Like 1 billion, 2 billions, 5 billions? I want to know just how many freaky aliens I got in my crazy space empire.
Question: How many people does one Pop represent?
- Thread starter zdmckinley
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Ultimately it's up to your RP, I would imagine larger creatures would have lower number in the millions possibly, and smaller creatures would be in the hundreds of billions.
This question is asked all the time and the answer is always the same: it is an abstraction and the specific numbers would vary by species depending on fertility and lifespan.
This will likely remain the answer for Stellaris’s entire life cycle and that is probably for the best.
This will likely remain the answer for Stellaris’s entire life cycle and that is probably for the best.
And here I thought the new pop system was going to finally lay this question to rest...
How many pops do you start a game with? Perhaps you could take the projected real world human population in 2200 and divide it by that number for a rough-ish estimate, but I think it's unlikely that a single number would make sense for all scenarios in the game.
There is no consistent number.
Across species it will vary depending on their size and ability to work job roles.
Over time it will vary - if 2019 (Space Age) Earth starts with (say) 8 pops and has 8 billion people, then that would suggest that a colony ship of humans has 1 billion people on board.
A billion people that has incidentally been removed from the planet providing colonists without reducing the number of pops there.
Indeed you can have one pop of a given species/sub species in your empire, use it to colonise somewhere and magically have two (or even three) pops of that species/subspecies as soon as the colony is founded.
Overall, it is "a number of entities sufficient to work one job".
Across species it will vary depending on their size and ability to work job roles.
Over time it will vary - if 2019 (Space Age) Earth starts with (say) 8 pops and has 8 billion people, then that would suggest that a colony ship of humans has 1 billion people on board.
A billion people that has incidentally been removed from the planet providing colonists without reducing the number of pops there.
Indeed you can have one pop of a given species/sub species in your empire, use it to colonise somewhere and magically have two (or even three) pops of that species/subspecies as soon as the colony is founded.
Overall, it is "a number of entities sufficient to work one job".
As many as you think are appropriate for your species.
My rule of thumb is 100 million people per pop.
My rule of thumb is 100 million people per pop.
In addition to all the other problems with getting a hard number that have been mentioned, it could be argued that the total number of pops you have don't even represent your total population, bur rather the employable "working age" portion of the population. Even among human cultures the percentage of the working population varies by significant percentages depending on the demographic and cultural factors present, among xenos, the problem of estimating it quickly becomes insoluble.
So starting on 23rd century Earth with ~20 pops means that we got down to two billion people somehow?
Well, there could be a serious (thought not apocalyptic)war or disease in the backstory, which would deplete the numbers right before discovering ftl tech.So starting on 23rd century Earth with ~20 pops means that we got down to two billion people somehow?
I don't play humans, I play my Terkardian Happy Birds.So starting on 23rd century Earth with ~20 pops means that we got down to two billion people somehow?
...but for humans you can always do the neat Vicky 2 trick and make it 100 million households. Or just use a number you like more.
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Sadly, there's no number you can assign that makes much sense.
If you assign a big number, like a billion, than you have to ask why a fledgling colony of starry-eyed pioneers has a whole billion (or two) people in it, and only stops being a backwater when it has ten billion.
If you assign a smaller number, like 100 million, then you have to ask why all the starting planets have so few people on them, and why an ecumenopolis or ringworld can only hold such an obscenely small number of people - a hundred billion or so at most. An entire planetary surface covered in even mild urban sprawl ought to hold trillions, and orders of magnitude more if it's arcologies and the like. The numbers for a ringworld are dizzying.
Some players get around this with some kind of headcannon about the pops representing some kind of logarithmic scale (IE, each pop on a planet represents more than one before it) but this creates even worse problems and is, in my opinion, very silly. If the first pop is a million people and the tenth is a billion, then how come they produce the same amount when the work a district? How what happens to all those people when you resettle a pop from a dense planet to sparse one? Do millions of people pop into existence when you resettle from a sprase planet to your crowded capitol? The whole thing falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
Best not to think too hard about it.
If you assign a big number, like a billion, than you have to ask why a fledgling colony of starry-eyed pioneers has a whole billion (or two) people in it, and only stops being a backwater when it has ten billion.
If you assign a smaller number, like 100 million, then you have to ask why all the starting planets have so few people on them, and why an ecumenopolis or ringworld can only hold such an obscenely small number of people - a hundred billion or so at most. An entire planetary surface covered in even mild urban sprawl ought to hold trillions, and orders of magnitude more if it's arcologies and the like. The numbers for a ringworld are dizzying.
Some players get around this with some kind of headcannon about the pops representing some kind of logarithmic scale (IE, each pop on a planet represents more than one before it) but this creates even worse problems and is, in my opinion, very silly. If the first pop is a million people and the tenth is a billion, then how come they produce the same amount when the work a district? How what happens to all those people when you resettle a pop from a dense planet to sparse one? Do millions of people pop into existence when you resettle from a sprase planet to your crowded capitol? The whole thing falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
Best not to think too hard about it.