Reason: Morale debuffs hurt tall empires A LOT MORE than wide empires. The more population you have on a planet, the more the morale debuffs hurt.
LEP should be -0.2 Money/Planet. A TALL empire with specialized worlds can easily afford the LEP, but a WIDE empire that over expanded would see its economy collapse. At about 40 colonies in the early game, expansion becomes a net loss.
Expanding to 80+ colonies with the NEW and IMPROVED LEP system requires Thalan Hives Tech and very careful planning (Colonizer + Prolific + -20% Maintenance, +2 Speed, +2 Sensors, +20% Economy, +20% Ship Hull Capacity, -30% Colony Module Size, allowing Tiny Hulls with Colony Modules).
Managed it, but I had to make most of my core planets into marketplace worlds, using colonizer to build shipyards on my fringe worlds and pumping out tiny hulled colony ships to colonize the neighborhood. Also, I had to trade for credits from the AI otherwise I would have gone bankrupt at 60 planets.
I've tested it. It works.
I think this would probably be for the best. Money is really, really easy right now, and even with the nerfs in 1.1, I can set my faction to -2 Traders and -2 Income and pretty much not even feel it. I'll have so much money that I don't even remember to set up trade routes. Money is never tight. I get everything I need from basic Tourism and maybe 1-2 income planets.
The major problem with using Morale as the LEP is that you have to manage Morale on every world as a case-by-case basis. This makes it a nightmare of micromanagement, as the bigger you get, you not only have to manage our new worlds, you have to fix your old worlds as well. There is no solution that can nudge your whole empire in the right direction, and worse, the best method of improving Morale involves Constructor spam and using Orbital Resorts. With money as the LEP, however, there ARE simple solutions that make it much more lucrative to pursue peaceful relationships with others, which, incidentally, is the strong point of Pragmatism in this game, and lends mechanical credibility to that line of thinking.
Completely agree with this point.
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