I never have enough building slots on a large world, even with the +3 from infrastructure specialization. But we probably mean different things by "enough"--you probably mean enough for all buildings that are really useful. I want to build *everything* there, dammit! I want my homeworld to be the perfect Eternal City for all time. It can't be that if it isn't Huge. Understand, I'm not making a pragmatic argument. I'll admit I'm not the typical target audience, but I've been playing 4x's since Civ 1 came out. It is very rare I play one to a victory screen--I have my own goals I set for myself, like completing the tech tree before turn X, and building every unique building in the world in my capital. There are 6 wonders and 6 empire buildings--medium + 3 spec = 10, 2 short. Large + 3 spec = 12, just enough, but have to destroy even the orbital station. Huge + 3 = 14, which still only leaves 2, not enough, I can at least keep the orbital station.... What respectable colony isn't going to have an orbital station?
Yes, I see. I'm a minimalist, and I enjoy the low tech early game. (Only once did I actually fill all six ship infrastructure levels and that was for testing purposes). By the time I could fully max out all infra levels on a large world, the game would be over. But judging from your response, I could see closing borders as actually benefiting a player with your style in some cases, it could allow you to focus on fully exploiting a more compact, but taller Empire.
Actually closed borders would hurt me, because my goal is also to control every source of strategic resources (well, except for all the gas giants) in the game to get absurdly high bonuses. Since I completely neglect my military--I build an extra starting level frigate just when I need a place to put a ship leader--I rely on rapid exploration to establish outposts before the AI's borders cover them, establishing colonies along the way (even if they're on less than ideal planets) just to expand the reach of remote scanning. Without declaring war, this means travelling through their empires to stick a colony on the other side. For some reason the AI has never declared war on me--they even leave my outposts standing once their borders encompass them--even though through the midgame I have nothing but a handful of frigates with starting lasers. I don't know if they're afraid of my non-military techs or just consider my military too pathetic to bother with. By the time I declare war I've really already won the game (actually having to vote against myself at the Galactic Councils), but need to get rid of their outposts on the last hidden systems--I rush the military trees and have absurd amounts of production, so I quickly raise a force that far outclasses them, and my battle stations are enough to defend my planets. As the AI improves I expect that strategic won't keep working--if it declared war at any point I would have been a very easy target.
Ideally that strategy should get you slaughtered on the harder levels, you would have been a prime target in MoO2
I like the loyality -o-meter on the leaders character sheet. So you always know what the opinion of the npc towards you is. You can improve/worsen the scala per fullfilling quest etc. I suggest introducing the same or similar system for diplomatic relations so you have the friendship the alien empire has for you expressed by an explicite number, improveable/worsening by quests, treaties, relations to their enemies etc. Important is that you know what number will be added/subtracted due to your actions. Of course there could also be events which modify the numbers of the aliens where you dont have influence on it. (eg. xenophobic factions which arise to power, diplomatic failures, erratic behaviour etc.)
Well, I finally put down the Wiki long enough to play again, and my pacifistic strategy may have finally failed me. In 20 sectors I found only one medium terran planet with eco 0 to settle, then I met the Kaek and thought "Oh, good, in a few turns I'll have a trade treaty." They promptly declared war and the 1 frigate I've seen definitely outclasses my 2 starting ones. Though I haven't seen them again in 20 turns or so, I've had time to quickly research nuclear missiles and class 1 shields and pump out 3 frigates, which they were nice enough to let me do--they were 1 sector from my homeworld defended only by 1 starting frigate but were kind enough not to overrun me. I'm about to see low tech early game warfare--they are stuck in a corner behind me, I don't think I can talk my way out of this war.
