Pop growth - what about decrease?

[Fletz]

There are many factors which have influence on the pop-growth-rate (food, tech, free housing) and also a migration-factor which pushes part of the pop-growth to another planet. After all, in Stellaris its kind of a principle, that population can only grow (fast or slow) but is never decreasing?

Shouldn't it be possible that there are also factors (for example prosperity and strata, etc.) which causes a low fertility rate and a decreasing planet population? This is especially important for late game, when the whole universe is overcrowded... but could also be a ongoing challenge for every empire to have a high fertility rate (connected to already existing factors which right now only influence growth rate).

Conclusion:
Better having a fertility rate instead of a persistent growth rate.

What do you think? Do I overlook something?

 

[Flame13223]

Pop growth is never a bad thing even if you somehow get overcrowded which I can't imagine how you'd do currently...I feel like its literally impossible to get overcrowded and the more pops you have right now the stronger your empire so decreasing pop growth would weaken you considerably.

 

[Flame13223]

There are options to limit pop growth on a per planet basis right now but they're useless. More pops is always better than fewer pops. There's no situation where an empire with more pops will be worse off than an empire with less pops. Pops are the ultimate indicator of economic power in 2.2

 

[Gyrvendal]

I can get behind some negative midifiers to pop growth, but only if the base growth is increased slightly...

 

[Flame13223]

Just enable resettling for a short time and resettle everyone to empty planets...why waste valuable pops? If anything you should increase pop growth not decrease it. Right now pop growht is the big bottleneck of empires. The sole reason why you cannot advance quickly is that there's not enough pops to fill all the jobs on planets.

 

[Fletz]

Yep, got it. High population is something good, especially in a time of expansion. I just thought that in the late game it could happen, that its getting overcrowded, or am I wrong?

 

[PanzerMan7]

I can see it becoming an issue late game. What happens when you run out of housing?

But early to mid game, I put my food supply growth focused and spam the pop growth decisions.

 

[Kinkness]

I honestly don't see how this could be implimented in stellaris's current situation. ultimately you'd just be putting a negative modifier on growth..

Right now you can't just straight up remove a pop from a planet. As that pop is simulating thousands or millions of people.

Ontop of that War itself already does this through bombardment and killing populations.

If you want to compare this to the real world, it actually simulates exactly how it is irl. While yes people die of sickness, old age, etc. The population of the world is slowly and steadily growing. Just like it does in Stellaris, and since in Stellaris you're looking at the "big picture" Thats exactly what its doing.
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And lets be honest... Throwing in abituary negative modifiers and extra things for the game to calculate thousands of times a second every second that grows exponentially as the game continues is the last thing Stellaris's end game needs when it already gets super bogged down and slow with the calculations it already has to do.. All to essentially do what we have already.

And if that isn't bad enough... the already completely stupid AI that can't even manage police stations and crime properly would have an absolute nightmare of a time trying to deal with depopulation..

 

[PanzerMan7]

I suppose late game you could frantically try to build habitats and start invading people. Maybe in the face of overpopulation and scare resources, that egalitarianism could be sidelined in place of more...practical ethics. Or maybe new ethics will arise. Look at those blorgs over there wasting their resources and their space. Imagine what we Terrans could do with it if only we had the Lebensraum...

 

[Flame13223]

Yep, got it. High population is something good, especially in a time of expansion. I just thought that in the late game it could happen, that its getting overcrowded, or am I wrong?

It can I assume if you don't have resettlement enabled...but it does take a really long time and I doubt unemployment is an issue, there's ways to get productivity from unemployed pops too like unity or research even.

 

[Flame13223]

hat egalitarianism could be sidelined in place of more...practical ethics.

Egalitarianism enables utopian abundance tho so unemployed people become researchers essentially. So no, you can keep it and let overcrowding go nuts you get benefits from it not detriments anymore.

 

[Flame13223]

I can see it becoming an issue late game. What happens when you run out of housing?

But early to mid game, I put my food supply growth focused and spam the pop growth decisions.

Running out of housing seems to be really hard imho...city disctricts provide so damn much houseing. And mastery of nature is always a great option if you have housing issues, just increase disctrict cap by 2 build 2 more cities. Replace mining and other stuff with cities as well and move mining to the smaller colonies. Just like in real life the bigger the population the less rural the area is. Urbanize the hell out of your planets if they get to high pop counts and build really big 10 job buildings.

 

[CyberianK]

As long as there are other planets in the galaxy you can't really run out of housing.

Any when you have all planets in the galaxy then the game is over.

Pop Growth is so OP now I want to start a FanaticXenophobe+Materialist+Mechanist+PopGrowth Species this evening .

 

[zukodark]

If you want to compare this to the real world, it actually simulates exactly how it is irl. While yes people die of sickness, old age, etc. The population of the world is slowly and steadily growing. Just like it does in Stellaris, and since in Stellaris you're looking at the "big picture" Thats exactly what its doing.

Well if you want to bring in the real world, population is expected to stabilize soon at around 10 billion (depending on which model), and many countries already have low population growth. In fact some are already in the negative. The only reason western countries are growing in population is because of immigration.

So how would realistic population growth be in Stellaris? In 2200, Earth would have already stabilized, if not be decreasing. Please mind that in reality there probably wouldn't be many natural resources left as well, but let's ignore that for now. Earth's population would be the only growth factor for new worlds until either pro-child indoctrinment, forced childbirths or lab-grown children or clones became commonplace.

Let's just say machines and hive minds would be OP.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I suppose late game you could frantically try to build habitats and start invading people. Maybe in the face of overpopulation and scare resources, that egalitarianism could be sidelined in place of more...practical ethics. Or maybe new ethics will arise. Look at those blorgs over there wasting their resources and their space. Imagine what we Terrans could do with it if only we had the Lebensraum...

I think this is a positive spin on things.

Overpopulation isn't a big problem until very late game, but then IT COULD be a problem, that requires a strategy (war, building habitats, spamming amenities to counter any discontent?) to counter. I like this. I like this very much, because it's realistic. It's something that adds to the game.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Well if you want to bring in the real world, population is expected to stabilize soon at around 10 billion (depending on which model), and many countries already have low population growth. In fact some are already in the negative. The only reason western countries are growing in population is because of immigration.

So how would realistic population growth be in Stellaris? In 2200, Earth would have already stabilized, if not be decreasing. Please mind that in reality there probably wouldn't be many natural resources left as well, but let's ignore that for now. Earth's population would be the only growth factor for new worlds until either pro-child indoctrinment, forced childbirths or lab-grown children or clones became commonplace.

Let's just say machines and hive minds would be OP.

True, but for the game to work, there HAS to be pop growth. Also, we are a level 0 civilization, while even the crappiest civilization in the game has total and utter control over its first planet. Resources aren't really scarce right now, it's just that we are using finite ones like oil, while in the game resources are infinite, symbolizing nuclear fusion plants, deep mining, worldwide GMO usage, and whatnot. If the world had a massive resource surplus under a single organized government AND could reach for the stars, demographics would change.

 

[Flame13223]

op Growth is so OP now I want to start a FanaticXenophobe+Materialist+Mechanist+PopGrowth Species this evening

I think its better to be Xenophile and go for multiple species so that you can colonize 3-4 planets immediately and start an early growth boost. Also Xeno-compatibility FTW!

 

[Flame13223]

spamming amenities to counter any discontent?

Do you need to spam ammeneties? Clerks provide so much I generally have 70+ ammeneties on every planet and I dont even need a single holotheater...

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Do you need to spam ammeneties? Clerks provide so much I generally have 70+ ammeneties on every planet and I dont even need a single holotheater...

Me too, but i didn't reach late-late-game so it could emerge as a later issue. For now, i find it very very easy to spam amenities but who knows.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

2.2 does have a mechanic for pop removal. It's the decline box next to robots. I've had pops show up there before. I believe it happens when you have enough emigration pull and maybe other factors that the net growth is negative.