Let's talk about small I mean tall empires.

The issue Willy is that every 4x game I have ever played benefits from expansion. All of them even GCII. The point is that sure you can have a very strong 'small' empire with say 6 or 12 worlds. ..but..the empire with 40 (like the Drengin or the Yor or the Krynn can get) will simply outpace you in all areas, production, research and influence. 

Now we can add special buildings which double, or triple the output of your empire but stop working or scale down in effectiveness after a certain number of worlds are colonized/invaded, but I don't know if that would be fun.

One of the core (..X's..) in a 4x game is expansion and to make a small empire as effective as a small one defeats that. One thing players dislike is a game which artificially limits their choices. We want it all. I want to expand and I want the buildings that work with small empires also in my larger empire. I do not like the brakes put on if there is no way to bypass it. 

In GCII I would expand to about 6 worlds then I was bankrupt (even if I did 20% economy and took the 20% economy government), and i was UNABLE to expand or do anything for about 30 clicks of the mouse. I am not kidding. It would take me rapidly clicking the mouse about 20 to 30 times to get to where I could keep researching or building new colonizers....all the while the ai was continuing to expand without the same brakes. 

I would not mind such rule-sets in GCIII, (I really hated them btw), but if we could tweak how badly it impacts your empire ..maybe reduce research to a mere 20% of what it was, then triple or quadruple the needed production on building ships (dont cut the values I output but instead raise the costs drastically) therefore I am still researching, building and doing stuff but at a far slower pace due to over expansion. 

This indirectly addresses your small/tall empire request. By keeping your empire small you never suffer the ill effects over fast over expansion. 

Perhaps others here have better Ideas. I would love to see them. 

IMO smaller empires should work better than now, but not so much that they always outdo larger ones - if human history is of any use small countries can be well-organized with less losses (bureaucracy, corruption, centrifugal forces) than biggies, but it seems to be a dominant power you simply need size, land, manpower. So at some point expansion should still pay off - otherwise why would we build larger empires at all? /my 2 cents

The problem is that with the current system a planet is maxed out pretty fast (all tiles covered with buildings, all buildings have max level). Then you cannot do anymore with the planet apart from surrounding it with starbases to further enhance its productivity.

So the solution would be to have a system in which you can develop a planet further and further and get the resources for that out of itself and/or by redirecting them from smaller planets or asteroid mines or resource mines (preferably with attackable supply routes). Then you had a real choice to make whether to develop a few planets or even a single one pretty far or a lot of planets not so far.

That would be possible if buildings had far more levels or new special buildings would only be available when a planet had reached a certain development level ( e. g. measured by the sum of the levels of all buildings).

The issue I see is that Tall empire support cannot be based on penalizing expansion.  It has to be based on somehow rewarding not expanding.  My best theory involves creating a new Trait, Centralized.  This trait would add flat growth, approval, and most of all production, bonuses but add a serious and escalating maintenance cost to planet capitols.  It could also use a serious Terraform buff.  The flat bonuses would feed into the present techs and should power some nice extreme planets.  If the maintenance costs do not effectively cap expansion, a coercion-type effect could be used instead.

The main thing is to treat Tall as an option similar to the Yor mechanics concerning population.  I don't see how you can encourage Tall as a general choice within the present economy system at all.  It has to be a separate set of mechanics.

I will point out Larsenex's talk about expansion in GC2, which is very relevant.  GC2 did have a mechanic that limited early colony rush mania, and GC3 could probably use a similar mechanic, but the mechanic in GC2 never stopped you from expanding, it just kept you from exploding all over the galaxy like a ruptured cancer tumor.  I think it highlights the need for an individual set of mechanics.

If we do need a new trait, I think it needs a better name than Centralized, but that is another matter.    My closest option is to refer to population density and call it Urbanized.  You are building City Worlds, like Trantor or Coruscant.

To clarify I meant you could add ideas. What I meant is that because we don't know what crusades is like we have to use Mercs for right now. We can use ideas to other games it would be how it would relate to galactic civilizations 3. There were alot of complaints about the game supporting wide, but not tall. No one came up with any ideas on this.

The problem I can see is limited room. Not alot of planets. I would like to see a map with no class zero planets. If you could use class zero planets it could help tall empires. Limiting stargazers hinder tall empires. Maybe something like classifying stargazers, and colonies where there is a limit something like you can have alot of stargazers, but a few planets. A lot of planets, but a few stargazers. Or a little of both. The terraforming option hinders tall empires. The last option should let you terrafom all the tiles. Maybe requiring aquatic water colonization to terrafom water tiles. You could even implement a large empire penalty if you terrafom to many tiles on one planet, or build to many starbases. 

Civilization had some solutions for tall like citizen management like working resources, or specializing in other fields. In call to power you could put them in improvements. They also had a build que that relied on technology, not class. Maybe class could be resources, not how many buildings you can have. 

A solution that was suggested was more upgrades. I did kind of like the idea of a tall ability. If this was a customised race then players could make it. To keep it from being to powerful you could give it a large empire penalty. Maybe the last terrafom tech could be unlimited with a large empire penalty to keep you from being to powerful.  Less starbases for large empires would help. Not a arbitrary number. 

I also don't like the idea of penalizing large empires. Maybe requiring resources to build things would help slow things down.

There's actually a really easy way to fix this problem.

The primary issue is that wide is better than tall in almost every part of the game. This is caused from the fact that population growth is independent of current population.

Fundamentally, your economic strength is a linear function of your population. And your population grows at a static rate - on each planey that you control.

So if you expand rapidly in the earlygame, doubling the number of worlds you control, your empires population will grow twice as fast. You migjt sacrifice a few turns pumping out colony ships - but fundamentally there is minimal opportunity cost to expansion.

The solution is simple - make population growth a function of the existing populotion on a planet. This means that you are rewarded for leaving your population on a few planets, rather than spreading them out over many many planets. 

A simple formula might be growth rate * existing pop * morale * some constant.

So at a given tech level, a world with 5 population might add another 0.1 per turn. But a world with 20 population would add 0.4 pop per turn.

You also get the added benefit that in real life a population tends to grow exponentially not linearly:)

@ OP: FYI, there was another thread already started on this topic. The good news is, not much had happened on it, so it probably won't make a difference. But here you go:

https://forums.galciv3.com/481142/page/1/#3661896

After reading through here I realized we have the means to do exactly what Erischild is refering to.  I am surprised I did not think of it before. 

Governement>>>> 

• Socialist Imperialism: 

1. +50% to Production on all worlds
2. +50% to research all worlds.
3. cumulative -5% to growth, Morale and food for every colony capital beyond 10. 

• Democratic Republic:

1. +2% to morale per colony capital beyond 20
2. +2% to production and research per colony, after greater than 20 colonies reached. 

These names are just an idea and we could have an entire separate tech line devoted to different types of government. The player CAN change government but will go through Anarchy similar to Civ 6 where we get zero research and production for x turns * planets beyond (set value). Each government a player chooses will actually change game mechanics for that player on all levels as long as he has that type of government.  In essence you can choose between an expansionist government which gives gradual small increases to the empire for bloated empires or has dramatic increases which rewards smaller/taller empires. I bet this is something even Brad is thinking of! 

For further discussion fodder:

Draft definition of Urbanization Ability.

+3 random planet tiles per era, 0.3 base growth rate, +100 % Social Manufacturing, +5% Coercion for each new Colony.  Super effective planets, especially with starbases, but nobody wants to leave the homeworld. 

Since Abilities are tied to races, I would love this Ability to be tied to the Dread Lords.  Give them something to work with.

There are two changes in the current GC3 opt-in that lend themselves to a taller game:

• Starbases can be packed closer together
• Your starting world's raw production is much higher.  

Good points Pshaw! I just realized we can park 3 rings of star bases around one planet if you get creative. 

Only problem when playing with a single world: only one shipyard and so one ship per turn max, no matter how much the planet's manufacturing becomes ...

While I would not necessarily like to have more than one ship produced per turn per shipyard, a viable option would be to have a world sponsor more than one shipyard (although I think that will be more programming and UI work than just pumping out more than one ship per turn).

I noticed the two points, believe me, but you must be a much better player than I or play on different maps.  I do play on sprawling maps with big empires though, so that is probably part of the dissonance.  On average, how many planets did each of the other factions have?

I still haven't figured out what I am going to do about starbases yet on this Insane map.  I dread the point where I am absolutely forced to decide.  

Thanks pshaw. One of my problems on these posts is not understanding what stardock is doing sometimes, so why then did Brad ask to discuss this for the expansion.

Also sorry general I forgot about your post.

The one shipyard was probably my empire's weakest spot.  I spent a lot of energy making friends with everyone (and bribing people to declare war on my enemies).  When Drengin decided that they'd finally had enough of me, I had a hard time fighting off their multiple stacks of 4-6 ships while only producing one ship per turn.  In retrospect, I should have invested more in defence earlier on.  

For me, I had 14 SBs on my homeworld and had mined all nearby asteroids for raw production bonuses.  I was also going for a research victory because I wasn't in a position to expand or build a lot of ships.  I also created a custom faction that maximized my homeworld advantage  I was playing on a "large" map because I was trying to finish the game in a single evening (failed) so perhaps a game on insane would be different.  

As for the enemy worlds, I'm not sure.  I didn't really focus on the number of worlds they had except for the Torians -- they were going for an influence victory and I had to use a few of my precious SB as influence hedges to keep them in check.  

I have a pattern that puts 12 starbases around a planet and am trying that with my homeworld and the precursor factory world. We'll see how that works out.  It is early in the game still, but I find that there have been a lot of relics out there to claim.  It feels like the AI is reluctant to commit administrators early in the game.  Especially on an Insane map, that isn't a particularly good strategy decision.  Those things are valuable.  I have learned to claim relics such that they also claim resources.  A new priority.

Here is my idea to solve the 'tall' issue from a research standpoint:

https://forums.galciv3.com/481495

One thing I wonder about when it comes to less expansion is how to mine Durantium et cetera at a larger scale. I usually have quite a lot of mining resources and use them heavily in ships. A large AI civilization will be able to do this against me if I choose to play as a small empire. Also you have to consider all research-, production-, ascension resources et cetera. How are a small empire going to compete against large empires on these, if they can´t reach them?

Simple, give small empires a mining bonus, so that each mine produces more of each resource.

Hey, no sweat man, we're all working towards the same goal. I am sure the StarDock folks would see both of them, one topic just makes an easier discussion. I think the discussion here has been more productive.

I want to look at this a littel more from a game design perspective. At first blush, you are correct that: a) tech snowballing is a problem, especially if you disable tech brokering (which often evens out galactic technology); reducing research as a function of number of colonies might well be a way to prevent it. My biggest concern is coming up with a reasonable (i.e., player-acceptable) in-game justification for this.

I am not exactly thrilled at the idea, but I think it should be considered more fully.

Ummm, one thing I just thought of: if vertical empires come to be, this will create an interesting situation for minor races, since they are effectively empires of one (snicker... old Star Wars fan film). Or 2-3 if you have Guantlet's Race Pack. Anyway, they might exploit any vertical strategy and become very powerful. I'm not sure this is a bad thing. I remember people asking in GC2 if, in the future, it could be set up so minor races could become major races if they were successful enough (it was shot down at the time). Giving minor factions a boost might be a great way to spice up the game!

I'm surprised more people haven't brought this up, as this is a fundamental flaw of GC3's mechanics...I do remember a discussion about population growth early in the alpha stage of the game, and I recall most people simply not appreciating its impact...

I would expand on this issue and say that there is too much of an opportunity cost with building farms...giving up a tile for food production cuts into your manufacturing and science production, and adjacency bonuses only exacerbate this issue...being able to import food would help this problem immensely and combined with nonlinear growth mechanics would allow tall empires to be competitive...

The opportunity cost of building a farm instead of a factory/lab/market is not usually very large except in the short term. You can get empire-wide bonuses to the three main outputs from techs (looking at the Terran tech tree, you can get up to +0.75/0.95/1.3 to the multiplier for manufacturing/research/income on each colony in the empire without need for any improvements, assuming I didn't miss or double-count any techs), events, anomalies, wonders, trade resources, and artifacts (up to +0.5 to a given output multiplier on each colony in the empire per artifact of the appropriate type), and you can add regional bonuses to the three main outputs from economic starbases on top of that (up to +0.5 to each output's multiplier per starbase in range of the colony), and then you can add in some bonuses from ideology traits in a few places. The only non-local food sources for most empires are Monsatium Deposits and a couple techs (+2 flat and +0.35 multiplier if you take all of the ones in the Terran tech tree).

On top of that, if you factor in production allocation and the efficiency penalty for focusing production into one output, farms are even more favored. A farm which ultimately increases the planet's base production by 10% increases the world's total output by 10%; a factory which increases overall manufacturing output by 33% on a world which divides production evenly between the three main outputs only increases total output by 11%.

I would think unindustrialization is not so effective as it is. I looked it up once industrialisation is on average forty time more than unindustrialization. Production is to significant. One solution would be to remove population caps making the population same on tall, or wide empires. That would fix production not room. One way to fix this is to allow you to terriform all the files.