In 2.2.5. pop growth is still bonkers

[Tisifoni12]

There are things you can do to try and manage this.

• Corral them on planets of their preferred type and ban them from migrating.
• Population controls.

 

[Arutar]

There are things you can do to try and manage this.

• Corral them on planets of their preferred type and ban them from migrating.
• Population controls.

For xenophils / egalitarians (the ones who are really affected by this anyway) this either not possible at all or will include hefty happines penalites respectively.

 

[Riftwalker]

mean while, i had serious issue getting my servile pops to grow at all on new planets... it would only be my ruler race on planets for decades...

I'm also running a xenophile, eglitarian, materialist empire with all species that are not the primary species using residence. my main species is charismatic and thus is basically guaranteed ruler positions on all my planets as well.

here's my demographics wheel, my servile race is the 1st sliver, the big one is my main race. I really wanted my servile race to grow more, but i don't really think they have the traits that must prioritise them. they are however, still more populated than any other race other than my main one.
the greenish blues are all robots, and the lime green is a neighboring race i keep conquering planets from.

and here's factions so people know that i'm not really having happiness problems from having residence races. (only minus for alien suffrage is unrestricted interference)

besides the conquered race, no other race has more than 5% expression in my empire....

I really don't know what people are doing that makes them constantly not have their main race grow? are they not colonizing with this race like i do? i can't colonize with my servile race or i would have.

as far as i can tell, the main thing to determine what race is most populated in your empire is what race you colonize with.

ALSO, all my colonies were terraformed before colonized to my main race pref. so there's that as well. I'm currently getting a ton of gene spliced stuff from migrations though, and i'm currently trying to consolidate them, so i'll be back after races have been consolidated with better numbers, but the 2nd most common is probably a psionic tomb world pref race with adaptability

 

[Arutar]

I really don't know what people are doing that makes them constantly not have their main race grow? are they not colonizing with this race like i do?

At this point I assume that the reason is that most people do not have all other species on residence, like you do.

As pointed out above for some reason simple residence rights seems to affect pop growth in a major way for whatever reason, though at this point I am still testing this.

However, I am fairly certain that it does not matter at all which pop colonizes a planet, since in my previous run I settled all planets with my main species and got zero main species growth for decades.

Just out of curiosity, has it been other people's experience that the -20% growth rate penalty from specifying what species you want to grow on a planet is somehow crippling?

Again, not really viable for xenophile / egalitarians (since it rquires pop controls policy). Besides -20% is huge. Also, many people very much prefer organic growth, unfortunately the current system is still not able simulate that at all.​

 

[Riftwalker]

At this point I assume that the reason is that most people do not have all other species on residence, like you do.

As pointed out above for some reason simple residence rights seems to affect pop growth in a major way for whatever reason, though at this point I am still testing this.

However, I am fairly certain that it does not matter at all which pop colonizes a planet, since in my previous run I settled all planets with my main species and got zero main species growth for decades.

mmm then why are my servile race, which are also full citizenship(since they don't make leaders anyway), under performing to such a degree? (8% expression to my main races 41%)

over your 5 year mark i'm guessing you didn't colonize?

 

[durbal]

I assume that I missed it but I'll ask to be sure ... Do you have a theory as to why certain performance-related issues appear worse in 2.2.x??

If the reports of others can be trusted measured stutters [on high end systems] of hundreds of milliseconds are being reported. Different CPUs, different video cards, etc. all seem to be impacted.

Something appears to be going on. What that is hasn't been fully determined yet. It may be something simple like added pops [or something else] is causing data structure size to grow enough that cache misses are occurring now when they weren't earlier ; there could be IPC issues causing lockouts to certain critical data and wasting computer power ; ...

Pretty sure it was already tracked down to the trade system (and trade pathing), at least for late-game performance issues where it's the worst. Could be stuff like a pathfinding algorithm running on the main thread which is always bad but gets much worse when gateways and wormholes are introduced, hence the late-game being so much worse. It's pretty easily verified that killing all gateways and stuff late-game significantly improves performance.

Pop growth doesn't occur on the daily update loop (it's monthly) so I doubt that has anything to do with it.

 

[AlanC9]

For xenophils / egalitarians (the ones who are really affected by this anyway) this either not possible at all or will include hefty happines penalites respectively.

Why would a xenophile egalitarian be trying to manage this in the first place?

 

[Arutar]

Why would a xenophile egalitarian be trying to manage this in the first place?

Because xenophiles / egalitarians dislike selective breeding.

And the current default growth system is precisely that. Selectively breeding. Since it prevents certain species from growing for decades, pushes the growth of certain species by 1.000 % to 2.000 % or kills selected "overrepresented" (according to the games nonsensical math) species off in case of overpopulation.

When Xenophiles / egalitarians talk about pop controls since 2.2, they only do it to try to counter the selective breeding the game deploys as default since 2.2. As a Xenophile / egalitarian, I want all my species to freely grow in my empire. The current system doesn't allow for that unfortunately. I don't want the game to sent species A and B to space Gulag, just so that there is more space for the brand new species Y.

 

[Riftwalker]

yeah, going farther along, my main race has grown since previous, at 48% expression now, and my 2nd race which i've given rapid breeding has still fallen to 4%

I'm having very little growth from my residency species. this is with utopian abundance standards of living.

the only races that have any meaningful expression in my empire are ones i've purposefully colonized with and ones i've conquered.

and these planets continue to grow their own species, with little chance for new species to show up at all unless they're adaptable. the people i'm conquering also have ocean hab and their worlds aren't getting my main species to grow on them for generations, but some humans and adaptable moles have shown up.

is the game double dipping adaptability by desiring high habitability and also the trait for preference?

(I'm actually noticing the races i've conquered and thus kept their planets mostly of their own kind have adaptability...)

 

[makaramus]

is it problem that FEW of low habitabilty rated pops living there?
I mean even in real world there are people deciding to f.ed up places because "they thought it would be good idea"(wich wasnt XD)

 

[Seedy]

It seems like the only real change is that low habitability pops won't grow much which is a substantial improvement. It means acquiring new pop types to cover habitability classes will work again. It's still quite ridiculous that if you get a single pop of a different species anywhere in your empire with the same habitability as your main species, you will grow nothing but that new pop type until you hit parity.

This is why I'm on break from Stellaris, one pop of a new species means all planets everywhere only produce that species. :/
Sounds like it might start getting playable again, otherwise what's the point of making your own race?
Maybe I'll just wait for console...

 

[KingAlamar]

Pretty sure it was already tracked down to the trade system (and trade pathing), at least for late-game performance issues where it's the worst. Could be stuff like a pathfinding algorithm running on the main thread which is always bad but gets much worse when gateways and wormholes are introduced, hence the late-game being so much worse. It's pretty easily verified that killing all gateways and stuff late-game significantly improves performance.

Pop growth doesn't occur on the daily update loop (it's monthly) so I doubt that has anything to do with it.

I think your assertions work for "general performance" but not as much for the day 1 stutter issue. I'm willing to be proven wrong though ...

 

[durbal]

I think your assertions work for "general performance" but not as much for the day 1 stutter issue. I'm willing to be proven wrong though ...

I'd wager it's caused by the same trade-related stuff that causes issues late-game, only that without gateways the algorithm takes a lot less time to process and hence less of a profound stutter.

Either way, pop growth wouldn't (shouldn't) be on that daily update loop so it doesn't matter much anyway.

 

[AlanC9]

Because xenophiles / egalitarians dislike selective breeding.

And the current default growth system is precisely that. Selectively breeding. Since it prevents certain species from growing for decades, pushes the growth of certain species by 1.000 % to 2.000 % or kills selected "overrepresented" (according to the games nonsensical math) species off in case of overpopulation.

When Xenophiles / egalitarians talk about pop controls since 2.2, they only do it to try to counter the selective breeding the game deploys as default since 2.2. As a Xenophile / egalitarian, I want all my species to freely grow in my empire. The current system doesn't allow for that unfortunately. I don't want the game to sent species A and B to space Gulag, just so that there is more space for the brand new species Y.

Hmm... so you've got a vision of how pop growth should work, and since the game's pop growth mechanics don't do that on their own you feel you have to force pop growth to conform to the vision? The ethics have nothing to do with the vision except making it harder to implement, right?

OK. For me, the best thing about playing a EX is that I don't have to GAF about the pops. Breeding and relocation aren't the business of the government; people can live where they want, work how they want, and breed how they want.

 

[Arutar]

Hmm... so you've got a vision of how pop growth should work, and since the game's pop growth mechanics don't do that on their own you feel you have to force pop growth to conform to the vision?

No, I dont need a "vision".

For me, basic logic is sufficient to know that the current system makes no sense and is completely counterintuitive.

Basic logic tells me that if two populations have similar overall birthrates individually, they should each double in the same timeframe and thus their relative ratio would stay roughly the same.

Basic logic also tells me therefore that in order to grow one more pop of a species, already having more pop units of the species should be an advantage and not a disadvantage as it is now.

Basic logic also tells me that if two species have the same overall reproduction rates on their own, them living together harmoniously would not result in one species suddenly having a reproduction rate of 1000x of the other species, just because it is the minority.​

 

[AlanC9]

I'm not quite sure I follow that. Are you objecting to the use of "vision" to describe your intuition concerning how pops should grow? ( Or your completely neutral exercise in basic logic, if you like.) We can certainly swap in a different word there.

Do we actually have a substantive disagreement here? You have a -- concept? Does that work? -- of how pops should naturally grow, and you want to force pops to grow that way,. Since the game mechanics don't work the way you want, you'll force the pops to grow the way you think ought to be natural.

But pretending that using the game tools to do this is simply permitting free reproduction is either deeply confused or just rhetoric. What you're doing when you play the game this way is having your government use state power to implement a preferred breeding program. That's what the Stellaris mechanics are, and why they don't work well for xenophile egalitarians, who rightly don't have any liking for such tools. Your disagreement with how Stellaris models population growth is clear, but it's not useful to pretend that the normal population growth mechanics in Stellaris aren't meant to represent normal population growth. It's just a bad model, and nothing more. Saying that the game mechanics represent "selective breeding" is nonsense.

Unless you need to pretend to think this to maintain your own suspension of disbelief or some such? If so, carry on, but handling the incoherence between what you're doing and what you'd prefer to think you're doing is your problem.

 

[Riftwalker]

No, I dont need a "vision".

For me, basic logic is sufficient to know that the current system makes no sense and is completely counterintuitive.

Basic logic tells me that if two populations have similar overall birthrates individually, they should each double in the same timeframe and thus their relative ratio would stay roughly the same.

Basic logic also tells me therefore that in order to grow one more pop of a species, already having more pop units of the species should be an advantage and not a disadvantage as it is now.

Basic logic also tells me that if two species have the same overall reproduction rates on their own, them living together harmoniously would not result in one species suddenly having a reproduction rate of 1000x of the other species, just because it is the minority.​

I disagree, it's completely logical and intuitive. the goal was to make it so that multispecies empires across many planets was something that would naturally occur over a game session(~200 year span). This was mostly impossible before without resettling or colonizing new planets. And i think it's important thing to be possible in this game, since it's a HUGE sci-fi trope, and so some rules should probably be broken to facilitate this.

you however, notice that this doesn't conform with natural growth patterns and any cognitive dissonance to support this kind of behavior is, at best, annoying, to you.

but don't call it illogical, as it works very consistently and in an easy to understand way(thus being intuitive).

i'm still having issue having my main race grow on newly conquered planets, even with them all set to residence.

 

[Urza1234]

I still dont think there is any evidence that Residence has anything to do with growth rates. Certainly there is absolutely no indication of that from the files, which I've been through back and forth several dozen times, with an explicit focus on growth mechanics. Certainly every growth phenomenon I've noticed has been explainable based on the factors that are known and manipulable. If residence has any effect on citizenship, it would be hardcoded somewhere we cant see it, and why for instance would the developers put the growth prioritization for Slavery out there in the open for us to play with, but hide Residence?
Its possible I suppose, but I'm skeptical.

To do valid testing on whether Citizenship has any effect on growth prioritization or now, you'll have to remove the factors of Homeworld prioritization, same-species proportionality, habitability, slavery, new_pop_species_div(the 50/50 value), randomness, and of course growth traits.
Make sure that all migration in your empire has always been off, for all species, and dont accept refugees.
Then start two planets; #1 where both species are citizens, #2 where one species is citizen and the other is resident.

TBH, even the above might require preliminary testing to determine exactly how much we even can turn off some of the above factors, since we dont know the exact formula. Changing some coefficients around, even to 0, might have unexpected effects if there are unknown constants in the polynomial.
Anyway, real scientific testing is required to support such an assertion, with all known variables controlled for.

 

[Riftwalker]

throwing this out there again, since i've given my servile race high adaptability trait, it's population has grown ~33% in 7 years(it was stable for decades before this). it's ocean preference, and almost all my planets are ocean planets, so it should have been prioritized as much as my main race, but it wasn't.

I do know, however that my main race still makes up more than 50% of my empire

this is my capital, an ecumenopolis. as you can see it's devoid of foreigners.(I don't know why)

here are my laws. I have 3 migration treaties, and have races from their empire within my nation, but none of them get above 10% expression.

no migration or population control
only my 2 main races are full citizenship.
all races have utopian abundance standards.

 

[Arutar]

I still don't think there is any evidence that Residence has anything to do with growth rates.

Well I for one have only anecdotal evidence at this point, but I would encourage anyone to try it themselves and report their findings.

All I can say that I got again the same subterran colony event in another game like mentioned above. Back then this event would prevent my old species to grow at all on 3 planets until parity had been achieved on one planet (for over 10 years), after which my species would grow 50/50 only on this planet. Now, with the subterranean species on residence, at least half of my growth on all planets at any given time still was my main species, regardless of the pop raitio.

Just to add: No species had any growth traits, they had the same same hability, etc. The only difference was residence.

Also, after changing the residence rights in another game, the growth section immediately reversed (in the next growth cycle). In the ten years before, my main species was selected to grow less than 5% of the time. In the four years after given residency to the minor species, my main species was selected to grow by more than 60% of time.

I am not arguing that the data is conclusive given the randomness involved and maybe it was sheer luck, but seeing that other people here have a similar experience with residence I strongly suggest to test it.


EDIT: After further testing, I am not sure about anything anymore. At least I could not reliable reproduce the effect described above.