Because you aren't. You do not need a large number of pops to max out a typical planet's food production and you only need a handful of food producing planets in an empire.
Sure, you don't need many. Instead of a single planet with, say, 12 food districts (24 farmers), you instead take that same planet and build 18 food districts, and employ 18 anglers instead. And on another planet, since you're making 36 trade value, you free up 6 technicians and 3 generator districts. You built 3 extra districts, paid 0 extra minerals, and employed 12 fewer pops (30 -> 18).
Remember, this discussion started with "Anglers doesn't make your empire better at producing food" and "Anglers doesn't make you better at producing food than an Empire without Anglers outside of the uncapping of districts".
Anglers demonstrably makes you better at producing food. If, for something like Catalytic Processing, you need to scale up food production, Anglers makes it so much easier. Your best food worlds produce roughly the same amount, with much fewer pops. And every other world is just as good as your best food worlds. since deposits no longer matter.
Only in the very early game does this pop efficency of yours matter, and that pop efficency boost is not even 66%, it's 33%.
It's 66%, in the early game, unless you for some reason don't feel like collecting trade, or you value energy so lowly that you literally don't care about it at all. Again: 3 anglers do the work of 4 farmers and 1 technician, in 3 districts instead of 2.5, in the early game.
Even if you're trying to argue
just for food, rephrase the question: if a regular empire is employing 8 farmers to make 48 food, and also has at least 3 technicians, how much food can an Anglers empire make while still keeping everything else equal? 1.66x as much more, by employing 10 anglers (80 food and 20 trade value). The 20 trade value replaces the 2 reassigned technicians and pays for the increased upkeep, so energy output stays the same. You build 6 more agriculture districts, but you build 1 fewer energy districts and you have 8 extra trade value which covers the upkeep.
If you want more food: Anglers makes 66% more by letting you reassign technicians (and still end up with more total energy). If you want to make the same food, Anglers lets you make the same output with 40% fewer pops (1.66x better pop efficiency).
Until you bring in boosting buildings, it's 66% more efficient, no matter how you slice it.
Once Food-boosting buildings are built on the planet it even drops further to 20%, and the fact that you only get 1 job per district and hydroponics building starts to seriously lower your production ceiling.
Once you have boosting buildings, it drops to roughly 50%. 2 food and 2 energy extra, compared to 8 total for both technicians and farmers. Once you have orbital ring buildings, it's 40%.****
****Once you start talking about advanced tech or traditions, the tradeoff of energy vs. trade can swing wildly one way or the other. If you pursue the energy techs and don't invest further into trade, trade will severely fall off, with technicians making ~24 to 28 each, while the trade is maybe worth 3 (from stability bonuses and maybe a stock exchange), so it's worth only 1/8 of a technician instead of the 1/4 or 1/5 that it would be without % tech boosts. That leaves you at only 32% improved efficiency for Anglers, instead of 40%. If you invest into trade, though, you can potentially get up to 1.5x from pop traits, +150% trade modifiers, and another ~1.8x multiplier from using the trade value, so that 2 trade can be worth ~8.1, around 1/3 of a technician, even one with late game tech, leaving you with 50% improved efficiency even after accounting for the boosting buildings.
More importantly, though, in late game, the efficiency improvement matters less since you only need ~1/24 pops to be a farmer, instead of ~1/6. But that's true of most civics that give flat bonuses: late game techs make almost everything else irrelevant.
So then what do you do with all those Pearl Diver jobs you're wasting?
If you just close them... nothing. Nothing happens to them, and it doesn't matter. You can pretend the civic does nothing except give Angler jobs, and it works fine. You take your 66% improved early efficiency and 32-50% improvd late game efficiency for farming/energy, and go home. It works just fine. Again, this whole discussion was about whether or not Anglers were better at making food... which they so obvious are that I'm still very confused as to why I have to keep typing this out.
But a pearl diver is more efficient than a regular Artisan (roughly halfway between a Artisan and an Artificer), so you should use them.
In the early game:
- Artificers use 4.8 minerals (on a factory world) and make 7 CG plus 2 trade.
- That's 1.2 miners in upkeep (assuming mining designation roughly cancels habitability to keep things around 0% net modifiers).
- The district needs 1 energy upkeep per pop, and 0.5 per miner, so that's ~1.6 energy (in aggregate), needing another ~.29 technicians in upkeep.
- 2.49 pops make 7 CG and 2 trade.
- If you replace technicians with the trade it's 2.16 pops make 7 CG (3.2 CG per pop).
- Pearl Divers (on a non-factory world) use 4 minerals and 3 food to make 6 CG and 2 trade.
- 1 miner in upkeep.
- .375 anglers in upkeep (though that angler also makes an incidental .75 trade).
- 1.5 energy in district upkeep, and the Pearl Diver comes district-upkeep-free since we're charging it all to the anglers (in both this comparison, and the angler-farmer comparison up above). That's .27 technicians.
- 2.65 pops make 6 CG and 2.75 trade.
- With technician replacement, it's 2.19 pops make 6 CG (2.7 CG per pop).
- Artisans (on a factory world) use 4.8 minerals to make 6 CG.
- 1.2 miners.
- 1.6 energy, .29 technicians.
- 2.49 pops make 6 CG, or 2.4 CG per pop.
Like MC, Pearl Divers save you minerals and sprawl on districts, as well. Every two Pearl Divers you employ instead of leaving closed saves you one district of sprawl, mineral cost, and upkeep, since you don't have to build an industrial zone. It's roughly the same as the way that the free building slots from MC saves you on district of sprawl/minerals/upkeep (by saving you city districts). If you have 2 metallurgists for every Artificer, the ratio is even the same. If you're tech rushing (so that actually have more CG specialists than that 2:1 ratio), then Anglers actually saves you more districts.
Too lazy to do the late game comparison. This was tedious enough as it is, and late game math has multiple scenarios for trade vs. energy upkeep. Suffice to say that the difference between all of them shrinks (as miners/anglers/technicians get more efficient), and Pearl divers do drop off until they're roughly the same as Artisans, unless you go all in on a trade build. They do need to spend twice as much on boosting buildings, but since a late game boosting building should cover around 50 artisans or 25 pearl divers, that's a difference of .08 Rare Crystals per job. Roughly .25 fewer CG per pop (out of 12), from extra crystal/energy upkeep for the building. Though the extra buildings do eat into some of your district savings.
And for late game, the Artisans don't go away. You can still use them, and leave Anglers as just anglers. You're just giving up the free districts if you do so.
You are optimizing too narrow of a system and getting a result that isn't actually correct in the wider context.
I'm not really sure what this is supposed to mean. You're still trying to argue that a civic that gives +2 food per job somehow doesn't make you better at making food. I'm still baffled by this.
Are you trying to say that all your extra food gets eaten up by the pearl divers, so, in aggregate you aren't making more? If so: why not actually say that? And you can just... choose not to use Pearl Divers. Pearl Divers give you the
option to use food for CG. But they're purely optional.
