Large Empire Penalty

Create a custom faction. Give yourself 'Patriotic' trait, while you are at it take 'Ancient' as well. You will get a cumulative global 5% research bonus per (ANY) relic you are mining. This quickly stacks up and makes even pure prodution planets crank out 60-180 research just based on empire wide global research bonuses. 

Patriotic makes you immune to LEP.

Farm the Approval relics, they are working now.

Conquer all who are before you....

Just to let you know, I have an insane map going on 280 turns. I have 92 colonies and I am running at 98 approval with actually all my planets at 100. I have approval buildings on 3 planets.

If you do not take Patriotic or farm Approval relics you will need to research approval techs and place 2 or more on each planet you settle or add. 

I finding it disappointing that a lot of planets have little room for anything besides a few manufacturing buildings due to requiring 4 buildings, usually, for morale and then one or two for farms. The penalty needs to be reduced a lot. Maybe since morale before a last few patches affected a lot more than influence and growth, that that idea of it being so important lingers too much in the dev's minds?

I would say Patriotic is a bit OP at an insane galaxy in it's current state, to the point the AI will become a pushover by mid game. But then again that depends on your definition of what is fun?

I do think the LEP will go through some iteration of balancing over time, but currently you are probably better of lowering the number of habitable planets on insane maps for now to have a balanced and fun game.

Good to know - thanks - I'll have to try that one.

Well I'm not up to speed on maximising the colony rush yet in GC3 - still refining my early game approach and working out the sweet spot for pop/approval, but yeah, I don't intend to be building approval buildings if I can possibly avoid it.

That is my main concern. Seems like a rather broken mechanic if that is the case Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Decisions, decisions...If I take patriotic, it means I don't get colonizer and the free improvement, or I don't get engineers and the non-decaying ship yards.

So far I have been opting for ++ content. It helps a lot.

Patriotic is Fine, but the issue is you actually have to have it as a trait if you want to play on Abundant insane maps. My game I mentioned was uncommon/uncommon and its still too many planets for my taste. 

I am keeping the game as I just got photon torpedoes and the final Carrier assault fighter module. Time to clear out the galaxy regardless of how stacked against me it is!

remember that you can build approval upgrades on star bases (up to +3 i think - maybe there's more in the age of ascencion, haven't played a lot in the late age yet). and you can upgrade star base range to 7. even without that range upgrade you can usually have 3-4 star bases affecting each of your planets. just build the base economy star base (the initial 10% production boost is far better than any of the subsequent upgrades anyway) and add approval modules as required. also, pick the commerce and approval traits that give flat or % approval bonuses approval and you don't have to waste much room for approval buildings on the actual planets. 

that's good enough for "reasonable" sized games. probably not enough for 1000 planet insane galaxies

also, as an alternative "infinite scaling" bonus, you can get the T3 trait in the upper line of malevolent. each planet you conquer gives you approval. so just absorb a neighbor or two every time approval starts becoming a problem

You can survive without patriotic - at least to 100 planets or so, provided your planets don't grow too much pop. 

1) always take the flat approval bonuses in the approval tech tree. I always beeline for the first approval bonus really early - and grab the second one towards the start of midgame.

2) approval relics are your friend

3) harmony crystals are even better. Trade your left nut for these! you can basically never have enough.

4) economoc star bases - you should be building these anyways. 

5) The benevolent approval tree - especially the last one. 

6) approval buildings as a last resort

there's a couple of other tricks too - there's 2 empire wide buildings that add approval, a government type, etc. 

this should cover you until at least 150-200 planets, maybe more. After that patriotic or approval buildings become necessary.

Unless a post-1.0 patch came out that I'm not aware of, approval still modifies all three output types. It just does it through base production, which means that the effect is hidden from the player if they're not paying attention, since base production isn't listed anywhere and none of the modifiers to it get listed in any of the tool tips anywhere in the planet and govern planet screens.

Evidence:

Listing: Population, Approval, Approval Modifier to Resistance, Actual Base Production, Expected Base Production, % Difference between Expected and Actual Base Production

1. 10, 48%, -1%, 19.8, 20.0, -1.1%
2. 10, 46%, -2%, 19.7, 20.0, -1.6%
3. 7.3, 63%, +3.2%, 18.5, 18.0, +2.5%
4. 7.3, 60%, +2.5%, 18.5, 18.0, +2.5%
5. 4.5, 97%, +22.5%, 19.2, 15.7, +22%
6. 1.9, 100%, +25%, 16.3, 13.1, +24%
7. 2.9, 91%, +17.8%, 10.8, 9.21, +17.2%
8. 3.1, 84%, +14.2%, 10.7, 9.42, +13.6%
9. 3.5, 73%, +7.2%, 10.5, 9.81, +7.1%
10. 3, 80%, +11.6%, 10.4, 9.32, +11.6%
11. 3.5, 68%, +4.4%, 10.3, 9.81, +5%
12. 4.1, 59%, +2.2%, 10.5, 10.37, +1.3%

The first 6 entries are for the homeworld, the others are for colonies. I think there's enough evidence to conclude that approval modifies base production in the same manner, or at least in a similar manner, to how it modifies a planet's resistance. This is supported in the GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML file, which defines a set of points for an Approval to Production curve, with the curve points being a set of multipliers which range from -25% at 0% approval to +25% at 100% approval; this curve is identical to the curves defined for Approval to Growth, Approval to Resistance, and Approval to Culture.

Those numbers come from a game created in game version 1.0.

I'd tend to suggest avoiding farms for the most part, myself. They're frequently not as good at increasing a planet's output as the ~two factories/labs/markets you could get instead of 1 farm (including the approval structure you probably need to build with it).

That's annoying. It'd be nice to be able to see those numbers in game. Thanks for the info.

While it is possible to get hundreds of planets on an insane map though building stations and approval buildings and other bonuses it will become quite hard to settle new worlds after a while since they start with huge negatives in morale.

it is also not a clear cut case if it is worth the overall population loss on all your colonies you could otherwise get. If you have 100 colonies and settle a new colony you essentially remove a minimum of 20 population cap in total of your entire empire. The higher your global percent modifiers to moral is the worse it gets. If you for some reason has 100% global moral modifiers those 20 population instead grow to a potential loss of 40 population. Unless you have a victory condition that require you to own all those colonies you might be better of just to start destroying low class underdeveloped colonies after a certain time.

That's 

why taking patriotic is a must IMHO. All of these problems,  costly buildings, techs,  possible reduction in production/research/money eliminated upfront. It is way a stronger benefit than others.

Has anyone here done the permanent boost to morale that the Malevolent trait provides to help offset this?  I'm not quite at the point in my I/A/A/A game yet where I'm gonna be conquering fools.  But when it comes, I expect it to help quite a bit.  

It's a relatively early trait as well (second tier, IIRC), so it's not like one can't get it early.

Anything that is a must is something a deem as an exploit and avoid There also is a reason for why Patriotic was removed from the Krynn, it simply made that AI go too cracy when the habitable world count was too large.

The trait is there for you to use, just be warned that on larger maps you are giving yourself a very big advantage, one no AI can ever hope to bridge.

don't think patriotic is a "must". it's kinda overpowered. a bit like taking subterranean and creative in good old MoO2 the game should be playable with the stock factions or custom faction of similar power levels. if it's not, the devs should cook up some solution that affects huge galaxies but is not required/feasible on smaller ones. they could for example expand the tourism concept a bit and add a global happiness boost to it. add some spammable (not "colony unique") tourism building and make fully built "holiday worlds" give a global bonus equivalent to a few (1-3) harmony crystals.  so if you have a ton of planets, you can simply dedicate 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 to global approval production - problem solved. not required on smaller worlds, and infinitely scalable in gigantic galaxies.

I think the problem here is not that patriotic is so overpowered (perhaps it is, but ...), but that the LEP is much too progressive on larger maps. It needs to be adjusted for the larger maps, especially the insane map.

Last I heard from Brad on this was that there would be researchable techs to minimize the LEP.  How exactly this would work, and if this is still what they plan on doing, time will only tell. But they do seem to be moving away from the "scalable by planets" idea under the banner of "different maps should play differently".

Loved GCII and just now playing my first GCIII game and enjoying it quite a bit. I loved giant maps in GCII and started with a "Gigantic" sized map for my inaugural III game and LEP is by far my most concerning opponent. I very much get the sense that Patriotic is both necessary and incredibly overpowered on even larger and/or more abundant maps.

Looking through this thread I see a few really great suggestions:

• Introduce buildings that modify empire wide approval modifier (Azunai_ called it a global modifier, but since we're settling multiple globes I think this is what he meant  )
• LEP scaling differently based on map size or number of habitable planets
• LEP hard cap or diminishing penalty

One other thing I'm noticing early on is that in the tech tree for "Specialization" research the tree defaults to showing me the bottom of the three options regardless of which one I researched, that is annoying if it could be fixed.

During the GCIII beta my Steam time spent by developer dropped under 50% Stardock for the first time in a long while, looking forward to "righting" that ratio in GCIII.

Cheers, gambit

Am I the only one that thinks it is strange that a 'large empire penalty' starts with your very first planet?  How exactly is it a large empire with one planet?  

I believe its because the 'large empire penalty' is actually a multiplier on the number of planets you have, its seems like a simple piece of code...

*Looks at who I just replied to*

Wait, Arumba the Youtuber?

If so love your videos, but kinda get board with all non-multiplayer videos after a little while...

Also check out:

https://forums.galciv3.com/465254/page/1/

forums.galciv3.com/465362/page/1/

https://forums.galciv3.com/465323/page/1/

Cheers!

-Jeff26jeff

It's unreal. I play every game with it, and in my current one, after conquering the Altarians, I have enough approval for 65 population on all my planets WITHOUT any approval buildings. If I add the intimidation center, I can support over 100 population. This is with 54 colonies, and I conquered 30.

Patriotic is a game-breaker in it's current form, as it let you completely ignore a crucial factor for EVERYONE ELSE.  In anything, it should just nerf the LEP, not ignore it. Say a 50% reduction.The only other ability which has this kind of "ignore this completely" factor is Starfaring, and being able to ignore Nebulas isn't much of a big thing.

Also, there's discussion about changing the LEP to either be non-linear (something like a Logrithmic function), and/or scaled to the size of the map or number of total planet on the map (e.g. say 0.1 per planet on a Insane Map, to 1 per planet on a Small map).