I think 10 is fine, it is very easy to get sources of happiness, I never had serious problems with happiness in any of my games. Any anti-snowball mechanic is always well received for me.

Ozgwald wrote:

Using horatio...

Ozgwald wrote:

With Horatio...

I think you've missed the point of the thread Ozgwald perhaps I should have made it clearer.  No one is asking how great Horatio is, Horatio is "perfectly" capable of letting us know that already and no advice has been sought on how to cope with the overpopulation.  The point of the thread is to gain opinion on whether there is a balance issue, e.g. like Dictatorships had an approval issue back in early access which was subsequently fixed.

Also to hopefully give suggestions on how it can be fixed if there is an issue (there is) and to bring it to Amplitudes attention so it gets fixed.

@SirBagel - thank you your posts are excellent in highlighting the problem more so than mine.

Using horatio or the right minor factions work (guardians give +5), horatio is a bit easier, but as I said you might face bugs. Then you also focus on larger systems (bigger planets and more planets (+4). If you have 20 population or more granting +5 or more approval you get a long way. 

Still the penalty is too big, but if you want a way to do it I described a way to do it. Just time your early game and midgame well. Make sure to rush (be fast) with both the academy tech and the market tech to gain or purchase heroes for governors. Also finish your faction quest line, I think most if not all provide you with extra heroes as a reward. You want them ready to contribute at the point you need them in your expansion plans. 

I like the fact you have to think about how you expand your empire, that it is not a thoughtless process. However it definitely needs to be more accessible and there should be less of a difference between races and less dependence on random elements (such as getting the right minor faction spawned and the right luxery resource etc. etc.)

So only content Religious can pretty much take the whole galaxy and not have to worry about unhappiness.

vahouth wrote:

SirBagel wrote:

It certainly seems like colonizing an entire galaxy is a thing of the past. I don't think it's possible to get a Conquest Victory on the largest maps without multiple approval laws, the tier 3 over-colonization luxury, and all late game approval improvements (all at once). Terraforming has become a necessary crutch for removing disapproval too. On a colossal galaxy, sitting on 42 out of 73 star systems needed to win already nets a -105 penalty. Especially painful when the AI colonizes systems with 1 Barren planet and you have to wait out the ownership timer to vacate the system.

I don't see Toys for Boys Law. And that's another 20

20 is nothing. To reach 72 systems, I'd have to go more than 3 times over the colonization limit that I am currently over. If disapproval continues increasing linearly, nothing short of Jingoist Paradise + war with everyone and the over-colonization luxury (that doesn't always spawn in a game) will be sufficient to prevent rebellion. Plus I want to keep my science.

Conquest Victory on a large map requites 45 owned planets (not sure if this is every large map or just some).  You can realistically get the over-colonizing amount from 8 to 14 systems via tech/government.  That's still a 31 system difference.  That is -310 approval!!!  -50 is enough to start causing reasonable problems and that's only 5 systems over.  Yes there is lot of approval in the game but not that much, and you shouldn't have to use literally use every bit remotely possible just to make conquest via actual conquest (and colonizing) vaguely possible imo.

I don't know the exact numbers from the last early access build but it was a lot more balanced -10 per system seems a huge increase possibly the amount of planets was changed as well can't remember.

Yes there are I'm sure ways to create very big empires still with a lot of difficulty and planning e.g. transvine all developments etc. but what I'm asking to clarify is for opinions on if the balance is correct not how to do it.  I think the balance is way off personally , it's possibly stopping the AI colonizing as much as it should and the balance gets much worse the bigger the map size.