The Malthusian Future

[Pat Casey]

One of the things that I think makes the early game interesting is managing pops. My ability to construct building and districts exceeds my populations ability to work them, so I have to make some hard (and interesting) decisions.

By the late mid game though, the game flips on its head and I consistently have the opposite problem of population coming out of my ears and nowhere to use it or move it.

In my current game its something like 2358 and I have at least a dozen planets with over 15 unemployed pops on them, and nowhere to move them or use them.

I can, of course, go to each and every planet and discourage growth, but its tedious, and feels like a workaround.

Early game, pops are power.

Late game, pops are a nuisance to be managed away.

Something feels off.

The solution I think is to add a lot more useful building and mechanics to the late game so that empires *can* use all those pops they produce.

A typical planet can only "employ":

2 pops per district (call it 15 districts) = 30 pops
Average 2 pops per building (call it 16 building) = 32 pops

We're looking at 62 pops.

I know I can build nothing but commerce building and have a few more pops working per building (I also get nothing but commerce out).

I can also upgrade buildings and employ more people, but in practise each level of upgrade requires me to build a rare industry production building (2 pops employed) somewhere else so, while I can use that approach to build a single uber planet with a lot of smaller "support" planets, it doesn't help me long term when the support planets get overpopulated.

Fundamentally, the late game needs more job; a *lot* more jobs.

 

[Imba]

You can also build an ecumenopolis, or if you have a diverse empire, put some pops on livestock.

 

[Secret Master]

Have you met my Lord and savior the Ecumenopolis and his consort, Ringworld?

Might I also direct you to Fen Habanis and the capital of the materialist fallen empire? And if that’s not enough, theres the machine fallen empire and all the ringworlds you could ever want without requiring a perk.

And if you are wondering what to do if you have no ability to resettle directly, just cut their housing on worlds with unemployment. They’ll move soon enough.

 

[Blurb]

Far as I can tell, this is just one aspect of Stellaris' awfully lacking management tools, and you're suggesting a symptomatic approach to this problem.
Instead of delaying the point where pop management becomes annoying, wouldn't it make more sense to ensure that managing things (a core feature of any strategy game) is overall enjoyable throughout the game?

 

[Pat Casey]

Ringworld and Fen Habilis are both sort of crutches to work around the underlying problem though aren't they?

They're "exceptions" to the normal rules which basically serve as big population sinks with very special purpose jobs ... ringworld is farm/agriculture, while Fen Habis is alloy/consumer.

I'd argue that if you need a deus-et-machina solution to your late game pops vs jobs balance, you'd be better served just by adding more jobs in general and doing something more unique/interesting with the ringworld and/or Fen Hablis.

For what its worth Fen Hablis is "full" in my game and I'm in steady state of "clear a blocker and build a residential archology" ... I get about 12 pop slots every 3 years this way.

 

[Elimdur]

That's the problem with endless expansion in a finite space. Either your growth is stopped by the availability of resources (which is never the case in Stellaris, you always got the food) or by place which is the factor here. But still even beeing cramped in a place as small as a refrigerator people don't like to stop procreating. Lower instincts always prevail over rational thought. Best would be if there was some kind of hard cap if pops are too much over housing limit to prevent further pop growth altogether. This way you can still have your slum planets which are overcrowded but no entlessly growing population that you cannot even put to work.

 

[Derp]

how is it any more tedious to go to each planet once to halt growth than it is to go to each planet every time something needs to be built

 

[eagletrekkie]

how is it any more tedious to go to each planet once to halt growth than it is to go to each planet every time something needs to be built

It's because the egalitarian faction gets pissed off if you stop growth, meaning you take a penalty for going egalitarian that no other ethos gets.

I've said it before, and made a suggestion about it. The point at which overcrowding stops growth should not be fixed at 1.5x housing, it should scale down based on how much housing you have total.

 

[Razor Feather]

I feel like you are severely underestimating the capacity of upgraded buildings to increase the total amount of jobs available in the empire. A fully upgraded research lab employs 8 pops and requires 2 exotic gases. A gas refinery employs one pop and creates 2 exotic gases. Thus the average amount of jobs created per slot for upgraded building + refinery is 8 + 1 /2, or 4.5. That is a substantial increase over the 2 per building you get with just basic labs, even if both refinery and lab are built on the same planet. Upgraded commercial zones do an even better job, since each commercial megaplex makes 11 jobs and takes one crystal, so one refinery supports two of them. This gives 11 + 11 +1 / 3 jobs per slot, just over 7. Admittedly the actual value of commercial megaplexes is debatable, but upgraded labs are definitely nice to have.

I do think that pop decline needs to be generalized as a system that limits growth for overcrowded planets though, instead of just being a way for the game to shift pop demographics around. I normally play as xenophiles with incredibly high species diversity. This means that for me, planet overcrowding is rarely an issue, since once planets start getting full they tend to have pretty consistent decline that makes it so the population growth is slow or even nonexistent without needing to actually enable population controls. However if I understand things correctly this process doesn't really happen with more homogeneous empires, since they don't meet the conditions needed for pop decline to activate, and instead keep growing until the hard 50% overcrowding limit.

Maybe planets with a high percentage of specialist jobs or urbanization should experience a higher level of decline as they fill up requiring immigration from more rural worlds to make up the difference as a way to represent the real world demographic process by which more industrialized countries start to have dramatically lower birth rates after a while. Though it is also entirely possible that would be too complicated/micro heavy to be worth doing, and in that case I would support the idea of a better scaled overcrowding penalty as a more mechanically practical solution.

 

[AlanC9]

How often does this actually matter? All my games are over by the time this really kicks in.

 

[Secret Master]

Ringworld and Fen Habilis are both sort of crutches to work around the underlying problem though aren't they?

Except that they aren't crutches so much as a way to expand your civilization beyond the basic form it takes early in the game.

You grab the arcology perk and viola! You are now the proud owner of as many "population sinks" as you can afford to create and support. You grab the wonders perk? Viola! You are now the proud owner of either a crap ton of real estate to house productive POPs (ringworlds) or sources of energy and minerals that do not even require POPs (Dyson sphere and matter decompressor).

The fact that there are ringworlds and ecumenpolises out there to conquer/repair as well as the ones you can build means that even if you don't feel like taking those perks yourself, you can just seize the ones of your neighbors. You can even conquer and seize wonders/ecumenpolis if you cannot take the perk due to your civics or type of government. Hive mind can't take arcology? Doesn't matter: found/conquered Fen Habanis or an FE.

It's the same with ascensions. Biological ascension isn't a "crutch." It's taking gene modding to a whole new level. Synth ascension isn't a "crutch." It's taking robots to a whole new level. Psionic ascension isn't a crutch. It's activating entirely new mechanics you can use to mold your civilization.

 

[FleetingRain]

I... don't get the problem. Usually my planets stabilize at ~110 pops (130-150 if I'm greedy) by 2400-2450. You know that overcrowding makes pop growth stop, right?

 

[Roddo]

You can take seat and wait to see if the devs can actually fix this. I'd recommend Utopian Abundance right now, it's the only way to effectively play this on late-game.

And here I am again, recommending the "only" effective way to play in stellaris, the game with many buttons but few options.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Average 2 pops per building (call it 16 building) = 32 pops

Sorry but what? Yeah that's true if you use lvl 1 buildings, but if you've got hundred pops, why would you be using only lvl 1 buildings?
Most upgraded buildings give more like 7 jobs at lvl 2. Lvl 3 foundry gives 15 metallurgist jobs. Same with artisans and labs. Lvl 2 commerce building gives total 15 jobs.
Yeah, they cost strategic resources, but strategic resources cost like 10 energy each when bought from market or the enclave - and you can buy infinite amount of them. That's nothing compared to how many minerals those 15 metallurgists are going to need for their jobs.
Sorry I'm a little harsh but this is a problem only because you apparently don't upgrade your buildings, or chose to omit upgraded buildings in your post. And even if you don't want to upgrade buildings, you can, as you said, cease pop growth. It isn't any more micromanagement than building one building is. And if that's too "crutch" for you, you can use social welfare, utopian abudance or shared burdens to make unemployed pops productive citizens without any pesky micromanagement.

 

[Derp]

It's because the egalitarian faction gets pissed off if you stop growth, meaning you take a penalty for going egalitarian that no other ethos gets.

I've said it before, and made a suggestion about it. The point at which overcrowding stops growth should not be fixed at 1.5x housing, it should scale down based on how much housing you have total.

egalitarians get pissed off at population control as a policy; if you have it disabled, the planetary decision changes to "Discourage Population Growth" which greatly reduces growth while greatly increasing emigration.

that said, I do agree that egalitarians get shafted on policies, and I'm in the middle of writing a thread about them and other ethics that are barred from, or penalized for using, a number of powerful features like resettlement with nothing to compensate

 

[Derp]

Sorry but what? Yeah that's true if you use lvl 1 buildings, but if you've got hundred pops, why would you be using only lvl 1 buildings?
Most upgraded buildings give more like 7 jobs at lvl 2. Lvl 3 foundry gives 15 metallurgist jobs. Same with artisans and labs. Lvl 2 commerce building gives total 15 jobs.
Yeah, they cost strategic resources, but strategic resources cost like 10 energy each when bought from market or the enclave - and you can buy infinite amount of them. That's nothing compared to how many minerals those 15 metallurgists are going to need for their jobs.
Sorry I'm a little harsh but this is a problem only because you apparently don't upgrade your buildings, or chose to omit upgraded buildings in your post. And even if you don't want to upgrade buildings, you can, as you said, cease pop growth. It isn't any more micromanagement than building one building is. And if that's too "crutch" for you, you can use social welfare, utopian abudance or shared burdens to make unemployed pops productive citizens without any pesky micromanagement.

foundries, labs, and factories gives 2/5/8 job slots. CZs give 5/11

did you just look up the buildings on the wiki and assume that each tier ADDED that many jobs? lol

 

[BoomWolf]

It's because the egalitarian faction gets pissed off if you stop growth, meaning you take a penalty for going egalitarian that no other ethos gets.

I've said it before, and made a suggestion about it. The point at which overcrowding stops growth should not be fixed at 1.5x housing, it should scale down based on how much housing you have total.

Utopian Abundance.
Egalitarians are actually the best dealing with unemployment, as they can turn them into useful pops as long they can afford the costs.

Failing that, social welfare/shared burden at least makes them not be an issue.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

foundries, labs, and factories gives 2/5/8 job slots. CZs give 5/11

did you just look up the buildings on the wiki and assume that each tier ADDED that many jobs? lol

Yeah, I checked them from the wiki because I didn't remember the exact numbers. Sorry, I was wrong in my details, but it doesn't change the point: one building, when upgraded, gives a lot more jobs than "average 2."

 

[Badesumofu]

Hmm, I'm at about the same point in my game and I still have loads of room for growth. How many planets do you have? Keep in mind you can resettle pops off full worlds to newer ones to make use of them. Even if you're Egal, it doesn't cost that much to turn resettlement on for 10 years, or you can just resettle robots off full planets to free up jobs for biological pops.

 

[CrowScape]

A typical planet can only "employ":

2 pops per district (call it 15 districts) = 30 pops
Average 2 pops per building (call it 16 building) = 32 pops

We're looking at 62 pops.

I'm going to say your planetary management is terrible.

Planets with few districts become forge or tech worlds, because upgraded version of those buildings can employ lots of pops. An Advanced Research Complex creates 8 jobs. That's more than enough to open another building slot for, you guessed it, another Advanced Research Complex.
Planets with many districts become refinery worlds, as they have enough districts to support a large pop base so you don't need the extra employment to open more building slots.

Looking at my current game, I have 126 employed pops on a size 13 tech world. No Mastery of Nature. I have 110 employed pops on a size 20 refinery world. Your planets still have a lot of growing to do.

Now, I don't know the exact options available for you lesser, food species, but I doubt they're off by that much.