Species Pop Growth Is Wrong

[methegrate]

Am I the only one who thinks the new pop growth mechanic needs a rework?

I'm currently playing a human empire and got the underground civilization event. Eventually one of their pops was living on my planet.

After this, human growth stopped completely on my planet. Fast forward a few years and eight out of the thirteen pops on this planet are Species X. They are essentially the only new pops growing anywhere in my empire. Six out of my seven planets are creating new Species X pops and haven't made a human in some time.

I think this is WAD. My understanding is that the system will essentially try to balance the populations of the various species in my empire, but that leads to pretty absurd results. A single alien can completely halt production of any other species in the empire, and overnight can turn into like a third of your empire's population.

New pops work closer to a virus or invasive species than new members of society. I'd recommend a rework on how they grow.

Copied to the suggestions thread too.

 

[Ashantai]

I will admit it is a little odd that after you open a migration treaty I've not seen a human pop grow in 50 years, what with the 10 other species I can have. Whilst I like it balances them, I think that should only be every second pop, and the dominant should still be represented.

 

[JodelDiplom]

It's not just odd, it's completely absurd.

Pop growth dynamics were fun under the old tile system. You would watch small species spread a bit, big ones more. It was plausible. The current system just makes me want to play fanatic purifiers all the time.

 

[evilcat]

Nomadic Rapid Breaders are safer, but otherwise there is a risk that your specie will become minority.
One way to manage is to play authoritarian and set all xenos population control, migration control.

 

[methegrate]

I will admit it is a little odd that after you open a migration treaty I've not seen a human pop grow in 50 years, what with the 10 other species I can have. Whilst I like it balances them, I think that should only be every second pop, and the dominant should still be represented.

My thought was weighted randomization. So for every new pop there's a percent-chance it will be human and a percent-chance it will be species X, with always a minimum chance of any given species. I would also make organic growth (not migration) planet-based. It feels weird that reproduction on Alpha Centauri depends on how many people live on Earth.

Finally, I would reverse the current weights. The dominant species on a planet should grow faster than a small enclave both for thematic reasons (10 million humans will grow faster than 100,000 species Xers), and for mechanical ones. As-is, you don't need continuous immigration. One new pop is enough for a population explosion. To counterbalance that a little, I'd weight immigration growth in favor of non-dominant species. We'll say that they're more likely to move and spread.

So on a planet with two species that's equally hospitable to both, you'd start with a 50/50 chance of each pop. Then you adjust that based on demographics and immigration. So you'd give a +% or a -% chance based on which is the dominant species, which is more likely to immigrate, etc. Maybe you'd end up with 30/70, so for any given new pop there's a 30 percent chance it will be one thing and a 70 percent chance of the other.

To prevent a complete cascade reaction, since we've weighted in favor of the larger number, maybe we'd say that in a two-species empire the chances of a minority species can never go below 10 percent. So at least one in 10 (on average) new pops will be the little guy.

 

[Bearjuden]

Each species's growth on each planet should be tracked independently. That might be a bit too complicated but if you have a Human growth tracker and an Alien A growth tracker, then if Humans have 50 pops and Alien A has only 5 then the human population can grow faster without impacting Alien A.

Additionally, immigration needs to not add to whatever is growing at that moment - the thought that immigrating Alien A pops can speed up human growth is silly. Immigrating species should always add to their own species tracker. That way, when you first open up your empire with your first migration treaty, your species can keep growing even as aliens come to live amongst you, their immigration doesn't halt your growth.

Combine that with slowing growth as the planet reaches maximum housing and faster growth if lots of housing is available (as is realistic), and the system should work pretty well, I think.

 

[Sblargh]

Yes, yes it is.
It just doesn't make sense right now and it kills flavor way too much in too many areas.

What frustrates me is that I think they are so close of getting it right.

The flavor of having a multicultural (and xeno-compatible) society is the notion that different races, with their unique traits, will gravitate torwards planets that provide them with both a happier life and where they can be more useful (in this order), right now, I feel this just isn't happening.

The flavor of being a tyrant obsessed with eugenics or a materialist obsessed with technologically improving your spescies or a space communist deciding democratically about the future or gestalt hive-minds/robots is that you can tailor your population to suit the needs of the empire. You go here, you go there, you do this job, you do this one. Right now this is also pretty much non-existent.

So the current system has no flavor in those areas. No order emerging from chaos if you are more prone to embracing diversity and no imposing of values if you are more prone to embracing the greater good. It's just a mess.

 

[FleetingRain]

I have a related question: does a species emmigration contribute to another species' immigration? Say, I have only two planets, each with one species, and no migration treaties. Will a species immigrating from a planet contribute to the pop growth from the species in the other planet?

 

[Badesumofu]

I've yet to see anyone defend the way pops grow currently. So you're not the only one.

 

[Bearjuden]

I have a related question: does a species emmigration contribute to another species' immigration? Say, I have only two planets, each with one species, and no migration treaties. Will a species immigrating from a planet contribute to the pop growth from the species in the other planet?

I believe that they do. In about half an hour or so I can test to be sure but I seem to recall my species benefitting from immigration even when I was the only one with that species and forced growth was on for it.

Edit: I rolled the worst start for testing this imaginable at the present moment. I will test this when I can though, sometime this weekend.

 

[dostillevi]

Try Glavius's AI mod. It completely fixes the pop growth issue and many others. Of course the base game should have this fixed as well.

 

[FoolishOwl]

Yes, yes it is.
It just doesn't make sense right now and it kills flavor way too much in too many areas.

Yes. Prior to 2.2, I'd looked at leading a Xenophile culture to a happy Star Trek Federation outcome, where there were different species together on different worlds, as an achievement to work towards and feel good about.

Similar to what others have said, I'd prefer some system where the population that grows is chosen through a weighted distribution, so it feels more organic, taking especially climate preference into account. Bumping up the growth rate for a minority population makes sense, but as it stands, it feels very mechanical and implausible.

 

[methegrate]

Try Glavius's AI mod. It completely fixes the pop growth issue and many others. Of course the base game should have this fixed as well.

I actually can’t use Glavius post-2.2. For some reason on my game it can’t assign pops to jobs. So I end up with a bunch of unemployed and every district/building empty.

Good on him for getting on this issue though!

 

[dostillevi]

He's changed the way pop assignment works recently, might be worth a look again.

 

[AmpsterMan]

Otoh, humanity has adaptability and nomadic, so seeing humans spread through out the Galaxy is cool.

 

[Kryndude]

He's changed the way pop assignment works recently, might be worth a look again.

I had the same problem just yesterday with the mod on so I'm not so sure about that

 

[dostillevi]

That's too bad. It's odd that you specifically have an issue when others do not.

 

[KingAlamar]

I don't think the system is as broken as it is "woefully incomplete". In my current playthrough I'm using Syncretic (sp?) Evolution and I'm glad for a system that keeps some semblance of balance -- at least in the beginning.

What I believe we need is:

• Empire-wide we need to have species control over who gets to breed and who doesn't ... that's already there.
• Empire-wide we need a way to designate species breeding priorities AND preferred job type(s) so that the growth AI can get "nudged" in the right direction
• Planet by Planet [sector by sector??] we need a way of designating growth priority based on available jobs, job priority, and species type

With additions like above [or similar] the AI can easily figure out who should [properly] be in what jobs, which species needs to grow, etc.

Note: I'm talking about giving the AI / automation nudges in the right direction. This will help make sure we minimize instances of odd [ludicrous?] growth patterns, job assignment, etc. It's as much about quality of life as anything else though. Also this does give the players additional [grand?] decisions to make which may be a good thing if done properly.

 

[Piotrzeci]

It would be nice if:

• Each specie were growing at the same time,
• The growth speed would take under consideration current population (Either exponential growth or logistical model),
• Xeno-compatibility would instead just start counting all species as one population that grows,
• Immigration would play a role regardless of current size of the population,
• There was a huge bonus to immigration for new colonies that wears off the more pops are present (so it doesn't take ages to grow from 1 or 2 pops).

 

[ShaTiK]

Devs wanted to add variety to empire's species. This is fine and nice. They way they did it is absurd. The game tries to balance POPs evenly across the empire. With no regards to traits or habitability or anything else - just pure and simple mathematical operation. You have 2 species - they should be 50/50. You have 8 - then they would be equal in representation.
This idea of equal representation - I don't know what's more, simle bad design idea or some tad silly political agenda, but it hurts the game even of mechanical standpoint. Right now POPs would grow with literally no regards to habitability, and since low hab have in-game penalties (increased food, consumer goods and food consumption), you could end up having tons of extra upkeep for your POPs.
So, yes, the current system is borked. It's could be fixed, either just buy tweaking the numbers (there is a mod for that already, thought it works a bit inconsistency as far as I saw in my game). Or by modifying the whole POP system, getting rid of 'single POP growth slot', adding 'health' to the POPs and such.