Matrix Games Forums

I would like to see some overhead and instability built into maintaining a big (horizontal) empire in Pandora to make going for a vertical empire a viable strategy.

Some thoughts:

- Some administrative cost for maintaining each city in the empire. This could also grow exponentially as the number of cities increases to represent the growing complexity of a big empire;

- A revolt or secession risk for each city that can be reduced by building certain buildings (e.g. police, courts, propaganda, security services), and that increases the further away from the HQ the city is, and with proximity to other factions. Morale of the city would also be a factor;

- When a city revolts, some of the army revolts and defends the city. Ideally this would be the units built by the city (or some fraction), but that might lead to complications, so perhaps just a percentage of the army that relates to the percentage of industrial output the city is of the empire.

- Revolts can spread, and if not contained, can lead to civil war.

I know Civ has developed ways of dealing with this, such as empire size generating unhappiness, civics costing more for bigger civs, and corruption, but they don't really have much to do with IRL and I'm not sure the mechanisms would be at home in Pandora in any case.

Just my 2c.

This is a sci-fi game afterall, not the real world. [:)]

There are no artificial city limits (ala Civ), but you also do not gain any inherent bonuses from having more cities -- growth is independent of the amount of cities. As long as have a positive habitat you will be efficient. You don't have to sprawl to win; too much and too early (ala AC) is in fact inefficient.

I think you need to get at least 3 rings around a well developed city and some decent special terrain rather than pure ICS. Population matters a lot in this game, especially for factions that get population based bonuses (Solar Dynasty and Togra), and a powerhouse 20+ city is far more effective than two 10 point cities.

So you should work with the lay of the land and plan ahead to create those megacities rather than merely plop down a new site based on some mindless array.

ICS might work better with the Imperials or Lady Vermillion, however. I prefer the more builder oriented factions.