[Thought] Terrain preference should restrict # of pops, not happiness.

[ShadowDragon868]

So, this is something that's been bugging me, and ironically, a much smaller game, Stars in Shadow, gets it right.

What earthly reason is there that planet type should impact a species' maximum happiness?

I mean, you take a race which evolved on a hot water world and move them to Earth. Sure, they're gonna be unhappy (or rather, they'll be DEAD,) if you put them in the middle of the Gobi desert or the Siberian Tundra, but they'd flourish in the Caribbean and South China seas. They wouldn't be miserable and unproductive and murderously ready to revolt at the slightest additional provocation, they'd just not be able to expand into many of Earth's environments.

Therefore, I think that planet preference should restrict the maximum number of pops of a given terrain preference inhabiting a given terrain type, rather than the happiness of those populations.

Consider humans: we're versatile. From the Siberian Tundra to the Caribbean Sea, from the Fjords of Norway to the hot coasts of Brazil, from the sprawling scrublands of Texas to the mountainous islands of Japan, we thrive. But admittedly, we thrive better in some of those places and others; Icelandic people live just fine in Iceland, but there's a whole lot fewer Icelanders than there are, say, Kenyans. Simply put, Kenya is a more habitable environment for humans than Iceland is.

But if you were to import a species which is small, loves the cold and hates the hot, and loves to burrow into rock and soil, a lot more of them would be able to live in Iceland than in Kenya.

So, terrain preference should, I think, simply restrict the number of pops of a given race that can live on a planet. If you wanted to go whole-hog with this, you could actually hard-set the terrain types of given squares, but that's not really necessary. If an Alpine world only has room for, say, four ocean-loving pops, and you're an ocean world race, you could fill those four Alpine lake slots with your water-dwellers, but no more of your pop could grow there. Import some humans, though, or build robots, and you could make use of a lot more of that terrain.

This would also, I think, give more incentive to build robots, even early-game.

 

[Tekadiel]

I totally agree. This would also add an incentive to have more species in your empire. But if the devs want to stay with „whole planet hability“ please change it from max happiness to max productivity or something else. Max happiness is just so random and does not make sense. Someone in Alaksa can be as happy as someone in California.

 

[Monphat]

Very much agreed as well. This change would add a lot of versatility to gameplay, which is the whole point of grand strategy game in the first place.

You would be able to colonize nearly all planets from the get go for strategic, border-increasing reasons, but price for maintanence of these colonies be restrictive. So you will get several gameplay choices:

- Colonize few parts and use robots for the rest. Probably the simplest and all around route but if lots of species would go for it, chance of AI crisis will also rise, spicing up the game even more.
- Colonize few parts and settle the rest with suitable species. Even faster colonization at expense of potential instability.
- Colonize few parts and go for habitability research or species modification to get it later all for yourself. Long way, but may be worth it in some circumstances, especially if species is modding itself constantly.
- Terraform it later. Long and expensive route with best benefits in the end.
- Use it for megastructure.
- Just leave it alone and focus on something more important

Many diverse approaches would make Stellaris only better. Also this change would allow to distance habitability from idea of temperature/humidity and add toxic worlds, molten worlds, high gravity, low gravity, high pressure worlds etc. all into play. More potential for bizarre creatures.

 

[Zoinker]

Icelandic people live just fine in Iceland, but there's a whole lot fewer Icelanders than there are, say, Kenyans. Simply put, Kenya is a more habitable environment for humans than Iceland is.

Hi. I'm Icelandic and that is the dumbest friggin' argument I've heard in a long time (Iceland isn't actually as cold as most people think, and there are a lot of people from all over the world that live quite comfortably in Iceland).
The lower population has more to do with how remote our island has been historically, how recently it was settled (ca. 870) and lack of valuable resources besides fish. I'm pretty certain Iceland could support a significantly larger number of people once the appropriate infrastructure is in place.

But I get what you're saying, and I actually like the idea of limiting habitability on square-by-square basis, though implementing it may be an issue. Basically the habitability system would have to be overhauled (again) for this to work.

 

[Tokolosk]

As mentioned in another thread on biodiversity:

Essentially Stellaris habitats = Earth climate zones. Earth pretty much has every habitat in the game - its weird that a whole planet could be Savanna or Tundra, etc. Continental also does not make sense. Continents of what? Continents of deserts? of Ice? A few could make sense: 100% desert planet, 100% arctic and 100% water.

In my honest opinion each planet should have zero to X amounts of each tiles. A large 25 tile earth-like planet might have 6 ocean, 5 tropical, 4 Savannah, 3 tundra, 2 arctic, 2 ice, 2 alpine, 1 desert and 0 of the rest.

A tropical species would have 100% habitability in 5 tiles, 80% in close climates, 40% in climate mismatches and 0% in hostile environments. Thus, a 25 tile planet might only have 16 tiles usable before it impacts happiness (or whatever). Gaia planets could then convert to be 100% the preference of the colonising species - making them extremely valuable.

 

[Brucesim2003]

How do you judge the max pop if the pops come from different biomes? Do the swamp dwellers limit the number of desert dwellers on a desert planet or do the desert dwellers make the swamp dwellers love the desert?

 

[Gorton]

I wrote a reply in the thread on biodiversity, and it's the same concept.

I still don't agree with the limiting of species to areas, mind. Humans only live in many places on earth with technology,

Hi. I'm Icelandic and that is the dumbest friggin' argument I've heard in a long time (Iceland isn't actually as cold as most people think, and there are a lot of people from all over the world that live quite comfortably in Iceland).
The lower population has more to do with how remote our island has been historically, how recently it was settled (ca. 870) and lack of valuable resources besides fish. I'm pretty certain Iceland could support a significantly larger number of people once the appropriate infrastructure is in place.

But I get what you're saying, and I actually like the idea of limiting habitability on square-by-square basis, though implementing it may be an issue. Basically the habitability system would have to be overhauled (again) for this to work.

And it's evident here with Zoinker: Appropriate infrastructure.
Humans with no technology though would not be able to live in Iceland. With limited tech, we can, we settled it and expanded. Just like everywhere else that wouldn't be habitable otherwise.
With the ability of a space-faring race, surely they can design something to assist them live in other environments...?

Lower habitability should increase cost of colonising, cost of building, perhaps give a planet modifier for increased energy costs etc.

 

[Tokolosk]

It's not limiting species to a few tiles. I would take an educated guess that a species will first try inhabit land that it prefers and then slowly expand outwards. Expanding into tiles that are not ideal would be slower and buildings would be costlier, as suggested by others.

It actually perfectly mimics what humans did. We inhabited the most ideal areas either by climate or by resources (food) and then moved into harsher places. In these harsher places the human population did not expand as much as the most favourable lands. A good example mentioned here is Iceland. We can live perfectly well there but the population will never reach Japan-like densities without spending a lot infrastructure and importing a lot of food & consumables.

Changing planets from one-tile-fits-all to a mix has a lot of benefits in game mechanics - but does add a lot of complexities too. It really depends if Paradox want to keep it simple or go the Victoria route where colonisation is akin to the latter mentioned economy.

 

[monsterfurby]

Agreed. If the citizens of a species live on a nice planet they might accept being crowded into tight urban spaces. If they are confined to a hellish craphole of heat, dust and hostile fauna, it better be an air conditioned hellish craphole of heat, dust and hostile fauna. And that takes up space.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Continental also does not make sense. Continents of what? Continents of deserts? of Ice? A few could make sense: 100% desert planet, 100% arctic and 100% water.

Earth is "Continental" because it's a middle-ground in the "Wet" climate-family- it has more landmass than an Ocean planet, but less than a Jungle planet. A similar metric seems to be used for at least the "Dry" climate-family as well; Desert worlds have the least water/plant life, Arid worlds a middle-ground, and Savannah worlds the most. It probably applies to the "Cold" climate-family, but my memory on the descriptions is a little fuzzy for those ones; still, they range from "totally frozen with extremely little plant life" to "cold scrubby environments" to "cold mountains with lots of valleys".

 

[monsterfurby]

Earth is "Continental" because it's a middle-ground in the "Wet" climate-family- it has more landmass than an Ocean planet, but less than a Jungle planet. A similar metric seems to be used for at least the "Dry" climate-family as well; Desert worlds have the least water/plant life, Arid worlds a middle-ground, and Savannah worlds the most. It probably applies to the "Cold" climate-family, but my memory on the descriptions is a little fuzzy for those ones; still, they range from "totally frozen with extremely little plant life" to "cold scrubby environments" to "cold mountains with lots of valleys".

I guess "Continental" could also be understood as "small enough for large amounts of liquid water and life, but large enough for tectonic activity."

 

[ShadowDragon868]

Hi. I'm Icelandic and that is the dumbest friggin' argument I've heard in a long time (Iceland isn't actually as cold as most people think, and there are a lot of people from all over the world that live quite comfortably in Iceland).
The lower population has more to do with how remote our island has been historically, how recently it was settled (ca. 870) and lack of valuable resources besides fish. I'm pretty certain Iceland could support a significantly larger number of people once the appropriate infrastructure is in place.

I wasn't thinking of the temperature so much as the terrain - lots of rock and volcanic areas which aren't very suitable for agriculture, and it is an island so the total overall land use is lower. I'm not saying more people couldn't live on Iceland - a lot more, if, say, the Earth were unified under one world government that decided to turn Iceland into high-density housing and dedicated planetary infrastructure to shipping in tons of food. But even so, Iceland has a much lower carrying capacity than Kenya, if only because it would require metric asstons of infrastructure to render the place livable for gargantuan numbers of humans that wouldn't be required if trying to settle that many in Kenya; short of turning Iceland into an outright arcology and dedicating absolutely massive amounts of human infrastructure to upkeeping it.

Even so, I apologize if I gave offense. It was quite late and I was very tired when I wrote this. (Come to that, I'm still quite tired.)

But I get what you're saying, and I actually like the idea of limiting habitability on square-by-square basis, though implementing it may be an issue. Basically the habitability system would have to be overhauled (again) for this to work.

I agree that giving each square its own terrain type that best matches a habitability would be best. You could even make it better by letting species live in tiles that don't perfectly match their ideal, but have a lower pop cap in those tiles, but then they'd need to break down and rebuild the system to allow populations of less than maximum to do something useful.

How do you judge the max pop if the pops come from different biomes? Do the swamp dwellers limit the number of desert dwellers on a desert planet or do the desert dwellers make the swamp dwellers love the desert?

The simple way to do it? Cap the maximum number of pops on a planet by terrain preference.
Consider an ocean-dwelling species. They can occupy most or all of the tiles on an ocean planet. Let's say they can occupy 100% of their homeworld, and 80% of another ocean world. Now, they move onto an ocean world of 18 tiles. Their population cap on that world is (18 * .8 = 14.4 rounded) 14. Ocean-Preference species can occupy 14 squares on that planet. Now say you import a Desert-preference species. They have abysmal ability to colonize an ocean world, only able to occupy 10% of its land. (18 * .1 = 1.8) 2. So your ocean-dwellers and desert-dwellers combined can occupy 16 out of those 18 tiles. You can just throw a robot pop onto the last two, and Bob's your uncle.

So if you have three different ocean-dwelling species, they'll still only be able to occupy 14 squares on that 18-square ocean planet. But if you import a Tropical-dwelling species (Compatibility with Ocean = 60%) and an Arctic-dwelling species (Compatibility with Ocean = 50%) you'll quickly fill that planet, since you'll have three different ocean-dwelling species filling as many as 14 of those squares, a Tropical species filling up to 11 of those squares, and an Arctic-dwelling species filling as many as 9 of those squares. Since that's way more than 18 potential maximum, you'll fill the planet.

 

[ShadowDragon868]

And it's evident here with Zoinker: Appropriate infrastructure.
Humans with no technology though would not be able to live in Iceland. With limited tech, we can, we settled it and expanded. Just like everywhere else that wouldn't be habitable otherwise.
With the ability of a space-faring race, surely they can design something to assist them live in other environments...?

Lower habitability should increase cost of colonising, cost of building, perhaps give a planet modifier for increased energy costs etc.

As Zoinker said, folks were living on Iceland circa the 800s C.E., so we were able to live there with very little in the way of what people would call technology. But not in great numbers, no.

And yes, I agree; you should be able to say "You know what? Fuck it; environment domes. Everybody gets an environment dome" and... Oooooh, mod idea.

 

[scaper12123]

What earthly reason is there that planet type should impact a species' maximum happiness?

I would imagine it would be the perspective of "Why is there no snow on this planet?! I don't care if it's cold, why is there no snow? What is this?!" Just basically minor griping about the planet not being as nice or similar to the home planet. Keep in mind they don't lose that much happiness as a result of being on a slightly less suitable planet. They get 50% happiness by default so a planet like that would be more like minor complaining rather than anything else

But I see what you're talking about. This is an interesting idea, but I think the pop growth mechanic already accounts for this right? Lower habitability means requiring more food to grow a pop and thus longer population growth times.

 

[Zoinker]

I wasn't thinking of the temperature so much as the terrain - lots of rock and volcanic areas which aren't very suitable for agriculture, and it is an island so the total overall land use is lower. I'm not saying more people couldn't live on Iceland - a lot more, if, say, the Earth were unified under one world government that decided to turn Iceland into high-density housing and dedicated planetary infrastructure to shipping in tons of food. But even so, Iceland has a much lower carrying capacity than Kenya, if only because it would require metric asstons of infrastructure to render the place livable for gargantuan numbers of humans that wouldn't be required if trying to settle that many in Kenya; short of turning Iceland into an outright arcology and dedicating absolutely massive amounts of human infrastructure to upkeeping it.

Even so, I apologize if I gave offense. It was quite late and I was very tired when I wrote this. (Come to that, I'm still quite tired.)

No offense was taken. I was honestly more amused than angered and couldn't resist a little petty jingoistic ranting (we Icelanders can be a bit small minded). It's true that a large part of our country is a cold barren hellscape, and all things considered I don't doubt we COULD fit a lot more people in Kenya, but I just found the whole correlation between current population and habitability, without regard to other factors, a bit ridiculous.

Anyway, sorry if I came off a bit angrier than I intended. I guess seeing my country discussed in this context touched a nerve, but that doesn't excuse blowing my top at you. We cool?

 

[ShadowDragon868]

No offense was taken. I was honestly more amused than angered and couldn't resist a little petty jingoistic ranting (we Icelanders can be a bit small minded). It's true that a large part of our country is a cold barren hellscape, and all things considered I don't doubt we COULD fit a lot more people in Kenya, but I just found the whole correlation between current population and habitability, without regard to other factors, a bit ridiculous.

Anyway, sorry if I came off a bit angrier than I intended. I guess seeing my country discussed in this context touched a nerve, but that doesn't excuse blowing my top at you. We cool?

Yeah, we cool. I didn't mean to come off as snooty or ignorant (I hope I wasn't being ignorant,) but just noting that, well, Iceland isn't quite as hospitable to human life as Kenya.
Both places would be very inhospitable to me, of course, since I melt in the heat and become absolutely shit-miserable in the cold. I like an environment which never varies outside the ranges of ~60℉ ~75℉.

 

[PogoMarimo]

Here's the thing about Habitability and Happiness--The current system is a very elegant solution. Happiness is a concept that is broad enough to encompass many different modifiers but simple enough to easily translate into game mechanics i.e. Happiness is your Pops efficiency% modifier. So you can do the math pretty quick to figure out how everything affects your efficiency: Your pops are xenophiles with alien neighbors, +10%, you are Decadent but own Slaves, +10%, you are on a moderately habitable planet, -30%, ect. Sleek, streamlined, and sensible.

So, the question is, how easily understood and interpretted is the alternatives? What benefit does it give to warrant the additional baggage an unintegrated solution would introduce? No doubt you could produce a more simulated, realistic experience, but does it make gameplay longer as you try to find the best solution to a micromanagement problem? Is it harder and less intuitive for newbies to learn? Does it add interesting, thematic choices or does it create a mathematical puzzle for the player to solve?

I wouldn't be opposed to a more in-depth system, but I also recognize it wouldn't necessarily be good game design.

 

[ShadowDragon868]

It's not a very elegant solution, because it ties into too many things.

"Happiness" should not impact productivity. You can be perfectly productive even if you're murderously angry - but right up until the day you snap, grab a TZ-74 Plasma Rifle and go Postal in your workplace at parcel delivery subjunction #547a, you're perfectly productive.

Meanwhile, you can be absolutely content and be bone-idle and unproductive.

The environment should not impact your maximum potential happiness, because happiness ties into too many things: things like ethic shift and revolt chance.
You don't go postal because you live in a harsh climate, you just have to spend more effort meeting your basic needs, whether it be low-tech hunting in the wilderness of Alaska, or more time spent in spacefuture habitat maintenance to keep your aquatic-worlder needs met on a desert planet.

You say an "elegant" solution, I say "clunky and oversimplified."

Having habitat compatibility effect maximum planetary usage is not only a solution which actually is elegant, it encourages more diversity in your empire and the use of options which players otherwise would not - like building robot pops, which are otherwise dog-crap since you can (eventually) fill that pop slot with a (grumbling) biological race... But if you have the pops capped below the planet's tiles, then it suddenly becomes a more-attractive gap-filling option.

 

[Gorton]

As Zoinker said, folks were living on Iceland circa the 800s C.E., so we were able to live there with very little in the way of what people would call technology. But not in great numbers, no.

And yes, I agree; you should be able to say "You know what? **** it; environment domes. Everybody gets an environment dome" and... Oooooh, mod idea.

Yeah, we cool. I didn't mean to come off as snooty or ignorant (I hope I wasn't being ignorant,) but just noting that, well, Iceland isn't quite as hospitable to human life as Kenya.
Both places would be very inhospitable to me, of course, since I melt in the heat and become absolutely ****-miserable in the cold. I like an environment which never varies outside the ranges of ~60℉ ~75℉.

Let's be clear here: Without any form of technology, humans probably wouldn't be able to leave africa.
With even the most rudimentary of things - stone tools, fire, clothing - we did, for hundreds of thousands of years, millions counting the other homo species etc.

Are we really saying that a desert people on a cold world, or a temperate world couldn't wrap themselves up in clothing, build warm structures?
The only real question is cost. That can be easily simulated.

 

[ShadowDragon868]

Let's be clear here: Without any form of technology, humans probably wouldn't be able to leave africa.
With even the most rudimentary of things - stone tools, fire, clothing - we did, for hundreds of thousands of years, millions counting the other homo species etc.

Ehh, I'm not sure most people are calling those "technology."
But if you want to say so, then sure, humans, when stark-naked, are best adapted for subtropical and tropical climes. So maaaaybe parts of the Mediterranean, Africa, some tropical islands and such.

But then, I would say that our intelligence is the adaptation by which we left those climates.

Are we really saying that a desert people on a cold world, or a temperate world couldn't wrap themselves up in clothing, build warm structures?
The only real question is cost. That can be easily simulated.

Sure, and I agree. That's one of the reasons I made my Expanded Habitability mod. I'm not 100% happy with it, but far more happy with it than the default, which says that people on a planet they're unsuited to become murderously, rebelliously angry and unproductive; yet are perfectly capable of eventually growing and occupying every single inhabitable niche of that planet?