Population Growth Flawed

[TheHolyAsdf]

I noticed that when a population is growing, it obstructs every other species population from growing on that planet.

I feel this isn't ideal. Every species on a planet should be growing at speeds in accordance to their genetic traits and existing planetary population simultaneously

I had an annoying game where I accepted subterranean species and now they grow in insane numbers. Every single planet favoured this species for some stupid reason and was growing them and they overtook my original species in number. They had undesirable genetic traits as well and this happened early in the game.

What does everyone think? How does a planet "choose" which population to grow?

 

[nikkythegreat]

Most players are complaining about the current growth mechanics and how it favors the minority species of a planet. That a single immigrant given time would most likely populate half the planet. Sadly paradox isnt listening to the players in this regard.

 

[Facepalm]

Maybe new pops could instead be randomized in some fashion once ready?

 

[Simal]

I feel this isn't ideal. Every species on a planet should be growing at speeds in accordance to their genetic traits and existing planetary population simultaneously

Guaranteed to destroy the devouring swarm and fanatic purifiers.

 

[Juboboman]

Most players are complaining about the current growth mechanics and how it favors the minority species of a planet. That a single immigrant given time would most likely populate half the planet. Sadly paradox isnt listening to the players in this regard.

When it was announced in the dev diary the reaction was exactly the same as it has been since it went live. Knowing what we know now they probably just didn't have enough time to flesh out the mechanic so this was the compromise to get some sort of growth model "working" in time for 2.2 release.

 

[strangebloke]

Most players are complaining about the current growth mechanics and how it favors the minority species of a planet. That a single immigrant given time would most likely populate half the planet. Sadly paradox isnt listening to the players in this regard.

They haven't fixed it yet; I imagine their priorities run something like: bugs > exploits > performance > AI > mechanical changes. I think once the game gets to a semblance of stability we'll see some key fixes to stuff like this.

Though I'll admit that I don't read all the dev responses.

---

As to pop growth siliness in general, as well as performance, this would be my fix:


You get rid of the current job weight mechanic. It just leads to an incredible amount of shuffling about of pops between the same jobs.

Instead, create a master matrix of Pop traits to jobs. 'x trait makes you .4 better at y job'. This is very easy to do in an objective manner. Communal makes you a little better at every job. Strong makes you a better worker. Intelligent makes you a better researcher. Every pop race then can have values calculated for it's attraction to each job.

When a planet starts production of a new pop, it looks at all the pops it can grow, and picks one based off of the jobs already on that planet and the habitability of that planet.

Since a city planet or habitat or Gaia world has 100% habitability, and differences between most jobs are small, many worlds will still be very cosmopolitan. But the science world is a world of intelligent species, thank you very much.

When a new job is opened, it's filled by whatever pop has the highest aptitude for it, but only if that pop is eligible, is of equal or lower strata, and it's aptitude for it's new job is higher than it's old one.

When a new pop enters the work force either because its place of employment was demolished or because it's a new pop, it takes the highest strata job available.

This means that a newly unemployed/created pop is generally going to have very low-strata options. But since specialist and ruler jobs are constantly being created, pops will be able to bubble up through the ranks if they're high aptitude.(Ruler job is filled by specialist, specialist is filled by other specialist, specialist is filled by worker.)

Finally, if jobs are eliminated, the least apt pops with that job are released into the workforce first.

All in all this leads to much more natural-looking, aesthetically pleasing worlds. A refugee with 30% habitability won't inexplicably take over a planet.

But the other benefit is that it relies on event based calculations. When a planet produces a pop, it assigns a job, then calculates the growth weight of all pops that can grow there. When a building is demolished, a dozen pops recalculate their position.

What they don't have to do is pointlessly reshuffle all the pops in the galaxy every tic.

Obviously this is just my 5 cents, but I think this would fix most of my problems with the game, from a design and performance perspective. (Balance and bugs are another matter)

 

[fodazd]

I agree that the way it is now isn't good. The old system, with all species growing at the same time (but slower), no pop decline and migration of whole pops instead of growth bonuses/penalties was better.

 

[metalosse]

I don't think that the problem is that one species grow at a time. I think it is still better than the previous version.

The problem is how much minorities are favored. I see the interest of favoring them (more diverse empires), but they are way too much favored.

 

[TheHolyAsdf]

Your "rapid breeders" genetic traits could be rendered completely useless if your planet is home to multiple species. All that trait does is promote opportunities for all other species to grow rather than increase abundance of that specific species. I feel it really is flawed so long as one species can be growing at any time.

 

[Arutar]

PSA: Here is the (old) main thread on this issue.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...es-decided-to-commit-auto-extinction.1137665/

TLDR: pop growth is nonsensical right now, almost everyone agrees, still waiting for any response from PDX (hopefully next week?)

 

[strangebloke]

TBH in the interim I've either been ignoring pop traits entirely, or I've been playing as a purging, slaving xenophobe. Both work pretty well.

Fun playthrough: Venerable leader-focused imperial race. Regardless of how pops spread in your empire, your long-lived, super-awesome leaders will always make up most of your leaders, and the whole empire will benefit.

 

[Pat Casey]

I agree that the current growth model is deeply flawed.

1) It doesn't take into account current population, so you don't get a "realistic" growth curve (whcih typically look like the letter S as growth starts out slow b/c a small breeding population, then expands as there are more and more breeders and lots of empty space on the planet, then slows down when things start to get crowded and the planet approaches its carrying capacity).

2) It biases in favor of minority populations so if you have a planet with 99 orcs on it and 1 human arrives, you are going to grow essentially nothing but humans until there are 99 humans and 99 orcs on the planet ... you could argue this is a special case problem of #1 (above), but implementation was its a distinct enough symptom to call out.

3) Pops are immortal (there is no death rate), which makes early game population a chore (not enough of it) and late game population a chore (too much of it).

IMHO the solution to all three of these is to

A) take the OP's original idea of tracking growth individually by species

B) apply non linear population growth math each of them ... population growth rate should start out low, peak when the planet is about half "full" (large breeding population, large amount of things for new pops to do leads to high growth), and then slow down to zero when a planet reaches its carrying capacity.

The basic idea is that the number of babies a given pop is going to have is going to be smaller the more populated the planet is, but the total number of pops having babies is going to be larger, and two mathematic facts interact to give us a realistic growth curve.

A simplistic growth rate equation would be something like:

Growth Rate per individual pop = <species specific modifier> * <habitability of that species on planet> (total planet capacity - current planetary population)/total planet capacity

Growth Rate per species = current planetary population of that species * Growth rate per individual pop

Example:

Assume Orcs have:

Default species specific rate of 0.1
80% habitability on our hypothetical planet of Home

Assume home is:

A size 15 planet with a "carrying capacity" of 6* size = 90

When the first ORC arrives on the planet:

Growth rate = 0.1 * .8 * (90-1)/90 = .079

There's only one orc growing though, so planetary growth rate is going to be:

1.0 Orcs * .079 Growth rate = .079 new orcs a year -> Fast on a per orc basis, but not super fast ... we'll get a fresh orc pop in about 12 years

Lets imagine things have been going well for our orcs though and there are now 45 orcs on the planet

Growth Rate per orc is = 0.1 *.8 * (90-45)/90 = .04

The planet is a little more crowded, and individual orc families are smaller than they used to be. But there are more orc familes on the planet (45 of them to be precise)

So the planetary growth rate is going to be:

45 orcs *.04 growth rate = 1.8 new orcs a year

Eventually the planet will "fill up" though and we'll have 90 orcs on it.

Growth rate per orc is 0.1 * .8 * (90-90)/90 =0

We are full, and even though we have a lot of orcs on the planet they aren't having a lot of babies.

You could then integrate this kind of model in the gameplay mechanics and get predictable, "natural" outcomes.

Higher technologies and/or terraforming could raise the carrying capacity on your planets, as could doing land clearances.

Different species could start with different natural growth rates.

Radically different species could use radically different growth models to add species dimorphism to the game... maybe a hive race sends a queen to a new planet (one per planet b/c they kill each other otherwise). The queen lays lots and lots of eggs so initial growth is very fast and outstrips more traditional races, but since there's only one queen laying eggs the growth rate is flat over time (unaffected by population) so there is a linear growth.

You could build in "flaws" into species like devouring swarms there they *were not* affected by planet carrying capacity and over-bred, leading to worlds becoming overpopulated and overrun by feral drones so you'd have to constantly expanding frontier of super productive worlds that came online quickly, expanding away from a core of overpopulated feral worlds that had collapsed under overpopulation.

There's a lot, in short, you could do with the basic mechanic once you got it in there, and it wouldn't be that hard to get it in there

 

[Scorpio_Shirica]

just to be clear, the problem isn't the model encouraging diversity. it's the whole "white genocide" thing it has going on with stopping all other species from growing from just one refugee showing up.

 

[Arutar]

just to be clear, the problem isn't the model encouraging diversity. it's the whole "white genocide" thing it has going on with stopping all other species from growing from just one refugee showing up.

Could we plese stop using nonsensical political loaded terms like "white genocide" in this context?

Not least because it is having the problem in the game completely backwards:

If in the game the slow breeding species A would become a minority over time because of the fast breeding species B, nobody could have a problem with it, because this would be based on maths and logic. But sadly that is precisely not how the growth system in 2.2 operates. Now species A and B would be forced more or less into parity, regardless of their initial population or breeding speed, which makes zero sense, destroys actual diversity and ruins immersion.

 

[strangebloke]

If in the game the slow breeding species A would become a minority over time because of the fast breeding species B, nobody could have a problem with it, because this would be based on maths and logic. But sadly that is precisely not how the growth system in 2.2 operates. Now species A and B would be forced more or less into parity, regardless of their initial population or breeding speed, which makes zero sense, destroys actual diversity and ruins immersion.

Right, that'd be very simple.

Ultimately, you need either a good gameplay reason or a good in-universe reason. What you're speaking of is an in-universe reason. Pop growth speed + habitability = weight is a very reasonable way to do things that doesn't overcomplicate anything.

My reasoning outlined above basically comes down to gameplay, but from a realism perspective, I think that it does work. If there are lots of mining jobs, pops that are good at mining are going to thrive, simple as that. The ones who are less good will be poorer, less happy and less willing/able to have kids.

The current version is good neither for purposes of gameplay nor for purposes of making sense, and it gets much sillier the greater number of pops that are on a planet.