Are planets and population actually useful ?

[Vincenzo_667]

Having a sh*tload of planets is actually a very effective way of maintaining infinite resources and to spread your borders all across the galaxy. You find an empty space of systems with habitable planets > spam some colonies, make a new sector, pour some credits and minerals down their throat, set sector to give you 75% of what they make and profit. Going over core planet limit can be done, but it's painfull as every 1 planet over limit gives you -10% to everything. I actually don't have too many issues with sectors as such, although it's true the AI builds unnecessary buildings or wastes tile resources at times, but it's still less tedium than managing 130 planets (that's the number of habited planets in my empire right now, accorind to the emp stats tab).

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

You can if you wish streamline a smaller empire for huge technological rush if that is your thing, certainly easier than if you spend most of your resources on expansion and war.

I also would not advice using exploitive mechanics such as the robot colonization and giving outposts to sectors... it really wont make the game very fun in the long run. These things will be fixed eventually anyway. It's your game and you do as you wish, I'm just saying...

If you expand you obviously will make sure you have enough pops dedicated for science or you will fall behind, but if you build for science then a good base of pop actually can be quite beneficial, but you can't expand like crazy.

You will need to make sure that you have a high happiness which lead to more science and less ethos drift, so don't colonize planets with low habitability and make sure you can raise the habitability of planets above 80% to get happy modifiers.

You obviously can go through the game conquering everything if that is your goal with the game... the victory goals in the game has NOTHING to do with your personal goals. This is a paradox game and your goals are whatever you make them out to be. There simply is no one right strategy to play the game and if you want to play a small research powerhouse empire with 5-10 planets then go for it. Victory conditions in the game are just for players that need a guidance if they can't set their own goals.

Anyway... more pops usually mean more industry and a bigger potential for war production.

In my last game I went with free though, social welfare and a good deal of other edict in my rather vast empire. I had the second most pop even if I was relatively small but extremely high happiness, mainly due to policies, free migration and so on. I also put allot of effort into research.

There also is a bug where negative ethos divergence tend to get pops to neutral status which is not intended... when they fix this you might see some even bigger problems in empires that expand too fast and with low happiness and big ethos divergence.

My point is... as long as you can keep your pops with high happiness values you can expand liberally, otherwise you will take some serious hits to your economy and research.

 

[grommile]

It is a bit weird that Paradox went back to tying size and tech again though considering they dropped it after EU3.

It's not weird at all. EU4's size-independent tech system is based on there being a resource for which you have very limited scope to improve your supply by expansion: Monarch Power (everyone gets at least 9/month totalled across the categories, nobody gets more than 39/month totalled across the categories (OK, hordes and events complicate it)). Victoria 2's size-independent tech system is based on literacy, POP composition, and rank category. EU3 and Stellaris both govern technological research using resources whose production increases quasi-linearly as you grow (monthly ducat income in EU3, tech points in Stellaris), so for game balance reasons it's pretty much essential to make tech cost increase as you grow.

 

[sovapid]

Also, if you want to have a large population and keep up with technology, prioritize research agreements with other systems to get the 25% discount on science.

I did this in my last game.

 

[yezhanquan]

You'll want pops at border worlds, especially if you're directly bordering someone. Pops help push borders.

 

[Akka le Vil]

Despite the interesting discussion, I think people are losing sight that it's not all about the tech, it's about the fact that pop, which is usually the basis of what even makes a nation, seems to be not really useful in Stellaris and even often just counter-productive.

Population brings basically all the problem you can get in your empire (happiness, revolts, ethic drift, starvation/food, etc.), but it's use is reduced to working tiles which bring the same resources than what you can get for much less hassle in space.
The very fact that people think of abuse like putting a single robot on a planet, tends to prove that yes population as a whole is annoying and best being limited - when you'd think that it's the source of an empire power.

So again, I'd say it should be used in much more situations and for many more things, so a player can feel he's actually expanding his power by growing his pop, instead of only preparing the headaches to come.

 

[yezhanquan]

The thing is: how much resources can you mine from space? Well yes, a single robot on a planet can project your borders, but it will be limited. And as others have mentioned, your industry base will be unrivalled.

The only time I face revolts was integrated an alien species with an opposite ethos from mine.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

[...]
It is a bit weird that Paradox went back to tying size and tech again though considering they dropped it after EU3.

I am not too unhappy, considering that it worked really well in EU3, particularly for Stability.

 

[genrtul]

Well, OP doesn't want us drifting in this direction, but I just wanted to say that having more pops does help your research. Which most people probably knew but maybe didn't know how to mathematically show. Basically if you consider a function of your research cost per pop, so how much research each of your pops needs to contribute on average you get something like: (1+0.02x)/(x+10) where x is the amount of pops you have over 10. This is a function that is always decreasing with x. Even so, it is worth considering playing in such a way that you minimize inefficient pops.

 

[yezhanquan]

Indeed, inefficient pops are the real issue here, particularly if you have open borders with species that don't quite share your ethos.

 

[Less2]

Mining stations are certainly one of the most efficient investments in terms of minerals per resource return, problem is that if you only invest in mining stations you run out of things to invest your minerals in around 2205.

If you can find a system with infinite places to build stations in, the station-only strategy would hold.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Despite the interesting discussion, I think people are losing sight that it's not all about the tech, it's about the fact that pop, which is usually the basis of what even makes a nation, seems to be not really useful in Stellaris and even often just counter-productive.

Population brings basically all the problem you can get in your empire (happiness, revolts, ethic drift, starvation/food, etc.), but it's use is reduced to working tiles which bring the same resources than what you can get for much less hassle in space.
The very fact that people think of abuse like putting a single robot on a planet, tends to prove that yes population as a whole is annoying and best being limited - when you'd think that it's the source of an empire power.

So again, I'd say it should be used in much more situations and for many more things, so a player can feel he's actually expanding his power by growing his pop, instead of only preparing the headaches to come.

I don't agree... it is one of the key mechanics of the game that pops should pose a double edged sword. The thing is that pops are actually a bit timid right now. Ethos drift has some bugs and slave revolts will never happen for example.

Using loopholes are pretty much cheating and your are only cheating yourself (unless you play multi-player) and not actually engaging with the game mechanics as they are intended. Who are you then trying to fool, yourself?!?

The purpose is that you should struggle if you expand too fast or conquer too much too fast. A stable empire of happy people will be able to quickly outgrow someone that conquer their territory and end up in never ending revolts, as long as they are left alone to grow slowly.

How you deal with these problems and how you like to approach it is up to you. There is nothing wrong with having an unstable empire with bad research, this is an actual challenge in itself and can be equally fun as anything else.

Personally I'm into heavy role-playing and never do things I feel lie outside what I think my empire would do in any certain situation from the given knowledge at that time. So I really try to disregard previous gameplay knowledge and overly min/max in favour of my empires main character, this certainly give me a greater challenge and more fun game.

Don't be so hanged up on what is more effective, especially if it is an exploit (cheat?), who are you trying to beat?!?

Ask your self one question... are you playing to WIN or playing to for the sake of PLAYING?

Either way can be FUN for you but I rarely find it entertaining to beat an AI I already know I can beat ten times over if I just use the most efficient way to play and completely disregard any role-play. The game just become stale and boring to me and my actions in the game usually make little sense, as a player I'm not restricted in my choices as an AI empire is. We are just not playing on the same playing field.

 

[evilcat]

Interesting analys. But i think that pops still pays off as long as your tech and general mineral investment is high enought to provide building upgrade.
Each field generally have 1 or 2 food/production.
Power plant is +5 from plant +1 from field.
Food is +5 from farm + 1 from field. for 2,5 energy
Lab IV is 6 science for 2,5 energy
So 1 Farm, 2 Plants, 3 Labs nets +2 energy and +18 science. on 6 pops
And this is low estimation, since generally we can better fields than 1 pop, or have adjecent bonus.
So new pops are good for science as long as 18 science is more than 12% of your pop 10 total science. Having 150 science from just homeworld is a bit impossible.

The game has interesting mechanics, Early on minerals are very important and our limit. But late it is more about balancing energy and catching up with science. SO feel free to to respec your old buildings.

 

[yezhanquan]

Don't be so hanged up on what is more effective, especially if it is an exploit (cheat?), who are you trying to beat?!?

The late-game threats? It's like the Mongols from CK 2: you blob hard so that you can beat them when they come.

 

[Andeign]

Pops may add all these negative modifiers that you have to deal with, but what I see as incredibly useful is the increase to naval capacity. Even if you want to RP as a peaceful species who is just interested in exploration and research, you're going to be royally farked when the Unbidden show up and start killing everything.

Sure, Spaceports give you some benefit but Pops will keep you relevant.

I will add that in one of my current games (Ironman of course) I get 162 Energy Credits from mining stations and 993 from Pops/buildings. Numbers are similar for minerals, and I make over 1k per month. Once you progress far enough down the tech tree most tiles provide 10+ of a resource. The most efficient pops from from conquering a Fallen empire, with each pop providing a minimum of 16 of each resource.

 

[raikaria]

Aside from the fact that you need planets to win [And 40% of colonization planets owned usually comes before wiping out every other empire]

Also the increase is 2% per pop over 10 in your empire. It is not difficult for a large empire to be generateing more research than is needed to offset that. More planets means more research points anyway, and more territory means more orbital stations. That modifer exists so that smaller empires [such as vassals] don't get completely left behind in the dust in tech and therefor have no chance even if they strike while the large empire is weak; or if they band together.

 

[Slug-thing]

Going back to the point of the thread, I think what's needed are some features to make population more interesting and useful. A trade system could certainly make populated planets more interesting. Populations could have more effect on alliances, federations, and other diplomatic functions. Maybe it could affect chance of a tech card showing up, since more people equals more chance of creativity. Perhaps some social techs would be easier/faster if one's population was high. This would provide another trade-off between wide/tall empires.

Population size could affect diplomatic relations in other ways. Some empires might approve of large populations, increasing relations; others would be the obverse. An empire might ally with you at one point, then decide to leave the alliance when your relative population (or economy, tech level, etc) sizes chance significantly. Some diplomatic options might only occur when you reach a certain size.

If trade made bigger pop = bigger economy, it would probably need some mechanism like the increased science cost, for the same reasons.

At present you can give yourself purely roleplaying goals, such as multiple happy races on each world, or racial purity and maximum slave output, but often at the cost of 'optimal strategy'. It would be nice to have some interesting benefits from various arrangements of populations.

 

[evilcat]

I think that part of population being not exacly interesting is that we cant transfer food from one planet to planet in any way, not even with caravans or transport ship.
Also unless we have specific trait we cant really boost our happiness above 80% which opens so fun zone to balance happiness for extra % boost.

 

[-Marauder-]

The thing is: how much resources can you mine from space? Well yes, a single robot on a planet can project your borders, but it will be limited. And as others have mentioned, your industry base will be unrivalled.

The only time I face revolts was integrated an alien species with an opposite ethos from mine.

A lot actually, planet mining doesn't really become efficient till level 3 or 4 mines. Even after that it's not good individually but only because of numbers.

Aside from the fact that you need planets to win [And 40% of colonization planets owned usually comes before wiping out every other empire]

Also the increase is 2% per pop over 10 in your empire. It is not difficult for a large empire to be generateing more research than is needed to offset that. More planets means more research points anyway, and more territory means more orbital stations. That modifer exists so that smaller empires [such as vassals] don't get completely left behind in the dust in tech and therefor have no chance even if they strike while the large empire is weak; or if they band together.

2% means that for a tech that prior did cost 1440 you'll now have to pay 28,8 more. Per pop. So a pop needs to on average generate 28,8 research. Now look at the 1/1/1 basic science lab. Now look back at that 28,8. Now back to that basic science lab.

You're welcome.

And yes I do know they generate that 1/1/1 several times in that span. But by minimalizing population while maximilizing space claimed swell as research stations you can have your cake and eat it to. Which means putting down a single robot to sit on that planet while you get the space just the same and can build all those research stations everywhere.

 

[evilcat]

2% means that for a tech that prior did cost 1440 you'll now have to pay 28,8 more. Per pop. So a pop needs to on average generate 28,8 research. Now look at the 1/1/1 basic science lab. Now look back at that 28,8. Now back to that basic science lab.

28,8 is a total icrease.
1/1/1 is monthy increase.
So after 10 months it will pay off.