Pop/Species Growth Ratio Formula - It needs adjusting, badly.

[Ex Mudder]

I actually find myself unwilling to continue games when it becomes time to colonize non optimal planets, because I don't want to deal with the insane pop growth that migration treaties will give me, and because the wrong pops will grow on my new worlds anyway.

Founder species should always have a boost to growth in their empire.

 

[nfmarque]

Demographics for me work like:
A) im on xenophile zone and dont care where xenos are.
B) im on xenophobe zone where i have no xenos on core planets. On conquered planets my primary pops are minority and the growth ratio favors them.

 

[Leylos]

I second pretty much most of what has been said. Looking through the code the pop growth system generally looks fine.

However the only thing that really doesn't belong is the bonus given the underrepresented species. There is no reason this should be there. If a minority species is heavily growing on a planet it should be due to migration and nothing else.

Late game many empires start becoming the same crazy mix to the point where I actually have trouble telling them apart.

 

[Duuk]

Personally, I'd rework how pop growth happens. Happy pops have a MTTH to spawn a pop. Rapid breeders have a higher chance to spawn a pop. Slow breeders have a lower chance to spawn a pop. Gene banks, Cloning banks, etc increase odds of pop spawn. Population controls reduce or eliminate accordingly.

Robots go back to being ordered manually (but you add an ability to batch-order by groups of 10).

Why is this so difficult?

 

[Foefaller]

I second pretty much most of what has been said. Looking through the code the pop growth system generally looks fine.

However the only thing that really doesn't belong is the bonus given the underrepresented species. There is no reason this should be there. If a minority species is heavily growing on a planet it should be due to migration and nothing else.

Late game many empires start becoming the same crazy mix to the point where I actually have trouble telling them apart.

Where is the code btw? I was going to write up a suggestion and then realized I only had the vaguest idea on how it currently works.

Or is it not in the moddable files?

 

[Arutar]

Demographics for me work like:
A) im on xenophile zone and dont care where xenos are.

But you are missing the problem:

The game the moment cares so much "where xenos are" that is essentially forces mandatory population controls in your empire on all species which are not a minority without you having any say in it.

"100+ humans, stop spreading now empire wide, one intelligent snail has appeared on one planet."

As a xenophile / egalitarian the last thing I want is population controls, yet the current growth systems does precisely that for all species which are not a minority species.

It is mechanically bad with tons of actual downsides (useless traits, horrible hability, etc. spreading massively) and hugely immersion breaking. All egalitarian / xenophile A.I. empires become the same in a game, as their populations gets "normalized".

 

[nfmarque]

But you are missing the problem:

The game the moment cares so much "where xenos are" that is essentially forces mandatory population controls in your empire on all species which are not a minority without you having any say in it.

"100+ humans, stop spreading now empire wide, one intelligent snail has appeared on one planet."

As a xenophile / egalitarian the last thing I want is population controls, yet the current growth systems does precisely that for all species which are not a minority species.

It is mechanically bad with tons of actual downsides (useless traits, horrible hability, etc. spreading massively) and hugely immersive breaking. All egalitarian / xenophile A.I. empires become the same in a game, as their populations gets "normalized".

Oh damn its empire wide? ill check my xenophile game atm.
Edit: my primary pops are human and only count for 14% of the total empire.

so weird

 

[Ironking]

Build a wall and make those filthy xenos pay for it.

 

[Althrinn]

Tbh a simple selection mechanism would do:

1. Determine the part of pop growth that is coming from planet (a) and immigration (b). Use those as weights to randomly determine which source it will be

2a. if the source is planet, randomly select from races already present on planet, using habitability and race pop growth modifiers as weights

2b. if the source is immigration, randomly select races from those available, using habitability and race migration modifiers as weights

That way:
- already present species are more likely (logical)
- races that breed faster or migrate more often are more likely (logical)
- races that are better suited for given planet are more likely (logical)
- it will still create a lot of ‘undesired’ pops, so that those authoritarian methods are still more optimal, but not a nessecity

Edit: bonus points if you can make it so that only the best suited (habitability wise) subrace is taken into account for each race

 

[Evangeline]

I tried to give my own species every possible advantage: rapid breeders, nomadic, tomb world preference (which right now also gives habitability for everything else). NO MIGRATION treaties with ANYONE. Once took 3 little refugee pops into my empire (which was around 230 pops at the time), they had zero habitability on my tomb worlds. They were also slow breeders and not nomadic. Every single colony ship I built was only with my original species.

Result by year 2330: I have now a pretty even 50/50 distribution, none of my strategies did ANYTHING to change this. That is not realistic, convincing or fun in any way. Please change it, devs!!

 

[Arutar]

Oh damn its empire wide? ill check my xenophile game atm.
Edit: my primary pops are human and only count for 14% of the total empire.

so weird

Btw, have you already looked at your homeworld - you'll pobably seeing a rapidly declining human population, since the game wont allow any planet to escape the "great equalizer"...

"Perfectly balanced, as all things should be" - Thanos, also Stellaris Dev.

 

[Bankipriel]

Right now, in the presence of even a single free 'xeno' species, I feel as though the original majority/home species simply stops reproducing, or has their reproduction much too heavily reduced. Then, if the Xeno species starts spreading to other planets, this causes a cascading effect of the 'home' species simply withering away until 'parity' has been the two achieved.

This is both 'unrealistic' and very frustrating.

Basically, forces you to choose beween 3 rather poor options
1) Heavy handed population control policies
2) Playing Xenophobe
3) Watching your Home species become immediately displaced because you 'dared' to allow a minority pop to exist within your borders.

Either weight a majority species to have some sort of favoritism in pop growth (to represent the larger growth inherent in a larger base value), or simply add a random element, but this 'weighted for parity' is just infuriating.

Ummm .... it seems that you (and most people in this thread) are unaware that you can select which pop-type you want to grow on each planet.

If you click on the growing pop picture, it brings up a list of available species. Just as you can lock in which type of robot model you want to be built by a roboticist, you can then lock in which species you want to be growing, so, for example, you can very easily grow all the alien miners you want on a planet, and then you can lock in your founder species for all future growth on that planet.

Your whole post seems to be the product of you not understanding how to control species populations via the population tab. Hopefully understanding how to choose your pops will help you enjoy the game more. Cheers.

 

[Arutar]

Ummm .... it seems that you (and most people in this thread) are unaware that you can select which pop-type you want to grow on each planet.

And you seem to be missing that this only possible if you have population control policy "allowed" and therefore isnt a viable options at all at least for egalitarian empires.

It also gives a 20% growth debuff, which means it also not really a viable option for everybody else, giving how important growth is in 2.2.

It also is micro heavy and makes organic growth impossible which means it is also rather bad game design.

 

[Cymsdale]

Ummm .... it seems that you (and most people in this thread) are unaware that you can select which pop-type you want to grow on each planet.

Many of us want organic growth AND we want diversity, but we want that growth to at least make a little sense. Giving a nudge to minority pops isn't a bad idea on paper, but the current balance of it is bonkers.

 

[Taritu]

It's just terrible. I had a situation the other day where, in eight worlds, 6 of them were growing "Racket" populations. (Which are absolute crap.) I actually suppressed xenophile and changed government ethics specifically so I could take control of breeding.

 

[Bankipriel]

And you seem to be missing that this only possible if you have population control policy "allowed" and therefore isnt a viable options at all at least for egalitarian empires.

It also gives a 20% growth debuff, which means it also not really a viable option for everybody else, giving how important growth is in 2.2.

It also is micro heavy and makes organic growth impossible which means it is also rather bad game design.

Many of us want organic growth AND we want diversity, but we want that growth to at least make a little sense. Giving a nudge to minority pops isn't a bad idea on paper, but the current balance of it is bonkers.

Good points. The current system seems okay to me, but I can see more clearly now why you (and other people) don't like it.

I have argued at length elsewhere that egalitarian is significantly inferior (mechanically) to authoritarian for other reasons (for which I never play egalitarian anymore), so if the pop mechanics are further hurting play with that ethic, that's a shame.

I hope they change the pop mechanics to make multi-species play more enjoyable for everyone.

 

[Derp]

It's just terrible. I had a situation the other day where, in eight worlds, 6 of them were growing "Racket" populations. (Which are absolute crap.) I actually suppressed xenophile and changed government ethics specifically so I could take control of breeding.

just mod the negative traits out. rackets kick ass.

on the topic at hand, my only real problem with the way things are is it's too easy to get a bunch of pops on worlds with a low habitability for them, which saps at your resources

 

[FleetingRain]

Basically, forces you to choose beween 3 rather poor options
1) Heavy handed population control policies
2) Playing Xenophobe
3) Watching your Home species become immediately displaced because you 'dared' to allow a minority pop to exist within your borders.

4) Enable Population Controls and eat the -20% Growth modifier.


I mean, I agree with the thread but at least we have that option.

 

[Taritu]

Population controls don't always work. You can't use them on aliens if Xenophile, and you can't use them if Egal.

 

[Leylos]

In my current game this situation happened to me:

I spawned in a very large cluster of the galaxy with my main species that likes tundra worlds. Since I like playing random starts my ethics were also random and ended up being fanatic egalitarian and xenophile. I was incredibly lucky to find a large amount of tundra and alpine worlds near my start.

Then I found a desert world which is where my problems began.

I ended up settling this desert world because it had many mineral districts.

I found a subterranean civilization and ended up accepting refugees which created one pop on the desert world.

Among the many traits this new species had were rapid breeder, repugnant and decadent so this new species can generally be described as fast breeding and very unhappy.

What now happened was fairly straightforward. All my planets stopped growing my main species and switched over to this new species. I didn't think of it a whole lot at first until stability started to drop. Unfortunately there was no way to combat this. My ethos prevented me from enabling population or migration controls. Then the unrest started which completely ripped my empire apart.

Having one pop on a random desert being able to outgrow almost 80 pops in all my empire is complete and utter nonsense.