Sllllooooowwww Pace of Game Play

[gathomas88]

Is it just me, or is waiting on pop growth and planetary development freaking *agony* now?

I got a bad start in my latest game. I spawned literally surrounded by other empires, and had to accept vassalization in lieu of conquest.

I'm presently trying to build up enough to rebel. Good God... It's like watching paint dry.

I've been playing for like 3 straight hours, and most of my planets are only now getting to 10 pops.

 

[sunyc]

Why not run at highest speed then? Lack of diplomatic options and discovery or general entertainment engagement is really an issue , but that’s not because of the new economy.

Think of early folding in an poker game, where technically after you fold you are just waiting for an new round to play. But at least you can see what actions others take and laugh at them. Neither options exists in sterallis now.

 

[tapewormlondon]

Yeah, the pop growth system either needs abuff, or you need ways to do more with less pops. Its not pop numbers thats the problem but more the resource balance. It takes too long to be able to balance your mineral, CG and Alloy numbers to a level where yu can build enough stuff. I have had to lengthen the mid game and end game by 100 years.

I think if higher tier buildings were more efficient rather than just adding more jobs would go a long way. EG Civillian Industry buildings producing 6,8,10,12 Consumer goods per job for same amount of minerals bia the tech buildings.

As an aside on the subject of pops. The new slow pop system REALLY shows up the AI outright cheating (it must get some kind of gift in resources rather than buffs). Theres just no way these AIs in game of such different empire sizes can have economies to support armardas based on their pop sizes.

 

[Sinister2202]

Highest speed + abuse markets to buy food and consumer goods + distribute luxury goods and encourage growth planetary decisions = not bad at all. Not to mention you can build gene clinics, do the expansion and harmony traditions and plentiful food policy.

Pop growth is slow if you are not doing anything to increase it, and growing multiple colonies at a time. I don't colonize any planets within my borders until 100 to 200 years later, when my capital hits 100 Pops or more. Even then, I can still keep reasonably large fleet with large energy income. Only trade off is that the capital won't have any specialization like alloy production or whatnot. But that's what the markets are for.

 

[tapewormlondon]

Highest speed + abuse markets to buy food and consumer goods + distribute luxury goods and encourage growth planetary decisions = not bad at all. Not to mention you can build gene clinics, do the expansion and harmony traditions and plentiful food policy.

Pop growth is slow if you are not doing anything to increase it, and growing multiple colonies at a time. I don't colonize any planets within my borders until 100 to 200 years later, when my capital hits 100 Pops or more.

With all due respect, what you are describing is optimal gameplay. You shouldnt get a barely usable pop growth from optimal play. Your pop growth should be off the charts. I do all of that except abuse the galactic market and I still find it slow.

 

[Sinister2202]

With all due respect, what you are describing is optimal gameplay. You shouldnt get a barely usable pop growth from optimal play. Your pop growth should be off the charts. I do all of that except abuse the galactic market and I still find it slow.

I could reach 6.00 growth at best. But fair point. This is why I suggested (and still am) parallel pop growth in the past, instead of serial growth. I am a bit disappointed clone tech only gives growth speed, but nothing else. I wish there was a building you could build to allow for parallel growth. Or even better, if you had multiple species, they should be growing parallel as well, instead of the game deciding who to grow first for you.

As a side note, you'd be surprised how fast they grow if you just don't pay much attention to it. I find staring at the growth meter makes it all the more slower.

 

[gathomas88]

Why not run at highest speed then? Lack of diplomatic options and discovery or general entertainment engagement is really an issue , but that’s not because of the new economy.

Think of early folding in an poker game, where technically after you fold you are just waiting for an new round to play. But at least you can see what actions others take and laugh at them. Neither options exists in sterallis now.

Umm... I *am* playing at the highest speed? I'm also playing with a species that has the "nomadic" trait, have food set to "plentitude," went for harmony traditions first to get the pop growth bonus, and made sure the first thing I put on all of my planets was a gene clinic. A freaking *eternity* later when I finally got the pops to make a second building, I built a robot factory to try and fill jobs more quickly, and also modified the robots to build faster.

It's STILL slow as Hell. Like... Barely more than 2.00 a month on most planets.

The only other thing I could do would be to make immigration treaties with everyone (which I obviously can't, being a vassal). Frankly, I don't think that should be a requirement for decent speed pop growth anyway.

Sometimes I want to play with one species only.

 

[gathomas88]

Highest speed + abuse markets to buy food and consumer goods + distribute luxury goods and encourage growth planetary decisions = not bad at all. Not to mention you can build gene clinics, do the expansion and harmony traditions and plentiful food policy.

Pop growth is slow if you are not doing anything to increase it, and growing multiple colonies at a time. I don't colonize any planets within my borders until 100 to 200 years later, when my capital hits 100 Pops or more. Even then, I can still keep reasonably large fleet with large energy income. Only trade off is that the capital won't have any specialization like alloy production or whatnot. But that's what the markets are for.

Why on Earth should more than one colony slow things down?

I could reach 6.00 growth at best. But fair point. This is why I suggested (and still am) parallel pop growth in the past, instead of serial growth. I am a bit disappointed clone tech only gives growth speed, but nothing else. I wish there was a building you could build to allow for parallel growth. Or even better, if you had multiple species, they should be growing parallel as well, instead of the game deciding who to grow first for you.

As a side note, you'd be surprised how fast they grow if you just don't pay much attention to it. I find staring at the growth meter makes it all the more slower.

IMO, immigration should really have its own growth meter, like Robots do. It'd not only be faster, but you could grow more than one species at the same time.

The current system doesn't make a whole lot of sense in this regard.

 

[stumason]

Why on Earth should more than one colony slow things down?

I think he is referring to the emigration from the more populated worlds to colonies. For each new colony, it adds a debuff to growth in the form of emigration push. Have too many and it will slow your developed worlds growth to a crawl. I find it's best to wait a little while before settling new colonies, let your homeworld build up a bit first. By all means, go and grab those systems, but don't rush 4-5 colonies in the first 10 years otherwise you'll gimp your pop growth on the one world actually making useful stuff for your Empire.

 

[Sinister2202]

Why on Earth should more than one colony slow things down?

Because of emigration. But I see your point.

IMO, immigration should really have its own growth meter, like Robots do. It'd not only be faster, but you could grow more than one species at the same time.

The current system doesn't make a whole lot of sense in this regard.

Yeah it doesn't. I would think growth rate should multiply by the numbers of Pops on a planet. It's much faster to grow a whole block of population with a 100 people, rather than 2. So I don't get the whole logic behind this either. And how does emigration comes into the equation is beyond me, it should be separate like you said.

And again, I think there should be parallel growth per species on the planet, rather than growing one species at a time. This makes no sense at all. Are they just waiting in line for other species to make certain amount of babies? Xenophiles should have upper hand in this regard. Xenophobes already get pop growth bonus so what's stopping xenophiles to grow multiple species at once?

 

[Guluere]

I think they need to add a modifier to growth speed based on how many bio pops you already have, gets faster with more pops.

 

[gathomas88]

Because of emigration. But I see your point.

Yeah it doesn't. I would think growth rate should multiply by the numbers of Pops on a planet. It's much faster to grow a whole block of population with a 100 people, rather than 2. So I don't get the whole logic behind this either. And how does emigration comes into the equation is beyond me, it should be separate like you said.

Right now, you can literally have immigration treaties with every race in the galaxy, but planets full of nothing but your own race. All you have to do is set your race to "preferred."

I'm pretty sure you even keep most of the growth bonus from those treaties while doing so.

 

[stumason]

POP growth does pick up as you go into the game, as a result of techs, decisions and buildings. I have slow breeders in my current game, but can easily get 5+ growth a month on all my developed worlds with little effort, which is a new POP every 20 months. My slave monkey things are even better, they seem to spend all their downtime bonking - they can hit 6+ a month.

 

[Sinister2202]

Right now, you can literally have immigration treaties with every race in the galaxy, but planets full of nothing but your own race. All you have to do is set your race to "preferred."

I'm pretty sure you even keep most of the growth bonus from those treaties while doing so.

It would be nicer if you could grow all those multiple species at once, but while you can still prioritize which species to be grown faster, judged from factors like living conditions and citizenship status etc.

But if you are playing xenophobic homogeneous empire, then growth speed modifiers need more buff. Right now it's so low. I've only jumped from 5.00 to 5.20 with planetary decision, and 5.75 with gene clinics. I'm just guessing with the numbers here, but the point is that it's not even increasing it by 1.

 

[Azhcristokos]

There are mods to boost the pop growth speed or make it possible to institute the planetary growth decisions permanently with food upkeep. Lowering the costs of traditions/technologies in the game setup settings also helps.

...honestly, maybe we should have just a slider in the pregame setup that lets us reduce pop growth requirements or boost speed? Could it hurt?

 

[pryr]

I really want to see some kind of "empire growth speed" slider added (for increasing pop growth speed and building speed). I prefer fast paced gameplay and just research/unity slider is not enough to make gameplay faster in 2.2. Right now i feel exactly like OP.

 

[Etrutian]

Do people play at anything other than the highest speed?

 

[stumason]

Do people play at anything other than the highest speed?

Personally, I tend to play on just "fast", unless at War then I drop down to normal for the most part. Fastest I only use in the 1st ten years and what with the current performance issues, it becomes a moot point about 50 years into a game when there is no difference between fast and fastest.

 

[Sifer2]

For me its mostly annoying how early game it takes a while to stabilize your economy so you can focus on making enough alloys to be able to expand through war. As I have said in other topics I really feel like 2.2 was built, and mostly playtested for small Megacorp empires. Trying to go wide or aggressively conquer in this system is annoying. And when you do manage it your reward is the incredible micromanagement hassle of building on 12+ planets since the sectors/automation is so badly implemented now.

 

[Vanhal]

Tbh we could use 2 more speed settings. Fastest speed seems like speed 3 in CK2, and there are 2 more speed settings there. And not only in 2.2, it was always too slow.