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Just, more of less finished a game with the Beta patch.
A few things to note:
Economy development feels better overall. Less tedium or annoying pop shuffles early on.
Pop Growth in mid to late game still feels a bit slow. Planets still remain mostly empty if colonized late. I still had to rely on buying slaves to fill ringworlds and eucs.
AI seem to sell too many of their pops and lets the player grow much faster.
So around year 2470 I had almost 2k pops, with a full euc (thanks to slave buying) and a completed ringworld with maybe 15 to 20 pops in each section. I had essentially won the game at this point but the ringworld was mostly pointless to make even though I had it for more than 50 years.
IMO I think the empire growth should be a game setting (on and off) and or a sider to affect its growth penalty. Many playstyles, I feel, will become too tedious or boring because of this system.
A negative side effect of the change in how buildings are unlocked is that planetary bombardment has become even more dull, since it can no longer destroy buildings even indirectly by killing pops. Devastation is just pure percentage modifiers now - the bane of fun.
Before 2.2, planetary bombardment would leave crater blockers on the planet, or destroy random buildings (starting with Fortresses I believe). It was a lot more interesting, both on the offensive and defensive side. Please bring that back when Devastation gets high.
Having had another go at a 3.0.3 game, I'd definitely say it's better, but there are just too many jobs and too much housing. Pop output could be increased, as well as boosting the techs that increase job output across the board, while jobs get cut.
I wish the industrial district were split into two separate districts, one for alloys, one for consumer goods. That would solve the AI's permanent goods crisis. But without splitting them up, we run into a roadblock with jobs rebalancing.
When Ring World Segments were halved in output and then doubled in number, their upkeep was not changed to reflect this. Ring World districts are now exceedingly expensive because you need twice as many resources now as they used to need to operate.
They could just massivly increase the output of the pops especially on lategame structures like Ring worlds or Ecumenopoli (and also haitats!) while reducing their number. This would make these Structures also feel more advanced since they would seem highly automated...
There really seems to be no need to increase output. The economy is currently overtuned, the fast initial growth coupled with higher outputs leads to high surpluses very quickly. Research is especially egregious, you get to repeatables before 2300.
I'm aware my thoughts and feelings on this matter will reflect if not outright mimic the ones said by many of the people in this thread, however I do feel the need to write them down if for no other reason than wanting to get these thoughts out of my head in some way.
Firstly I would like to preface this by saying that the slow down due to population growth was something that needed to be addressed, I don't think anyone can really deny that. The only thing a decent computer changes is when that slow down occurs, so it's something that affects all of us. I don't believe anyone, even those just screaming at you, wished for the issue to remain, and that they merely take issue with the solution you came up with.
Because, to put it as bluntly as I possibly can, Australians do not stop having children as often just because China has a billion people in it.
Empire wide population slowdown is a horrific solution to the problem and fails to take into account the diverse play-styles an average game sees. Instead the only remaining ways to remain competitive economically is to become a hyper aggressive warmonger, raiding population from everyone in order to fill job slots, or turn entire sectors into sex pits by filling them with habitats and planets that don't produce jobs so the unemployed pops they create will emigrate.
I echo the thoughts of many others when I say the slowdown should have been planet based. I understand this will still cause heavy end game slowdown during late games, especially for people like me who play machines and colonise everything they come across, or hive minds and terraform everything into hive worlds for fun and profit. However there is no real way of preventing this.
Unless you go back and completely redo every aspect of the economy, we're always going to need large numbers of pops to keep our empires running and expanding into end game, especially on higher difficulties. Because of this we are always going to demand high population numbers, and acquire them however we need through whatever manner we think up.
So please, if you are going to force a population slowdown mechanic into this game about empire expansion, make it planet based. Many people both here and elsewhere have come up with amazing ways of implementing it, and I can guarantee you there are more than a few mods that have also solved this issue, so please read through them and work out what's best.
And if you end up going with a mod, credit the mod author if not outright hire them!
As of version 3.01, it no longer makes sense to found a federation. The AI players usually do not send ambassadors to the federation, so that the federation cannot develop any further. Probably the AI players use their ambassadors for espionage or first contacts. The AI players need a priority to send ambassadors before using them for espionage. Alternatively, the ambassadors to the federations could abolish it.
My first Nemesis game was starting on a Doomed World. The influence cost to migrate people away was severely crippling. I know it's supposed to be a tough start, but I don't think this was intended. Either waive (or severely reduce) the influence cost, or add a massive bonus for pops to automigrate away from the doomed world. I think a combination of both would be a good idea, i.e. reduce cost and add a substantial bonus to automigration.
Sorry if this has been covered, I didn't read all the patch notes in detail and haven't tried the same start since Nemesis launched.
The setup: Test games were conducted on 600-star spiral galaxy, 1x habitables, 1x primitives, 2 guaranteed habitables, default mid-/endgame dates. Both playthroughs were of a peaceful nature (i.e. no conquest) - one on 3.0.2 and one on the [1d63]3.0.3 open beta branch, for a direct comparison. The feedback concerns the results in the open beta test run.
The feel of pop growth rates in the early, mid, and late game.
=> Pop growth rates feel mostly fine up until 2300 in a 25 colony UNE, possibly a bit too fast in the very early game (2200-2220). By 2320 a slowdown is still noticeable despite best efforts to increase pop growth (including several Ecus and Clone Vats)
The abundance of jobs in the early, mid, and late game.
=> Jobs in the early game (2200-2260) are fairly scarce relative to pops
=> Jobs in the midgame (2260-2320) are about right relative to the pops, however, as new planets open up due to tech, terraforming and migration treaties, housing and job capacity shoots through the roof - growth never catches up with this, it starts feeling pointless to settle new worlds (though mathematically it's known to be advantageous)
=> Jobs in the endgame (2320-?) certainly vastly outstrip pop counts. To the point of "oh I have an Ecumenopolis (comes online around 2290-2300) to focus all my industry on for maximum pop throughput efficiency" followed by the immediate realization of "well I guess I'm not filling any other new colonies". Most colonies end up sitting with barely 25 pops at this point for maximum growth, the focused specialty worlds (Ring in 2330, thanks to Cybrex precursor, and three Ecus) are eating all the growth for the rest of the game, will likely not fill up (test ran until 2360, ran out of time for more). Settling new planets (or habitats) feels pointless at this point because resources are already taken care of by the initial 20-something colonies feeding specialty worlds. For pop efficiency reasons (and to begin Crisis preparations) this is where Megastructures such as the Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor are taken into construction to further shift population towards specialty worlds and heavy industry/science. Pop growth and planet management is largely ignored because other than 3-6 planets (that have districts pre-built far in advance) nothing else changes (25-pop breeder planets are "finished" for the rest of the game)
Production levels in the early, mid, and late game.
=> Production levels are "fine" in the early and midgame, it is however difficult to estimate since I lack a good point of reference. By the early endgame (2320) production levels can easily get to 1k alloys per month thanks to a singular Ecumenopolis, and with a bit of work can get to 2k+ alloys/month in another decade or two thanks to shifting pops around and optimizing mineral output vs consumption and energy output (i.e. moving pops around planets, not really growing them anymore). This is further facilitated by a Dyson Sphere and/or Matter Decompressor, thanks to which the industrial output can easily reach 3k+ alloys per month. These levels are more than sufficient to deal with a 5x crisis, especially if the player also has access to the Custodian reforms and the GDF.
The value of specialized planets including Ecumenopoleis and Ring Worlds in the late game.
=> The value of these worlds is largely focused on maximizing pop throughput - and in this regard, Ecumenopoleis are significantly superior to Ringworlds. The only reason I even built a Ring is bragging rights (well, and testing). A Science Ringworld segment provides 10 jobs for 2 exotic gases upkeep, the Science designation increases science output by +15%. Compare with Ecumenopolis: 2 fully upgraded labs take up 2 building slots, provide 12 jobs, and most importantly, the Ecu comes with a "Research Ecu" designation, as well as having the baseline +20% specialist output, thus coming out ahead of the Ringworld in per-pop throughput. Given that the Ringworld does not possess any other redeeming features, nor have Industrial/Foundry planet designations, there appears to be little point in having one since having four Ecumenopoleis is superior in terms of final output relative to four Ringworld Sections. Notably, amenities are more of an "issue" on the Ringworld, since on an Ecu one can simply build one or two Entertainment Arcology districts.
On top of all this, the Ecumenopolis comes with a baked-in +50% pop growth boost, thus contributing an extra 3.0 monthly growth to your empire relative to a singular Ring section, this feels very, very wrong. I would recommend changing the logistic pop growth ceiling for specialist worlds (maybe to 2x the regular ceiling?) and removing the baked-in Ecu growth boost for better relative balance between the two with regards to pop growth.
Overall, Ringworlds and Ecumenopoleis do not feel particularly valuable for population growth purposes - even though it feels like they should, especially Ringworlds. Both planet types have vast population capacities, and when the population there grows at most as fast as on a regular old size-15 planet with some houses (or a bit faster on an Ecu)... it just feels wrong. Their value comes mostly from concentrating pops for more pop throughput as pop growth slows down, since that is then the more efficient way of growing the size of one's economy. And in this regard, Ecumenopoleis are clearly still vastly superior to Rings, both in terms of final result and in terms of time and resources invested.
From a preliminary test (2200-2250) of the Void Dweller origin, the early game growth there feels significantly worse than a regular planetary empire, despite best efforts to spam out habitats. The Void Dweller trait giving -15% pop growth stacked on top of already-cramped habitats giving negatives to growth until they get upgraded feels really bad. The problem is that either jobs are too scarce at any reasonable growth rates, or growth stagnates should the empire choose to expand jobs. Knowing that a planetary empire can have more than +9 monthly growth by 2220 and sitting on 4 habitats each enjoying +2 at best at that point ... is not great. Knowing that the planetary empire will likely gain even more growth past that ... well. In other words - Void Dwellers fall behind on growth very quickly, by a not-insignificant amount.
I hope this does not get overlooked for i post it here in the appropriate megathread and not create a new normal forum thread...
But dear devs:
Pls remember the special events on planets which give special jobs per 20 pops! I do think these numbers should be tweaked now with overall less pops to be of any significance
1. End the empire-wide growth curve. Limit them to individual colonies and their capacities. It feels ironic enough that POPs are attracted to migrating to new colonies, but then constrained by empire-wide curve in mid and late game at the same time. It's very discouraging to continue expanding the empire internally, with plenty of worlds ripe for colonization within the borders. The order of colonization and timing becomes more important, if one doesn't want a particular planet they want to fully utilize to turn into a barren and rural backwater until the inevitable late game lag hinders everything. Nightmare. But honestly there shouldn't be a need for that.
2. Lower the number of jobs the buildings provide and adjust outputs accordingly. Districts are fine. With the slow breeder version of the game, it's a constant battle to decide whether to hold off on specialist jobs or not at this point. Honestly, with the economy system the way it is, the traditional 4x single pop growth is not only frustrating but feels unfit. A single pop feels undervalued, while putting inflated value on them with restrictive growth system at the same time.
3. Do not penalize authoritarian faction when assimilating with transcendence living condition. Not a big deal, but I think this should be changed.
The choice is simple. It's either delaying the inevitable late game lag (which is futile) or delaying the actual game's pace. The late game has improved, not gonna lie. But by another 100 years or so. But this feels very much forced, rather than mechanic-oriented. If the pops are the cause of the problem with the game's performance, I think it's necessary to root it out and rebuild, rather than creating inconvenient blockages and changing the pacing of the game just to put a band aid over the severity.
My main concern is the empire-wide growth curve. Please don't let the final frontier - on a galactic scale no less - feel like a piece of continent.
Just pop mechanic theory-crafting; not a serious suggestion...
Have pops grow on jobs, immediately giving off 0.2 minerals with 0.1 energy upkeep while growing on a miner job, as an example. The output and upkeep increases as they grow. As growth speed becomes faster, have a spillover, causing another pop to grow on another job in parallel. While spillover is happening, the growing pop with the highest growth speed from which the spillover happened, should be soft capped at a certain growth speed. And this growth speed and soft cap should be affected by the colony's growth curve as well. If the growing pop doesn't hit the soft cap of the growth speed, the spillover doesn't happen. The spillover pop doesn't have to be of the species it offshoot from. It could be any species that are capable of internally migrating.
The spilled over pop would have a growth speed of the excess amount from the capped one. Then if the main growing pop finishes growing, the speed is carried over to the spillover pop plus the excess it's been receiving. And its own excess creates a spillover again, this time growing faster than the previous spillover. Until the soft cap gradually increases due to the curve and pop growths slow down and spillovers don't happen. So on and so forth. The colony shouldn't necessarily have to reach the peak of the curve for the growth speed of a pop to hit the cap and cause a spillover. But a brand new colony or highly populated colony, for example, definitely shouldn't have such an effect.
Following that, have immigration separated. Immigration from xeno empire shouldn't directly boost the growth speed of the local growing pop. Instead, have one whole separate migrant pop to start growing on a job. Migration speed should be determined by the usual modifiers of the colony and how much emigration is happening from the colonies they are coming from. But incur penalties from the overflowing admin cap usage, and be applied empire-wide. Migrating pop growth should also be prone to spilling over, separated from the local pop growth. Regarding this, the xenophobes who aren't likely to go for migration treaties should be buffed to have lower growth speed soft cap threshold to better utilize parallel growth of their dominant species or slaves.
If somehow there's a point of the growth curve where spillover halts, the partially grown pop should still be around with stunted growth until the main growing pop finishes growing and the growth speed carries over to it. Same goes for immigrating pops. Internally migrating pops should directly affect the growth bonus of locally growing pops as usual.
If a partially grown pop gets stolen through a raid bombardment, the value of that pop remains the same in the raider's colony.
Partially grown or not, they should be considered to exist, and should appear in the species templates as soon as one starts growing.
A fully grown pop takes precedence on a job over a growing pop, if there are no other jobs or if a job is prioritized by the empire. If no job to grow on, they should grow as unemployed, with the happiness impact or partial unity production depending on living standard.
Partially grown pops would have less political power, and less amenities and food upkeep than the fully grown ones. These also increase as they grow. Unemployed growing pops would have possibility to create a growing criminal pop spillover.
Colony capital building should provide more planetary capacity every time it upgrades once. With the pop growth curve, it should be harder to achieve system capital complex anyway despite the fact, if disregarding this beta. As a trade off, don't restrict any colony buildings to the level of the capital buildings. Except for disassembled colony ship.
I think that all the problems with pop growth/assembly would go away if the growth penalty will be planet-based, rather than empire-based.
With current penalty, in late game, big planets/ring worlds/ecumenopoli do not fill up despite them having huge capacity and housing available. This could be solved by changing this so that filled up worlds have their growth decline due to overpopulation and industrialization. Instead, migration should dramatically increase to the empty worlds, boosting their growth. Also growth curve on worlds that are underpopulated and have high housing/capacity, grow up to 70-80% of capacity and then decline due to overpopulation.
Also, IMO pop assembly should only work when there are jobs available. When not needed, the assembly workers/drones can increase amenities/maintenance.
I think that all the problems with pop growth/assembly would go away if the growth penalty will be planet-based, rather than empire-based.
With current penalty, in late game, big planets/ring worlds/ecumenopoli do not fill up despite them having huge capacity and housing available. This could be solved by changing this so that filled up worlds have their growth decline due to overpopulation and industrialization. Instead, migration should dramatically increase to the empty worlds, boosting their growth. Also growth curve on worlds that are underpopulated and have high housing/capacity, grow up to 70-80% of capacity and then decline due to overpopulation
For that to work while achieving similar performance would require much smaller planets. The entire reason the cap is in place is because the engine cannot deal with the current capacity of planets.
I am playing on a small galaxy and game moves so slow in 2350 no matter what the new pop changes are doing... So all these changes basically didn't do anything for my game experience.
The new pop growth mechanic is interesting. I like the idea, but the implementation seems lacking. And I dont have a perfect solution.
One point I want to bring up is that colonizing planets no longer seems to be inherently better than not colonizing. Not neccesarily a bad thing, but what it leads to is empires no longer benefit from organically growing their pops. It's just WAY faster, easier, and cheaper to just conquer another empire and absorb their pops.
I noticed this issue in stephon anon's playthrough on youtube. He vassalized two ai empires and annexed them. The result was an easy tripling of his population while other players fell behind so hard and he snowballed to an easy victory.
Peaceful players seem to be at an inherent disadvantage even more now. Non expansionstic players have always been at a disadvantage, but it seems even worse now. Annexing players is significantly better than growing your pops.
One solution may be is adding a peace time growth modifier. The longer you have not declared war on someone or annexed a player, the larger the modifier. Or maybe it's not an increase percentage but something that reduces the negative modifier of having more pops in your country.
Also, another solution I thought of is having two separate base modifiers to growth. The first modifier is the planetary modifier and its base growth per month is maybe 2. While second base modifier is the empire wide pops where having more pops in general leads to a lower value. You would have to roll back the other decision that more pops in an empire raises the neccesary amount of growth. So on a planet, it always has a base growth of two and on a fresh game the other base growth from empire pops is 2 as well for a total of 4 base growth on a planet. As pops continue to grow, the second base modifier reduces to 0 eventually leaving your fresh planets to only have a base modifier of 2. Itll still grow, but no as fast.
I've seen other solutions such as simply reducing the number if jobs on a planet so planets can fill up faster. I like that idea as well.
But my main cause of concern is just how much better it is to conquer another empire, absorb their pops, and double or triple your popation; instead of organically growing your pops yourself. Growing pops for a non expansionist empire should be a Possibility
I really like the idea of a peacetime bonus - it could be something a long the lines of a production bonus of like .5% for every year not at war or something.
I've only had time to play a couple of games with the beta so far.
For context, I used to play stellaris with a 1.8GHz dual-core processor with 2GB RAM and recently traded up to a 2.6GHz hexa-core processor with 16GB RAM.
I can appreciate the late game slow down resulting from high pops but this could previously be controlled by players by playing on small galaxies and then when the option to control the proportion of habitable worlds to include, this became even better.
I did experience what I fondly called the "population resettlement simulator 5000" in the late game but the "greater than ourselves" edict also solved this.
Playing the 3.0 version and later the couple of games in 3.0.3 felt terrible by comparison. I really enjoyed many of the new features but not population growth.
Now as I get into the late mid-game and late game the growth is totally throttled. I appreciate that while the beta has improved this it is still very difficult.
In my latest game for instance, I was playing on a Huge Galaxy with 50% habitable planets and by 250 years in I had 31 planets (after some conquests and growth) and ~1000 pops. With the 3.0.2 I was taking over 100 months to get a new pop on a newly settled colony. My population on other planets are employed and I have new planets to settle so this artificially prevented any further growth in my mid and late game when I was able to terraform new planets and build habitats; I hadn't even started to build ring worlds. So all development was stopped.
I know in 3.0.3 [1d63] that this was modified and so similar situations were taking around 60 months to get a new pop. This still feels far too long. There also doesn't feel like any logic for this. Food is plentiful. Space is abundant. There are no biologically limiting factors on growth. The game already has a planet-dependent growth factor and it feels like this would be a better place to implement the growth limitation based on empire-wide food availability and planet-local housing availability. Population growth is a really simple equation (as a biological systems modeller) and making it planet dependent would leave it in the hands of players to handle their own performance-related issues.
The current "solution" just makes my late-game unplayable as I can conquer the galaxy but I can't fill the jobs or grow/ balance my economy.
As I briefly referred to, I was left with many "new" (being technical as they just weren't growing or developing) colonies with empty jobs and "old" developed planets where I could upgrade buildings but then couldn't fill the new jobs. So due to the population growth "throttling", the jobs were far too abundant but this didn't feel like the result of too many jobs, so much as just lack of population growth.
I did find that production felt high. In my case this was due to mismanagement. For instance, by the time I had abundant consumer goods from upgrading my civilian industries and building industrial districts; I couldn't build new administrative buildings because they lay empty and so consumption of produced resources was lacking. I couldn't advance my technological or administrative production to balance the production I had developed and so I had too little research and administrative capacity and too many consumer goods from the early game infrastructure development. I realise my management would improve with further playthroughs but the lack of growth is deeply hampering in the mid to late game for development.
As stated earlier, I didn't get a chance to play with the Ecumenopolis or Ring Worlds as my economy was too unbalanced to facilitate this as my jobs weren't being filled with pops.
As a closing comment. I love Stellaris. It is by far one of my favourite games from which I have derived literally thousands of hours of enjoyment but the new population growth mechanics make it feel unplayable. I would be really curious to hear from the other players who say they have really enjoyed these new mechanics and to discuss how our play styles vary so that I can try to find a way to enjoy this update.
My 3.0.2 game was an authoritarian/militaristic/spiritualist empire. For 3.0.3 I decided to try fan-pacifist/egalitarian. I wanted to see if the empire growth mechanics hurt non-conquest as much as people seem to claim it does.
Currently in year 2320ish. Have lots of planets from natural expansion (zero conquest or wars whole game) and a couple habitats. I didn't do voidborne start, I wanted to see what habitats were like "naturally". I did the start with the gateway in your home system cause I never tried that. Growth is fine, in the 600s of pops. I feel a little more incentive to fill out a few planets a bit more to get the capital upgrade although I'm not really sure what that buys me. Since I'm a democracy this time, the unemployed pops fly around to other planets a lot faster. So my planet management comes down to "I want more admin" so I spam jobs on one of my admin planets, or, "could use more food", spam jobs on food planet.
Hard to say if there is an 'abundance' of jobs because jobs only exist when I want them too. I'd say it is incredibly easy to find a place for a job. I am pretty much never in situation where I want a new job of a specific type and I don't have a place I can spam it. I never have to use building upgrades for things like admin centers and research labs. I'll use the upgrades on 'bonus' buildings because it gives a % boost, but pretty much on none of the others.
Pre-building is great, but is annoying for tech worlds, it's the only one you can't immediately plan because you have to have 10 pops on it before you can build tech. So you pretty much have to spam 10 whatever jobs, keep an eye until it's ready to upgrade, wait for upgrade to be done, and THEN you can build out the planet how you want.
I'm supposed to be in 'mid' game, but my production levels are more like late game, and I'm currently on repeatable techs. Of course the AI in incredibly behind. A neighbor through a wormhole decided to offer to be my Protectorate out of nowhere since I was so amazing and better, this is despite them being fanatic xenophobe. I did have an envoy improving relations and a commerce agreement, but that was it, never gave them favorable trades or did really anything. Their empire size was comparable to the other AI empires on the map, they weren't one of these one colony offshoots, and the protectorate tooltip told me they were at 25% of my tech. So 'production' levels are high... for me and me only. AI hasn't gotten the 3.0 memo. At this point I'm using a lot of my free building slots I have no purpose for to just spam expansion to my resource limit, because I'm knocking against it in all categories.
I wanted to make wonders this game, so I sat on three perk slots with nothing to take until I got the tech. I could have taken Ecumenopoleis (I still can), but I just never felt the need to bother. A super-sized planet just doesn't feel.. necessary. Also, I turn off every clerk job, so those aren't necessary or wanted.
In summary: Tech is too fast. AI struggles to keep up. I don't think adjusting pop growth up or down or sideways is going to do a damn thing so I don't understand the focus on it.
1. Artificial Overal Growth Scaling. i think the biggest problem is the scaling growth in the empire in general. Why is it so, it is so artificial. It would be SO MUCH better to implement LOCAL SCALING. It seems reasonable and natural that it is hard to grow more pops when there are trillions on one planet.
2. Artificial Growth Boost Cap. You can reach a bonus from pops of 3 pretty easily on a planet with a capacity of 70 and around 22 pops but everything after that is wasted. It has larger implications like Ring Worlds and Eucumenopli are basically just the same as any other planet. And there's the fact that the cap for capacity to scale is 500 but anything beyond 100 is basically a waste of resources. If you remove that cap Eucumenopoli and Ring Worlds can get well beyond 50 growth per turn, even reaching 100. With that growth, it is kinda possible to power through the growth scaling for another few decades but even then it still slows down to a crawl.
It should not be that hard to populate a Eucumenopolis and there should be untold trillions living on a PLANET-SIZED CITY.
PS. The cap to limit the amount of pops should be an option when you start a game just like Xeno-compatibility. It simply ruins the fun of having a million pops for those who have decent PCs.
Just a thought on the growth penalty and the problem with capturing pops being objectively better: perhaps the empire-wide penalty could be tied to being at war to some degree? An offensive war could trigger the penalty to some maximum (hand-waved in universe as people being focused on the war effort and survival and less on building families), which then has to slowly tick down when at peace. This would at least allow peaceful empires to grow naturally more quickly than empires at war all the time, who receive the benefit of gaining pops through war (maybe on top of a rebalance of refugees as a previous poster suggested). Maybe being in a defensive war would trigger a lower penalty. Genocidal empires could have a lower war penalty to compensate for not keeping pops. A lower base empire-wide penalty could be imposed for all empires in addition to the war penalty if the Stellaris dev team still wants that mechanic.
As it stands, there's no penalty to war; there's no peace-time prosperity bonuses to lose and there's no malus to happiness or stability from war exhaustion. Unless you lose a war, you only stand to gain from focusing on military. Bringing in growth would at least take a step in that direction.
Obviously none of this addresses the other issues such as useless clerks, empty jobs on most planets in the late game, etc.
Even in the patch, the empire-wide growth penalty feels very forced. Effectively it improves performance by making the galaxy empty. It is also very immersion breaking since the penalty is so large you have to keep doing gamey cheesy tactics to raise your pop growth.
Thing is, when we start a game we have a whole bunch of sliders we can use to influence the size - performance tradeoff. Players that value performance pick smaller galaxies with fewer habitable worlds. Players who want a large, brimming galaxy go for huge galaxies with lots of worlds. We have already been making this choice for years. The new mechanic is just one more variable.
Given that, I really don't understand why the empire-wide growth limit has to be a forced predetermined limit, and not a slider like all the other factors that deal with the same problem. If you had implemented it in this way, you wouldn't have most posts here complaining about it.
Stellaris has been a game with lots of replayability because of how many viable ways there are to play and grow your empire. But since 3.0, the wide play style is impossible, and you pretty much have to go authoritarian to buy slaves, and spend an ascension perk so you can raid pops. I don't think this reduction in choice is a good thing for the game.
