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[StagnantSoul]

I was just pointing out that you could be only a little bigger than your federation members and still get the permanent presidency, you wouldn't need to be 10x their size.

Divide my numbers down and you still have the same deal.

You: 3 planets
8 members with 1 planet each = 8 planets
Total: 11 planets

Or:

You: 5 planets
8 members with 2 planets each = 16 planets
Total: 21 planets

In either case, each member is now less than 10% of the total planets and less than 50% of yours. And you are only slightly more than 2x any of their size and only a fraction of the total federation size.

Can you imagine trying to pass that off in real life?

"Hey guys, I'm just a little bit bigger than all of you so I'm going to be El Presidente for life. No rebellions okay! And make sure not to form any factions or alliances amongst yourselves!"

Hell you can barely get away with that in CK2.

You can manipulate the AI in CK2? Hell, all they ever say to me is this is war you tyrannical bastard.

[Descan]

Is it possible to release whatever planet you want as a vassal in the current version

yes

planet view, i think

[ZeroGravitas]

Is it possible to release whatever planet you want as a vassal in the current version

yes

planet view, i think

unless your resolution is too low

(jk, i think they fixed that last patch)

[PTTG??]

Ok, that works then. A bunch of separate enclaves within your territory, all with your ideology... that would basically be like a federal system.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, sort of a federated empire model, where there's effectively a monarch who directly controls military affairs, strategically important territory, and interstate traffic, but individual regions are left to make their own decisions and elect their own leaders for domestic affairs. Shame that you have to take such a convoluted route to build it. Would be nice to be able to make a polity with that sort of integrated military and foreign policy control but disseminated local control without manipulating systems that are meant to handle inter-polity relations.

[Egan_BW]

Isn't that what sectors are supposed to be?

[Baffler]

Kinda. The advantage is that vassals will maintain their own navies rather than just building defensive stations like sectors do and don't contribute to population for things like calculating unity costs, at the cost of getting less out of them in tax. It's super f l a v o r f u l to have them able to politically diverge from you too, and vassals are more proactive about telling you to fuck off if abused (and will also proactively look for foreign support), which I think is the real reason the Space HRE idea seems to be the second hardest-sticking nontraditional strategy after Playing Tall.

[Cruxador]

Isn't that what sectors are supposed to be?

What sectors were supposed to be is irrelevant at this point; they're a half-baked idea that hasn't been followed up on adequately and which it is now easy and beneficial to never actually use.

[Criptfeind]

One of the last games I played in 1.9 I played a group of fanatic egalitarian warriors who went and conquered the whole galaxy, put them into sectors, and basically forced everyone into being happy multiculturalists, and the sector management was so bad (no way I was going to micro that many planets) that I found somewhere around 40-50% of the way though taking the galaxy that taking more places and adding more sectors actually reduced my mineral income instead of increasing it, because the AI empires and Sector governors were so bad at managing their planets that they cost more in consumer goods costs increasing (even though I was just using the basic consumer goods level) then they made in minerals. Sectors make me really sad right now

[Hanzoku]

The last game I played, I made exactly three sectors.

Honestly, Stellaris punishes you for using half of the features that they're trying to force you to use because of the terrible interaction with the way too low leader caps and the half-baked systems that are currently in placed.

Take leaders for one thing - You start with 10. Three slots are automatically filled because when are you NOT going to have your three research leaders? 7 left. You need an admiral, a general, a leader for your core systems. 4 left. You want to explore, and (at least the last time I tried) you can't use science vessels without a scientist inside. Take two more for that, and you have 2 slots over for sector leadership, a second fleet, splitting your ground forces...

and yes, there are researches meant to alleviate the problem slightly, but you'll never have enough leadership capacity to put a leader in charge of all of the ~20 possible sectors in a large empire, much less trying to NOT doomstack because you don't want to feed fleets without leadership into the woodchipper.

[ZeroGravitas]

Paradox always loves the artificial caps that do nothing but provide uninteresting buckets for more incremental progress.

They've still never learned to separate out what's actually interesting and fun about their games from what's mindless tedium and restrictions.

[LoSboccacc]

>  mindless tedium and restrictions.


scientists and governor dying every four turn *ugh*

[EnigmaticHat]

The last game I played, I made exactly three sectors.

Honestly, Stellaris punishes you for using half of the features that they're trying to force you to use because of the terrible interaction with the way too low leader caps and the half-baked systems that are currently in placed.

Take leaders for one thing - You start with 10. Three slots are automatically filled because when are you NOT going to have your three research leaders? 7 left. You need an admiral, a general, a leader for your core systems. 4 left. You want to explore, and (at least the last time I tried) you can't use science vessels without a scientist inside. Take two more for that, and you have 2 slots over for sector leadership, a second fleet, splitting your ground forces...

and yes, there are researches meant to alleviate the problem slightly, but you'll never have enough leadership capacity to put a leader in charge of all of the ~20 possible sectors in a large empire, much less trying to NOT doomstack because you don't want to feed fleets without leadership into the woodchipper.

Part of the issue is that sectors run, AFAIK, the normal AI but without access to most of the game's options (like diplomacy and such) and with a very limited income.  Problem is, if the normal AI is restricted to just a couple planets, it will crash and burn.  Even with access to diplomacy and megastructures and being able to choose its own research and such.  So how can the AI be expected to keep an empire running if all it can do is build and move pops?

[Criptfeind]

I'm not sure about that logic, managing an economy is the core of the game, what basically everything else comes from. That feels like the area that the most work goes into and should be the least reliant on anything else (I mean... if there was any actual reason to trade with others that might not be the case... But there isn't.) Why is it you think that the lack of other options should have a large impact on it? That having a limited size should cause it to go poorly (and big sectors still suck) I can make a sector that's more resource rich, has higher technology, and is better protected then any AI empire, but it'll still be terribly mismanaged... Just like any AI empire.

The AI just sucks. Although I'm sure as hell not a programmer, so I don't know how hard it is, but somethings clearly gone wrong when it can't even reliably run a positive economy.

[Baffler]

I've never really had that problem with sectors. I don't think I've ever had one run a mineral deficit, at least. I do sometimes end up with them having chronic energy shortages but that's more a result of being resource-poor. If they're not forced to respect tile resources and are allowed to redevelop they can often fix it, otherwise shifting your internal (or external) borders might be necessary.