This is actually something I really want to see.  A Dyson Sphere and a Ring would be amazingly useful because of the fact that it would be able to hold a huge population.  Usually when I'm at war in the older games and aggressively expanding I find that my population is usually a limiting factor for my troops and civilian transport missions... not to mention income from taxes lol.

A Dyson sphere holds population. Never caught that. All I thought it was a huge power plant. Matter of fact it would probably be enough to power the empire for a long time. If this is to advanced to be on the game it could be a Precursor or Dread lords invention from a mega invent or like a wonder that was found on the game.

It might be more feasible to instead say that player empires can build rings, but not spheres.  But, there's a cloaked sphere built by the precursors that can only be found when the appropriate tech is unlocked, and then you have to fight your way in (super hard) past automated defenses.  Once someone sends a fleet to it though, it becomes visible to everyone.  So players will usually want to be the first to detect it, but sending a fleet that may not win the fight could be disastrous if someone else sense a fleet of their own to mop up, without ever spending the research on the tech.  Good strategic choice there.

Little nod to Master Of Orion, too.

My comment abut the Cardissians was not intended as a slur  - never occurred to me.  I ignore most of 'popular' culture - so i had to look up Kard -yada - yes, a sad set of sisters.  Moving along...   A mega - structure is a mega size structure, and its a subjective concept.  Take a member of one of the newly discovered human villages in the Amazon rain forest and place them in Manhattan, and they would, rightfully, see many mega structures.   Also, a structure is not necessarily purely physical.  So, The CIA, or the KBG, may be described as structures.  And when compared to individuals (most of us are), these structures do seem mega.  It IS a mega structure. 

I've seen things like this in call to power. It could be a super project.

Super project that may sometime became too powerful and leave you, like Sherydin? Or just more control, something similar to old espionage model (no need to tell me we won't have it), where we allocate some funds on project and then slowly got increased information and/or control options over nation, with different flavours, based on race we're playing?

In regards to Dyson Spheres, I've always been very interested in Matrioshka Brains (wikipedia, new window) which are basically multiple layers of dyson spheres layered on top of each other, with a focus on computational power.  

For Gal Civ 3 though, as pointed out above, this would be a very late game concept, if at all.  From a gameplay perspective - if you could simulate your own universe where you control all rules, the ability to accelerate research would be nearly limitless compared to what could be done in your own physical universe.  Of course that doesn't take into account that if a civilization could actually build such a structure, they may choose to just upload themselves into their simulated universe and that only leaves the problem of protecting the physical structure itself in the non-simulated universe....

....and lastly, whose to say we're not in a simulated universe in a Matrioshka brain right now?  Brb, time to start day-drinking.

I give up on worthwhile discussion.  I'm out.

1. Talking about no worthwhile discussions. I remember reading in the Jedi search trilogy in Star wars about how Han solo thought that the Maw was built by someone. This was a series of black holes. Lets just focus on one black hole. In the thundercats cartoon to escape a man made black hole he had to remove magnets. Considering that energy and matter are basically the same microscopically, and there area only two forms of energy which are interchangeable electromagnets could be used to replace gravity in a wormhole. What is a black hole but a wormhole.

2. Later there in the book they found a base in the center of the black hole. According to my understanding of physics there may be a center of gravity that works like there are no forces.

3. In the movie the Black hole their was a ship that had anti gravity that could hover on the event horizon. The problem with that is that Boeng build a anti gravity ship that didn't move because without force the ship just wouldn't move.

Here's some ideas I was thinking about I actually think is about as realistic as a Dyson sphere. Sorry I quoted from a book and a cartoon. I couldn't figure any other way to introduce them.

Finally decided to read wilkapedia on Dyson's spheres. If we were going to build one in our solar system a Dyson swarm should work considering everything lies on a two dimensional plane orbiting our sun. All we would have to do is angle the swarm a different way that for the most part the light that would be being collected would be wasted otherwise this would not affect everything else that would be receiving light on a very narrow plane. My question is if things could orbit a star as close as 100 kilometers awar why are we talking about 300 million kilometers away. Things are gas giant planets not satelites.

Anybody heard of a Dual planet it was a concept when they discovered Charion. Pluto and three other objects orbit around a common center of gravity which orbits. Scientists think this will eventually happen with us and the moon.

The reason I brought this up is because this happens between our sun, Jupiter, and Saturn. Which means the sun moves in two ways around a center of gravity which moves around the galaxy making a Dyson bubble where the satelites don't move is unfeazable.

Why are they not considering red dwarfs. They are smaller stars, Also this should work with planets because they produce light. Anything smaller than about the size of the moon doesn't. One thing you would have to remember this would not work for a dead planet like our moon, mars, or mercury, but it would work for a living planet like earth or venus. In order for something like the moon to work it would have to be younger before the core hardened. Ironically the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are still alive due to the fact that they keep reshaping themselves. As long as a planet hasn't died it would still work. Planets produce light. Anything that is not a planet would be to small to produce it's own light.

Well to me the ring world makes more sense, while I'd love to see a dyson sphere...it'd be a galactic achievement...giving nearly limitless population, with solar rejuvenator tech...they could safely live there for billions of years. Even then a ring world could give like hundreds of planets worth of populations, manufacturing etc.

A Dyson swarm maybe. A Dyson circle maybe. But a Dyson Sphere is very unlikely. If we turn the power consumption when the satalites hit the ecliptic plane and turn the power consumption on when they left then it wouldn't affect the other planets and stuff, but this would give less power. This should be an option to use if you want.

Whats a ringworld.

I suggest reading (or looking up) the Larry Niven book "Ringworld." Nevertheless, to answer your question more directly, a ringworld is an artificial structure taking the form of an enormous ring wrapping around a star. Similar to the spherical shell, but instead of being a sphere it's a section of a cylinder. It has the advantage (relative to the spherical shell) of being less resource-intensive, while still providing significant amounts of surface area which could be used for living space, still captures a reasonable fraction of the energy emitted by the star around which it was built, and could theoretically be spun to provide artificial gravity on the inner surface of the ring (assuming you can find a material strong enough). That said, it remains in the realm of nonsensically large and resource-intensive structures, and any faction which was able to build one probably won't be needing to colonize any planets for a long, long time, if the ring is habitable.

Not talking game terms but feasably unfeasably if one of these things were able to be build it would make no sense to move them to a distance of an astronomical unit, but make them much closer resource wise and make the habitat modules seperate and further back beaming the energy back to the habitat islands. 

A Ringworld is almost a Dyson swarm except a Dyson swarm is a bunch of satalites doing the same thing.