Beta 6 patch 2 release notes:

Balance

<snip>

Reduced the large empire approval penalty

So the question is have you patched?

You know what I feel is missing, techs that give a flat reduction to empire approval. Even maybe even a one per player building that decreases approval penalty on a global basis. Although would I prefer a tech as if your planet with the building is taken your screwed. The game Endless Space had this and did it very well, it allowed you to expand at your own pace and as soon as you started getting to big you could just research say a 20% empire approval bonus.

Galciv 3 could do the same thing, and to prevent players being forced down one tech path you could spread them out. Have one called "warring empire" or something more thought out lol, once you research planetary invasion. Have one somewhere down the entertainment path "Deep space Entertainment network". Have one in the Trading path "empire mail and trade network". Even one down the manufacturing path, "Automated assemble network", pretty much anything that could be considered something that could make your empire more happy. There are plenty of ideas Stardock could come up with.


Even if Stardock didn't want to go down this route they could just add a global bonus at each "Age" you unlock.


maybe this would just cause more problems then help, i dont know.. but from what i keep hearing it needs to be looked at. This is part of the reason im waiting on trying a bigger map until i hear from people its fixed

Quoting 00zim00,

reply 3

You know what I feel is missing, techs that give a flat reduction to empire approval. Even maybe even a one per player building that decreases approval penalty on a global basis. Although would I prefer a tech as if your planet with the building is taken your screwed. The game Endless Space had this and did it very well, it allowed you to expand at your own pace and as soon as you started getting to big you could just research say a 20% empire approval bonus.

Galciv 3 could do the same thing, and to prevent players being forced down one tech path you could spread them out. Have one called "warring empire" or something more thought out lol, once you research planetary invasion. Have one somewhere down the entertainment path "Deep space Entertainment network". Have one in the Trading path "empire mail and trade network". Even one down the manufacturing path, "Automated assemble network", pretty much anything that could be considered something that could make your empire more happy. There are plenty of ideas Stardock could come up with.


Even if Stardock didn't want to go down this route they could just add a global bonus at each "Age" you unlock.


maybe this would just cause more problems then help, i dont know.. but from what i keep hearing it needs to be looked at. This is part of the reason im waiting on trying a bigger map until i hear from people its fixed

As it stands now, the percentage (negative or positive) is applied last.  This causes all sorts of problems if he LEP is larger than ones' total morale (a bonus to approval actually makes things worse  ).  But even if it isn't negative, it can still be problematic.

Let's say a planet has 15 units of Goods And Services being applied from all sources.  Let's also say there is a 12 Large Empire Penalty from 24 colonies.  Lastly, let's say that there is a 40% boost to approval from various sources.

(15 - 12) * 1.4 = 4.2 overall morale  (current way it is calcuated)

vs

(15 * 1.4) - 12 = 9 overall morale (alternate way it could be calculated)

Even at 40%, this makes a huge difference.  The more sources of percentage based morale there is, the bigger the difference.  But, then again, on a map with a thousand or more planets. we're talking aobout LEPs in the 200 range.  The two overwhelming forces might just cancel each other out.

The math generally supports the conclusion of it being worse right now. Under the old system, you wanted to have a morale bonus of at least

P / (1 - n*0.01 + a)

to keep everyone happy, whereas under the current system you want a morale bonus of at least

(P / (1 + a)) + n*0.2

to keep everyone happy, where P is the maximum planetary population, n is the number of colonies you have, and a is the percentage morale bonus you have on the planet, expressed as a decimal (note - this is the morale bonus before percentage modifiers; i.e., if the numbers say 11 morale, I want to have 4 entertainment centers for +8 and the colony capital can provide the other +3, and this is not affected by any percentage morale bonuses I have on the planet). The new system is a more severe penalty for any number of colonies n such that 0 < n < N, where

N = 100*(1 + a) - (P*5 / (1 + a))

is the number of colonies at which the penalty under the old system is equal to the penalty under the new system.

I think it's not just about map size but also abundance of habitable planets. Generally I think they should add scaling factors to the penalty to account for number of habitable planets in the game. 

This can actually be controlled by a bigger map having more relics that give you more percentages and tradeable resources giving you global extra morale, but only if percentages is added before the penalties are applied. That way you should only need to apply a very small scaling factor for habitual planets on the map.

Basically large map should increase the LEP while large number of habitual planet should decrease the LEP. This way you can enjoy an insane map with both rare and abundance of habitual planets.

I made a slight error in my earlier post, which has been corrected. For some reason, I had treated the current LEP mechanic as though the percentage morale bonus applied before the penalty. The conclusion still stands, however, as the error I made resulted in the current LEP being treated as though it were less of a penalty than it actually is.

As far as revisions to the LEP mechanic go, I personally would rather see the penalty moved off of approval and on to something else. For example, modify the technology costs based on the number of colonies you have, rather than applying a morale penalty. Something like

[tech cost] = [base cost]*(1 + [large empire penalty]*([number of colonies] - 1))*[other scaling factors]

would do nicely. The real effect of a morale penalty is to target research rates (which makes sense; increasing the number of people working on a project tenfold does not generally increase the rate at which the project is completed tenfold), manufacturing rates, and net wealth generation (which makes some sense; administration and bureaucracy does seem like it grows faster than anything else) anyways. Why not directly target the research rate by scaling the costs, rather than indirectly through the approval modifier and the requirement to have more morale structures to keep the approval modifier constant (or, at any rate, lessen the penalty)?

With a penalty such as is given above, you don't have the need for ever increasing numbers of morale structures even on well established colonies as the empire grows. Furthermore, this penalty system is self-correcting for map size; you expect to have a research rate of R on an 'average' colony, for a total empire research of n*R with n colonies. The rate of research under this system is n*R / (1 + [scaling factor]*(n - 1)), which increases with n so long as the scaling factor is less than 1. This function goes to a limit of R / [scaling factor] as the number of colonies n goes to infinity, which means that this cost scaling keeps the maximum research rate constant across map size and planet availability settings. As this function grows sublinearly with n, this means that while a larger empire will have a technological advantage over a smaller empire, the magnitude of the advantage will be something less than the simple ratio of the empire sizes (assuming both empires have the same average research per colony). This is not true of the current model, which scales research production but has a maximum penalty, meaning that once that maximum penalty is hit, the research rate grows linearly with empire size.

As far as applying a large empire penalty to manufacturing, I'm somewhat inclined to leave it be. Perhaps apply a manufacturing cost penalty similar to the technology cost penalty based on the number of sponsors of a shipyard, but aside from that, I'd just leave it be. Money can be penalized in the same manner as technology or with a scaling empire administration cost.

Note - I am not advocating removing the approval modifier to base production. I'm advocating moving the large empire penalty out of approval.

No, there is a sliding progression from (I think) 75-100 approval where you go from +0 to +25% bonus to production on the planet. 50-75 is 0% and below 50 you gain negative percentage modifications to a planets total production output.

**EDIT**

According to the XML files people are content between 45-65% and you receive positive effects from 65-100 and negative from 45 and below. Can't be 100% sure though.

To me,  I still really thing the LEP should be based of the percentage of habitable planets colonized.

Thus one a rare/rare tiny map,  You start noticing the hit on even your second/third colony if there are only 20 habitable planets.

Likewise on an Insane Abundant/Abdunant  you might see the same penalty when you have 300 planets.

My personal thoughts on mechanics.

Each planet gives you a penalty of X / number of habitable planets.

With my first hunch on balance being that with all tech/planet buildings (not starbases, events, or rares) you could offset say 20% of X.

So you could have 10% of habitiable planets, wiith 'no penalty' with effort but not drastic effort.

If you want an empire that spawns more then that, you need to start going to extra length to maintain morale.  (true building effort on morale buildings, extra starbases, precursor, etc

Making it a formula based on total number of planets, makes it work for tiny maps, insane maps,  rare maps, or abundant maps.  The only real question is what percentage do you control before it 'hurts'

I've read through most of the posts here, and skimmed through the rest--so if someone has already said something like this, I apologize:

I disagree with the notion that LEP should increase based on the number of habitable planets.

I think a few mechanisms could be put in place to manage this issue:

First, AI should be less likely to colonize depending on their LEP and the quality of the planet in view; smart human players should do the same - with the result that strategic planets and high quality planets will be colonized, leaving some habitable planets uncolonized due to the LEP until later in the game, when the LEP can be managed through the following mechanisms:

1) the LEP could be lowered by political techs

2) starbases could have modules that can help negate the large empire penalty for planets within their range; this module could either negate the effects on the planets in range or could alternatively effectively lower the number of planets causing the LEP

3) a planetary improvement could help negate the LEP

These are just some thoughts. I personally like the idea of the LEP - I just hope it can create interesting strategic dynamics in the game and not just be an annoyance.

new thought that as far as i can see hasn't been explored. instead of thinking in terms of numbers of colonies, what about a per-colony calculation based on distance from the capital?

Hello!,

   I realize this is a bit of a necro.. so apologies. But I thought I would throw my two cents in, and ask a question. Question is, does the Malevolence perk that grants +1 morale per planet conquered only applied through planetary invasions, or does colonizing count?

The issue I am running into in my rather large scenario (Forget size, just, lots of planets everywhere lol) is that after colonizing a good amount, the Large Empire Penalty actually out weighs how much base morale my colonies come with, and as mentioned, bonus %'s are calculated AFTER the fact.. so every new colony, despite my bonus morale % researches and goodies, comes with 0% approval from the start, because its a negative number that gets multiplied by my bonuses.. Once I create a approval structure, I normally go straight to 100% due tobonuses, but its rather annoying having 0% approval instantly...  I feel like there should be some refinement on this mechanic for larger scenarios?


Ser JuJoo Guppy

It should be per planet conquered, unless there's a bug. Culture flips might count as conquering the planet, though I've never really checked. Colonizing should not count. Also, conquering a planet you've already conquered should not increase the morale bonus.

You can gain a larger immediate benefit by picking up Supportive Population if you don't already have it (possibly through trade, if you developed something else instead; this provides +4 morale on every colony you have) or by trading for Harmony Crystals (+1 morale on each colony for every Harmony Crystal you have; I would suggest that you never trade these away unless your empire isn't large enough and won't grow large enough for you to need them, or unless you're playing with a mod removing the base-game large empire penalty). There's another tech later in the tech tree that provides another +4 morale to every colony you have, if I recall correctly, but I don't remember what it is. Something down the branch giving approval buildings, I think.

In order for your method to "work," Ser_JuJoo_Guppy would need to start a new game. That's not terribly helpful, especially as Ser_JuJoo_Guppy seems to be indicating that this is a game that he has put a large amount of time into.