Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 11:37 am probably a similar result can be achieved more understandably with something like a filter on what planets count... like the additional cost only comes from populated planets, not outposts, or those not set to influence or somesuch... and then keep the somewhat-simpler-to-express formula.
Aim of the policy: increase population by a fixed percentage as well as influence upkeep, with the upkeep increase being small for small empires but growing faster with empire size than standard upkeep, in a way that having many populated planets makes the policy counterproductive. The point is to make it good for tall and bad for wide.
Additional cost only comes from populated planets -> Counting or not the outposts has nothing to do with my aim. To make the additional cost grow faster with number of populated planets than N^1.5 I need to increase de exponent, but N^2 is too much. If I just add a factor to (directly or indirectly) increase or reduce N, the increase of influence will be the same for 4 than for 40 colonies. Or at least I can't see how this could work.
Additional cost only comes from (populated) planets not set to influence -> This can't work (regardless of the focus chosen), because it would make the policy brutally good for wide empires: keep expanding and setting planets to that focus, milk the focus-independent bonuses with extra populations.
Additional cost comes from buildings enabled by the policy -> A building that increases population and counts as another planet in the upkeep quation. This is not bad for wide, but it's better for tall than for wide: getting the bonus from the policy requires to invest PP on each planet (first the biggest ones for better return), so planet focusing on few but big planets will get bigger returns for the invested PP and the increased IP upkeep. But still, wide empires could find it useful to use it in the biggest of their planets for a relatively small increase in upkeep compared to just expanding to more smaller planets.
Additional cost comes from the number of buildings, not squared -> Not working as intended, as it does not consider the number of planets in the additional cost (and so building one of those pop-boosters is as good for a 4-planet than for a 40-planet).
Make the exponent of IP upkeep 0.75 when the policy is adopted -> No need for the building (so no repetitive action) and works as intended.
Anyone has other ideas?