I agree that there should be more options for the defender. 

-just improve military starbases in general. You could do something simple in a patch, like buff the starting bonus to weapons/defenses, and buff starting sensor range. Oh, and increase their area of effect please. HP could be a bit higher as well, though not at the beginning of the game. 

-station garrisons should not have anything to do with legions in the global pool. You build a station garrison on a planet and you get a defending legion that cannot be moved. It does not require any legions to build, and is very cheap compared to a normal legion. That way, there might actually be a reason to defend a planet and the ground combat aspect of the game would mean something. Right now, it doesn't. 

 

Also, as has been pointed out, borders aren't respected at all. It bothers me that my neighbours can harvest resources that are in my zone of control. It's also weird to go right next to my neighbour's home world and plop an influence base down beside it. Do borders mean anything at all? Are there borders? There should be. 

There are not currently borders, merely lines that show your influence.

Personally I'm pro-borders existing, and being much tighter and separate than influence.

The immediate area around planets and starbases should be borders... anything else is influence only. This could even leave great gaps in your territory, that the other players can fly through, but if they get REALLY close to your planets or starbases it could be a big no-no and treaty violations.

Just a random idea here from a casual player, but what about this for "tall" civilizations:

At a certain level of population, you can commit to a planet by building an optional improvement. This greatly boosts the population cap of the world (making it a "Tall Colony"), but reduces the growth rate of non-Tall Colonies by a percentage.

The in-universe justification could be that Tall Colonies become a location people want to live over other colonies.

Over a long period of time or in a large scale game, you could keep building Tall Colonies by sheer effort and resources. However, each time you create a Tall Colony, the percentage stacks. Non-Tall Colonies grow at 50% rate, then 25%, then 12.5%, and so on. It becomes a real choice to make.

This could also be done via a civilization trait of some kind, like "Close-Knit: These people happily build dense societies, but languish if they feel they exist on the fringe."

In any case, you balance the game for wide civilizations first and use this mechanic to frame and balance tall civilizations. The improvement itself could be given buffs and debuffs that can be dialed up and down in minor patches to ensure that statistically having a tall civ is comparable to a wide one.

EDIT: You could also do the opposite, having a "Low Colony" improvement for a planet. This would mean you can't colonize it normally or it has a tiny population cap, but you quickly get a steady stream of resources from it, non-Low Colonies get a boost, or something similar.

Realistically, in order to have Tall worlds, several things have to change to keep stuff in balance:

1. Raw production CANNOT be linear with population. It's just way too gamebreaking to do so. We've discussed several ways to fix this current 1:1 ratio, and while I don't have a total solution, I've tested one on my own that seems to balance considerably better.

Raw Production = .5 * (pop)^1.1

2. Improvements (wealth/production/research) have to have low, fixed values (i.e. +.5, +.75, +1, etc.) for the basic bonus, and modest % per level (e.g. +5% per level).

3. Approval has to be changed to a penalty system.  You get 100% production at 100% approval. Any approval level below that reduces production. For example, use a linear step function, so for every full 5% below 100%, you lose 5% of full production. So a 43% approval rate gives a -55% penalty.  To go with this, approval sources have to be more plentiful - e.g. bring back the starbase approval modules, but don't let them stack as high as planetary ones, and remove the resource requirements for "ordinary" (i.e. more than 1-per-planet) planetary approval improvements. It really has to be possible to have a 40+ population planet with 75%+ approval, and, with a bit of work, a 100% happy 30 pop planet.

 

What the above does is this: to get a Tall planet, you build mostly cities and approval buildings. This gives you very balanced values (i.e. similar adjusted wealth/research/production), but still sticking below a pure 1:1 pop:production ceiling, so a Tall planet isn't some incredible powerhouse, but rather a general "everything" planet. So, for a planet with 30 pop, you're looking at about 21 raw population, which means 21 production, 21 research, and 21 wealth.

For Wide empires, individual raw production for <10 pop planets is severely sub 1:1, and more like 1:2. There, you need to fill the planet with specialized buildings to get decent values, and you'll only ever get those for one category. So, presume a class-10 planet with 8 factories and 5 population, that would be 3 raw production, with maybe +4 and +100% in production bonuses, yielding a production of  14, but a research of 3 and wealth of 3.

 

In short, to support the difference between Wide and Tall, you need a population:raw ratio that yields more benefits per 1 of pop at high population levels than at low levels, AND you need individual improvements to provide substantial, but not overwhelming, bonuses.  The goal is for Tall empires to consist of generalized worlds, and Wide ones of specialized worlds, with you needing somewhere around 3 Wide planets to equal one Tall planet in the sum total of output across each category.

This. Approval should provide natural counter to population over-exploiting. Having planet with low approval should have severe consequences, ending with that planet rebelling - which would also enable interesting spy strategies.

I am grateful to Stardock for their hard work on balance, but nerfing is not an solution...

This is what I was saying, this is how Galactic Civilizations II worked and that way there is no hard cap, just a soft cap based on number of entertainment buildings/farms/cities one can build.  Why not?

 

I agree to this too

I think a linear population to production, 1 to 1 model, is the way to go, personally. It is simple and intuitive. Everything else can be balanced around that. 

 

Making negative approval more penalizing is a nice idea, but would mostly limit tall empires, which are already basically non existent in this game. As others have pointed out, tall empires will lack necessary resources as well. 

 

Let's face it: in Galactic Civ, there really is no such thing as a successful tall empire. There are just too many obstacles. For example, one way to increase your economic output without adding more planets is to simply grow your population, but good luck trying to do that if you have no monsantum. There should be some way around these obstacles, for example, higher level farming techs provide both an enhanced farm (that requires monsantum) and one that does not. 

 

Another way to boost tall empires is to simply provide more specialized buildings, those one-per-player buildings such as the manufacturing capital or research capital, or buff these buildings. Personally, I'd like to see some kind of one-per-player building that provides extra tiles. This way you could have at least one very high class planet in your empire.

You should try synthetic at some point. There currently virtually no restrictions on population except for durantium income. So guess how many planets is ideal to have with synths? As many you can have continuous pop production on. The one time I tried recently, that meant 8.

This.

In more abstract terms, you have a choice to spend your strategic ressources (durantium, monsatium, wealth, citizens etc.) on one planet or another. It has to be attractive to 'pool' these ressources on one world. It has to be attractive enough to offset additional tile space, empire wide bonusses and the strength of a colony capital.

Did I mention citizens? More research/manufacturing techs could provide free citizens (worker/scientist).

How about this:
Every terraforming tech provides a player unique terraforming improvement alongside the colony unique?

Furthermore, I would like to bring up claiming planets again. How about this:
When a planet is colonized you are forced to build the colony capital first over like 10 turns. During that time the colony does not contribute at all to the empire and then it starts building up. This means longer incubation time and longer return of investment time.

Or more if you shuttle people around using colony ships.

I like the 1 to 1 relationship of population and production.

The problem is, as others have mentioned, is that it puts the ball in the wide empire's court at the expense of the tall empire.

I am fine with a really huge empire having a big advantage over a single planet empire.  But it's too far that way.

Now, personally, I wish we had refined goods.  That would solve a lot of problems and it is something the engine can do but it's too big a game change.  IMO, that's what cities should require.  I.e. resource A + B used by building C to create resource D and that, plus food, is what lets you construct cities.

If any of you have played Distant Worlds, you will understand.  And anytime someone says that Stellaris is so successful because it's "Better" you can smack them by showing them Distant Worlds.

 

I heard a lot of talk here about tall vs wide empires. Why verses? Why not have both? I happen to like the colony rush. I like winning it and I like making the most of my spoils.

Something that I don't like is all the work needed to manage everything. This game has more micromanagement than GC 2 had. Things were also more smooth.

If there was such a mechanic to allow tall to compete with wide, what would stop you from going tall and wide?

If resources were the limiting factor, you could always get more resources later.

Edit
At sometime during the game you will conquer other planets and end up wide anyway.

I think resources are a problem of the game, not a feature. I think resources makes more sense for a civ like game where you manage a growing empire (started from nothing), but not for a game where you manage planets. The homeworld at least should be a developed world that can provide for its own needs. It could choose to use steel, a new alloy, ceramic plates, fiber glass, etc or any number of things to build cities and ship or what not.

I don't think a planet should have to worry about something trivial such as a shortage of iron. There should be many adequate substitutes because it being a space faring civilization. I don't think any resource should be a game changer.

 

I agree, a galactic resource is rare in terms of planetary resources and should only be used to construct unique buildings or exotic weapons types.
I am ok with synthetics and the like requiring special resources to manufacture population, but cities and normal buildings?