pop growth based on pop size

[Warhunter]

What if we changed the base growth to be based on pops on planet instead of flat 3 regardless of the situation.

like each pop gives .1 to base growth
so a planet with 30 pop will have 3 base growth

This will help balance large planets vs smaller planets as then having more planets doesn't necessary means more pop growth than less but larger planets
so 5 very small worlds (like 5 T1 habitats) wouldn't grow faster than 1 supersized planet (size 25 world)

Then give a pop growth bonus/penalty from housing, jobs, happiness, and stability.
Having plenty of open housing/jobs and high happiness/stability will give a % bonus to growth
Having low/negative amount of open housing/jobs and low happiness/stability will give a penalty to growth

So a well built Ecumenopolis can provide as much growth or even more than a bunch of small undeveloped worlds
Having alot of happy pops on a high stability world will give more growth than a slaving empire constantly enslaving more pops

Only things i can think of that might be a problem is
should there be an upper cap to the base growth? so having pops above a certain amount will not boost base growth
early game pop growth would be a bit slower as it wouldn't have the initial boost the current flat growth gives

any thoughts on problems that i might have missed with this suggestion?

 

[mial42]

This is suggested pretty regularly, and it has a few obvious issues:
1) Super slow early game.
2) Exponential growth means the vast majority of pops will grow (and thus cause lag) in the very late game, when they don't matter any more. It also means the game will very suddenly grind to a halt in a matter of years.
3) Colonization is kind of pointless. Colonization is expensive, but gives you nothing unless all of your other planets are already nearly full.
4) Early conquest becomes hilariously, stupidly, overwhelmingly overpowered. Not only do you get twice the pops as someone who doesn't do it, you also get double the growth. No one else will ever be able to catch up unless they also early-conquer. Combining 3-4, this balances peaceful "tall" and "wide" by making peaceful expansion completely pointless and conquest ludicrously OP.
5) How does this interact with assembly?

 

[Warhunter]

1. We could set a minimal base growth around +1 so you will still see growth and/or boost the starting pops on your home planet. colonizing a new planet shouldn't just double your growth rate
also i used to remember new colonies gave a penalty to growth until it grew to a certain point (i think it was like a 50% penalty so most of its growth came from immigration) not sure when that changed

also your starting pop is around 30-40ish so you would still be growing at the same rate or slightly faster than what you currently get

2. it won't grow that out of control compared to spamming more habitats. to reach base growth would take 30 pop on a planet or 60 pop to reach max base growth of the current system and currently growth comes to a halt when approaching planet capacity so there is still a cap
or set a max base growth rate so it can only go so high through i don't think it would grow that out of control as housing should be the limiting factor

4. For conquest i suggested giving a penalty to growth from low happiness & stability on the planet. through i think part of the problem is that theres almost no penalty in conquering/stealing pops. they barely lose any happiness or drop stability at all so that act as if they have been your citizen pops the entire time

and even then for the current system it would be the exact same problem as you are just conquering more planets for that +3 base growth and have more planets to choose to colonize.
My change to pop growth is not there to fix conquering and neither does the current system affect conquering. its there to change small vs large planets having the exact same growth rates

5. assembly jobs are somewhat limited by capital tier for machine empires so it roughly keeps in line with organic base growth through it would be worse compared to high pop organic worlds the benefit is robots can colonize anywhere
through maybe the tier1 capital building should give 1 replicator instead of 2. or change it so every 10 robots for a machine empire gives +1 replicator job (or maybe add that part to machine worlds only?)
for hives the spawning pool just gives them a boost as they are supposed to be the fast growth type empire.
for cloning im not sure how to change it for the current setup. with the current change to base growth cloning would have been fine as a % boost to base growth instead of assembly. don't remember if cloning needs an upgraded capital building to be built but it could be linked to that so you need a minimal number of pops before you can build the cloning building

or maybe change all assembly to give jobs per x pop. so it scales with larger pop count = more assembly
so every 10 pop gives +1 cloning/replicator job
every 20 pop gives +1 spawning pool/roboticist jobs
(all assembly jobs gives +1 to assembly)

Also planets cap at 6 base growth regardless of size currently.
A habitat can grow pop as fast as a size 25 planet