Recently I have encountered a problem of over expanding. Over the Last 30 turns or so, I have conquered almost all of the known galaxy while holding 18 systems and 50 planets. What motivated me to agressively expand is that I have acquired my neighbor specie's colonization technology, thus putting me (gas giant) and them (rock) into a tight race for rock planets. With these many colonies around, I became overwhelmed by the size of the empire and regret about my overexpanding policy. My ally is nice enough to become a partner with me since the beginning, but they (Phong Federation, those yellow dudes) always try to slip a colony ship or two into my system to rip a moon or a planet away from me. Thus this created numerous packets of partner planets within both of our space. In the frontier things are worse. Usually I can outrun them with my superiorly powered colony ships, but they can always grab one or two planets in every system I rushed into. This created a mixture of frontier systems with contested space. Since we both have many planets within each other's system... it would be a total war if I try dominate all systems.
There are still about 10 or so systems to be discovered, and I am quite tired of these build-only-colonyships and the race to grab the newly discovered planets as soon as possible. Not only this making border defining difficult, it would also drag the two empires into total war in almost all of their systems.
Now my question is: in my new game, should I only occupy a certain amount of systems, while research mine-laying tech as soon as possible? I find my ability to oversee such many planets lacking and tiresome.
What is the safe range of systems to have? I think 10 systems should be enough for a player while research other colonization techs. Such effort would make a system over habitable for my race, because I would have the ice, gas giant, and rocky planets within a system as my bases. Such tightly focused empire is not only easier to defend than the usual all over the place empire, it would also create a focused border, a private space free of interlopers. After the three colonization techs, I would go for the atmospheric converter tech (by the way, is it in the planetary utilization tech area?)
What do you think about my focused system expansion? I think I will try that soon!
Guess I am not a qualified 4X player... since I get tired managing too many colonies
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a lot easier, because after each turn you are forced to deal with the cities individually... in SEIV... I have to click each system and check... arrgghhh! I am such a lazy emperor!
Vic
How hard do you expand?
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