So I posted this in the latest Dev Diary thread, but it seemed worthy of a thread on its own.
Based on what we've seen so far, it looks like POPs will have the following 'stats': Size, Species, Ethics and Traits, and Happiness.
Size looks like it will normally be maxed out at 50/50. So a POP's size will be mostly irrelevant. Instead the size of a planet's population will be based on the number of (50/50) POPs that are living there. And the number of POPs on a planet will be limited based on the amount of tiles for POPs to live and work on. To a seeming maximum of 25 POPs on a fully developed planet of the maximum size of 25 tiles.
I'm mostly fine with this. But what I'm missing is class divisions. It seems like POPs will differ on traits and ethics, but not on whether they are lower, middle, or upper class. Which greatly weakens the breadth of the societal simulation.
While Ethics and Traits makes for a somewhat complex societal simulation, what the removal of 'class' does is that it removes the economic aspect of societal division. Basically, it seems like there won't be any distinction between poor and rich people in Stellaris. The closest things will be the overall development of the planets people are living on, but that obviously is not the same.
Meanwhile, we are seeing today that this division has actually become more prominent with technological advances, and is still at the core of the majority of our societal issues today. Removing it really makes it likely Stellaris' population simulation will not feel in any way like representing a real society, which is a shame. From a gameplay point of view, POPs will be more like CK2 vassals than actual masses of people. (As much as I love the CK2 system.)
But, I think this can be fixed without any rigorous upheaval of the current system. You do this by taking a page out of Civ 4's system and its use of specialists.
How it would work is that first you add a lower-middle-upper class division to POPs, so every POP is always one of the three.
At its root, a planet can support one Middle Class POP for each available tile, and Middle Class POPs are always tile-bound. So Middle Class POPs would basically just be the POP system as it looks like it is now.
But through policies or other means, you can switch some Middle Class POPs to Lower Class POPs (which are also tile-bound) and in return for every two Lower Class POPs the planet gets one 'specialist' Upper Class POP which is not bound to any tiles.
These specialist Upper Class POPs then provide additional benefits like increased research or resources or production. Of course, the downside is that lower class POPs are less happy and more likely to support more egalitarian ethics.
In addition, for extra complexity you could expand it beyond just a local planet-based system: you could have certain empire-wide policies which trade extra lower class POPs in distant worlds for extra Upper Class POPs in your core worlds. This would create a source of conflict, but also a great incentive for you to keep unproductive periphery worlds in your empire. Because they'll give you extra Upper Class POPs in your maxed out hyper-productive core worlds.
The more I think about it the more I like it, though I guess Paradox has already chosen otherwise. Though even if it's not in the base game, it might always end up in a DLC
Based on what we've seen so far, it looks like POPs will have the following 'stats': Size, Species, Ethics and Traits, and Happiness.
Size looks like it will normally be maxed out at 50/50. So a POP's size will be mostly irrelevant. Instead the size of a planet's population will be based on the number of (50/50) POPs that are living there. And the number of POPs on a planet will be limited based on the amount of tiles for POPs to live and work on. To a seeming maximum of 25 POPs on a fully developed planet of the maximum size of 25 tiles.
I'm mostly fine with this. But what I'm missing is class divisions. It seems like POPs will differ on traits and ethics, but not on whether they are lower, middle, or upper class. Which greatly weakens the breadth of the societal simulation.
While Ethics and Traits makes for a somewhat complex societal simulation, what the removal of 'class' does is that it removes the economic aspect of societal division. Basically, it seems like there won't be any distinction between poor and rich people in Stellaris. The closest things will be the overall development of the planets people are living on, but that obviously is not the same.
Meanwhile, we are seeing today that this division has actually become more prominent with technological advances, and is still at the core of the majority of our societal issues today. Removing it really makes it likely Stellaris' population simulation will not feel in any way like representing a real society, which is a shame. From a gameplay point of view, POPs will be more like CK2 vassals than actual masses of people. (As much as I love the CK2 system.)
But, I think this can be fixed without any rigorous upheaval of the current system. You do this by taking a page out of Civ 4's system and its use of specialists.
How it would work is that first you add a lower-middle-upper class division to POPs, so every POP is always one of the three.
At its root, a planet can support one Middle Class POP for each available tile, and Middle Class POPs are always tile-bound. So Middle Class POPs would basically just be the POP system as it looks like it is now.
But through policies or other means, you can switch some Middle Class POPs to Lower Class POPs (which are also tile-bound) and in return for every two Lower Class POPs the planet gets one 'specialist' Upper Class POP which is not bound to any tiles.
These specialist Upper Class POPs then provide additional benefits like increased research or resources or production. Of course, the downside is that lower class POPs are less happy and more likely to support more egalitarian ethics.
In addition, for extra complexity you could expand it beyond just a local planet-based system: you could have certain empire-wide policies which trade extra lower class POPs in distant worlds for extra Upper Class POPs in your core worlds. This would create a source of conflict, but also a great incentive for you to keep unproductive periphery worlds in your empire. Because they'll give you extra Upper Class POPs in your maxed out hyper-productive core worlds.
The more I think about it the more I like it, though I guess Paradox has already chosen otherwise. Though even if it's not in the base game, it might always end up in a DLC
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