How should the game choose which pop to grow?

[Spartakus]

I've posted this yeterday in aseperate thread, but apparently no one has read it as I got zero responses. So here ist is again.

Just an idea that popped into my head.

Give the player more control over what species grows where by controlling for which species housing is build. I mean look at a Blorg. It would by it's nature have very different needs for it's home then a human. I'm not talking about tropical vs. continental vs. desert biome here, just the stuff we build and use to maintain our cities. The salt we're pouring on our streets during winter would potentionally kill them and they may have very differnt preferences to what's an acceptable room temperature.

So here's the idea: A colony ship provides housing for the species that build them and any district you build on the same planet provides housing for that species too. Edit: But you can select to build/modify it for a different species in your empire. Whenever a new pop is created it belongs to a species that has free housing (or whatever the Initial species of the planet was if no free housing is available) Thus giving players direct control over their pop growth.

Building and maintaining districts for a species cost more the lower the habitability for that species is. Do I want a desertborn slave race on my arctic planet? Well, I can but those districts are expensive.

Xenophiles should be able to build districts that are open to everyone, but prefered by species with a matching habitability. (Possibly giving some bonus as well. Trade value for example)

Pops that spawn on a planet without appropriate housing (refugees, events, ...) won't grow and consume double amenities until there's room build for them.

Gene-modding a species will mod their districts as well and mixed species can live in either environment.


There are propably a bunch of problems I havn't thought of - many of them are UI related - but that's the basic idea.

 

[The Boz]

Follow a set of rules that make sense:
* Set a default value of "share" for each species equal to 1 + [number of pops of that species currently on planet], so that by default, ratio is ~preserved, but pops that don't yet exist on planet may appear.
* If there are jobs available, increase a species' share by thrice its job output bonus (a pop with +10% mining gets a +30% share increase if there's an empty mine)
* If habitability of a species is below 50%, its share is multiplied by 0 (thereby removing it from the pool) (this is ignored if there is only one species with share over 0 left)
* Modify each species share depending on their growth (a species with higher growth SHOULD outnumber a species with lower growth), rights, policies, etc.
Roll a number between 1 and whatever the sum of all shares is for that planet. There. Done.

 

[Leylos]

I'd have it weighted mostly for matching pop traits with available jobs. For example, if the only jobs available on a planet are farmers and miners, any species on the planet that has Agrarian or Industrious gets a strong bias to be selected for growth. Similarly, if a planet gets overcrowded and starts suffering from population decline, the first species to decline are the ones taking up job slots that another species on the planet can do better. This makes gene modding and/or collecting species with varied traits actually useful, as it automatically optimizes your planets over time, instead of being a complete mess.

Habitability and pop growth traits would also have an impact on species selection, but significantly weaker than job matching.

It can't be weighed too strongly on jobs.

Population dynamics need to be of importance. If my species is the dominant species in my empire it needs to have a strong bias for growth, even if another species might be better suited for mining jobs.

 

[Typee]

Rather than having just population control for authoritarians and xenophobes, I think xenophiles should have access to a living standard/species status that would be something like "preservation protocol" or "endangered species revitalization" or something like that. It would increase the consumer goods consumed by that species, and increase their breeding chance considerably. There's no reason for xenophiles to have zero control over demographics.

 

[Typee]

As much as I'd like it to be based entirely on population dynamics, what you suggest is the only way to make actual good gameplay out of the current system.

Anything else, even if it is more realistic, would make multicultural societies incredibly bad to play with.

Nah I think it's a pretty bad idea due to the way population strata work. There is never an available scientist job, much less an available ruler job. With that system pops with bonuses to science or unity would never grow.

 

[w1zard9169]

Well... assuming that we don't scale pop growth off of number of pops and instead keep the current system of choosing a SINGLE type of pop to grow at one time and applying all modifiers to that growth... the formula for a percentage chance of a particular pop to be chosen should be something like:

(percentage representation in population)*(weight)

where weight is a percentage over or under the average habitability of all pops on the planet. so weight=((habitability of this species)/(average habitability of all pops))

=========================================================================
Example: Desert planet, with 9 pops of stock human, 1 pop of blaarg (desert preference).

Average habitability of all pops = 9*20+1*80/10 = 26

Chance of human being next grown pop = (90)*(20/26) ~ 69.23%

Chance of blarg being next grown pop = (10)*(80/26) ~ 30.77%

Integrating immigration and emigration might be a little more tricky, but that is my idea for a base system.

Can I hab job paradox?

 

[Delthor]

Yeah, job availability should instead cause internal migration. Like a brilliant programmer who moves from Michigan to California.

It already affects immigration pull. I suppose if immigration pull is sufficient, choosing species based on the appropriate job makes sense, as long as that species actually exists to migrate there in the first place.

 

[permeakra]

The current system creates a super multicultural mess that ignores the jobs and climate of your planets. Its pretty much as unreasonable as it gets.

So how exactly should they grow?

Unless the devs get rid of species-specific population growth bonuses/penalties, it should use a completely different scheme, or, at least, it needs a very complicated formula for growth speed. Current model would have hard time simulating proper growth taking into account breeding bonuses/penalties.

If we go from simulationist perspective, the simplest way would be to simply assign to each pop a chance to grow/migrate and make a roll each month if the pop breed true. Incidentally, this would get rid of less obvious problem of growing pops messing with species-modification projects.

I also think that devs should put more emphasis on proper handling of migration. Specifically, pops should prefer to migrate to places with climate better suiting them.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

Having tinkered a bit with the numbers over the last couple of days, I've come to the conclusion that NEW_POP_GROWTH_MOD_MULT should be the most significant factor, followed by NEW_POP_SAME_SPECIES_WEIGHT.
By default NEW_POP_GROWTH_MOD_MULT is 0.66, I'm personally having a better experience with 0.85 to 1.00 (still trying to decide but I'm set on not going any lower than this), while reducing NEW_POP_SPECIES_DIV down to 0.30 and NEW_POP_SPECIES_RANDOMNESS... I'm still not sure about, need more testing. By its very nature, it's hard to judge the impact of randomness without a sufficient sample size. Currently oscillating around 0.50, leaning towards maybe slightly lower for my next test.

My rationale for this direction is... pop growth traits are pretty expensive in Le Guin. 2 trait points per 10%? At that price, I feel it NEEDS to pay for itself through regular, visible and tangible results. A species that is hyperspecialised for growth rate sacrifices things like resource output and leader efficiency. It does that with the expectation that it will be able to compensate for the weakness of individual pops by being able to put more pops to work than a slow-breeder species.

However, given the tendency of minority species to hog the growth slot for years at a time, a fast-breeding species is not breeding any faster than anyone else - it's stuck in queue, waiting for slower-breeding species to gain sufficient representation. That doesn't make much sense.

At the same time, I really like that all species I sign migration treaties with eventually come to my planets. That's great! Multispecies empires are easier than ever to set up! However, I feel like once they do appear on my planets, they should not be hindering the growth of species that are already established there. The game should not be trying to prioritise the least represented species just because it's least represented, that goes against both nature and gameplay intuitiveness.
I think it's fine to give priority to new migration treaties UNTIL they have a nominal foothold, but after that, let nature take its course - priority should be given primarily to growth speed, and secondarily to the existing majority since generally more people making babies = exponentially more babies.

In an ideal world, if there are three species on a planet that each start with one pop, and are equal in terms of habitability, but one grows at twice the rate of the other two, there should be at least 50-25-25% split in favour of the fast breeder, and growing exponentially. The fast-breeder shouldn't be completely monopolising the growth slot, but it should be guaranteed undisputed majority representation over time. The other priority factors should matter mostly for species with comparable growth speeds, in which case habitability and majority advantage would decide the pecking order, with a bit of randomness thrown in to either swing the scales or enforce the asymmetry even more.

In the end, it's perfectly okay if one or two species end up drawing the short straw on a given planet. They might get another chance on a new colony somewhere else. However, populated planets that already have an established majority should generally maintain it, and species that breed fast should also be able to breed often enough to get value out of it.

 

[Greenslade]

Habitability makes sense. Jobs available doesn't. People don't say "Hey, there's a bunch of jobs we're genetically predisposed towards! Let's make more babies!"

No, but people do say "hey, there's a bunch of jobs we'd be good at, let's move there."

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

I think a rough formula would be something llike this (Might have weightings wrong, or missed some, just to throw it out there)

Pop growth = [% of Pops on planet]x[habitability]x[fast/slowbreeders]x['demand' or need for the race, indicating how well they are doing]

 

[ReynardtheSpaceFox]

I think it should be weighted for habitability, species pop size (higher pop species weighted heavier for selection), and the traits rapid/slow breeders and migratory/sedentary.

I do not think available jobs should be in the weight, because the way the current system works best is to get a few unemployed first before creating a new district or building to create jobs for the extra pops.