132 * 5 planets - Good luck - WTF do you do for fun, waterboard yourself?

The problem is the Large Empire Penalty takes morale points away to the point where %increase in morale has no effect. 

For example:

+27 morale - 132 * .2 (LEP)= 1 morale.

THEN the percent bonuses kick in.  So even if you have + 500% morale percentages, you only gain a total of 1 * 5= 5  morale.

As I said: you only have two options on maps like that: 

Patriotic or Malevolence Approval Bonus from Conquest.  

There ARE no better alternatives.  Basically: if you didn't select Patriotic, or you didn't get Malevolence Level 2, you've screwed yourself in the long run on the larger maps.  

It depends. As I stated, there should be a max LEP, so I agree, its too harsh right now. But is it fun? Well, I find challenges fun, so yes, when it has a limit to its awful and is defeatable, yes, it will be fun TO ME. Does it make sense? Yes, I think it does. 

Oh and Rebellions? HELL YES. This was my favorite aspect of playing Star Trek Birth of the Federation, and the subsequent "obedience training based bombardments". As a super-side note, rebellions should be what enemy influence causes rather than a full flip. At least for a short term, say 35-50 turns of the planet being independent, so you have a chance to reconquer them without going to war with the Influencer directly.

Again, all predicated on you having the right tools for the job.

There's challenges, and then there meaninglessly arbitrary punishment. LEP currently very definitely falls under the latter. 

Yeah it is impossible to have good morale on insane map without devoting more buildings to morale which will gimp you one of more fields.

Changed a few things around to test something, now have 160 planets, 5 Max morale relic starboard, Max tech and ideology, plus I now have 2 that's right 2 morale buildings on every planet and my overall morale is 5. Yeah this is completely unbalanced for large maps.

Erm, the way I understood it is that research costs (and probably some other things) would scale based on the total number of habitable planets on the map. Whether you colonise them or not will make no difference - it's a way to scale things based on the 'size' of the map. Given all the options available when setting up a game, total habitable planets is the simplest way to measure a map's 'size'.

I find it amusing that the same ones wanting to change LEP are the same ones against Sensor stacking and Carriers.

I am not stating an opinion on LEP other than I don't play on maps with enough planets for it to be an issue. I just find it (amusing)  that now the game is released and everyone wants to change it to be 'their' kind of fun. I do agree that the approval relic bonus needs to apply before LEP kicks in.

LEP is ok, as a brake to wide empires, build taller and put an approval building on EVERY planet, problem solved.

Carriers are fine as long as the AI uses them as well. There are dozens of suggestions all are worth someone putting up as a mod.

Sensor stacking is fine the way it is, again if someone wants to mod up a diminishing returns to their liking that's fine as well.

Next up we will have the same old 100 page thread on why there is no Tactical combat. Lets see how fun that would be on 200+ planet maps!

ok I have derailed this thread enough....

True Though And I do play on the larger maps and the LEP is killing my morale with only 17 planets and I've built stadiums....

Build 2 stadiums, problem solved Seriously I don't "like" playing games where I have more than 50 colonies because of micro management. But I have played games with 100+ colonies and I've not found the LEP a problem. No I don't play with patriotic or malevolent ideologies.

I wouldn't say that - not least because most of the guys arguing against LEP are in favour of Sensor Stacking (since they play on vast maps that need it). And anyone in their right mind can see that all three of these mechanics are problematic, anyway:

* Carriers produce top-tech ships, for free, constantly

* Sensor Stacking, in it's present form, allows a player to make 1 ship which can encompass the whole map with its sensor radius - even those of us wanting larger sensor ranges can agree that this is not what we want to see

* LEP simply produces a cap on expansion, which breaks larger games and does not effect small games enough. If I have 8 out of 10 worlds on a map, my LEP is the same as the guy who only owns 8 worlds out of 600 on a large map. Why is the puny weed who only got to 8 worlds in the massive game being punished the same as the guy who owns 4/5ths of the map in the smaller game?

This thread is about LEP being non-nonsensically over tuned for large maps, it needs to be nerfed because with 165 planets controlled by me (probably not even 1/5 of all habitable planets), with max morale tech everywhere I could get it, 4 Morale relics with max star bases, 2 morale buildings on every single planet, I control every harmony crystal in the galaxy, and I am full benevolent, I am still at "5" overall morale for my empire. It is completely broken for large maps and it is 100% useless to even make morale buildings, or research the techs. 

In another thread, I showed how 3 approval buildings can give you LOTS of approval, well over 70 if you are "full benevolent".  Let me ask this, on your insane map game with 165 planets, how many points of malus are you getting from LEP?  -30, -60, -120???

Personally, I feel that arguing about the magnitude of the effect is largely pointless. The purpose of a large empire penalty is to keep small empires approximately competitive with large empires. The minimum requirement to keep small empires roughly as competitive as large empires is for the small empires to be capable of keeping up in research with large empires. This is something that the current large empire penalty completely fails to do; the most extreme situation is for the large empire to have 0% approval on all its worlds while the small empire has 100% approval on all of its worlds. In that extreme case, assuming the same average research bonus and population for colonies in both empires, the large empire will have a higher rate of research as long as it has more than 5 colonies for every 3 colonies in the small empire. This is not a very large difference in empire size; I would in fact consider these empires to be of fairly comparable sizes.

On top of that, the approval production modifier is additive with other production modifiers, such as the level bonuses of Thalan Hives, the basic effect of Economic Starbases, and the bonus granted by Interstellar Governance. This means that the relative size difference at which that 0% approval 'large' empire catches up with the 100% approval 'small' empire is less than the 5:3 colony ratio given earlier. If both the large and the small empire have a single economic starbase affecting each planet and both have Interstellar Governance, the ratio of colonies at which the 'large' empire breaks even with the 'small' empire assuming equal average research bonuses and colony population is about 3 colonies for every 2 of the small empire (each of the small empire's worlds is worth ~1.53 equivalent worlds in the large empire due to the difference in production multipliers).

The approval modifier to production fails to keep the research rate of empires which really are large in line with that of empires which really are 'small,' relatively speaking. The approval modifier keeps the research rates of empires roughly comparable in size similar, nothing more. A small empire needs to have at least comparable technology with a large empire in order to compete with the large empire in any real way. The current large empire penalty will not constrain 'large' empires sufficiently to prevent them from eclipsing the technology of the small empires for any two empires where one empire is actually 'large' by comparison to the other. The current large empire penalty therefore fails to serve its purpose.

There are ways to implement a large empire penalty that actually works. You could go directly for research rates by scaling the tech costs by the number of planets in the empire (if you have an average research per planet of R and you scale the tech costs by a factor of 1 + s*(n - 1) for an empire of n worlds, the research rate goes to a limit of 1/s times the rate of research performed by a single colony as the number of colonies goes to infinity) or by making the total empire research output be something less than the simple sum of each world's research output (say, square root of the sum of the squares, which means that an empire of n colonies producing R research per colony will research at a rate which is sqrt(n) times faster than a single colony producing R research would), or you could go for research rates indirectly, say by targeting colony expenses so that it's impractical for a large empire to have the same average research per colony as a smaller empire due to a greater need for purse worlds, or you could go for a combination of these. The current large empire penalty is sort of an attempt to indirectly target research rates, but it fails rather badly because the effect chosen will not reduce the research output of a large empire or improve the research output of a small empire by more than 25% from the nominal value (and will likely have less of an impact), and so the effect only matters for relatively small differences in empire sizes.

i don't like that system. the penalty itself is annoying, since you have to go back and refit planets that were "green" after you get enough new colonies. lots of pointless micromanagment. it would be far less tedious if there were a way to export approval. they could have used the tourism concept for that. instead of building a new stadium on 50 worlds, you'd just build up a few worlds as "holiday worlds" with lots of tourism stuff that export enough approval to keep the other worlds in line. essentially you lose a few planets worth of tiles rather than losing a tile on lots of planets. main difference - a lot less micromanagement.

or as an alternative, they could have used money as the penalty - there's already ways to produce money without having to re-do the layout of tons of planets you already planned and built up. not going to elaborate this point. there were other threads discussing the benefits of money based colonization penalties.

on the other hand, the LEP effect/approval effect is not big enough to really make a difference for wide vs tall considerations. as joeball already explained in depth, there is just not enough of a penalty for running at 0 approval. approval only affects production on a 75% - 125% scale. if they want the LEP to matter, they should change that to a 25%-100% rate. or for all i care, a 0-100% rate, so planets at 0 approval are "on strike" and contribute no production (manufacturing/wealth/research) at all.

I didn't read the entire thread and only skimmed some of the posts, so forgive me if I'm being redundant. 

If you want better morale, you can build economic starbases.  If the layout is exactly right and you have both range extension techs, you can squeeze up to 9 starbases around a planet. I'm thinking it's possible to get a 10th in the middle there, but I haven't tried yet.  I prefer to stack starbases around multiple planets to increase the power to weight ratio.

I only build morale structures mid game if needed and when I can load up the starbases, I overbuild them (and the influence buildings) with whatever the planet is specialized for.  I also only specialize for economy, research and factories, with the military planet being a factory one.  Of course, this means wiping the AI planets clean and rebuilding for the most part.

I think they need to rebalance the economy right now, money is overabundant. If they increase maintenance it will help tackle large empires. I'm also for harsher LEP, right now it affects production but not enough to make tall empires competitive with wide.

It's possible to actually get 12 - but I've never built that many... I like to min/max now and again but I'm like you, I'll put a few where they do most good by overlapping worlds. (Although the sparse game settings I play means it's rarely more than 2)

valid points, but why assume the intent of LEP is only to reduce research, as it currently curbs all growth - pop, cultural, research, economic, and manufacturing...which could all redirected to research anyways (except for cultural), so to me its all in the same.  Research could be considered the most important, but I think that population is most important to curb - it's highly debateable, with no clear winner.  Sure, having individual modifiers would be more accurate and realistic, but adds to user complexity.  Some others may already feel overwhelmed with the game's complexity.

You pretty much have to go Patriotic with 100+ colonies unless you enjoy nerfing yourself or enjoy OCD behavior like surrounding each colony (and you would have more than 100 of them) with 3-4 starbases or more.

That's effectively what the LEP system forces players to do.  

Yeah instead we get to try to watch a camera that can't stay focused on the action we can't control, against an AI that can't offer competition. And they want to know which is better GC II or GC III. LOL

It's pretty consistent:

People who play with fewer planets are ok with LEP as it is.  People who play with more planets hate it or simply pick up Patriotic in all of their games.  

Broken mechanic are broken mechanics.

Actually I would love Tactical combat and yes it would be a blast on 200+ Planets.  And I'm not joking.

I think as far as Carriers go we should be allowed to design are own Tiny ships to attach to them and build them before they are attached. And yes if the fighters get damaged then the Carrier should be able to repair them but not instantly. And if fighters are destroyed then they need to be rebuilt and added back onto the Carrier. This not only will make Carriers more "realistic" and less OP. It will also allows use to see our own designed fighters launching from the ships. But this should not affect the Logistics of the fleet (Advantage of carriers.)  Also Carriers should be able to carry more fighter than what is currently allowed with a minimum of 5 ships. 

marigoldran, plenty of large map peeps have stated they play fine without patriotic.  

Now I think where things are borked is the fact where these awesome high level techs for improvement are % based, and the % is applied AFTER the LEP.  This is ludicrous, and is simply broken. That with hardly any LEP(even the amount I have on my smaller map games), that age of expansion buildings are more efficient than the age of war and ascension buildings.  That's just WRONG.  I don't care how you argue it, if that's design intent, then the designer is stupid stupid stupid.  No problem for it to be considered a design oversight.