Major Regime hasn't built new Zones inside it's huge borders.

[KingHalford]

Has anybody else seen this issue in their games yet?

In my current game (with the previous patch, I've only just updated to the 0.98i just now), an AI Major Regime (with a Republican Realpolitikers faction at the helm) has a very large portion of the world under it's control, but has, for decades, just portioned it into just the one, original Zone. I would have expected them to have colonised other Cities now and fully utilised the landmass it has available. As a result, with the regions I conquered from the Minors, despite having a smaller tech/culture level, I'm winning on score because of the difference in population.

Is this a known issue? Or does the AI sometimes "play tall" like this?

Ben

[DasTactic]

I've been forced to play tall in one of the series I'm recording and it is very difficult to progress and settle other zones with a limited population. Much easier to take over a minor - deal with the uprisings - and then profit. Usually the AI will grab a number of minors agressively but maybe it didn't have any close by.

It does bring up a point and I wonder if there should be a large bonus to BP and materials for playing tall so that the capital city does well until the number of zones stats to increase.

[KingHalford]

Gotcha, thanks Das! I did wonder why it might have done that.

[KingHalford]

Ok I've actually gotten right around the other side of their territory, scouted their neighbour and it's now given me more recon. Turns out that faction does have a second city after all, and part of the territory that the fog of war was suggesting was theirs was actually one of their neighbours.

I did consider that the Fog of War will give a "best guess" of territory, but I didn't realise it was so effective!

What an awesome game! This really makes it important to work on all the possible angles towards reconnaissance of a rival.

[balto]

Das, if it appears to be beneficial to only play tall -- is it best to only focus on other Regimes that have cities?

In your opinion, how useful is building your own city(s)? I saw you do it on Medusa, it was too difficult for me to tell if it was helping you?

[DasTactic]

ORIGINAL: balto
Das, if it appears to be beneficial to only play tall -- is it best to only focus on other Regimes that have cities?
In your opinion, how useful is building your own city(s)? I saw you do it on Medusa, it was too difficult for me to tell if it was helping you?

I think at this stage it is very difficult to effectively play tall - or even to build your own cities. By far the biggest factor in the success of your cities is population and the taller you build, the more workers are required. So it is much faster and more effective to conquer territories and start with 70,000+ population.

In that Medusa run, so much of the infrastructure in my cities ended up being mothballed because of population concerns. Mothballed industry meant lack of QoL. Lack of QoL meant less happiness. Less happiness meant population emigrating away.

The game needs a reason to build your own cities and I think the best reason would be for Infrastructure reasons such as rails not providing their supply unless there is a station at both ends and that stations can only be built in settlements.

[KingHalford]

ORIGINAL: DasTactic

ORIGINAL: balto
Das, if it appears to be beneficial to only play tall -- is it best to only focus on other Regimes that have cities?
In your opinion, how useful is building your own city(s)? I saw you do it on Medusa, it was too difficult for me to tell if it was helping you?

I think at this stage it is very difficult to effectively play tall - or even to build your own cities. By far the biggest factor in the success of your cities is population and the taller you build, the more workers are required. So it is much faster and more effective to conquer territories and start with 70,000+ population.

In that Medusa run, so much of the infrastructure in my cities ended up being mothballed because of population concerns. Mothballed industry meant lack of QoL. Lack of QoL meant less happiness. Less happiness meant population emigrating away.

The game needs a reason to build your own cities and I think the best reason would be for Infrastructure reasons such as rails not providing their supply unless there is a station at both ends and that stations can only be built in settlements.

Yes I agree with this 100%. I did manage to build and colonise a new city in my first game, but I'd already taken seven other Zones first, so had a large number of colonists to be able to grow it quickly. It's a very slow process to colonise a city if you've only got one or two zones, and I think it's only going to be a viable strategy in very large, long games or on planets with a lot of native population.

I don't necessarily think this needs to have any drastic changes: I like the fact this isn't your standard 4x where you can just bang out cities left right and centre with no issues. The post-apocalyptic setting ensures that's unrealistic. But perhaps some tweaking is in order there. Even if it's just an option in the game start menu to allow for quicker colonisation for those who do want to play it a bit more like a traditional terrestrial 4x game.

On the rail issue, I'm in full agreement. I put something in another post about the difference between road/rail and why anybody would bother with roads once you've gotten the industrial capacity to support building rail everywhere. Not sure how best that can be addressed: Vic suggested just using rail to connect cities and roads to your frontlines and Assets, but I can't see min-maxing gamers sticking to such suggestions.

[KingHalford]

Perhaps one other way to address this could be to make population of your own culture significantly happier, more effective workers or more willing to hand over more tax income?

There certainly shouldn't be any penalty to dissuade from taking new cities over building new ones yourself, else this stops being a wargame and that'd be a seriously bad move since they entire game is built around the military system.

To be fair, Administrative load does force you to build new cities from time to time, especially if you share a front with an enemy that is 20-30 hexes away from any of your existing cities, like has happened to me before. Then you're going to need a nearby Zone, and likely a new SHQ, as you can't get replacement troops or food to them so easily.

[DasTactic]

Yes, there is a discussion in the beta forum about this and Administrative Load is the only real reason to build other cities at present. I also think there should be more of a reward for the CAS and Civ mechanics which favour your own culture. Tax income would be another nice way of implementing that.