Shouldn't pop growth accelerate

[Spidee]

Hey,

I know that we will never know how many individuals are in one pop, population is just like bacteria. If space and food is available, shouldn't they grow exponentially? I know immigration helps to fill planets, but it just feels wrong.
If the argument is "because balance", I shut up, otherwise I welcome thoughts.

 

[Blurb]

I think it's painfully obvious to everyone that a realistic population model would imply exponential growth.
I would hope it's similarly obvious that Stellaris does not attempt to be a realistic model of anything at all.

So yes: "because balance"... or "because game design".

 

[zukodark]

I'm not sure if it should simply accelerate, and adding that would hardly make it any more realistic than currently. For a more realistic pop growth system they would need the multitude of factors that are important IRL, while at the same time balancing them to make the game fun. Which is not really the path this suggestion is going.

 

[sillyrobot]

If you assume population census is non-linear (i.e. 2 Pops is numerically larger than twice a single Pop) then constant linear growth is fine and it helps conceptualize a starting colony being only 1/80 of a wholly developed world. Dropping 100,000,000 people to start a colony has always seemed... excessive to me.

 

[Typee]

If you assume population census is non-linear (i.e. 2 Pops is numerically larger than twice a single Pop) then constant linear growth is fine and it helps conceptualize a starting colony being only 1/80 of a wholly developed world. Dropping 100,000,000 people to start a colony has always seemed... excessive to me.

Well that argument only holds until you start moving pops from one world to the other and they keep being the same size.

Hey,

I know that we will never know how many individuals are in one pop, population is just like bacteria. If space and food is available, shouldn't they grow exponentially? I know immigration helps to fill planets, but it just feels wrong.
If the argument is "because balance", I shut up, otherwise I welcome thoughts.

The reason for it is surely balance, but I really find it to not work game mechanics-wise. There is no reason for your pop growth to be a multiplier of your # of planets. It's silly that the main use of habitats is to be baby factories. It's silly that people colonize every single planet available just to get more pops out of them. It's silly that you will never fill an ecumenopolis without relocating pops from small colonies into them. It's silly that in a game desperately trying to make tall play viable the most important resource (pops) is a direct function of how wide you are.

Either existing pops on a planet should increase pop growth (probably sub-linearily to avoid massive snowball, or something like pop_growth = 1 + 0.1 * pops), or pop growth on a planet level should be abolished and everything should happen at the empire scale.

 

[sillyrobot]

Well that argument only holds until you start moving pops from one world to the other and they keep being the same size.

<snip>

Lots of folks lost in transit. It all comes out in the wash over 20 years or so. No head canon is perfect.

 

[anamiac]

If they made population growth exponential, they'd also need to make building construction speed exponential. Otherwise you'll get to the point where your pops are growing faster than you can provide them with jobs and housing.

But you know, exponential building construction speed actually makes a bit of sense. The more population you have, the larger pool of construction workers you can employ.

 

[Spidee]

If they made population growth exponential, they'd also need to make building construction speed exponential. Otherwise you'll get to the point where your pops are growing faster than you can provide them with jobs and housing.

But you know, exponential building construction speed actually makes a bit of sense. The more population you have, the larger pool of construction workers you can employ.

Yeah, but don't go into the Project leader fallacy. 9 women will not deliver a baby in 1 month. And there is a hard cap on housing and jobs you can provide via districts and buildings, thus you would just reach it and then emigration gets you into balance.

 

[RXG4]

Hey,

I know that we will never know how many individuals are in one pop, population is just like bacteria. If space and food is available, shouldn't they grow exponentially? I know immigration helps to fill planets, but it just feels wrong.
If the argument is "because balance", I shut up, otherwise I welcome thoughts.

Human populations do not grow exponentially, like bacteria. A number of factors (e.g. economical, cultural, societal) are involved into a human deciding to have a child. Even with immigration, developed societies mostly have weak to negative growth (e.g. USA, Germany and Japan have 0.71, 0.42 and -0.16% annual growth, respectively).

I can see that applied to highly developed, space-faring societies, although of course some, like hive-minds, could be a counter-example.

 

[Bearjuden]

If you assume population census is non-linear (i.e. 2 Pops is numerically larger than twice a single Pop) then constant linear growth is fine and it helps conceptualize a starting colony being only 1/80 of a wholly developed world. Dropping 100,000,000 people to start a colony has always seemed... excessive to me.

That completely shatters the economy though. If not all pops are the same, then why does, all other things being equal, every single mining pop produce the same output as every single other mining pop? If one pop is twice as big as another pop, it should have twice the output. The only reasonable way Stellaris functions in any logical sense at all is if all pops within a species represent the same amount of people. Between species (and especially between species type) they aren't the same, which is why there are no hard numbers attached to them, but they do at least represent the same productive workforce. Arthropods are probably a lot more numerous than mammals so they have a lot more people per pop, but their people are individually less productive (since they're smaller, whatever) so it all balances out.

 

[Onedreamer]

Hey,

I know that we will never know how many individuals are in one pop, population is just like bacteria. If space and food is available, shouldn't they grow exponentially? I know immigration helps to fill planets, but it just feels wrong.
If the argument is "because balance", I shut up, otherwise I welcome thoughts.

Not necessarily. Population growth doesn't simply depend on the number of possible subjects available for reproduction, it depends on many factors. In mammalian species each couple (if monogamous) would need to have at least 3 children on avg in order for population to grow and that would still not be an exponential growth. How many children does a sentient spacefaring species produce however, is a complex situation that you can hardly represent by a simple equation that would be valid accross the entire game. You would have to take in consideration really a host of factors, from reproducing organs to social habits, laws, influence of nature and of alien elements; most of these are elements that do not add anything but nuisance to a strategic game. I believe the current system isn't there for the sake of balance but for the sake of simplicity and strategical value, since we are talking of a game.

If you look at Nature in general, anything that grows exponentially has a brief existance. Since we talk of spacefaring civilizations, which assumes a significant social development, we can safely assume each of these species has learnt in a way or another to at least control population growth in order to face the risk of extinction. You should note that the very existance of "Fallen" Empires is based on this.

 

[Spidee]

Human populations do not grow exponentially, like bacteria. A number of factors (e.g. economical, cultural, societal) are involved into a human deciding to have a child. Even with immigration, developed societies mostly have weak to negative growth (e.g. USA, Germany and Japan have 0.71, 0.42 and -0.16% annual growth, respectively).

I can see that applied to highly developed, space-faring societies, although of course some, like hive-minds, could be a counter-example.

Well the last few decades in the developed countries are suggestive, that we are not like bacteria, however if memory serves, only in the developed west. In China, the growth was cut artificially. one could argue, that we are reaching what we can reasonably feed under the current system (remember when oil was attacking $100 per gallon and how we were concerned what it will make to food prices and that there might be food riots). Humanity reached 1B around 1800. 2B sometime in 1923. 4B in 1974 and is projected to be reached 8 in 2026.
120 years for 1st doubling, 50 years for the second doubling. 50 years for the 3rd.
Even if we are just doubling the population every 50 years, it is not a linear growth.

 

[Ekufa]

Imagine what real world would look if growth worked like in stellaris. Countries would colonize Antarctica where people would breed like rabbits doubling their numbers in 5 years and then government would resettle them back to motherland.

 

[Onedreamer]

Well the last few decades in the developed countries are suggestive, that we are not like bacteria, however if memory serves, only in the developed west. In China, the growth was cut artificially.

That's completely wrong. In China the growth was cut by human beings, you cannot call a reasoned decision taken by human beings, be it taken by authorities on a large scale as "artificial". All the opposite. On a large scale you cannot treat this in any different way than the decision of a single couple to have children or not. You would have to support the idea that birth control by the use of contraceptives or even by God's advised abstinence is "artificial".
Remember that we play SENTIENT and complex species, not bacteria. Even the insectoids and robots available to play are sentient. Species that would grow exponentially or uncontrollably most likely would never reach a spacefaring situation before extinction.

 

[Iosue Yu]

What about an empire-wide growth calculated from your Pops and the divided and distributed to the planets?

Would need some complex model to actually see if it is feasible. But in hypothesis, it should work.

 

[anamiac]

Not necessarily. Population growth doesn't simply depend on the number of possible subjects available for reproduction, it depends on many factors. In mammalian species each couple (if monogamous) would need to have at least 3 children on avg in order for population to grow and that would still not be an exponential growth. How many children does a sentient spacefaring species produce however, is a complex situation that you can hardly represent by a simple equation that would be valid accross the entire game. You would have to take in consideration really a host of factors, from reproducing organs to social habits, laws, influence of nature and of alien elements; most of these are elements that do not add anything but nuisance to a strategic game. I believe the current system isn't there for the sake of balance but for the sake of simplicity and strategical value, since we are talking of a game.

If you look at Nature in general, anything that grows exponentially has a brief existance. Since we talk of spacefaring civilizations, which assumes a significant social development, we can safely assume each of these species has learnt in a way or another to at least control population growth in order to face the risk of extinction. You should note that the very existance of "Fallen" Empires is based on this.

How are you defining this word 'Exponential'? You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. Exponential and Linear are mathematical terms. When related to population growth, linear growth is constant, regardless of population. Exponential populations means that it's more useful to talk about growth as a percentage of existing population.

For instance, New York City has a population of 8.6 million and gained 447,565 residents or 5.5% over the course of 7 years. If we believe human beings growth rates are linear then we can determine when population growth as 63,937 per year and we estimate the 1919 population as 2.2 million. However as we go further back it gets ridiculous with NY having 1 person in 1884 but that person having grown to 64k people in 1885. The reason why the linear method fails is because it's unrealistic.

Suppose we take the exponent approach estimate how many people there were at a given date. If we extrapolate that New York gains .78% population every year then 100 years ago it had 2.75 million people. This is not only closer than the linear estimate (actual 1920 population was 5.6 million), but it allows us to go back in time further than the linear example. It allows us to guess population 200, 300, 400 years ago. It only fails insofar as the the exponent (the percentage) changes over time. But nobody said that exponential growth as defined mathematically means a constant exponent, or even a big one. The population dip in china was exponential, not linear. It just had an exponent that was smaller than 1. 98% and 115% are both exponential interest rates, even though the latter one will grow your money very quickly and the former will see your assets slowly shrivel and die.

So yes, human beings do grow exponentially, exactly like bacteria and any other lifeform. Do you know that you have several pounds of bacteria in your body at any given time? But you're not about to explode tomorrow. It's all growing exponentially, but that exponent is very close to 1. This is the most natural, most normal state of bacteria. Of course, if you stick it in an unnatural environment where there are no predators, no pesky white blood cells to enforce the law, and an unlimited amount of food, then it's going to grow much faster. Human beings could also grow much faster without limitations than we currently do. I knew a man with one wife and 16 surviving children. And yes, I realize that isn't socially normal in this day and age, but social norms are another one of those limiting factors I'm referring to.

 

[strangebloke]

Well, frankly gating early game planet utility behind pop count is already kind of humorous. For the first 30,000 years of human history on sol, we've accumulated 20-some pops. Then in 50 years we've doubled that on earth in addition to having multiple colonies of that size. Everyone on earth just decided to start having tons of babies all of a sudden I guess.



From a pure simulationist perspective, some races could double every 10 months whether housing was available or not whereas other races might decline in size if the lighting is wrong, or something. There are a million things which affect birth rate, ranging from sex-preference abortions to a need for specialized breeding conditions, to gestation periods, to the prevalence of in vitro fertilization, to religious biases, to media effects, to...

Goodness, I don't actually think there's any way to cover the whole list of things that

Shifting population dynamics are excessively complicated, which is why the system is kept relatively simple.

What I wish is that your imperial pop growth wasn't
(3+modifiers) * (#of planets)

but rather:

(X+modifiers)^[1+(#of planets)/Y]

In other words, I wish that it didn't matter so much how many planets you had. If there's space available for everyone, why does it matter if my pops are spread out between a dozen worlds or not?

 

[Dark Philosopher]

It would definitely become a problem in 2.2+ since population doesn't have a maximum, leading to Civilization-style problems where colonies become so large that unhappiness and lack of housing/amenities make the colony unplayable and prone to rebellion. That is no fun. I understand it's realistic to assume pops would continue growing even when there's no room, but it forces micro-management and just makes the game less fun. In that regard, I liked the tile-system (even though I do prefer the 2.2+ mechanics).

As far as implementing it, how about simply increasing pop growth percentage on a colony based on the amount of organic pops, combined with free housing, surplus consumer goods and empire-wide food surplus? Sounds complicated, but it shouldn't be too hard to implement, since there are already per-colony growth modifiers if I recall correctly.

This way, if there's free housing and goods, the pop growth percentage on a colony would increase with higher pop amounts, leading to accelerated growth. But as soon as a colony ran out of housing, goods or food, the equation would come back as 0 or even negative, thus stunting pop growth and leading to an eventual exhaustion of pop growth and a natural maximum size. Combine it with the already existing emigration pressure from lack of resources and it would result in a fairly natural balance, I'd say.

 

[Crowarior]

They could simply make it so that you get +0.1 or +0.05 growth per every pop that currently exist on the planet.
For example, you have 100 pops, that means you get +10/+5 extra growth. I dont think that exponential growth would be good because pops would grow too fast.

 

[Spidee]

That's completely wrong. In China the growth was cut by human beings, you cannot call a reasoned decision taken by human beings, be it taken by authorities on a large scale as "artificial". All the opposite. On a large scale you cannot treat this in any different way than the decision of a single couple to have children or not. You would have to support the idea that birth control by the use of contraceptives or even by God's advised abstinence is "artificial".
Remember that we play SENTIENT and complex species, not bacteria. Even the insectoids and robots available to play are sentient. Species that would grow exponentially or uncontrollably most likely would never reach a spacefaring situation before extinction.

Artificial in a sense, that if let to choose, they would not go for 1 or in exceptional case 2 children. Humans make their choices based on the indoctrination/culture they are in. Social engineering/religion/social norm/peer pressure define how many children you aim for and if/when you take action if you go above the number. If I am not mistaken, in Israel if a couple has only 2 children, it is seen as only 2, why aren't they blessed with more. In central Europe, if you have more than 2, you are seen as adventurous and exposing yourself to stress.
however this restriction came on over the last 50-80 years. Prior to that, as long as food was available we grew non-linearly. I think equilibrium is achieved somewhere around 2.08 or 2.1 child per female. Compound interest.
This calculator ignores mortality prior to natural death, but should give you an idea.
http://ilkkah.com/population-calcul...000&timespan=200&start_year=2013&pyramid=flat
Now I actually regret I never took that demographics course in collage to have all statistics at hand.