I'm surprised there isn't a thread for this already. Am I the only one who absolutely hates the large empire penalty? I don't want to have to use a trait to avoid it and I like playing on the Insane map size with abundant star and common habitable planets so it will be a problem by the time I even encounter someone else, by then I'll at least 25 planets so a quarter of my morale improvements are down the drain.
This seems to me to be an indication of how the devs want me to play. I hate it and that's why I can't stand Endless Space for this reason too, I can't play the game the way I want to, I can't build enough morale improvements if I build a hundred world empire. I know the patriotic trait avoids this entirely and generally morale isn't a challenge but a 1% per world penalty is a bad option. Scale it based on the size of the map and the abundance of planets, on a small map its not bad but on an insane map its game breaking.
Let's start a conversation about this. Do you like the large empire penalty? Do you think I'm crazy?