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[Retropunch]

They did. The 'New dev diary is up' above the spoiler is a link.

Ahh it didn't seem to be when I first looked at it - might have been my browser messing up I suppose.

[Flying Dice]

If we're going to be accurate about it, vast sprawling expansionist empires should be highly successful, the best around... for a generation or two. Then they should start getting pounded by rebellion, external alliances against them, leaders who aren't competent enough to maintain what their predecessors built, &c.

The "best" should probably be a middle-ground empire, one that expands enough to have room for a good deal of growth without over-extending, which still has few enough worlds that it can effectively pump the density of a handful of them without totally neglecting everything else.

Basically, "tall" empires tend to face problems dealing with their relative lack of resources; they need to be far more effective at exploiting what they do have just to keep up. "Broad" empires don't really have many problems unless you seriously overextend, stuff like colonizing ten or twenty systems away from friendly territory in a hyperdrive-only campaign to secure key points, and do it in five different directions. "Broad" empires should face problems of consolidation and pacification. They've taken vast swaths of territory, it shouldn't be as easy for them to control it as it is for an empire with five systems to control their shit.

If you go big you should have to deal with big problems. At the moment, you don't. Instead you have to deal with the same little problems more times. If you're familiar with the civil war in the Terran Federation of the Starfire setting, that's an example of the sort of thing big empires should have to deal with: entire sectors of people who're so totally disconnected from the central government ethically, philosophically, and politically that they feel forced to revolt. This shit happens when travel times are limited to those possible on a single planet.

[PTTG??]

I for one would really enjoy a game with serious fractionalism and civil war as possiblities. I could imagine playing a huge galaxy with only two other AI empires. The first century or two is just the rise of Humanity. Might even need to switch when the Old Earth Directorate falls to the Republic of Interstellar Colonies. Eventually the power groups balance out, with Terra Sector being the old but developed power while the dynamism is all happening in the RIC, now in a fairly stable peaceful rivalry with the Church of the Stars, both trading with the neutral Deep Space Mining Conglomerate.

But everything changed when the Fungoid Nation attacked.

[NullForceOmega]

They just want to invite you to their party, why won't you accept their hospitality?

[ollobrains]

i cant wait for 1.5 when we get more serious indepth ingame mechanics and more subtley

[Culise]

I for one would really enjoy a game with serious fractionalism and civil war as possiblities. I could imagine playing a huge galaxy with only two other AI empires. The first century or two is just the rise of Humanity. Might even need to switch when the Old Earth Directorate falls to the Republic of Interstellar Colonies. Eventually the power groups balance out, with Terra Sector being the old but developed power while the dynamism is all happening in the RIC, now in a fairly stable peaceful rivalry with the Church of the Stars, both trading with the neutral Deep Space Mining Conglomerate.

But everything changed when the Fungoid Nation attacked.

Alternately, if you screw it up, Earth and the most-developed colonies pound each other into the stone age with relativistic weapons, leaving the newly-colonized and sparsely populated/developed periphery not only completely bereft of the support infrastructure it needed to get back into working order, but also the sole remaining bastion of humanity. 

I would love to play that, actually.  We just need sufficiently severe bombardment to actually be able to knock someone back to the stone age...

[Shadowlord]

I would love to play that, actually.  We just need sufficiently severe bombardment to actually be able to knock someone back to the stone age...

If you have colonies in other star systems, you probably have this capability.

[Flying Dice]

I would love to play that, actually.  We just need sufficiently severe bombardment to actually be able to knock someone back to the stone age...

If you have colonies in other star systems, you probably have this capability.

Think it was meant in-game. Orbital bombardment, even on full, does basically nothing to civilian populations. Even if we don't get planet-crackers I at least want it up to the standard of Aurora, where you can plaster population centers with antimatter bombs dropped from orbit or irradiate the place so badly that it takes centuries of terraforming to fix. Or use terraformers to pump the atmosphere full of chlorine gas or something.

[Majestic7]

You only need to find a couple of rocks in the solar system, attach engines into them and send them towards the planet. Remember what happened to the dinosaurs? Yeah. That would be possible, in theory, with our present technology level. Destroying biospheres from space is easy. Destroying fortified positions without fucking everything up for generations is much harder.

[IcyTea31]

You only need to find a couple of rocks in the solar system, attach engines into them and send them towards the planet. Remember what happened to the dinosaurs? Yeah. That would be possible, in theory, with our present technology level. Destroying biospheres from space is easy. Destroying fortified positions without fucking everything up for generations is much harder.

I remember reading once a calculation on how much that plan would cost the Imperium of Man, compared to an Exterminatus. Even conventional explosives might win the bidding competition; redirecting a large number of asteroids is very, very expensive.

[PTTG??]

Gotta get in that blue chair.

[Karnewarrior]

I for one would really enjoy a game with serious fractionalism and civil war as possiblities. I could imagine playing a huge galaxy with only two other AI empires. The first century or two is just the rise of Humanity. Might even need to switch when the Old Earth Directorate falls to the Republic of Interstellar Colonies. Eventually the power groups balance out, with Terra Sector being the old but developed power while the dynamism is all happening in the RIC, now in a fairly stable peaceful rivalry with the Church of the Stars, both trading with the neutral Deep Space Mining Conglomerate.

But everything changed when the Fungoid Nation attacked.

It would definitely make a Fermi Paradox galaxy a lot more playable. And the galaxy more dynamic.

I prefer my space to be empty early on and then get multiple empires with many different species within them. I feel like it's more realistic - probably because I'm an optimist Xenophile who thinks friendly aliens are way cooler than green men abducting cattle and moms.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

By the way, there have been dev posts on twitter indicating that 1.5 will come with some more variety in Purge options. Now, in addition to mere, boring, industrial genocide, you will have the potential to process troublesome sapients for food or neuter them all to ensure demographic certainty.

[Flying Dice]

Honestly that horrific industrial WHURRR when you click the purge button right now is too satisfying to use anything else. Started up a fresh campaign with a new set of mods and my space elf Nazis managed to wipe out the closest neighbor when they still were on three planets. Got a Fallen Empire that likes me on the rimward side, right on the edge of the galaxy. They've got a full four-section ringworld. I'm coming for you, fuckers. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday. I've got the ringworld repair mod and I'm not afraid to use it.

[Majestic7]

You can eat sentients in Banks, so that is a strong contender to purge in the future. Funny enough, I've actually never used purge. I'm too nice for that. When I play collectivists, I just enslave problematic populations and don't allow slave procreation.

I finally tried playing a Spiritualist empire, by the way. Having that negative ethics drift is amazing, I just go and assimilate every minor civ since they will soon turn into my way of thinking anyway. There is the bonus from ethos, bonus from government form, bonus from Ministry of Benevolence and for really problematic planets, bonus from Mausoleum and/or Symbol.