If the penalty is linear, then there would be always problems. And no matther what the coefficient is, empire penalty is illogical itself.
- 11
- 1
The pop mechanism is quite terrible in 3.0
- Thread starter npc1054657282
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
You really don't get it: There can't be a compromise, because making it kick in later just means that you screw over someone being able to enjoy colonizing new planets later.
Screwing over our ability to enjoy something at an arbitrary point in gameplay has no right to exist as a mechanic, no matter how late it comes.
- 19
- 3
Well, take a look at the developer response. It is the way and solution to decrease the endgame POPs right now and I suggest, as a compromise, to set it a little later.
- 7
Sometimes the developers just plain make a mistake.
Even if we take as gospel that this is the way endgame pops have to be lowered, then it completely fails because you can simply take your empire and split it up into a bunch of vassals to reach the same number of endgame pops as before. You can also do a different cheese by continually harvesting various enemy empires for population with Nihilistic Acquisition, keeping them around the double growth, which likely will get you way more pops than you would've had trying the same tactic in 2.8 when pop growth was linear.
- 7
- 1
I'm disppointed about the developer respond in this thread. They have thought about the cheese in planet S-curve growth, however they add a mechanism that making all the pop stop to growth in the empire, then the exploit is concealed because of its poor game experience, but not to be solved. There are a lot more ways to solve the problems brought from planet S-curve growth, and the dev takes the nonsense.
- 5
- 1
- 1
The change effectively halves the number of pops in the game, but does so in a way that feels bad because it leaves worlds empty and artificially restricts growth.
You know what else would halve the number of pops? Halving the number of pops. Districts do 1 housing/1 job instead of 2, buildings require 1 pop instead of 2, cities house 4 instead of 7, etc. Double the growth time, upkeep, and output of a single pop - you now have half the number of pops but all the worlds are filling up and you've got the same economy as 2.8 with half the CPU load from pop calculations.
You know what else would halve the number of pops? Halving the number of pops. Districts do 1 housing/1 job instead of 2, buildings require 1 pop instead of 2, cities house 4 instead of 7, etc. Double the growth time, upkeep, and output of a single pop - you now have half the number of pops but all the worlds are filling up and you've got the same economy as 2.8 with half the CPU load from pop calculations.
- 16
- 3
- 3
- 1
Well, it's a horrible solution, because it penalize you for being a good player and managing your planets. Even cutting max possible population per planet in half (by limiting housing and other means), pop growth on planets (with some formula similar to current Empire grow) and increasing job output x2 is a better solution. Sure it will mess some specific build a lot, making one OP and others weaker, but it won't make any unplayable. There is still be issue with Habitats, but current "you will never fill them up, lol" isn't a solution also. It was quite obviously from the start that if you can just plop them everywhere it will lead to issues.
- 3
Honestly the game wasnt this laggy late game... and at some point in any 5x i expect some lag/slow. Especially with this old pop systeme. Why not stop the penalty at some point where it is not feel to bad to colonize new world? Like 250?
- 1
I would like to briefly mention on habitats that it's aggravating the devs have never made a serious attempt to stop their spammability. Anything that is a one time cost and then just gives you stuff is going to be continuously spammed in a 4x game, so the very obvious solution is to add upkeep. And yes, I know the capital building has upkeep, but come on, that upkeep is pitiful; at least raise it from 5 alloys to something noticible at the stage where you can make them.
- 4
I fixed most of what I feel are the issues in my own mod... I have played a few sessions with AI only against each other to see how the AI do and it does really well.
First of all the capacity relating to housing is a problem as the AI simple don't understand how to grow planets efficiently, the other is growing population too fast too early which is too easy from a player perspective with just spamming planets.
My change that "fixed" this is...
1. Removing any sort of cap on organic POP growth.
2. Different empire wide growth penalty for constructed POP versus grown POP... this make robots still viable later on in the game in my model.
3. Base POP growth is "1" which make new colonies not grow at all unless they have migration... as it should... but growth based on POP is doubled to adjust. This means insane POP Growth later on. The POP growth at around 60 POP is not around 1+7 base and only increasing from there... Ecumenopolis can become really insane POP growth as they grow larger.
4. All POP now require 2 housing and all housing on planets are doubled... the effect is that AI also get perfect growth when the start running out of housing and people start migrate to other planets, just the way the player does it.
5. The empire wide penalty make sure that population is not run rampant as the pop growth can become insane. I actual had to increase the empire wide from 0.5 to 0.6 for regular growth and I reduced the constructed POP growth to about 0.25. All empires now have a base of 75 to grow POP at the start of the game.
The result so far is that spamming new colonies in the early game is not good.... growing your main planets or using it to feed one or two colonies is something you want to do... spamming colonies just hurt your admin cap too much early when you don't have the resources to put on administrators.... Hives are the best for start spreading and colonising fast as they have much less penalties to going over the cap... there are still some benefit with more colonies.
POP growth are much slower at the start and you will feel like POP growth actually matter even during the end game... you will end up with more POP in the galaxy than vanilla so it will hurt game performance... but that does not bother me personally since I always play on slow or normal speed late in the game anyway... I don't tolerate the insane amount of feedback I get from the game playing faster than that.
You will still feel it possible to grow a new planet in the late game. It will NEVER be able to grow on its own... but through Migration is now grows just fine, even the AI have no problem to keep growing in a decent pace. It will slow down later on in the game but it will never really stop.
With this model the AI actually will be competitive as it is forced into this behaviour naturally... the player can still be MORE efficient that the AI... but it will keep up quite well with the player now. This is a problem that Paradox have had for a very long time... making sure the AI understand their own mechanics and able to at least somewhat optimise under it to be a decent threat to the player.
This way POP growth also feel more "realistic".... large populated planet now feed smaller planets and not the reverse.
First of all the capacity relating to housing is a problem as the AI simple don't understand how to grow planets efficiently, the other is growing population too fast too early which is too easy from a player perspective with just spamming planets.
My change that "fixed" this is...
1. Removing any sort of cap on organic POP growth.
2. Different empire wide growth penalty for constructed POP versus grown POP... this make robots still viable later on in the game in my model.
3. Base POP growth is "1" which make new colonies not grow at all unless they have migration... as it should... but growth based on POP is doubled to adjust. This means insane POP Growth later on. The POP growth at around 60 POP is not around 1+7 base and only increasing from there... Ecumenopolis can become really insane POP growth as they grow larger.
4. All POP now require 2 housing and all housing on planets are doubled... the effect is that AI also get perfect growth when the start running out of housing and people start migrate to other planets, just the way the player does it.
5. The empire wide penalty make sure that population is not run rampant as the pop growth can become insane. I actual had to increase the empire wide from 0.5 to 0.6 for regular growth and I reduced the constructed POP growth to about 0.25. All empires now have a base of 75 to grow POP at the start of the game.
The result so far is that spamming new colonies in the early game is not good.... growing your main planets or using it to feed one or two colonies is something you want to do... spamming colonies just hurt your admin cap too much early when you don't have the resources to put on administrators.... Hives are the best for start spreading and colonising fast as they have much less penalties to going over the cap... there are still some benefit with more colonies.
POP growth are much slower at the start and you will feel like POP growth actually matter even during the end game... you will end up with more POP in the galaxy than vanilla so it will hurt game performance... but that does not bother me personally since I always play on slow or normal speed late in the game anyway... I don't tolerate the insane amount of feedback I get from the game playing faster than that.
You will still feel it possible to grow a new planet in the late game. It will NEVER be able to grow on its own... but through Migration is now grows just fine, even the AI have no problem to keep growing in a decent pace. It will slow down later on in the game but it will never really stop.
With this model the AI actually will be competitive as it is forced into this behaviour naturally... the player can still be MORE efficient that the AI... but it will keep up quite well with the player now. This is a problem that Paradox have had for a very long time... making sure the AI understand their own mechanics and able to at least somewhat optimise under it to be a decent threat to the player.
This way POP growth also feel more "realistic".... large populated planet now feed smaller planets and not the reverse.
- 2
- 1
But it also functions as a catch up mechanic for the "not so good" player.
- 2
Hoestly speaking right now what was the only way to chesse the s curve mechanic? Having world overpopulated a lots that could become just a world for 'stacking pop'like a prison worlds, that could have been fixes by making world automaticly crumbling after too much overpopulation.
Secondary? Habitat spam. Before 3.0 AI and player was spamming them, unless it was a try hard pvp game, and that was crazy how you fill a ecu or a ring world because of this.
Right now it is pretty usless to do, but some cool thing like horizon signal, having the ring world of a fallen empire or building a ring world or just having some random new thing to colonize after some point feel like shit.
Why not just limit this penalty grow that feel just wrong and is not fun and work around these 2 way too cheese the S curve ???
Secondary? Habitat spam. Before 3.0 AI and player was spamming them, unless it was a try hard pvp game, and that was crazy how you fill a ecu or a ring world because of this.
Right now it is pretty usless to do, but some cool thing like horizon signal, having the ring world of a fallen empire or building a ring world or just having some random new thing to colonize after some point feel like shit.
Why not just limit this penalty grow that feel just wrong and is not fun and work around these 2 way too cheese the S curve ???
Last edited:
- 1
Yeah, Habitats were supposed to help tall builds and be a catchup mechanics. But since everyone can use it hardly works (and real "tall" was dead long ago anyway). And it all can be solved by dedicated mechanics attached to POP growth - something like "population density" that dictate current formula POP growth formula, cost of Habitats resettle cost, etc., so if, f.e., you have a few overcrowded planets, habitats are cheap in influence, while if you have free space, the cost is so high, one simply cannot afford any. You can attach all the modifiers for civics, ethics, Empire types, tech to "population density" and make truly tailored experience for different Empires. You can make universal formula and make it work for everyone. But no, PDX being lazy again.
"So... let me get this straight. Because I managed my housing needs well, I'm punished by not being allowed to put a habitat over that mote deposit?"
- 2
Hey all, just wanted to pop in and say that we are paying attention to the response to these changes.
Lets keep the talk constructive, critique is welcomed and encouraged.
Lets keep the talk constructive, critique is welcomed and encouraged.
- 37
- 9
- 2
Nope. You can put habitat over that mote deposit. You can't put it over every celestial object. If you want it as utility it's OK, you can always add some "cheap" habitats for normal cost (like a limit, where hab. cost not affected by your Empire size) specifically for situations like this. But you shouldn't be able to spam it everywhere, if you have free space to grow, or your Empire yet to hit critical levels of "overcrowding".
And i'm not a game designer to predict all the small things. But, IMO, having a dedicated separate mechanics for POP growth that, if needed, can easily factor in issues like that is vastly superior than a single formula that's clearly failing on fundamental level.
Instead of armchair theorycrafting you should use tested practice and borrow from games that solved similar problems. Civilization solved city spam by making tech and culture increase in cost with the number of cities founded. That encouraged you to have fewer but larger cities (tall builds). Habitats aren't tall play, it's more like allowing city spam no matter despite having bad territory. I find it bizarre that Stellaris has this problem since governing capacity was clearly introduced to serve the same purpose, yet for some reason it scales mostly with pops (meaning it affects tall empires just as much as wide) and can be bypassed by building bureaucratic centers.
- 5
Habitat is quite a headache for game and mods… In the current version habitats are very weak because there are poor houses on them so it is hard for pop to grow on them.
Maybe it is not a bad thing, because habitats can be built infinitely, if it can hold a lot of people then there will be too much pop in the late game because AI loves to build habitats.
But the habitat origin suffers a lot, even in the early game it is hard for the three habitats to breed pop. Maybe the original habitats should have more houses. But infinite habitats would always make things unpredictable. Should habatats be limited to be built on specific systems and appropriate distance with the stars, that make the habitats not always so spam?
Yep, the administrative scale is now too easy to be satisfied because of bureaucratic centers. Of course it is, because the administrative scale is linear, and bureaucratic centers' output is linear too. A n*log(n) function may make administrative scale a more important thing to be paid attention to.
- 2
- 1
- 1
I struggle to understand why this rather obvious fix hasn't been implemented.
Surely there is a reason this has not been done that we are not aware of?
- 8
- 1