The pop mechanism is quite terrible in 3.0

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I struggle to understand why this rather obvious fix hasn't been implemented.
Surely there is a reason this has not been done that we are not aware of?
Haha, maybe the dev does not know how to handle the buildings provide single jobs, such as gas refineries.
I think if the high level buildings cost half gas, then the single job produce only 2 gas is OK.
 
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I just finished my first game in 3.0 and came straight here. The new system is good for performance, but TERRIBLE for gameplay. by the year 2525 I didn't had a single planet full planet (usually have several by this point). And by the time I finally repared the Cybrex ring word my pop growth took so long that I think I had like 5 pops on each Ringworld segment by the end. It's no longer "max out a planet, population controll it and forget about it" but instead "oh you have 600 pops in your empire, forget about your planets".
I played more or less the same way I usullay do (mostly peaceful, focus on economy) and and stuggled to take on a 3x crisis (I usually do 5x). Not to mention it's VERY impractical to purge lategame, bacause it takes decades to replace even a handfull of pops.
A lot of people already suggested solutions to this e.g: significantly decrease the penalty, halve the pops and jobs per planet, ect. Or add a new option what kind of performance booster system we want during game.
Paradox pease fix this.
 
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Yeah a full rework of habitat, or empire sprawl is necessary for the game instead of this ad eternam +0.5 pop(or why not the 2 of them.)

. I'm more about a complete rework of the origine and the habitat and by the way give to this origine a real tall game play.

1 by system, but more like a full artificial worlds that move around the star with what you can exploit in the systeme affecting your district. So some op sysyeme, like the drone mining one would give some pretty op habitat. You increase by a lots, the influence cost and alloy cost even the time for building one, up the tech tier and for stats of job/district/ origine start up etc we need further testing ig '-'.
 
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Hey all, just wanted to pop in and say that we are paying attention to the response to these changes.

Lets keep the talk constructive, critique is welcomed and encouraged.
Good to know.

I have to ask (though have no expectation of getting a reply :) I'm not sure anyone would be allowed to answer this question) Do you think a major rework of pops and jobs, vis a vis tiles etc, is a realistic possibility, from the devs point of view?

What I mean is, how realistic in this game, is it that we might see pops replaced with a system more akin to vicky for example? Or a hybrid system?

I feel it might be the most logical course of action, given that late game performance is so bad in large part due to the pop/jobs mechanics and the AI does struggle to adequately handle the way pops and jobs works now. But while it might seem logical to me (and a few others atleast) Is that too large an undertaking for the devs? Is that something we are more likely to see in a sequel, rather than in this game? Is even something the devs feel would be desireable?
 
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Hey all, just wanted to pop in and say that we are paying attention to the response to these changes.

Lets keep the talk constructive, critique is welcomed and encouraged.
Hello the dev. Since there are some problems about the S-curve planet pop growth, that is, because players can utilize the automatic resetlement, or force resettle the slaves, then pops can be controlled half of a planet's cap, then a "pop farm" is created.
I think there are many solutions to solving it. I will take an example for it. There will be many other solutions and

When a pop is moved out(automatic or forced) from a planet, then an event "Immigration Waves" happened. Some people on the planet are moving out, maybe it is good or bad? A planet modifier is added for 5 years.
When the second pop is moved out, on the planet, "A bad omen" event happend. People on the planet think that the planet may be lack of attraction now. The planet modifier is flushed to a level 2 modifier for 5 years.
When the third pop moves out, "appeal to construction" event happend. People think that the empire ignore the planet construction, which make too many people leave here. The planet modifier is flushed to level 3 for 5 year.
When the fourth pop moves out, "There is no prospect on the planet" event happend. People believe the empire has totally forgets the planet and the planet will not be constructed and provide more jobs any more. Then the planet modifier is flushed to level 4 for 10 years, and the modifier starts to have a negative effect: slown down the pop growth by 75%. If more pop continues to move out, the modifier will flush to last 10 years. Even though new jobs are opened by players, the negative pop growth effect is not that easy to disappear.
On a crowded planet, the events will not be triggered. The level 1~3 modifer is just an alert to warn the players that you need to build new buildings. Only the last modifier take the punishment, and stop players from farming pop in a long period.


The solution may make the Egalitarian less attractive because its high possibility of automatic resettlement. Maybe we can "give the wrongdoer a way out" that in Egalitarian empire the events will not be triggered and players can try pop farmer in an Egalitarian empire. Well, it is just a joke lol.
I just want to point out that there are still many ways to solve the S-curve cheese, and each way is much better than empire pop penalty. Empire pop penalty does not solve it at all. If I have spare time, maybe I'll try to make a mod for this.

And if the dev hope to restrict the players to spam on a lot of planets, the best way is to make the administrative scale non linear. Since now administrative scale is growed linearly, and players can provide bureaucratic centers output linearly, then administrative scale does little impact, and players always escape the administrative penalty. If players need much more bureaucratic centers as they expand, players will be more cautious. This can balance the conquring too.

If the dev really want to reduce the pop number, then just double the pop output and half the jobs provided by districts and buildings, a lot of people have mentioned.
 
As this seems to be a semi official thread watched by devs, I'd like to add my voice to the crowd.

I'm playing as fanatic purifier and trying out the "become the crisis" feature. As I automatically purge any pop on newly conquered planets, I'm stuck with huge barely populated planets.

Maybe add + pop growth to purifiers and devouring swarms, as they get seriously left behind when they grow due to not purging? Other ideas in the thread are welcome as well, however in it's current state, it's rather frustrating.
 
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I just finished my first game in 3.0 and came straight here. The new system is good for performance, but TERRIBLE for gameplay. by the year 2525 I didn't had a single planet full planet (usually have several by this point).
How? My Homeworld is usually full at 2250 to 2300 in version 3.01.

You need to start to build just enough city districts to open all building slots on all of your planets to promote growth and create further jobs when needed.
 
If your playstyle isn't fun for you, is it a good playstyle?
Objectively, yes, relatively, no. And as the person actually making the decision to sit down and play the game, the relative portion should always take precedence.

This is exactly the problem, however, because certain playstyles I had before are now cut off arbitrarily at a certain and feel counter intuitive as hell. What the devs have done here is limit the fun in the game, limited playstyles, and made things feel incredibly janky and forced. Playing to win and conquer and expand as fast as possible, with half filled breeder planets filled with housing and not much else with only a few planets actually having any real value... that's how the game is played now. Which is fine in competitive games that end before 2300 but for everything else it's... kind of dire.

While I am happy for the competitive mp crowd who, albeit i'm not sure it's intentional on the part of the devs, now have a gameplay tailored to them, they are unfortunately a minority, and the game can only suffer for it.
 
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One thing I don't think anyone has mentioned yet, is how much extra power the Megastructures like the Dyson Sphere and Matter Collector give now. I rushed them in my recent game, and they pretty much allowed me to move all of my jobs to industry / research, vastly increasing the power of my empire. It feels like a huge achievement to finish them now.

You really need to change up your empire when you build them, though.. in the old days I'd just leave my pops doing what they were doing, and all new pops while building megastructures went to industry / research. That's too slow now, need a radical restructuring of your empire when you build them.

Which is kinda cool, and had fun with it :)
 
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Good to know.

I have to ask (though have no expectation of getting a reply :) I'm not sure anyone would be allowed to answer this question) Do you think a major rework of pops and jobs, vis a vis tiles etc, is a realistic possibility, from the devs point of view?

What I mean is, how realistic in this game, is it that we might see pops replaced with a system more akin to vicky for example? Or a hybrid system?

I feel it might be the most logical course of action, given that late game performance is so bad in large part due to the pop/jobs mechanics and the AI does struggle to adequately handle the way pops and jobs works now. But while it might seem logical to me (and a few others atleast) Is that too large an undertaking for the devs? Is that something we are more likely to see in a sequel, rather than in this game? Is even something the devs feel would be desireable?
Haha of course I can respond, the response is "I don't know", my personal feeling on the matter is that there's only so many times we can overhaul systems before maybe we should ask some questions about why we keep feeling the need to do that.
 
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So far I want to be sure from some stuff from this update (sorry I don't write very good english, I am omelette du fromage...)

1) Make or repair ring world is now totally useless, same for more one Ecumenopolis

2) Terraform planets to have a lot of world become useless and destroy your economy because at the end they will be empty

3) Fanatic purificator can't play anymore because they can't pass the maximum "pop growth cap"

3) (this one is gold for my point of view)Fanatic purificator lose pop growth when they purge (how dev let pass this thing....)

4) You can "exploit" pop growth with vassal or nihilistic acquisition. Or should I say, you need to play like this

5) War and conquest become mandatory

6) You can't win if you play economy or pacifist

7) Fighting against a crisis or become a crisis is no more fun because the fact you can't have a big empire

8) Dev didn't give us the way pop growth work (please feed us with math.)
 
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9) You can't make a federation and be a spy empire because spy are Envoy and not leader? And you have very few Envoy. (For me is a not a good idea because I don't feel """pain""" when one envoy die, but I'am "impacted" when a leader with good skill and/or a good LV die. This would be a good idea, send Spy in low level empire and when is become more powerful, send it in big empire. But it's just me idea)


10) For what I see on the net, pop growth is boosted not when the planet have jobs or housing available. But when district are not constructed. (For me it makes no sense and it’s a very bad idea)
But in dev diary 190 why have this "By decoupling the building unlocks from population growth, it makes it much easier to “prebuild” a planet to varying degrees. It removes some of the tedium of waiting for that last pop to finish growing before a slot unlocks [..]"
But for me, now is worse. I just can't prebuild a colony for 2 reason
-1 that will destroy the bonus of free district on the pop growth
-2 I have so few pop that every job is vital for my economy, so I need to check all the time the pop on my planet. My micromanaging is far worse and hard than before.

11) (this one is not so important) worker jobs placement's is very hard if a planet do a lot of stuff, because workers don't automatically go on free resource jobs with negative income. And when you select a job all workers go on this job. Why can't do a click = +1 minimum worker

12) Ultimate question, did the dev want us to play like this and punish those who want to conquer all the galaxy ? Because I fell that

(double post because for some reason I couldn’t send the whole message)
 
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I love your mod thats 10 time better that what we have now and it feel more 'natural' the last thing i wish you could add is another mod for reducing the spam of habitat just for making farm pop ( so a rework of habitat and void born origine) and this would be a most better stellaris that i played since 2.0.
I do have a mod that makes habitats unbuildable for non-Void Dweller empires, but if you want something to just limit habitats rather than eliminate them for non-Void Dwellers, I'd recommend this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2047398134&searchtext=habitat, which limits the number of habitats all empires can build (Void Dwellers have a higher cap, but still capped).
 
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I for one am glad that the total and utter domination of Ecumenopolis is over.
Considering resource outputs are much more important now to make up for lack of pops, they're probably just as strong (if not stronger) because of their 20% resource production bonus, although their pop growth certainly is less impactful.
It's funny, people have been clamoring for total empire pop count affecting growth for over a year. Now that it's here people are angry. LMAO this forum is a gift that keeps on giving
I don't think I saw too many people clamoring for it (although I only pop in and out). I for one thought it was a TERRIBLE idea on the dev diary talking about it, in regards to how it would affect habitats and 'building tall'. I now think it might have been an even worse idea than when they changed Empire Sprawl and added Beauracrat jobs I think.
So you can’t play wide anymore basically? Hello refund.
Kind of hurts 'tall' too. Max population in a confined area is still going to hurt you as much as having a population over a wider area. It acts more as an 'anti-snowball' penalty to allow behind Empires a chance to catch up/recover - because they screwed their old one with Sprawl by introducing 'crats. Except with far more disastrous consequences imo.
 
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Considering resource outputs are much more important now to make up for lack of pops, they're probably just as strong (if not stronger) because of their 20% resource production bonus, although their pop growth certainly is less impactful.

I don't think I saw too many people clamoring for it (although I only pop in and out). I for one thought it was a TERRIBLE idea on the dev diary talking about it, in regards to how it would affect habitats and 'building tall'. I now think it might have been an even worse idea than when they changed Empire Sprawl and added Beauracrat jobs I think.

Kind of hurts 'tall' too. Max population in a confined area is still going to hurt you as much as having a population over a wider area. It acts more as an 'anti-snowball' penalty to allow behind Empires a chance to catch up/recover - because they screwed their old one with Sprawl by introducing 'crats. Except with far more disastrous consequences imo.
I believe the greatest way to 'anti-snowball' is to utilize the administrative scale, however now it does not work since players can build administrative centres but the administrative scale is still linearly growing.
 
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I believe the greatest way to 'anti-snowball' is to utilize the administrative scale, however now it does not work since players can build administrative centres but the administrative scale is still linearly growing.
Yeah, I was not a fan of when they introduced 'Crats (and just for the reason that they liked the flavor of it... Not because they thought it would be good for the game :rolleyes:). The pre 2.0, or just pre 'Crat admin sprawl at least did what it was supposed too by having larger empires have slower research and tradition gain in exchange for their massive productivity base (sure, not enough to make the Meta any less focused on going as wide as possible because Conquer Conquer Conquer, but it allowed things like the One Planet or 'Core Planets Only' play styles to be different and somewhat competitive).
 
overextension has no impact on alloy production or influence gain, so sprawl never really stopped snowballing.
 
People complain that the "-10% Empire Sprawl Penalty" bonus from dictatorships is useless because it's too easy to avoid having the penalty at all anyway. Maybe the answer to bureaucrats being too powerful is they should simply give a bonus more like this. You could do some *handwave math* to make sure it's too difficult/impractical to get to -100%. Not only would this make dictatorship better because it now acts as free bureaucrats, but it means that the value of bureaucrats themselves don't really come into play unless you are well over the current cap to begin with.
 
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Yeah, I was not a fan of when they introduced 'Crats (and just for the reason that they liked the flavor of it... Not because they thought it would be good for the game :rolleyes:). The pre 2.0, or just pre 'Crat admin sprawl at least did what it was supposed too by having larger empires have slower research and tradition gain in exchange for their massive productivity base (sure, not enough to make the Meta any less focused on going as wide as possible because Conquer Conquer Conquer, but it allowed things like the One Planet or 'Core Planets Only' play styles to be different and somewhat competitive).
I know different people like different gameplay, and some players may hate the non-linear administrative scale penalty because they love to expand and do not like to consider too much.
So, if, I say, if the dev considers the administrative scale to become non-linear, they can leave an option to set the parameter about the administative coefficient.
But I will reject the empire pop penalty totally because the concept is just a nonsense. Even there is an option to let me set the coefficient to zero, I will still feel unreasonable about its existence.
 
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