came before and build a ship design system that fits with stellaris instead of continually trying to tweak what exists.
Time to add some more red x's to the pile: the ship customisation system
Not ship customisation as a concept or even in stellaris - I love me some good ship building - but the existing designer is yet another stellaris system where you make a dozen little decisions one after another that mostly don't matter and are just you restating the big decision you made earlier.
I'd love someone to sit down with instructions to ignore what came before and build a ship design system that fits with stellaris instead of continually trying to tweak what exists.
On ship customisation, I remember years ago posting about how much more fun and interesting ship designs feel in Sword of the Stars despite having a very similar numbers of weapon components (many of them even with had the same name and function when I started to compare them).
In Stellaris for example, if I build a ship with missiles... then I'm kinda done with ship design. I will be mildly annoyed fighting against PD since it reduces my effective fleet power significantly, potentially enough to require a refit, and happy to fight against shields as it dramatically raises my effective fleet power but that's the full extent that I care.
In Sword of the Stars I also have missiles, but they're beyond-visual-range weapons that look beautiful when they fire or ominous as they slowly approach on the tactical screen before you even see the enemy, or MIRVing missiles that split into a flower of death that spirals towards the target soaking up PD fire, and only the heavy planet missiles can re-target, going dark for a moment before all whipping around on a new trajectory, and there's white streaks from ultra-fast kinetic kill missiles that knock ships flying into a very terminal orbit or the rapid close-range dumb-fire missiles for pure damage output. Getting PD isn't certain or easy, sometimes you have to make do with inferior options, hoping for salvage or very high-tech alternatives. But if you do roll PD early it's a powerful counter that adds no offensive power so it's a real trade-off. Or you can hug the sensor shadow of asteroids to prevent missile-lock, or build ships to redirect enemy missiles back at the enemy. Or you accept heavy losses and fight anyway. It's all very similar to Stellaris (at least with basic starting techs) but feels completely different and I'm really not sure why exactly.
It's not just missiles/lasers/kinetics that are the same between the two games. Shields also exist, but you have to research them and opt-in rather than every ship automatically having them, and you sacrifice the ship's largest gun to get them. Or you build half-shields that only block one type of weapon but do so perfectly... but only from directly ahead, while also sacrificing weaponry. Or you use absorbers to turn enemy energy weapons into cooldown reduction on your weapons instead. Obviously there are more fancy options but even the basics feel very different.
Armour is basically the same as Stellaris, but there's something deeply satisfying about hearing the thunk of kinetic weapons and watching them actually bouncing off the ship and doing minimal damage. I think for me the tactile feel of battle is important, I like big ships with destructable elements (think Star Wars Empire at War or Battletech). When watching the battle is unsatisfying then ship design is equally unsatisfying.
But, perhaps Stellaris ship design feels unsatifying because picking a weapon or adding a counter doesn't have much of a cost? All ships start with shields, armour and PD rather than these being something you have to research and sacrifice to include. Or mabye it's just that battles/wars are over quickly with unreliable combat reports so you aren't sure what you could have done better.
I also played a bit of Mechabellum recently, and choosing the composition and tech upgrades for my army to counter the enemy over and over was far more rewarding than anything I felt from Stellaris ship design in some years (maybe not since the very first time I actually defeated a Fallen Empire against overwhelming odds). It was beautiful seeing waves of missiles raining down and satisfying the many ways of countering them. But again, I keep unfairly comparing turn-based games to Stellaris. But something like Sins of a Solar Empire I can still hear the sound of advent lasers and the many different barks when building and selecting my capital ships.
Maybe the magic comes from the slower pace? Sound effects? Blowing bits off ships? Tactical considerations? I don't know where the magic of combat resides, but I wish I had an easy answer. Something simple to suggest but it's hard when I can't identify exactly why I enjoy other games more when so many features are similar.
Especially war which demands full conquest when some obscure border-gore corner can't be reached (e.g. isolated system cut off by a genocidal in a previous war).
When the empire capital is captured, war should generally end. They shouldn't hold out for that one isolated system to spontaneously generate a new fleet or whatever. Conquering the empire capital should be a big deal.
When the empire capital is captured, war should generally end. They shouldn't hold out for that one isolated system to spontaneously generate a new fleet or whatever. Conquering the empire capital should be a big deal.
I would like to disagree, but in stellaris all empires are strongly centralized around the capital, so it actually make sense for the fall of the capital to be the virtual end of any function capacity for an empire.
we could add a civic that use a decentralize system, with some maluses but having to lose all sector capitals to be doomed.
I would like to disagree, but in stellaris all empires are strongly centralized around the capital, so it actually make sense for the fall of the capital to be the virtual end of any function capacity for an empire.
we could add a civic that use a decentralize system, with some maluses but having to lose all sector capitals to be doomed.
On ship customisation, I remember years ago posting about how much more fun and interesting ship designs feel in Sword of the Stars despite having a very similar numbers of weapon components (many of them even with had the same name and function when I started to compare them).
In Stellaris for example, if I build a ship with missiles... then I'm kinda done with ship design. I will be mildly annoyed fighting against PD since it reduces my effective fleet power significantly, potentially enough to require a refit, and happy to fight against shields as it dramatically raises my effective fleet power but that's the full extent that I care.
In Sword of the Stars I also have missiles, but they're beyond-visual-range weapons that look beautiful when they fire or ominous as they slowly approach on the tactical screen before you even see the enemy, or MIRVing missiles that split into a flower of death that spirals towards the target soaking up PD fire, and only the heavy planet missiles can re-target, going dark for a moment before all whipping around on a new trajectory, and there's white streaks from ultra-fast kinetic kill missiles that knock ships flying into a very terminal orbit or the rapid close-range dumb-fire missiles for pure damage output. Getting PD isn't certain or easy, sometimes you have to make do with inferior options, hoping for salvage or very high-tech alternatives. But if you do roll PD early it's a powerful counter that adds no offensive power so it's a real trade-off. Or you can hug the sensor shadow of asteroids to prevent missile-lock, or build ships to redirect enemy missiles back at the enemy. Or you accept heavy losses and fight anyway. It's all very similar to Stellaris (at least with basic starting techs) but feels completely different and I'm really not sure why exactly.
It's not just missiles/lasers/kinetics that are the same between the two games. Shields also exist, but you have to research them and opt-in rather than every ship automatically having them, and you sacrifice the ship's largest gun to get them. Or you build half-shields that only block one type of weapon but do so perfectly... but only from directly ahead, while also sacrificing weaponry. Or you use absorbers to turn enemy energy weapons into cooldown reduction on your weapons instead. Obviously there are more fancy options but even the basics feel very different.
Armour is basically the same as Stellaris, but there's something deeply satisfying about hearing the thunk of kinetic weapons and watching them actually bouncing off the ship and doing minimal damage. I think for me the tactile feel of battle is important, I like big ships with destructable elements (think Star Wars Empire at War or Battletech). When watching the battle is unsatisfying then ship design is equally unsatisfying.
But, perhaps Stellaris ship design feels unsatifying because picking a weapon or adding a counter doesn't have much of a cost? All ships start with shields, armour and PD rather than these being something you have to research and sacrifice to include. Or mabye it's just that battles/wars are over quickly with unreliable combat reports so you aren't sure what you could have done better.
I also played a bit of Mechabellum recently, and choosing the composition and tech upgrades for my army to counter the enemy over and over was far more rewarding than anything I felt from Stellaris ship design in some years (maybe not since the very first time I actually defeated a Fallen Empire against overwhelming odds). It was beautiful seeing waves of missiles raining down and satisfying the many ways of countering them. But again, I keep unfairly comparing turn-based games to Stellaris. But something like Sins of a Solar Empire I can still hear the sound of advent lasers and the many different barks when building and selecting my capital ships.
Maybe the magic comes from the slower pace? Sound effects? Blowing bits off ships? Tactical considerations? I don't know where the magic of combat resides, but I wish I had an easy answer. Something simple to suggest but it's hard when I can't identify exactly why I enjoy other games more when so many features are similar.
It's all of the last paragraph and more. They're entirely different games.
In SotS you have at max a couple of dozen ships shooting at each other. Putting a single cannon here instead of a laser there on the exact same ship design can, and will, have a huge impact, and you can, and will, see and influence that feedback in real time. You can, and will, watch a bullet ping an entire gun off another ship, or watch a badly placed gun with a bad turning angle have 0 targets all battle. You can build a ship entirely for dropping plague bombs on planets and that warps the entire fight into an escort mission of you trying to get the bomber to the planet and the enemy trying to burst through your defenses to manually focus fire the plague boat down before you do. One of the most important unlocks in the game is the ability to pre-place your ship formations. SotS isn't a 4X, it's a wargame skirmish map generator in disguise - and while I'm paraphrasing, that statement is otherwise straight from the head designer (though please do not take that as a general endorsement of the guy who also created SotS2).
In Stellaris you have the exact opposite of all of that. You can't tell your ships to target a colossus, never mind individual guns, and combat width is limited to how many hundreds of ships you can afford to cram down your opponent's face. Stellaris combat serves a very, very different purpose and works at a very very different scale to SotS and trying to chase SotS in Stellaris is a waste of time. Stellaris needs a ship and fleet designer that is built around supporting the game Stellaris is, but the current one just kinda gets in the way and builds ships that do the same.
Keeping the existing core ship design system intact but layering more and more complex autobuilds on top of it isn't a solution either.
e: I'm not saying SotS is better than Stellaris, it's just that SotS is apples and Stellaris is oranges and we're here trying to peel oranges with an apple corer.
It's all of the last paragraph and more. They're entirely different games.
In SotS you have at max a couple of dozen ships shooting at each other. Putting a single cannon here instead of a laser there on the exact same ship design can, and will, have a huge impact, and you can, and will, see and influence that feedback in real time. You can, and will, watch a bullet ping an entire gun off another ship, or watch a badly placed gun with a bad turning angle have 0 targets all battle. You can build a ship entirely for dropping plague bombs on planets and that warps the entire fight into an escort mission of you trying to get the bomber to the planet and the enemy trying to burst through your defenses to manually focus fire the plague boat down before you do. One of the most important unlocks in the game is the ability to pre-place your ship formations. SotS isn't a 4X, it's a wargame skirmish map generator in disguise - and while I'm paraphrasing, that statement is otherwise straight from the head designer (though please do not take that as a general endorsement of the guy who also created SotS2).
In Stellaris you have the exact opposite of all of that. You can't tell your ships to target a colossus, never mind individual guns, and combat width is limited to how many hundreds of ships you can afford to cram down your opponent's face. Stellaris combat serves a very, very different purpose and works at a very very different scale to SotS and trying to chase SotS in Stellaris is a waste of time. Stellaris needs a ship and fleet designer that is built around supporting the game Stellaris is, but the current one just kinda gets in the way and builds ships that do the same.
Keeping the existing core ship design system intact but layering more and more complex autobuilds on top of it isn't a solution either.
e: I'm not saying SotS is better than Stellaris, it's just that SotS is apples and Stellaris is oranges and we're here trying to peel oranges with an apple corer.
I like your examples from SotS. After hearing a few words, my mind is back carefully shooting weapons off a derelict, struggling to aim photon torpedoes, watching enemy ships spin wildly after being hit, planning how to protect my assault shuttles and biomissiles and not having a command ship and the vanguard of my fleet being a tanker that explodes starting a devastating chain reaction.
It's odd how easy it is to describe and imagine the situations that unfold in SotS but Stellaris warfare doesn't evoke any of the same stories for me when so many elements (the majority of the weapons, turrets, ship sizes etc) are similar which suggests that maybe it's something different that's the key. But what?
Combat width, focus fire on specific targets, modular ship damage are massive differences, but are any of those the special missing spark or are they just differences?
Maybe it's foolish to chase those leads because of the different genres of games, maybe not. I don't know.
Part of it could simply be polish, SotS2 had the makings of a far more advanced ship designer with a testing range and superior graphics but was the most painfully unfinished game I've ever paid to play. So multiple games (SotS1 SotS2 Stellaris) can all share UV Lasers, Gauss Cannon, Missiles, Torpedos, Strike craft and Lances but not even feel remotely similar depending on how well it all fits together. One seemingly small missing piece and it all falls apart.
You could add anything to Stellaris, I just wonder why combat and war doesn't spark my imagination the same way it does in other games when they share so much DNA, including all the weapons having roughly the same characteristics. I think it could be because of how fast combat is, and how much is decided before the war starts makes it more of an economic tug-of-war rather than a military one. Only it's an economic tug-of-war where I can't fight the enemy economy directly by undercutting, loaning, bribing, out-competing and bankrupting the enemy instead the economic battle "is limited to how many hundreds of ships you can afford to cram down your opponent's face". When I do see the state of the enemy economy it usually breaks my suspension of disbelief, but that's just a matter of polish more than anything.
So... I know what I like in other games... but I really don't know what would be for the best in Stellaris.
I do agree with you that after you design a ship it's mostly just lots of little improvements rather than a few important and interesting decisions.
So, instead of trying to become a "wargame skirmish map generator" what about playing more into the strengths of Stellaris?
Stellaris has a more complex economy, named leaders, politics and factions, events, anomalies and situations. How could they fit more into war and ship design?
Economic targets? Something like certain weapons needing key Munitions factories that provide boosts to ordnance (weapon cooldown) for the one who owns them.
Leaders suggesting battle plans/automation/missions in conversations like with marauders picking raiding targets, or admirals requesting cloaked ships for an ambush.
Political effects of winning or losing key battles in a Star Wars:Rebellion style popular support in a sector, spawning rebel armies or lowering stability.
Post-War Factions that want revenge or reparations, that urge you to seek new alliances or plot the downfall of an enemy federation (unlocking new attack vectors).
Debris-like events to tip a war in your favour by providing military intel, planting spies for a future war, setting traps or releasing bioweapons.
Situations that unfold as a result of key events in the last war - a new starship graveyard forming after cataclysmic battles, ship debris that works like chaff limiting the range of missile weapons system-wide, new features uncovered over 50% devastation or after clearing all orbital bombardment related blockers, new wargoals to rescue enslaved pops via a new special liberate pops raiding stance, new hidden civic or government authorities that reflect your military history etc.
I like your examples from SotS. After hearing a few words, my mind is back carefully shooting weapons off a derelict, struggling to aim photon torpedoes, watching enemy ships spin wildly after being hit, planning how to protect my assault shuttles and biomissiles and not having a command ship and the vanguard of my fleet being a tanker that explodes starting a devastating chain reaction.
It's odd how easy it is to describe and imagine the situations that unfold in SotS but Stellaris warfare doesn't evoke any of the same stories for me when so many elements (the majority of the weapons, turrets, ship sizes etc) are similar which suggests that maybe it's something different that's the key. But what?
Combat width, focus fire on specific targets, modular ship damage are massive differences, but are any of those the special missing spark or are they just differences?
Maybe it's foolish to chase those leads because of the different genres of games, maybe not. I don't know.
Part of it could simply be polish, SotS2 had the makings of a far more advanced ship designer with a testing range and superior graphics but was the most painfully unfinished game I've ever paid to play. So multiple games (SotS1 SotS2 Stellaris) can all share UV Lasers, Gauss Cannon, Missiles, Torpedos, Strike craft and Lances but not even feel remotely similar depending on how well it all fits together. One seemingly small missing piece and it all falls apart.
You could add anything to Stellaris, I just wonder why combat and war doesn't spark my imagination the same way it does in other games when they share so much DNA, including all the weapons having roughly the same characteristics. I think it could be because of how fast combat is, and how much is decided before the war starts makes it more of an economic tug-of-war rather than a military one. Only it's an economic tug-of-war where I can't fight the enemy economy directly by undercutting, loaning, bribing, out-competing and bankrupting the enemy instead the economic battle "is limited to how many hundreds of ships you can afford to cram down your opponent's face". When I do see the state of the enemy economy it usually breaks my suspension of disbelief, but that's just a matter of polish more than anything.
So... I know what I like in other games... but I really don't know what would be for the best in Stellaris.
I do agree with you that after you design a ship it's mostly just lots of little improvements rather than a few important and interesting decisions.
So, instead of trying to become a "wargame skirmish map generator" what about playing more into the strengths of Stellaris?
Stellaris has a more complex economy, named leaders, politics and factions, events, anomalies and situations. How could they fit more into war and ship design?
Economic targets? Something like certain weapons needing key Munitions factories that provide boosts to ordnance (weapon cooldown) for the one who owns them.
Leaders suggesting battle plans/automation/missions in conversations like with marauders picking raiding targets, or admirals requesting cloaked ships for an ambush.
Political effects of winning or losing key battles in a Star Wars:Rebellion style popular support in a sector, spawning rebel armies or lowering stability.
Post-War Factions that want revenge or reparations, that urge you to seek new alliances or plot the downfall of an enemy federation (unlocking new attack vectors).
Debris-like events to tip a war in your favour by providing military intel, planting spies for a future war, setting traps or releasing bioweapons.
Situations that unfold as a result of key events in the last war - a new starship graveyard forming after cataclysmic battles, ship debris that works like chaff limiting the range of missile weapons system-wide, new features uncovered over 50% devastation or after clearing all orbital bombardment related blockers, new wargoals to rescue enslaved pops via a new special liberate pops raiding stance, new hidden civic or government authorities that reflect your military history etc.
If I had complete carte blanche? The big thing about Stellaris is Scale. Stellaris isn't ship vs ship it's fleet vs fleet. So I'd make the fleet the core of the designer. Have fleet designs like you now have hull designs, unlocking different formation segments with tech, each formation has slots for different hull sizes like we have gun size and type slots now. You could do cool stuff like have different formation slots dictate different ship behaviours in combat, slot in fleet-wide modifiers, and so on. That would be the core of the new setup.
Ships themselves would be a cross between the old segments and the old modules. Ships would be constructed out of 3-6 fixed "segments", and again remember we're talking a complete start from scratch so I don't mean being handed one of the current segments that you don't get to customise, I mean cool things with cool effects.
Now that devs aren't hampered by trying to make each weapon approximately as good as every other weapon that slots into the same size slot they can start to get real weird with things. Unlocked plasma? You get a plasma lance battleship stern, plasma stormer center segment, and so on. They're designing each segment as a whole so they have a lot more leeway, and they could even stretch a particularly powerful idea across multiple segments. Psionic ascension? You get a bunch of fixed design psionic ships, say two of each hull size, and even though they're fixed you can still customise things based on what formations you use, what fleet slots you put them in, and what fleet-level augments you add. You can have admiral traits or ethics or civics that unlock special fleet formations and ship segments that only unlock if you've encountered certain kinds of enemies.
Most importantly of all, ship segments and formations are very visual things. Your fleets will look different to a different empire's fleets for reasons other than your cosmetic ship skin. Which for me is a pretty big thing in a game like this.
Economic targets? Something like certain weapons needing key Munitions factories that provide boosts to ordnance (weapon cooldown) for the one who owns them.
Leaders suggesting battle plans/automation/missions in conversations like with marauders picking raiding targets, or admirals requesting cloaked ships for an ambush.
Political effects of winning or losing key battles in a Star Wars:Rebellion style popular support in a sector, spawning rebel armies or lowering stability.
Post-War Factions that want revenge or reparations, that urge you to seek new alliances or plot the downfall of an enemy federation (unlocking new attack vectors).
Debris-like events to tip a war in your favour by providing military intel, planting spies for a future war, setting traps or releasing bioweapons.
Situations that unfold as a result of key events in the last war - a new starship graveyard forming after cataclysmic battles, ship debris that works like chaff limiting the range of missile weapons system-wide, new features uncovered over 50% devastation or after clearing all orbital bombardment related blockers, new wargoals to rescue enslaved pops via a new special liberate pops raiding stance, new hidden civic or government authorities that reflect your military history etc.
I forgot to say these ideas are cool, and would slot pretty well into a fleet-centric approach. There's a lot of very stellarisy things that are kind of hard to justify as applying to literal guns that work really well if applying to the more societal idea of what you think the best fleet shape is.
Big battles leaving terrain behind is a really cool idea. You should put that into suggestions just as is (and ping me when you do for an upvote).
I have two annoyances that are different types of "annoying".
The first is the fleet manager. It's frustrating and obnoxious. Plus not being able to fleet up most special project ships.
The second is anomaly investigations. 95% of the time your choice on how to handle an anomaly is one of two different types of options:
1) Investigate the anomaly or disregard the entire thing and delete it forever. Literally why would you ever do this?
2) A choice that is hardly a choice, like "pick between a one time lump sum of science, or a +resource/month deposit that will pay dividends long term". The science dump is never worth it. Why would you ever take that choice?
I find that annoying. Nearly all anomalies are the same choice every time because the alternatives are dumb.
Even then some of them are silly in comparison, like if I had a choice of +2 crystals or +5 physics, crystals are rarer and that physics is a drop in the bucket. Crystals every time. So again it's not a choice.
2) A choice that is hardly a choice, like "pick between a one time lump sum of science, or a +resource/month deposit that will pay dividends long term". The science dump is never worth it. Why would you ever take that choice?
As someone who enjoys playing on the taller side of things it's actually empire size.
I like the effect higher empire size instills, but I don't like the way it's calculated.
1) I feel that empire size should come from Colonies, Systems and branch offices. Pops is a weird choice as playing tall is not about having less pops per se. You want to maximize the pops per colony so you will have less because you have less colonies. As such I see pop and districts as a derivative of colonies. Looking at the current system, even doing a 1 system/planet challenge will make you go over 100 empire size which is idiotic. and beyond the point of ES.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think that vassels should give an empire size increase as well based on the terms / type of vassel to portray the administrive burdon of keeping the vassel/agreements.
2) There should be no reductions to empire size / empire size effects. If you want low ES you need to play tall period. It currently limits the way you can effectively build tall as you basically need to stack these bonusses and soft forces you to always go for soverign guardianship / fanatic pacifist. For wide I feel you already will always outpace the empire size effect so I see really no point in reductions.
I think if they would redo the calculations it would have a number of benefits, first of all the devs have to decide where the line of optimal tall is, e.g. how many colonies/systems can you have before breaking the 100 empire size limit as you can no longer rely on reductions. Next to that it provides more build variety for tall play as stacking ES reductions is no longer needed opening up other civis / ethics.
