And that is exactly what I will do. I am sure many other players will do the same. This will, however, make me unable to get any achievements or to play multiplayer games. I'd much rather this get changed in the base game.
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The pop mechanism is quite terrible in 3.0
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Honestly I am tempted to do the same, because I just imagined how stupid it is to build a massive ringworld only for nothing to grow there.
Only thing I am worried about is the new tech and capital buildings buffing pops, it is going to drastically increase the "effective?" pop count in the galaxy, if we mod out the new penatly.
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I really don't understand this "no reason to settle as they will be useless" mentality. If you have 10 planets and grow, say, 50 'pop' per month, and you need 300 to get a pop, then you get a pop every 6 months.
If you settle another 10 planets after terraforming them, you now grow 100 'pop' per month, so you grow a new pop every 3 months. Some of your old planets will be full eventually, so they will automatically migrate to the new planets, causing if anything faster growth than ever. You can now have many more pops before you grow at the same rate with 20 plants as you did with 10!
Slower overall empire pop growth with a constant base per-planet growth only ENCOURAGES more planets, the more planets/habitats/ring worlds you have, the more pops you grow, so as you get more pops you need more planets to keep growing at the same rate.
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Well, this is true, and not really needed against current AI (unless max difficulty?), but POP count being capped do create issues for some Empires. F.e. if you some kind of Authoritarian Isolationists and by late game you're being bordered by 2 Empires what are allied and don't like you, it's 2 vs 1 and you can't do anything about it, since most resources come from POPs and it's now capped. Sure it's theoretical situation, and a player can do 2 vs 1 against AI, but in general it does pose an issue, then everyone have same basic cap.
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Building upgrades do nothing to improve per-pop research efficiency. Each improvement simply opens 2 additional jobs. In other words, each upgrade saves a building slot at the extra cost of maintenance., that's all. Don't upgrade until/unless there is excess population on the colony and you can't place a new research building.
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What if the penalty was halved or maybe even smaller? I feel like it would be a lot more bearable then. 200 pops for doubling the growth cost seems way way too drastic.
Because there isn't a constant base per planet growth. Increasing pop costs combined with the S-curve pop growth means that developed planets may have -50% pop growth while also having +500% pop cost. New planets will have 3 pop growth while costing 500 per pop. Growing 8 pops to reach 10 total pops and upgrade the capital building will take over 100 years at that point.
You can't simply sum growth like this because pop growth isn't granular. Past a point you will actually have your pop cost increase quicker than pop growth, meaning there will be pops that can never actually finish growing. At that point your pop growth is useless. Furthermore this happens sooner than you think, because your pop growths will commonly be split between pop growth and pop construction, and one of those will be functionally useless
I don't think it's ever reasonably possible to "fill" planets aside from exploiting migration/resettlement/building excess housing only to delete it later.
It should absolutely, 100% be removed. But, at the very least, it should scale with galaxy size such that the current penalty is for tiny galaxies and small/med/large/huge require 2/3/4/5x the pops for the same penalty. Heaven forbid someone at paradox reads this and uses this suggestion as justification to modify the penalty rather than remove it entirely.
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Yeah you are helpless. Nothing but the optimal strategy can ever be played.
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Maybe lower penalty can increase the game experience. But I still cannot understand the logic from the empire pop penalty, it's unreasonable thoroughly. The planet cap is enough to decline the pop.
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I just feel like adding my two cents four pages later, don't mind me.
Also, they failed to remember history and are now repeating it. There used to be a building a while back that gave 2 jobs base and 2 jobs per upgrade level, and NOBODY used the upgraded versions because the upgrade costs strategic resource maintenance for the exact same amount of jobs as just settling a new planet and spamming level 1 versions of the building. This is why they changed level 2 and 3 buildings to give 3 jobs instead of 2 in the first place! You may have noticed that all buildings now function like this.
Get ready for the "level 1 building spam" strategy again! And that strategy requires lots of colonies rather than a few colonies filled with pops.
I have tested out a total economic overhaul on 2.8 (or was it 2.9?) based on the game Starsector (vaguely similar to Endless Space (2)'s economic style as well), where each planet has at most 10 pops, and instead of "jobs", there is one job that all pops have no matter what, and the buildings on a planet determine what this one job produces. Because I made it takes a really long time to grow pops once a planet was getting close to full even at high growth rates, there was even fewer pops in the late game than there are in the current patch, even though I didn't use a "penalty per empire pop".
I honestly think they should get rid of "growth penalty per empire pop", and just rely on planet size and housing restrictions heavily reducing pop count late-game anyways, but that is just my two cents. On the bright side, it's really easy to turn off in the code.
"Wide" empires are those that rely on expanding to new territory, taking advantage of already present resources that require little initial development, at the risk that others may want to expand to the same valuable territory. In Stellaris terms, this means grabbing as many systems as you can and focusing on settling planets.
"Tall" empires are those that prefer to invest extra effort in developing in such a way that they do not contest valuable territory, at the risk they may be unable to acquire highly valuable pieces of territory or rare and exclusive resources. In Stellaris terms, this arguably means filling a few systems with habitats and ringworlds.
The concept sort of comes from history, where you have "wide" empires like the Persian Empire which owned hundreds of cities but had very little local investment short of "pay taxes, don't rebel", compared to "tall" civilizations like Greece, where most cities where independent and highly developed, with every citizen expected to give their everything to assist the city.
Now, this may be a bit of speculation, but I am under the impression that many people who want "tall" builds but downvote every post I make about current "tall" builds ACTUALLY want "small" builds. To put it another way, they want to get as much as a conventional "wide" or "tall" build, but with much fewer colonies and/or pops (some say they want super pops, some say they want normal pops but they want 3 planets with a million of them). Rather than quality of systems like habitat spam, they want quality of colonies.
Problem is that if this was a viable strategy, it would by necessity be the only strategy. Why would you play wide and get less for your effort? And I say this because this was in fact an actual issue a long time ago in Stellaris's history. Vassals are a total joke in the current version, but the "Domination" tradition tree used to give a load of bonuses to owning subjects. One of them was getting a percentage of your vassal's force limit without reducing theirs. Others were increasing the resources a tributary gave you without reducing the amount they lost. It was quickly understood that between both you and your subjects, having a swarm of subject empires would produce way more resources or fleet size than a single nation owning the combined territory. Hence why vassals are glorified friends you can annex for an influence cost at the moment.
At least with the "Wide" and "Tall" builds that (as I see it) currently exist, there is some theoretical balance. Try to grab a lot of territory and contest those valuable choke points and high resource systems? Or focus on avoiding conflict with expansionist empires and put the resources you may have wasted on battles on improving your smaller empire?
The community is not homogenous. Make a post or comment declaring war exhaustion to be good or bad, and depending on what time it us, it will be flooded with upvotes or downvotes. Or it's on page 36 of some unrelated thread and it'll be ignored.
No, wide is the ONLY way to play now. There is also a growth penalty to having too many pops on one colony, so the solution is to spread to as many planets as possible to avoid getting hit with what is functionally a MULTIPLICATIVE -95% growth penalty. It takes 0.5 extra growth per pop for each pop in the empire (this is the actually bad mechanic in my eyes), while a "full" planet quickly reaches above 80% growth penalty on top of that.
Also, they failed to remember history and are now repeating it. There used to be a building a while back that gave 2 jobs base and 2 jobs per upgrade level, and NOBODY used the upgraded versions because the upgrade costs strategic resource maintenance for the exact same amount of jobs as just settling a new planet and spamming level 1 versions of the building. This is why they changed level 2 and 3 buildings to give 3 jobs instead of 2 in the first place! You may have noticed that all buildings now function like this.
Get ready for the "level 1 building spam" strategy again! And that strategy requires lots of colonies rather than a few colonies filled with pops.
Correct. This patch is a middle finger to pacifists.
I have tested out a total economic overhaul on 2.8 (or was it 2.9?) based on the game Starsector (vaguely similar to Endless Space (2)'s economic style as well), where each planet has at most 10 pops, and instead of "jobs", there is one job that all pops have no matter what, and the buildings on a planet determine what this one job produces. Because I made it takes a really long time to grow pops once a planet was getting close to full even at high growth rates, there was even fewer pops in the late game than there are in the current patch, even though I didn't use a "penalty per empire pop".
I honestly think they should get rid of "growth penalty per empire pop", and just rely on planet size and housing restrictions heavily reducing pop count late-game anyways, but that is just my two cents. On the bright side, it's really easy to turn off in the code.
This is a topic of much debate, emotions, controversy, and I will just be giving my own opinion here:
"Wide" empires are those that rely on expanding to new territory, taking advantage of already present resources that require little initial development, at the risk that others may want to expand to the same valuable territory. In Stellaris terms, this means grabbing as many systems as you can and focusing on settling planets.
"Tall" empires are those that prefer to invest extra effort in developing in such a way that they do not contest valuable territory, at the risk they may be unable to acquire highly valuable pieces of territory or rare and exclusive resources. In Stellaris terms, this arguably means filling a few systems with habitats and ringworlds.
The concept sort of comes from history, where you have "wide" empires like the Persian Empire which owned hundreds of cities but had very little local investment short of "pay taxes, don't rebel", compared to "tall" civilizations like Greece, where most cities where independent and highly developed, with every citizen expected to give their everything to assist the city.
Now, this may be a bit of speculation, but I am under the impression that many people who want "tall" builds but downvote every post I make about current "tall" builds ACTUALLY want "small" builds. To put it another way, they want to get as much as a conventional "wide" or "tall" build, but with much fewer colonies and/or pops (some say they want super pops, some say they want normal pops but they want 3 planets with a million of them). Rather than quality of systems like habitat spam, they want quality of colonies.
Problem is that if this was a viable strategy, it would by necessity be the only strategy. Why would you play wide and get less for your effort? And I say this because this was in fact an actual issue a long time ago in Stellaris's history. Vassals are a total joke in the current version, but the "Domination" tradition tree used to give a load of bonuses to owning subjects. One of them was getting a percentage of your vassal's force limit without reducing theirs. Others were increasing the resources a tributary gave you without reducing the amount they lost. It was quickly understood that between both you and your subjects, having a swarm of subject empires would produce way more resources or fleet size than a single nation owning the combined territory. Hence why vassals are glorified friends you can annex for an influence cost at the moment.
At least with the "Wide" and "Tall" builds that (as I see it) currently exist, there is some theoretical balance. Try to grab a lot of territory and contest those valuable choke points and high resource systems? Or focus on avoiding conflict with expansionist empires and put the resources you may have wasted on battles on improving your smaller empire?
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I feel like the per pop growth penalty needs to be broken up into two parts - I think up until 100-200 pops or so it's fine, and helps tamp down some early cheesing.
But after that, I think the penalty should be slower based on map size. Even on a small map, I felt like I couldn't really fill up my larger planets especially with the districts being able to get 3-4 jobs. Or just reducing it generally is fine too.
With a capitol as an ecumenoplis by way of Remnants, for example, there was just no way i was gonna add the extra 150 pops or whatever to use up the district space in the remaining century. That makes me sad - not having to deal with resettling tons of unemployed pops is really nice though! They definitely got that part right.
But after that, I think the penalty should be slower based on map size. Even on a small map, I felt like I couldn't really fill up my larger planets especially with the districts being able to get 3-4 jobs. Or just reducing it generally is fine too.
With a capitol as an ecumenoplis by way of Remnants, for example, there was just no way i was gonna add the extra 150 pops or whatever to use up the district space in the remaining century. That makes me sad - not having to deal with resettling tons of unemployed pops is really nice though! They definitely got that part right.
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I guess it should scale with amount of empires(potential growth from habitats and ringworlds) and amount of habitable planets, if anything right?
The more I think about it, the less I like this new change, but if it were removed they would have to adjust a lot of numbers, seems like a lot of work.
Meanwhile do you have some suggestions for what we as players can do right now? I feel like just removing the penalty straight up might have some bad consequences.
But only a lot of smaller planets are worth it. Three planets with 50 pops each have much more growth than a single ring world segment with 150 pop and the growth penalty stays the same for both.
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Personally I would prefer it if planets filled up in 50-90 years or so and then stopped growing. The limit to protect performance should be an absolute limit on number of planets/habitats/ringworlds.
The current version does not fix performance when a player chooses to min max with vassal play or conquest.
The current version does not fix performance when a player chooses to min max with vassal play or conquest.
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I actually like the idea of creating a couple of vassals to manage growth and empire sprawl. Works for my headcanon that you can't control everything. I will try it. Creating vassals is an underused way of playing anyway.
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I am not sure I understand. If you have empty planets to grow into, why not close jobs on your developed planets until they are only half full and avoid the '-50% pop growth penalty' ? Take full advantage of the new migration mechanics to maximize pop growth.
There will be less total pops in the galaxy, and conquest of other pops has been buffed tremendously, but nothing fundamental in the meta has really changed. As long as new planets provide more pop growth (and they do!), having more planets is always better than having fewer.
The pop growth increase from more empire pops is linear, it's impossible to reach a point where you cannot grow more pops, though it will eventually take a long time if you never expand your planet count.
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This is already being done by the S-curve growth mechanic, so the penalty per pop in the empire mechanic is essentially superfluous. I see no reason not to just remove it. Planets already naturally peter out in growth as they become populated.
Not having jobs and/or housing also penalizes growth. Technically you could fiddle with it after every pop has grown in order to migrate them but that would be insanely micro-heavy, especially considering the whole point of the new system was to reduce micro.
It's not that having more planets isn't good, it's that things fundamentally just suck. New colonies will never grow. The game makes no sense.
It's not possible to reach a point where you can't grow more pops, but its possible to reach a point where you have growth that is useless. To quote myself from another thread:
Getting +5 pop growth and +2 pop construction on 10 planets is absolutely NOT worth the same as +70 pop growth on one planet. Not even close. It's exactly the same problem way back when you could have multiple pops growing on a planet at the same time with split growth (back when planets used tiles), because growing two pops to 50% was a massive penalty compared to growing one pop to 100%. A half grown pop is worth nothing.
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Ah.. you meant through conquest, right. But if you conquer 50 pops a year, you will have won the game within a few decades anyway so everything seem to be in working order.
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If you have "breeder planets" that don't have jobs, the pops will migrate to your more populated planets. The logistic curve on purely a planetary basis would do almost nothing to reduce endgame population counts.
In many of my recent playthroughs I've got some developed planets and a number of semi-developed resource planets. The pops that grow on those resource planets move from their rural backwater over to get jobs in the big city, eerily simulating urbanization. (Unemployed pops will almost always move to the planet with the most available jobs.)
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