The pop mechanism is quite terrible in 3.0

[npc1054657282]

I have been waited in hope about new pop mechanism before 3.0 released. According to the dev diary, pop increased in logistic growth on each planet, and will be influenced by housing and planet size. When the planet are crowded, pop stop grow on the planet any more. It's so good, I think.
But I cannot understand why the pop growth in a newly colonized planet will be influenced by the empire pop? When I get more pop in an empire, all pop growth (including assembled pop) need 100 + 0.5*empire_pop. Although I colonize a fresh new planet, I need more than 10 years to get a new pop, just because there are many people on other planets in my empire! It's illogical.
As we all know, the productivity severely rely on population in stellaris. If you love peace and hate war, then you will be frustrated to find that, no matter how well you construct buildings and districts, how many rings and planets you colonize, your pop will stop grow at the point of 600. Since it is hard to get more people even though you have many empty colonies, you cannot increase the productivity in your empire any more. If you want to defeat 25x crisis in 200 years, the only way to develop you empire is starting the war, because the war can help you get new pop from other empires.
Well, of course, you have another choice to prevent your empire's development from bogging down without wars, that is to release part of your planets to be your subject empires, and merge them back after the subject empires' pop growing. Anyway, it is illogical. Why my people cannot grow in my own empire, but have to grow in my subject empires?
If the pop growth point demand depends on the planet pop, and planet pop get a maximum point, I'm happy to see it. But now the pop growth mechanism, which is related with the empire total pop, is too terrible. The new mechanism force players to start wars and grab pop from other empire, or players' empire development will bog down. If you love peace and only want to construct your own empire, you will get very poor game experience.

There are some other balance problems in 3.0, e.g., the industry districts in ring word are so mighty, which makes Ecumenopolis be meaningless. You afford 300 influence to construct 4 ring worlds, and get 150*4=600 metallurigst jobs. Meanwhile, when you afford 200 influence to build an Ecumenopolis with 25 planet size, you only get 200 metallurigst jobs.
And, now the Colossus, well, seems so inconsiderable. Only one planet for a task, fragile in a task, unique in an empire. Strengthen the Colossus please, it takes a whole ascension perk slot anyway.
Well, the other problems are not that severe, compared with the pop issue.

 

[Mastikator]

I for one am glad that the total and utter domination of Ecumenopolis is over.

 

[ruzen]

In which tooltip it says pop growth is affected by the total number of pops in the empire?

 

[npc1054657282]

In which tooltip it says pop growth is affected by the total number of pops in the empire?

Well, you will find that, you need more growth points to increase a pop,200 points when your empire have 200 pop. In fact every empire pop will increase 0.5 growth point demand, including both natural growth and assembly growth.
The data is described in the scripts:

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

So how come stefan anon had 1000 pops in the cold war stream?

 

[tomtom99113]

Agree, it's ridiculous that pop growth is influenced by total number of pops in empire. And also this pop growth influence the assembling the mechanical pop, which means player should cost few years to build a robot, and cost almost same number of alloy which can build a warship.

 

[andriy.gerasika]

Nihilistic Acquisition FTW?

 

[Mastikator]

Agree, it's ridiculous that pop growth is influenced by total number of pops in empire. And also this pop growth influence the assembling the mechanical pop, which means player should cost few years to build a robot, and cost almost same number of alloy which can build a warship.

It's funny, people have been clamoring for total empire pop count affecting growth for over a year. Now that it's here people are angry. LMAO this forum is a gift that keeps on giving

 

[ThePHD]

So you can’t play wide anymore basically? Hello refund.

 

[npc1054657282]

It's funny, people have been clamoring for total empire pop count affecting growth for over a year. Now that it's here people are angry. LMAO this forum is a gift that keeps on giving

Well, if the empire cap can both limit pop growth and pop grab from the war, I would be not that hate the mechanism.
But now, only Pacifists' development are restricted, so it's the worst idea.
In fact with the planet cap, the pop mechanism should be ok and pop increase has been slowed down a lot. The empire cap is superfluous

 

[Madzai]

Well, penalty to growth per POP should be lower. Also, planets amount should act as counter for POP count. Overall idea is neat, so you don't just spam POP and district everywhere, but have to actually move your POP around and change districts though course of game, and not sit on overflowing basic resources. But it's not only micro-intensive but also don't solve problem with conquest being too effective. It also kind of gimp genocidal Empires. as they effectively have limit on total POPs and no allies.

 

[Aeroclub]

So does the empire population also limit organic assembly speed? I can't find any formula for that...

 

[Bayes]

So you can’t play wide anymore basically? Hello refund.

No wide is better than ever, atleast comperatively. You need new planets to take advantage of the new growth bonus from being far below your planet potential and eventually growing pops yourself is going to be really slow so you want to go to war for them.

 

[Bergest]

So you can’t play wide anymore basically? Hello refund.

No, it's the opposite. You can't really play tall anymore, because you will inevitably hit a point, where internal development will make you fall behind hard in comparison to conquest, forcing you to conquer empires around you, which in turn will make your own pop growth crash even harder, forcing you even more to go wide. Good luck ever growing a pop of your main species at reasonable speed from that point forward...

I get what they wanted to achieve, but this mechanic is just bad in every concievable way and I'm baffled that Paradox playtested this and came to the conclusion, that this would be a good addition to the game.

 

[npc1054657282]

I for one am glad that the total and utter domination of Ecumenopolis is over.

Ring World is the one truly take utter domination. In 2.81, Ring World takes charge of technology, Ecumenopolis takes charge of alloy and consumer goods, and normal planets takes charge of engergy and minerals. Now, Ring World takes charge of almost everything, technology, consumer goods, alloys, foods.

 

[Mastikator]

No, it's the opposite. You can't really play tall anymore, because you will inevitably hit a point, where internal development will make you fall behind hard in comparison to conquest, forcing you to conquer empires around you, which in turn will make your own pop growth crash even harder, forcing you even more to go wide. Good luck ever growing a pop of your main species at reasonable speed from that point forward...

I get what they wanted to achieve, but this mechanic is just bad in every concievable way and I'm baffled that Paradox playtested this and came to the conclusion, that this would be a good addition to the game.

There's the other meme. Every new expansion people complain that you can't play tall anymore. As if previously you could.
Tall was not viable in 2.8 or 2.5 or 2.2 or 2.1 or 2.0 or 1.9 or 1.6 or 1.0

Ring World is the one truly take utter domination. In 2.81, Ring World takes charge of technology, Ecumenopolis takes charge of alloy and consumer goods, and normal planets takes charge of engergy and minerals. Now, Ring World takes charge of almost everything, technology, consumer goods, alloys, foods.

Ring World costs more alloys than ecumenopolis costs minerals, and you are limited in how many mega structures you can build at any given time.
It also takes 58.3 years to build a single full ring world, 38.8 if you have architectural revolution (which also lets you build 2 at a time, the opportunity cost is that you're then delaying building a dyson sphere or strategic coordination center or science nexus). To me the fact that a ring world is very awesome is not a problem. This is in fact good news because now gestalts have that one nice thing.

All in all I see this as an absolute win.

 

[npc1054657282]

There's the other meme. Every new expansion people complain that you can't play tall anymore. As if previously you could.
Tall was not viable in 2.8 or 2.5 or 2.2 or 2.1 or 2.0 or 1.9 or 1.6 or 1.0

That's true. Play tall is always not viable. But the game balance need it to be viable, because there is a Ethics —— Pacifist. So in each version people hope play tall to be viable, it is related to the game balance.

 

[Bayes]

There's the other meme. Every new expansion people complain that you can't play tall anymore. As if previously you could.
Tall was not viable in 2.8 or 2.5 or 2.2 or 2.1 or 2.0 or 1.9 or 1.6 or 1.0

What does tall mean here? The only meaningful way to talk about tall in stellaris imo is conquest or no conquest. And the no conquest option did just get severly nerfed and definitely was viable in 2.8.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

What does tall mean here? The only meaningful way to talk about tall in stellaris imo is conquest or no conquest. And the no conquest option did just get severly nerfed and definitely was viable in 2.8.

There is a bit of disagreement there.

Most people refer to it as just having a couple of systems and then spam those with habitats while fully developing your low number of planets.

Some people mean having only a couple of planets so low pop count high productivity per pop (one planet challenge being the extreme).

 

[ruzen]

So you can’t play wide anymore basically? Hello refund.

No, it's actually the opposite
Mining asteroids and researchers are more valuable than ever. Free income without involving any pops.