It's the way the LEP system works. The problem is LEP takes morale points away from the base pool.
So if you have +20 morale on your planets from starbase and buildings, but have 100 planets, your morale will be exactly ZERO even if you have +600% morale boost, because
0*6=0.
[EDIT: Wait a second. Is this right? I wouldn't know because I'm good at math and so I ALWAYS take Patriotic or Malevolence level 2 and so I don't pay attention).
Furthermore, if you didn't figure this out BEFORE starting a game on insane, you're doomed. Even worse, you won't realize how doomed you are until 30 hours into the game.
On almost any map Gigantic or Larger with abundant habitable planets and standard number of AI, Patriotic is a must. For larger maps, with lots of AI, Malevolence Level II approval bonus from invasion is a must if you did not take Patriotic. THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS IN THE LONG RUN.
Yes. Tall is more fun than wide. But wide is more OP than tall.
Hence the dilemma. I'd like to play TALL games without feeling like I'm nerfing myself.
I disagree, with the simple fact that unless you go SEvERAl approval buildings, the age of expansion buildings are better than any age of war and ascension buildings. That does not hold true for any other tech in the game. If they applied LEP first and then the %, and they then later think LEP isn't as harsh as it should be for various conditions then they need to tweak LEP. But when you best approval tech building (virtual world) is not as good as your 1st choice, it's broken...
Even more basic example. Entertainment Capital is TRASH compared to an Entertainment Center. Now how is that design intent? If we could make unlimited research capitals and manufacturing capitals, we would, but not Entertainment capitals.
Well, it's not trash if you have positive approval already so if you have 1 world with just the capital and the colony building, you have 5.6 approval, compared to 4.8 from the Entertainment center. With an entertainment center and the colony capital, the EC gives you +4.8.
The problem is that, once you have 15 worlds, base approval reaches zero. At this point, all hell breaks loose in the approval system. The value of individual entertainment buildings disappears and the % bonuses from relics and buff-buildings cease to have any effect. You need to begin stacking more and more approval bonuses wherever possible to try and fix the bad mechanic.
I am fairly sure that the devs honestly thought 15 worlds IS a large empire, and that players would be playing on the huge maps with enough AIs to make the average empire around size 10; this is co-incidentally exactly the ratio where LEP actually works quite well, as Joeball pointed out in his contribution to the LEP discussion. I think this may be a consequence of the relatively late addition of huge+ maps in development, after many of the mechanics had already been tried out on smaller maps where the flaws weren't so obvious (or even exist at all in some cases).
Interesting insights on what the devs may consider a huge empire. more so on the the number AI players. perhaps they want a military victory to be a huge cost and reward playing tall, and trying a peaceful victory? i have played no more than 6 opponents thinking the more room the AI has, the more formidable their late empires get. My colony rush skills are weak, and the AI continue to do it better than I do with most races. as well, the more AIs, the more you have to rely on allies I would think. I don't like getting into hostilities until turn 100 or so. That's just me though.
Higher tech should always be a better solution however, not based on the size of your empire In certain conditions. as well, I meant that entire building line, not the +2 entertainment building but the +6 stadium. Sorry, not in front of the game to give any concrete examples.
I will correct myself as the entertainment capital gives 25% on each planet, by building only 1 For your entire empire. Design intent? Maybe. So, in a way, yes, it's worth building to give you a only the ability to increase population approval, not offset LEP.
i hope this to be a hot topic on the next dev video stream I mainly just want to hear their vision, not just 'we're working on it'.
When the game was finally released, and the forum started to fill up with posts pointing out things like this, the general reaction from most of the existing beta tester playerbase was utter astonishment that anyone would play an insane map with fewer than 50 empires. You still see it a fair bit, tbh - players who defend a badly-scaled mechanic by saying that you must be playing with the wrong setup. I've nothing against people who like to play with 50+ empires - in fact, I'm one of them, my games rarely have less than that - but I still recognize that it's a problem if the game relies on it; amongst other things, if you're playing conquest then eventually those 50+ empires will boil down to only a few, and the problems will re-emerge.
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