How is decided which pop is next to grow?

[Monkbel]

I have this weird situation that for the last many years, on all my planets, the only pops that are growing are non-main species, but instead a species of another empire.
They have -20% habitability on my planet type (mine is Arid, theirs is Desert).
I don't have migration treaty with them (used to have, but canceled it).

Still, they keep breeding. Both they and my species have +10% growth perk.

Why is it happening and how to stop?

 

[Armed Avacado]

The current formula prioritizes under-represented species, those with low proportions in society. Habitability and possibly citizenship status are also involved.

I would like, in fact I very much hope, to see a better formula in future updates.

 

[The Boz]

In a stupid manner.

 

[Korvash]

It's supposed to take habitability and citizen status into account. but at the moment only the POPs with the lowest representatation are grown untill an equal split is achieved. Or at least it seems that way

If you click ion the growing POP on the planet screen you can choose and lock a certain POP to grow. For example, you can lock in your ruling species. This does seem to reset at random intervals though, so make sure you check the planet screen of all the planets you want only a specific POP to grow.

Many posts concerning this matter have been made, but it seems to not get any attention from PDX, even when developers are tagged.

 

[Ramiel]

The current formula prioritizes under-represented species, those with low proportions in society.

It doesn't just prioritize them, they're literally the only pops that will grow at all. Soon as you get a few xeno pops in your space then bam, core species stops breeding entirely. The system in general is fantastic, but this weighting is so ridiculous it's killing the game. Hope it gets fixed very soon.

 

[Korvash]

It doesn't just prioritize them, they're literally the only pops that will grow at all. Soon as you get a few xeno pops in your space then bam, core species stops breeding entirely. The system in general is fantastic, but this weighting is so ridiculous it's killing the game. Hope it gets fixed very soon.

Not killing the game per se, but it does kill immersion. People are too fast calling something gamebreaking, it only breaks the game if it become litterally unplayable. And while I definatly agree that this POP growth this is bugged as hell, the game is still playable and there is a work-around available, you can still play the game .

 

[wickermoon]

The current formula prioritizes under-represented species, those with low proportions in society. Habitability and possibly citizenship status are also involved.

I would like, in fact I very much hope, to see a better formula in future updates.

It apparently isn't, if what OP says is true (and I don't see any reason not to believe OP). Also, in my first game, my "bio-engineered" pops keep growing, although they are the majority in my empire. It doesn't seem to prioritize under-represented at all.

 

[The Boz]

It apparently isn't, if what OP says is true (and I don't see any reason not to believe OP). Also, in my first game, my "bio-engineered" pops keep growing, although they are the majority in my empire. It doesn't seem to prioritize under-represented at all.

Migration/Population controls, habitability, stratified society?

 

[WhapXI]

Pop growth as it is is kinda silly.

From what I can tell all species will grow and decline until their numbers are exactly equal. This leads to the silly situation where as soon as you get a single refugee pop or enter a migration treaty with even a one-planet minor, for a good long while these pops will be literally the only ones that grow on literally all of your planets.

I was playing a bio-asc UNE, so I gave every species the same traits so I wouldn't lose anything by having a total hodge-podge of different species with no consistently growing pops. Around the mid-game I had something like 30 species. There were a few conquests, a few migration treaties, a few uplifts, and then crossbreeds of all. Plus a few migrants going next door to my spiritual friends and then coming back psychic, the gene template of which could then be applied empire-wide. Most of my pops were Psychic, Robust, Very Strong, Intelligent, Communal, and Conservationist. I was doing pretty well.

So luckily it didn't matter so much that on every new world I'd settle after this point, not a single human pop would ever seem to grow. They would literally grow one each of my many species before then growing a second each and so forth. It got the point that my full and crowded capital actually had humans declining so that more xenos could grow. No doubt that over a long enough period of time it would all have become demographically perfectly balanced, with each planet trying to have like three pops of each species.

 

[Maldazar]

Imho it should NOT strife to create an equal spread of species, it should strife to keep the current ratio...

So, if you have 60% your pop, 30% pop X and 10% pop Y, then, given that all other modifiers (habitability / citizenship) are equal, the script should try to maintain this ratio, so in every 10 pops that grow, on avarage 6 should be your pop, 3 pop X and 1 pop Y, given that it would make SENSE for bigger populations to have more offspring and so grow faster.

 

[Moonglow87]

There are a few mods that try to tackle this "issue" you could take a look:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1592077532
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1589935363

Somehow this was Paradox less boring design decision

 

[wickermoon]

Migration/Population controls, habitability, stratified society?

No pop control, migration control neither. Habitability is the same for both species, I don't have a stratified society, I think.

Also, what I noticed: I have 3 species in my empire. My original, my bio-eng originals and and allied empire's species(let's name them "the others"). People keep saying that an empire will only ever grow the most under-represented, but at least in my first game that was not the case. The others had affinity for ice, my originals had an affinity for water, so quite different, and when I settled an ice world with the others, only they would grow on that planet. So I think habitability does play a role here. But as long as the habitability is the same it seems to prefer under-represented pops.

And no, it shouldn't do that and it shouldn't try to keep the same ratio. It should use a number of factors when deciding (like whether pop is already on that planet and how strong of a migrational pull the planet has, etc.), one of them being a random number generator if all else fails. This homogeneity is horrible.

Is there a way to mod this calculation?

 

[Armed Avacado]

I made a post in the suggestion forum with the best idea I could come up with.

Trying to preserve the current ratio is a bad idea. First, this would make it impossible for new migrant species to gain a large foothold. Secondly, that ratio may sometimes not be the ratio you want at all. Trying to reach the ratio you want and maintain that ratio is a micromanagement nightmare. (I used to do this with syncretic evolution, pre-2.2).

I think the selection should be weighted according to the current ratio of employment status for the species' on the planet. This way, a primarily mining planet will select for more of your strong/industrious species than your other species, which will be holding fewer jobs on the planet and may also have periods of time with unemployed pops.

This is all assuming, of course, that the algorithm for assigning jobs is working effectively. Fixing that algorithm is more important to me than this one.

 

[The Boz]

This is all assuming, of course, that the algorithm for assigning jobs is working effectively. Fixing that algorithm is more important to me than this one.

Don't think that algorithm is likely to be fixed if they insist on job and strata immobility.

 

[Leylos]

I second this, the current system is really stupid. I found a subterranean species and added them to my empire. They are rapid breeding, decadent and are in general always unhappy. Unfortunately they are the only species that is growing on all my planets.


It's even worse in my other game where I decided to capture some slaves. Unfortunately only the slaves are replicating now so slave unrest is pretty much unavoidable.

 

[Armed Avacado]

Don't think that algorithm is likely to be fixed if they insist on job and strata immobility.

I didn't say I wanted an efficient algorithm. Only an effective one. Anything that allows better qualified pops to displace jobs from less qualified pops, even if its slow. A bit of frictional unemployment is realistic, anyway. As long as pops are moving towards their ideal job. As it stands now, I'm not so certain.

 

[Person012345]

Basially, imagine the typical charicature of a nation run by "the evil SJWs" or whatever you can and that's pretty much how pop growth works now.

 

[The Boz]

I didn't say I wanted an efficient algorithm. Only an effective one. Anything that allows better qualified pops to displace jobs from less qualified pops, even if its slow. A bit of frictional unemployment is realistic, anyway. As long as pops are moving towards their ideal job. As it stands now, I'm not so certain.

*a bit of friction* in the order of a few months results in *years* on a high-pop planet, every time you build something or replace something or new pops come along.

 

[joshau-k]

I'd prefer it if pop count had nothing to do with which is chosen. Instead it should mainly be habitability.
If i have 100 humans with 20% habitability and 1 Roach with 80% habitability. The roach should be 4x more likely to grow on that planet.
Though i do think that if that pop isn't yet present on that world, they should be less likely to be chosen too.
Generally your species will even out in population but it will take a long time to happen

 

[Ramiel]

Really it should be both.
The baseline - all other factors (habitability, traits, etc) even - should be the current pop ratio. The other factors would then modify that baseline.