Overpopulation as a game mechanic

[Enohpoxas]

This game needs overpopulation as a mechanic and I think I've thought of a good way of executing it.

Pops should keep reproducing if the planet's tiles are full and each new pop will either go to an empty tile on another world in your empire or, if that's not possible, remain on the world they grew up on as overpopulation. The number of extra pops stuck on a planet as overpopulation would simply be shown as a number on the UI. The penalty for overpopulation would be simply the need to feed them, forcing you to build more farms if a world is overpopulated. There could also be a happiness malus such as -1% per extra pop if it's necessary to make overpopulation worse.

Some benefits of this new system include new importance and dynamism to food and it's related techs as well as the ability to have an "abandon planet" war goal that relocates pops to other worlds instead of purging them.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that this new system would add further incentive to expand your empire. I personally find it useful as a role player to have a reason to expand since realistically many types of societies have no inherent need for territory or power without overpopulation as a factor.

Of course it will be necessary to control population growth when needed so policies limiting or even banning reproduction when tiles are full would be available with happiness effects based on pops' ethos.

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!

 

[Derp]

What I think is that the game doesn't need overpopulation as a mechanic.

 

[Pimp Daddy Flex]

And I think having overpopulation would be a fun, realistic mechanic to toy around with. Especially if you're able to import food from other planets; like some kind of harvest world.

 

[RadioactiveHellion]

I'm kinda experimenting with this in a mod, though limited at the moment and it'll have to ignore the standard population birth system unless I can find a way to force more. But it's possible to represent this now to some degree using population modifiers and the +Food Consumption tag. It's also not as clean as I would like but it is vaguely possible to use strategic resource production and planet modifiers (even directly from buildings_00) to create Food Export and Import buildings.

 

[grommile]

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that this new system would add further incentive to expand your empire. I personally find it useful as a role player to have a reason to expand since realistically many types of societies have no inherent need for territory or power without overpopulation as a factor.

"If you don't expand other bastards will come over and say 'nice planet you got here'" is a reasonably compelling reason to expand.

 

[Quaade]

Overpopulation should be a mechanic in-game, as a means to manage by colonizing (never understood how colonization doesn´t take one pop while you elect one on building it), however there should be ways to handle it... Like 1-child laws, increase happiness, specie-trait being less happy in crowds... However given that the planets are so "small", with only 25 tiles that quickly gets populated, there needs to be some serious changes to either growth or more tiles so that your ideal planet could fill 80 % and be at it´s best production...

Another way to improve it, could be "death of pops", while the abstraction of pops is likely that they are millions I see no way to out-grow another specie since pops don´t die (other than purging) which could be a real interesting crisis if your slow-breeding empire of democratics pacifist find themselves adding a fast-breeding specie that starts replacing your own pops making you the minority... I mean, how will they react, how will the government change depending on this new situation... Will reservation and special laws be implemented on the other species (that will likely revolt at some point), or will you accept the fact that your origin specie is dying and dying fast.

 

[xandor9]

I also think overpopulation should be a thing. In history one of the major reasons for migrating to colonies was the feel that the homelands were overpopulated. The mechanic to have overpopulation as a kind of colonists which migrate on theirselfes is quite intriguing to me.
One other thing: would overpopulation count to research malus because than a better management of food/growth is needed to ensure to not fall back in the science game.

 

[Tricsun]

Absolutely agree.

 

[Juwatu]

Like having a farm planet and little ships jump from system to system to provide your big energy/minerals worlds with food.

There could also be like events where a ship went missing or there are problems with the farmers.

 

[The Founder]

And I think having overpopulation would be a fun, realistic mechanic to toy around with. Especially if you're able to import food from other planets; like some kind of harvest world.

The Game is not designed or balanced for it.
Neither is the AI (wich has to be developed for the game you have).

I do not see Overpopulation as nessesary at all.
Eventually every planet in the Unvierse will be colonised and all tiles fileld to the brim. So conquering to getting more "Lebensraum" makes no sense, unless you are Xenophobe. So the whole "we need to expand against Overpopulation" agurments breaks down. All you really did is add another permanent modifier to happiness.

Pacifist/few planet playthroughs are not 100% viable yet. They will become viable. The whole overpop thing would just make them unfeasible again.

In short:
It is unfeasible to retrofit the game like this.
The argumentation for the need is faulty
It would disable certain playthroughs that are clearly planned/still being worked on from my point of view.
All I see a lot of work to make the game worse.

The argumentation to conquer is simple:
Your Ethoses are right. The success of your people prooves it. It is a moral imperative to have everyone live under those Ethoses (or cleanse the Universe of all those filthly Aliens/Unbelievers).

Like having a farm planet and little ships jump from system to system to provide your big energy/minerals worlds with food.

There could also be like events where a ship went missing or there are problems with the farmers.

I think the game you do want to play is Star Drive 2.
Purely singplayer unfortunately, but it has these exact mechanics because it was designed to have those.

 

[Pode]

I'd really like to see a happiness penalty for being unemployed, a stacking happiness penalty per unemployed pop on a planet, and all pops that grow over a planet's capacity be unemployed (since they wouldn't have tiles to work, they could just show up as 26/25). This would allow you to trade happiness for population growth and eventual migration, as eventually even your homeworld would get so crowded pops would migrate.

 

[Adrastea74]

I think that pop in this game is not a "bunch of people" but rather a "city population". Bigger planet can have up to 25 major cities (and population) whereas smaller ones can afford 6 or 7.
Which explains why they grow so slowly...And the more populated the city, the slower the growth rate...seems reasonable.

Maybe it would be interesting to add some culture changes in those fully-grown planets. Overpopulation and emmigration seems to be nice.
But maybe the overgrown pop can be spawned as colony ship (no, definitely no.)

 

[The Founder]

I think that pop in this game is not a "bunch of people" but rather a "city population". Bigger planet can have up to 25 major cities (and population) whereas smaller ones can afford 6 or 7.
Which explains why they grow so slowly...And the more populated the city, the slower the growth rate...seems reasonable.

Maybe it would be interesting to add some culture changes in those fully-grown planets. Overpopulation and emmigration seems to be nice.
But maybe the overgrown pop can be spawned as colony ship (no, definitely no.)

The best figure we have managed to come up with was that 1 "Pop" equals between 500 million and 1 billion people. Wich puts home planet capacities at 8-16 billion.

 

[karolus10]

I know it's an old post but I think that best way to implement overpopulation is use of migration and resettlement mechanics. Pops could be more willing to migrate away from their planet depending on amount of free tiles as well as total amount of pops. This way pops from small planets would be less likely to migrate despite of having equal amount of unoccupied tiles.

Same factor could be used for calculating discounts on resettlement cost, I could see myself using 20+ lush paradise as a place to grow and ship slaves.

 

[Seomis]

There was an "overcrowding" mechanic at some point during development. The modifiers for it are still present (but unused and inert).

 

[Irushian]

Overpopulation wouldn't work as it's far too limiting in a finite game where you can't construct cities in space or domed colonies etc, so it would just turn into an annoying mechanic late game when ever Planet is colonised and you can't deal with the mechanic.

 

[karolus10]

Overpopulation wouldn't work as it's far too limiting in a finite game where you can't construct cities in space or domed colonies etc, so it would just turn into an annoying mechanic late game when ever Planet is colonised and you can't deal with the mechanic.

I guess that my suggestion is more about encouraging pops to "overflow" into other worlds by migration, currently pops don't want to leave full planet if they're happy.

 

[Tyrannical Prince]

I think it's a cool idea. I had a similar idea not too long ago. Basically pops could be refugees (running away from the front line of a war) or illegal immigrants (even an empire with closed borders would get some illegal immigrants) or just overpopulation. My idea involved planets having another "tile" on it that could stack up to so many pops if the production tiles were all full. These pops wouldn't produce anything but wood still need food. Each pop in this zone would create negative happiness for the rest of the planet.

 

[Ashantai]

Please do not necro 6+ month old threads.

Start new discussions.