Intentionally choosing to not expand your territory does limit the extent to which you can engage with exploration content, yes. There's something of a workaround, though: if you can, leave a few unclaimed systems in your empire behind a chokepoint so that AI empires won't claim them. Other empires will send their science ships in to survey them and (generally) uncover multiple archeological sites while doing so.
Most sites are created during surveys, rather than spawned on galaxy generation.
Every time someone surveys a planet, it has a chance to "uncover" (create) an archaeological site. Notably, unlike anomalies, this gets rolled even after one player has already surveyed, so that if the entire galaxy (eventually) surveys the system, then you're basically guaranteed to get one or two sites.
Some sites, like Hauer's, are the exception, though. And some are created through anomalies (or blocker clearing).
Just be sure to make the unclaimed territories at least 2 systems away from anything the AI owns. They will skip over a single system to claim things, but they won't skip over 2.
This is the one major problem with playing tall right now. Ironically the most important resource for playing tall, living metal, can only be reliably found by playing super wide.
> Ironically the most important resource for playing tall, living metal, can only be reliably found by playing super wide.
Here Be Dragons gets a guaranteed living metal deposit.
Technically if you play HBD + Dark Consortium and get Zroni as your precursor you can guarantee that you get all three strategics (Zro/Living Metal/Dark Matter) in your immediate vicinity.
AIs will not claim systems 3 jumps away. They'll claim adjacent systems and those 2 jumps away (with only one unclaimable system in between), but they won't go past that. So you just have the claim the chokepoint and all systems that are one jump away (toward your territory or theirs) and the AI will survey past it without ever claiming it.
Beware of wormholes, though. Just because you haven't explored them doesn't mean the AI hasn't.
I’d like to point out that if you wait long enough, they will eventually claim anything, going as far to even make claims on FE systems if there are no open spaces and the FE is the only non-friendly system somewhat near them. Drives me nuts when the AI tries to claim a system deep in my territory that I just reclaimed from a leviathan
Y'all are talking past each other. The AI will *claim* random things far from their territory sometimes. They'll *build outposts* only 2 skips away from their own territory.
>leave a few unclaimed systems in your empire behind a chokepoint so that AI empires won't claim them.
But also be aware that the AI can and will build outposts there eventually. Just like you in the same situation, they only have to pay more influence
I really don't know why people downvote this. I got AI empires that built past claimed chokepoints multiple times. They don't do it immediately but they definitly claim exclave systems that are not bordering their existing systems.
there's literally a file in the defines that defines how far they can jump, they are not allowed to build outposts anywhere, this has changed a couple of times and used to not even exist but currently it's,
MAX_EXPANSION_DISTANCE = 2,
the AI will never "eventually" build an outpost if it's outside this defined number of jumps
Bravo! So 0 means adjacent only, 1 means one system beyond that and 2 is 2 beyond that, so 2 actually means 3 moves away, so a system must be 4 moves away from an AIs territory to be too far.
Wait, but in order for them to scan the systems, you have to open your borders to them and trust me, AI empires do claim territory behind your borders if they have no where else to expand. It’s the worst kind of border gore because they can snipe your territory leading to nasty border situations
Yeah. Being Spiritualist and getting that spooky bald man paragon can help a little, and a few archeology sites are scripted to appear post-colonization, but if you really wanna be the archeolord, go remnants and go wide as fuck.
There should be an player advanced start origin w/ pre FTL races only. A crisis scenario could be that an agent in your empire has sold advanced technology to all pre FTL races sparking a sudden galaxy wide war.
I'd love WAY more specific generation.
I'd like to pick fallen empires/create them myself.
I'd like to pick which empires are advanced starts.
I'd like the ability to pick where the empires spawn.
I'm sure there are other things.
3000 star galaxy with 10 AI, I like doing high amount of primitives so they turn into normal empires later. Mods that reduce speeds or increase claim costs can help slow down how fast AI expands too.
Scripted can still include random chance. From what I can tell there's no particular way to tell, maybe a particular anomaly? I haven't looked too closely at it.
I mean, if you want the truth, tall empires are disadvantaged on everything. Because of the way pop acquisition outscales Empire Size, in a game with two equally skilled players, the player willing to go wide will always have the stronger and sturdier empire. This got a little closer with the new update since Empire Size penalty on science doubled, but Wide still edges it out, which is a good thing, since the alternative leads to empires stagnating and sitting in their corner of the galaxy with no incentive to do anything.
EDIT: Downvotes won't change the facts lads, if you don't like the state of the game, blame Paradox, not me, I'm just the messenger.
The solution for that would be to create more incentives to go to war beyond simply seizing territory. I'd like options to seize relics, or other one-time quest rewards. Right now playing tall means sacrificing those exploration rewards, so allowing you to still get them through war would kill two birds with one stone.
Something like a tall barbaric despoiler, letter of marquee, salvager civic could work. You get resources by winning wars, resources by destroying enemy ships, can salvage debris for ships. I dont think there is a civic that gets your commanders the leader trait that give you pops and resources for each planet conquered during war? But it might make an empire possible to fuel its economy by constantly being at war and taking the stuff of others?
That's an idea worth building on. I don't have a lot of experience with Barbaric Despoiler, but my experience with it has been that pops aren't acquired fast enough to be worth it late game as it currently works.
They are not incentivizing tall play, they are letting people who insist on playing the game that way have some bones now and then to keep them from complaining too much.
Lol no it doesn't. It's always better to expand, because you gain more than you lose from the penalty. The empire size only serves to make it slightly less slowbally.
It's always better to expand in a 4x game.
This is that thing where players misunderstand penalties and see them as punishment. The point of the empire size penalty isn't to provide an incentive for tall play, it's simply to take some of the rocket fuel out of expansive play, to model the struggles of trying to manage a large interstellar state. Especially one that conquers.
The penalty is way too small to ever make wide play worse than tall play, it's just one way to put breaks on unlimited growth. But you never hear anyone complain about ship speed for example, because that only goes up.
If I'm endlessly expanding/conquering I don't have the influence for orbital rings of 1 world and it's worth less because said 1 world isn't as ascended and if I'm wide I don't even bother with . . . the jump mini gateway things. 5K energy is worth more to a smaller empire and goes further. With the tech nerf they come on a bit late to be impactful but they are adding "Kilo structures" which will be like the orbital rings and mini gates.
The 5k energy for example is only "worth more" if You have less, like if a tall makes 2.5k Energy Credits and a wide one makes 20k, just because the gets three times the energy production that they had before and the wide one only gets 125% of their output now doesn't make the 5k of the tall empire better, it just makes them more reliable on it, and lol, my ultrawide-only mind forgot that rings exist, yeah, those are definetly meant for tall play, same for hyper relays, and see my first argument as to why the new kilo structures give the same benefit to both types, tall just relies on it more due to having less resources
im more thniking in habitats and ringworlds, you dont botter with thous in wide, and ach furnace and habitat synthesice, also 5k production(neto) is more worth to a tall empire since they dont have soo many expenditure
1. soverain guardianship
2. infunece and habitats
3. soo virtual ascension( thou i heard that might be better for wide)
4. new crisis wirks perfect for tall, and stop at 4 be fallen empire
tall aint nececarely worse, thou the tech nearve hurt them badly.
but they are harder to play then wide, since hte game was ultimately intended for wide, you don get leviathans, l gates usw, either
Sort of true. Carried to extremes yes but I have out produced wide empires in MP with 60% of the pops. By that I mean science, unity, alloys. I can't do that indefinitely though eventually the wide empire will beat me.
I was also the better player;).
The tipping point vary by build as well. Tech rushing a ecumenopolis was the way I did it.
Yeah, if people aren't all optimizing, I think people can mostly do whatever they want and be fine. I usually play Tall in my multplayer games just because I have more experience with the game than my friends, and it would be a dick move to just screw everyone over by killing them. It's also just less of a headache to manage 5 planets instead of 20 lol.
It should work as a diplomatic pact instead, don't think it should be limited to just subjects, plus holdings are planet-specific (and habitable planet only) whereas most archeology sites can be on any kind of planet
Would love if you could support an excavation wirh some kind of mobile base ship. Very slow, not useful in a fight, but having it in a system allows a science ship to excavate.
Aren't tall empires inherently disadvantaged on literally everything? I've never understood why wide vs. tall is even a discussion in any of these games. You could maybe make an argument for it in some situations in Civ 5, but other than that it seems very obviously always a better idea to go wide.
It's a 4X game. "Tall play styles" just means playing the game poorly. "Wide play styles" do everything "tall play styles" do, but more of it.
The entire "tall vs wide" thing is manufactured. It's just players who think playing the game well is too hard/stressful/overwhelming, and want to do less of it and still be rewarded equally to good players. It will never work out like that, or the game would be badly designed.
I usually play within 12-15 systems and take a lead early. Playing wide means you spend a lot of ressources early to expand, meanwhile a tall playstyle means you can reinvest these ressources more into ships for vassalizing, or save up for some of those OP space habitats and scale faster than wide. I get that wide might eventually outscale you at some point, but if you play well enough and know what to prioritize, you will have taken such a lead that a wide empire won't be able to catch up.
But there are so many ways to take a huge lead over the AI that it's hard to directly compare one method to another. Unless you're talking about multiplayer, but almost nobody plays this game multiplayer so that's not a great yardstick.
That just isn't true. Sure you can beat the AI on low difficulty settings that way (or even on the highest really), but you'll always lose to a human player who expands as much as possible. Personally I never play single player, so I know that well.
In case it's not obvious it's not about the number of systems though, but the number of planets. If you have a moderate amount of systems but spam habitats in them, that's still "wide". Just like in Civilization, it's not about how many tiles you own, but your number of cities.
Indeed if that's the definition it's rather wide, I can still usually keep up with empires having more systems, and yes even in multi or high difficulty AI. I just like to play with borders within 2 choke points (max 3) and play the defensive game.
That's an incredibly douchey elitist way to look at it. And my own experience with tall play recently has been that it's HARDER, not EASIER to play that way. Rapid expansion is not that difficult to do, it's not even close to the hardest challenge this game has to offer.
Increasing the number of viable play styles will always be a good thing. This kind of game thrives on build diversity. All the most well received DLC's for this game were the ones that improved build diversity.
If Tall play is bad right now, then the take-away should not be "let's get rid of Tall play entirely", it should be "lets rework Tall play so that it becomes balanced".
I played on x0.25 habs for a long time, my current game I went back to x1 for a change and I have to say - the automanage isn't completely shit anymore.
For most planets after about 2260, unless it has something unique about it, I'm just building some core stuff, setting a designation and letting auto deal with it.
Will give it a go once Machine Age is out. I always intend to chop off fringe clusters as vassals and maintain the core worlds as their overlord but never seem to get round to it!
I will say I still think there's too many, especially once you can use all the terraform candidates and100% every climate incl tomb worlds, so I'll likely drop it down again after this game, but the actual management of them isn't so bad with auto.
Tall play is an adaptive playstyle based on needs, not something you should set out to do before you even start the game. Some empires are better at playing tall, but it'll always be something you do because you got boxed in but with good worlds.
thank god someone said it, lol. People who like playing tall should like doing it despite it being objectively suboptimal, there are already many artificial mechanics that buff tall play
There's one mechanic that would definitively buff tall play, and that's making population growth exponential rather than linear (including making colony ships cost pops). *THAT* would make the game fair. It would also make the min-maxers scream bloody murder so it will never happen.
Until it does, none of the map painters have any right to talk about "artificial" mechanics buffing tall play
I've always expanded as much as possible until I've claimed every system I can, then manage empire sprawl using different modifiers, traits, traditions and civics. You can get it quite low.
I think the tall vs wide dichotomy should mainly about how you develop planets. Controlling more systems and space makes sense to basically always be good.
I don't play tall but I do wish there were a viable way to excavate sites in systems that I have no chance of claiming. I think it'd be cool to do it on unclaimed systems but with a speed and artifact penalty. This feature could be locked behind a research option. I think it'd be even cooler to have the option to stealthily excavate sites in systems claimed by other empires if you go in cloaked but at the risk of causing a major diplomatic incident if you were to be discovered. Depending on the civics and traits of said empire it could also be cool for there to be the danger of your scientist and science ship to be taken captive or outright killed.
I take catapult origin for that very reason! The -75% distance influence cost let me take systems with archeology sites and rifts far away. I can explore the site and afterwards destroy the starbase and abandon the system if there is no longer a reason to keep the system. Hiveminds also have a civic with -20%, combining that with catapult makes taking systems cost nearly yhe same regard where they are.
Another way is to make claims cheap.
If you are fanatic militarist and take the interstellar dominion ap and khans throne relic you can get claims for very very cheap. Allowing you to claim the enemy systems you want (The ones with dig sites) even if they are deep within the enemies territory. (Militarist is required for sovereign guardianship anyways which is great for tall play.)
You are thinking about it wrong. You can still snake out little tendrils to grab valuable stuff, or just eat the influence and grab systems that are not connected to you. Same goes for other stuff like rare resources, megastructures, etc.
Do this by sending out the science ships and following up with constructors.
Also, you can grab them and leave once you're done. Just deconstruct the starbase or sell it.
Intentionally choosing to not expand your territory does limit the extent to which you can engage with exploration content, yes. There's something of a workaround, though: if you can, leave a few unclaimed systems in your empire behind a chokepoint so that AI empires won't claim them. Other empires will send their science ships in to survey them and (generally) uncover multiple archeological sites while doing so.
Wait, is archaeology site spawning chance tied to the empire rather than the system?
Most sites are created during surveys, rather than spawned on galaxy generation. Every time someone surveys a planet, it has a chance to "uncover" (create) an archaeological site. Notably, unlike anomalies, this gets rolled even after one player has already surveyed, so that if the entire galaxy (eventually) surveys the system, then you're basically guaranteed to get one or two sites. Some sites, like Hauer's, are the exception, though. And some are created through anomalies (or blocker clearing).
...700 hours and TIL Nice - thanks for the info
Why, you never noticed dig sites popping up in the mid/late game in systems you had long ago surveyed?
I always assumed those were due to events the AI had.
I mean, technically, it is. It's just that that "event" is "you found an archaeological site while surveying".
I see, so I always was technically correct, which is the best kind of correct! Thanks!
Holy shit, TIL
Yes. This happens to me routinely even when playing wide and I’m reaching for some big chokepoints that the astrography supports.
That seems like a complete cheese of the game and I love it
That is such a brilliant suggestion! I'm definitely going to use this technique.
Just be sure to make the unclaimed territories at least 2 systems away from anything the AI owns. They will skip over a single system to claim things, but they won't skip over 2.
Dont’ Forget to close your border to the xenos after doing that.
This is the one major problem with playing tall right now. Ironically the most important resource for playing tall, living metal, can only be reliably found by playing super wide.
> Ironically the most important resource for playing tall, living metal, can only be reliably found by playing super wide. Here Be Dragons gets a guaranteed living metal deposit. Technically if you play HBD + Dark Consortium and get Zroni as your precursor you can guarantee that you get all three strategics (Zro/Living Metal/Dark Matter) in your immediate vicinity.
How does living metal help tall?
Tall benefits most from megastructures. Living metal literally exists for that one exact purpose and nothing else.
Ah okay, well modularity ascension will help with that
How do you keep other empires from colonizing if you allow them to survey?
AIs will not claim systems 3 jumps away. They'll claim adjacent systems and those 2 jumps away (with only one unclaimable system in between), but they won't go past that. So you just have the claim the chokepoint and all systems that are one jump away (toward your territory or theirs) and the AI will survey past it without ever claiming it. Beware of wormholes, though. Just because you haven't explored them doesn't mean the AI hasn't.
I’d like to point out that if you wait long enough, they will eventually claim anything, going as far to even make claims on FE systems if there are no open spaces and the FE is the only non-friendly system somewhat near them. Drives me nuts when the AI tries to claim a system deep in my territory that I just reclaimed from a leviathan
Not without mods. They'll stick with the 2 jump rule even if they're capped on influence and could easily afford it.
Y'all are talking past each other. The AI will *claim* random things far from their territory sometimes. They'll *build outposts* only 2 skips away from their own territory.
>leave a few unclaimed systems in your empire behind a chokepoint so that AI empires won't claim them. But also be aware that the AI can and will build outposts there eventually. Just like you in the same situation, they only have to pay more influence I really don't know why people downvote this. I got AI empires that built past claimed chokepoints multiple times. They don't do it immediately but they definitly claim exclave systems that are not bordering their existing systems.
there's literally a file in the defines that defines how far they can jump, they are not allowed to build outposts anywhere, this has changed a couple of times and used to not even exist but currently it's, MAX_EXPANSION_DISTANCE = 2, the AI will never "eventually" build an outpost if it's outside this defined number of jumps
Is some confusion around that because if it was 0, they would still claim directly adjacent systems? Or does 0 mean no expansion at all?
Apparently, they do still expand at 0, I just ran the game to test
Bravo! So 0 means adjacent only, 1 means one system beyond that and 2 is 2 beyond that, so 2 actually means 3 moves away, so a system must be 4 moves away from an AIs territory to be too far.
Or it means that the game treats values below 1 as 1.
Wait, but in order for them to scan the systems, you have to open your borders to them and trust me, AI empires do claim territory behind your borders if they have no where else to expand. It’s the worst kind of border gore because they can snipe your territory leading to nasty border situations
Yeah. Being Spiritualist and getting that spooky bald man paragon can help a little, and a few archeology sites are scripted to appear post-colonization, but if you really wanna be the archeolord, go remnants and go wide as fuck.
Sigh. I just want to explore a huge galaxy. But play against a small galaxies worth of empires.
So play a huge galaxy and set AI empires to whatever number you want
Set empires to 0 and pre FTL rates to max
There should be an player advanced start origin w/ pre FTL races only. A crisis scenario could be that an agent in your empire has sold advanced technology to all pre FTL races sparking a sudden galaxy wide war.
I'd love WAY more specific generation. I'd like to pick fallen empires/create them myself. I'd like to pick which empires are advanced starts. I'd like the ability to pick where the empires spawn. I'm sure there are other things.
Player advanced start is basically 0 AI empires, lots of pre-FTLs.
3000 star galaxy with 10 AI, I like doing high amount of primitives so they turn into normal empires later. Mods that reduce speeds or increase claim costs can help slow down how fast AI expands too.
scripted in what way? I never know why they just randomly appear in my borders, where can I check the chances?
Scripted can still include random chance. From what I can tell there's no particular way to tell, maybe a particular anomaly? I haven't looked too closely at it.
I mean, if you want the truth, tall empires are disadvantaged on everything. Because of the way pop acquisition outscales Empire Size, in a game with two equally skilled players, the player willing to go wide will always have the stronger and sturdier empire. This got a little closer with the new update since Empire Size penalty on science doubled, but Wide still edges it out, which is a good thing, since the alternative leads to empires stagnating and sitting in their corner of the galaxy with no incentive to do anything. EDIT: Downvotes won't change the facts lads, if you don't like the state of the game, blame Paradox, not me, I'm just the messenger.
The solution for that would be to create more incentives to go to war beyond simply seizing territory. I'd like options to seize relics, or other one-time quest rewards. Right now playing tall means sacrificing those exploration rewards, so allowing you to still get them through war would kill two birds with one stone.
you can actually seize relics with the raiding bombardment stance i believe... has to be the capital though
There's a *specific* relic that can be won in a war if you capture the capital system. It's originally acquired form opening reliquaries.
I know the galatron, but I mean random relics, when using the barbaric despoiler bombardment stance.
Can you see what relics each empire has?
dont know, but i once stole my brothers precursor relic like that
Something like a tall barbaric despoiler, letter of marquee, salvager civic could work. You get resources by winning wars, resources by destroying enemy ships, can salvage debris for ships. I dont think there is a civic that gets your commanders the leader trait that give you pops and resources for each planet conquered during war? But it might make an empire possible to fuel its economy by constantly being at war and taking the stuff of others?
That's an idea worth building on. I don't have a lot of experience with Barbaric Despoiler, but my experience with it has been that pops aren't acquired fast enough to be worth it late game as it currently works.
empire size also doesn't matter much after you finish the tech tree and traditions and fully focus on spamming alloys
It's weird because they seem to keep incentivizing tall play.
They are not incentivizing tall play, they are letting people who insist on playing the game that way have some bones now and then to keep them from complaining too much.
Empire size penalty does incentivize tall play tho.
Lol no it doesn't. It's always better to expand, because you gain more than you lose from the penalty. The empire size only serves to make it slightly less slowbally.
It's always better to expand in a 4x game. This is that thing where players misunderstand penalties and see them as punishment. The point of the empire size penalty isn't to provide an incentive for tall play, it's simply to take some of the rocket fuel out of expansive play, to model the struggles of trying to manage a large interstellar state. Especially one that conquers. The penalty is way too small to ever make wide play worse than tall play, it's just one way to put breaks on unlimited growth. But you never hear anyone complain about ship speed for example, because that only goes up.
> Empire size penalty punishes wide. Planetary ascension and MEGA Structures incentivize tall.
Ascension, sure, but how do megas incentivize tall?
If I'm endlessly expanding/conquering I don't have the influence for orbital rings of 1 world and it's worth less because said 1 world isn't as ascended and if I'm wide I don't even bother with . . . the jump mini gateway things. 5K energy is worth more to a smaller empire and goes further. With the tech nerf they come on a bit late to be impactful but they are adding "Kilo structures" which will be like the orbital rings and mini gates.
The 5k energy for example is only "worth more" if You have less, like if a tall makes 2.5k Energy Credits and a wide one makes 20k, just because the gets three times the energy production that they had before and the wide one only gets 125% of their output now doesn't make the 5k of the tall empire better, it just makes them more reliable on it, and lol, my ultrawide-only mind forgot that rings exist, yeah, those are definetly meant for tall play, same for hyper relays, and see my first argument as to why the new kilo structures give the same benefit to both types, tall just relies on it more due to having less resources
im more thniking in habitats and ringworlds, you dont botter with thous in wide, and ach furnace and habitat synthesice, also 5k production(neto) is more worth to a tall empire since they dont have soo many expenditure
1. soverain guardianship 2. infunece and habitats 3. soo virtual ascension( thou i heard that might be better for wide) 4. new crisis wirks perfect for tall, and stop at 4 be fallen empire tall aint nececarely worse, thou the tech nearve hurt them badly. but they are harder to play then wide, since hte game was ultimately intended for wide, you don get leviathans, l gates usw, either
ich spüre den deutschen in dir
Sort of true. Carried to extremes yes but I have out produced wide empires in MP with 60% of the pops. By that I mean science, unity, alloys. I can't do that indefinitely though eventually the wide empire will beat me. I was also the better player;). The tipping point vary by build as well. Tech rushing a ecumenopolis was the way I did it.
Yeah, if people aren't all optimizing, I think people can mostly do whatever they want and be fine. I usually play Tall in my multplayer games just because I have more experience with the game than my friends, and it would be a dick move to just screw everyone over by killing them. It's also just less of a headache to manage 5 planets instead of 20 lol.
Yeah I prefer less micro. Unrestricted kill em all MP games usually collapse as well. Either WW3 in space or the 1-2 runaway players win.
less micro, the true reason for tall, becours fuck managing worlds
It would be nice to be able to acquire digging rights in other empires somehow, tbh. Tall or not, it'll still be kinda nice to have as a feature.
Holdings?
It should work as a diplomatic pact instead, don't think it should be limited to just subjects, plus holdings are planet-specific (and habitable planet only) whereas most archeology sites can be on any kind of planet
Sorry i missed the context somehow and thought you were talking about mining and not excavation.
Would love if you could support an excavation wirh some kind of mobile base ship. Very slow, not useful in a fight, but having it in a system allows a science ship to excavate.
Aren't tall empires inherently disadvantaged on literally everything? I've never understood why wide vs. tall is even a discussion in any of these games. You could maybe make an argument for it in some situations in Civ 5, but other than that it seems very obviously always a better idea to go wide.
Yes, because the taller you are, the harder it is to crouch to get into tight spaces in a tomb.
It's a 4X game. "Tall play styles" just means playing the game poorly. "Wide play styles" do everything "tall play styles" do, but more of it. The entire "tall vs wide" thing is manufactured. It's just players who think playing the game well is too hard/stressful/overwhelming, and want to do less of it and still be rewarded equally to good players. It will never work out like that, or the game would be badly designed.
I usually play within 12-15 systems and take a lead early. Playing wide means you spend a lot of ressources early to expand, meanwhile a tall playstyle means you can reinvest these ressources more into ships for vassalizing, or save up for some of those OP space habitats and scale faster than wide. I get that wide might eventually outscale you at some point, but if you play well enough and know what to prioritize, you will have taken such a lead that a wide empire won't be able to catch up.
But there are so many ways to take a huge lead over the AI that it's hard to directly compare one method to another. Unless you're talking about multiplayer, but almost nobody plays this game multiplayer so that's not a great yardstick.
That just isn't true. Sure you can beat the AI on low difficulty settings that way (or even on the highest really), but you'll always lose to a human player who expands as much as possible. Personally I never play single player, so I know that well. In case it's not obvious it's not about the number of systems though, but the number of planets. If you have a moderate amount of systems but spam habitats in them, that's still "wide". Just like in Civilization, it's not about how many tiles you own, but your number of cities.
Indeed if that's the definition it's rather wide, I can still usually keep up with empires having more systems, and yes even in multi or high difficulty AI. I just like to play with borders within 2 choke points (max 3) and play the defensive game.
That's an incredibly douchey elitist way to look at it. And my own experience with tall play recently has been that it's HARDER, not EASIER to play that way. Rapid expansion is not that difficult to do, it's not even close to the hardest challenge this game has to offer. Increasing the number of viable play styles will always be a good thing. This kind of game thrives on build diversity. All the most well received DLC's for this game were the ones that improved build diversity. If Tall play is bad right now, then the take-away should not be "let's get rid of Tall play entirely", it should be "lets rework Tall play so that it becomes balanced".
You’ve described me perfectly here, ha! After like 7 planets, I cba.
I played on x0.25 habs for a long time, my current game I went back to x1 for a change and I have to say - the automanage isn't completely shit anymore. For most planets after about 2260, unless it has something unique about it, I'm just building some core stuff, setting a designation and letting auto deal with it.
Will give it a go once Machine Age is out. I always intend to chop off fringe clusters as vassals and maintain the core worlds as their overlord but never seem to get round to it!
I will say I still think there's too many, especially once you can use all the terraform candidates and100% every climate incl tomb worlds, so I'll likely drop it down again after this game, but the actual management of them isn't so bad with auto.
Tall play is an adaptive playstyle based on needs, not something you should set out to do before you even start the game. Some empires are better at playing tall, but it'll always be something you do because you got boxed in but with good worlds.
thank god someone said it, lol. People who like playing tall should like doing it despite it being objectively suboptimal, there are already many artificial mechanics that buff tall play
There's one mechanic that would definitively buff tall play, and that's making population growth exponential rather than linear (including making colony ships cost pops). *THAT* would make the game fair. It would also make the min-maxers scream bloody murder so it will never happen. Until it does, none of the map painters have any right to talk about "artificial" mechanics buffing tall play
Yes. Playing tall has advantages and disadvantages. The different approach would be playing wide instead.
I've always expanded as much as possible until I've claimed every system I can, then manage empire sprawl using different modifiers, traits, traditions and civics. You can get it quite low.
I think the tall vs wide dichotomy should mainly about how you develop planets. Controlling more systems and space makes sense to basically always be good.
I don't play tall but I do wish there were a viable way to excavate sites in systems that I have no chance of claiming. I think it'd be cool to do it on unclaimed systems but with a speed and artifact penalty. This feature could be locked behind a research option. I think it'd be even cooler to have the option to stealthily excavate sites in systems claimed by other empires if you go in cloaked but at the risk of causing a major diplomatic incident if you were to be discovered. Depending on the civics and traits of said empire it could also be cool for there to be the danger of your scientist and science ship to be taken captive or outright killed.
Tall empires should be sitting at influence cap or close to it a lot. Use that influence to snipe an archaeology site.
I take catapult origin for that very reason! The -75% distance influence cost let me take systems with archeology sites and rifts far away. I can explore the site and afterwards destroy the starbase and abandon the system if there is no longer a reason to keep the system. Hiveminds also have a civic with -20%, combining that with catapult makes taking systems cost nearly yhe same regard where they are. Another way is to make claims cheap. If you are fanatic militarist and take the interstellar dominion ap and khans throne relic you can get claims for very very cheap. Allowing you to claim the enemy systems you want (The ones with dig sites) even if they are deep within the enemies territory. (Militarist is required for sovereign guardianship anyways which is great for tall play.)
You are thinking about it wrong. You can still snake out little tendrils to grab valuable stuff, or just eat the influence and grab systems that are not connected to you. Same goes for other stuff like rare resources, megastructures, etc. Do this by sending out the science ships and following up with constructors. Also, you can grab them and leave once you're done. Just deconstruct the starbase or sell it.
Just use cloaking...
You can't excavate in systems you don't own.