There's a couple of issue with your basis of comparison which undermines your overall point. Not only are you not comparing a realistic basis of comparison (a normal empire and a hive empire are not going to have the same number of pops while relying solely on capital jobs for unity- Gestalts are, after all, fundamentally pop-bloomers and their unity job is the exact same as their capital job) but more importantly you're not comparing Unity costs.
Ok, I'm game. Let's talk about pop growth. When comparing regular empires to hive and machine empires, there are four types of pop increases that have to be considered: Natural Pop Growth, Pop Assembly, Pop Integration, and Colonization.
Natural Pop Growth
Hive empires have an advantage in natural pop growth based on their innate +25% growth. Machine empires don't naturally have pop growth unless they are Driven Assimilators which then receive -50% growth and lack access to some of the bonuses to growth available to hive and regular empires. The same pop growth bonuses and penalties are available to both regular and hive empires except for one.
Regular empires have access to the Gene Clinics line of buildings which provide 10/20% pop growth along with amenities and more crucially +5/10% habitability. On non 100% habitable worlds the habitability is worth an additional 2.5/5% bonus to pop growth as well as 2.5/5% reduction in production output. This means that the inherent growth bonus of hives is reduced and eventually eliminated through the use of this building (and associated slot).
Pop Assembly
Again, hive empires have an advantage when it comes to pop assembly. By trading a building slot and some upkeep hives are immediately able to have 2 points of pop assembly. Regular empires can begin to assemble robot workers very early on at the same 2 points/month rate. It is likely that the hive empire has only produced an extra 2-5 pops before a regular empire closes this gap depending on the regular empire's luck in the engineering technology draw. Robotic works also (with the proper technology) can be used to colonize otherwise uninhabitable planets.
Machine empires are obviously the clear winners in this category. Even though their replicator jobs only provide 1 point of pop assembly, they get 2 or more from their capital building and an additional 1-3 jobs from buildings. They also have very powerful civics and traits that increase assembly rates even further. These bonuses however even out with hive and regular empires when adding organic pop growth and assembly points.
This section wouldn't be complete without mentioning the bio ascension set of perks. Clone vats replace the robotic assembly points of regular empires with 3 points of bio assembly. This is also affected by the Gene Clinics line of buildings for a maximum of 3.6 points of assembly. Hive empires that take the bio ascension perk end up with 5 points of assembly and begin producing more pops than regular empires again. Hive empires also gain an additional 2 points of assembly once they have access to Hive world terraforming for a maximum of 7 points of assembly. These bonuses are available much later in the game.
Pop Integration
Pop integration is the act of incorporating external pops into an empire. The primary ways of accomplishing this is through conquering other empires and primitive worlds or through the use fo the Nihilistic Acquisition ascension perk. This is something only available to regular empires by default. Hive empires gain this ability if they complete the bio ascension path which would be much later in the game. Machine empires can only take advantage of this if the target empire is also machine, has robotic workers, or they are Driven Assimilators.
The power of pop integration as it relates to population growth can't be understated. A regular empire with early access to a primitive world can obtain decades worth of natural and/or assembly pop growth instantly. Not to mention, if the the integrated species has a different biome preference they can begin to leverage other worlds for efficient exploitation. This isn't something available to hive empires unless they go through the process of terraforming poor habitability planets or eventually complete bio ascension. Driven assimilator machine empires can also use this technique to great advantage to supplement their otherwise lower organic pop growth.
Colonization
Although not very consequential in the grand scheme of overall population growth mechanics, I wanted to note it to be thorough. Machine empires get a slight advantage here as they get an extra pop each time they colonize a new world in comparison to regular and hive empires.
Overall, hive empires might have a slight advantage in general pop growth from natural and assembly sources but this advantage is easily overshadowed by the sheer power of pop integration. A regular empire can grow by leaps and bounds through conquest. It's not even a competition with the clear winner being the regular empire.
While Gestalts have lower unity production on the per-job basis, they also have a very, very significant factor I didn't see mentioned at all- 25% sprawl reduction. Sprawl affects both how much technology production you need, but also how much unity you need to produce for traditions. While a lower unity output is a disadvantage against flat unity costs, most unity costs aren't flat- tradition unity costs are the vast majority of unity expenditures, and they scale exponentially before sprawl is brought in.
Empire Size and its associated penalties are an interesting aspect to the discussion. Yes, it is true that pound for pound the effective penalty paid by hive empires is less than both machine and regular empires when ES is the same. However, ES isn't generated in a vacuum. Hive empires have the unique ability to zero out ES contribution from colonies. Compared to regular empires this equates to 2.5 ES per colony difference.
Hive empires also have a single civic that reduces ES from pops by 20% allowing hive empires to max out at -50% ES from pops pre-scaler bonuses. Scaler bonuses are the class of multiplicative bonuses such as the one provided by the Docile species trait and the ES reduction from planetary ascension. These are applied after the standard reductions/increases. For a hive empire to accomplish both of these feats, they have to expand both initial civic slots.
In comparison, a regular empire actually maxes out at -85% ES from pops pre-scaler. As the game progresses, the population contribution to ES quickly becomes the limiting factor for all empires. I'll admit that the -85% number is a very specialized build that requires all three ethics slots, a civic slot, and being a democracy as opposed to other choices.
Let's look at a more traditional build that takes Egalitarian and Beacon of Liberty. This build provides the following benefits:
- +15% empire unity production
- +5% specialist output
- -15% ES from pops (-55% max pre-scaler)
- +25% unity from factions
If we compare the two builds using the earlier example empire template we get an ES of 250 for the regular empire and 250 for the hive empire as well. An ES of 250 equates to a 15% penalty to tech and a 30% penalty to traditions for the regular empire and 11.25%/22.5% respectively for the hive empire. The hive empire is paying 7.5% less for traditions, but the regular empire is producing 23% more unity per month overall with my changes in place and the same resources were dedicated to unity production. The regular empire easily wins again even when taking ES into account. The regular empire still has 2 ethics slots to use and one civic slot to customize their empire where as the hive empire is locked into this specific template while still being inferior.
Those ethics slots can be used to widen the gap even further by either going spiritualist for more unity production bonuses or pacifist for additional ES from pop reduction. The civic slot could also be used for another 40% unity from factions or another 10% specialist output. The point is that a regular empire is still superior to hive while also maintaining flexibility in build which the hive does not have.
I haven't addressed machine empires yet because even with unity income parity, they still aren't in a great place when it comes to ES. The machine intelligence effects on ES aren't a great tradeoff. Assuming the Expansion tree is taken as well as the ES per colony reduction ascension perk is taken, it still requires a planet to have at least 34 pops on it before the break even point. In the early and mid game when an empire is expanding, most colonies will not meet this condition causing the machine empire to pay costly penalties.
A machine empire following that template ends up with an ES of 250 also though the template is favorable to them. They pay full price at the penalty box but don't have access to a +unity species trait like regular and hive species and have to pick 2 out of three of +15% unity, +15% pop assembly speed, or -20% ES from pops. The last two are basically the current go-to build for machine empires unless Rogue Servitor or Driven Assimilator where you give up one of the two. There's no redeeming offset for machine empires like there is for regular empires.
This means that gestalts, while initially at a unity disadvantage in the early game where unity costs are flat, have a Very Significant long-term unity advantage, and science advantage, and even an edict-advantage.
Based on the above, the long-term unity advantage actually goes to the regular empire, and that's assuming you have all of my changes in place. Without them as I said before it's not even a contest.
And this is before you factor in things like the Gestalt Manufacturing economic policy (20% to all specialist jobs), the early-game pop advantage (more pops to spare), the Synchronicity tradition (makes unity workers provide 2 amenities, greatly affecting the Maintenance drone ratio).
The economic policy can be boon for sure once you have a matter decompressor and dyson sphere online. Before that, hives and machines suffer from basic materials shortages all the time. This is primarily caused by their jobs directly converting basic materials into specialist production. You lose the opportunity to double dip certain production bonuses.
For instance the regular empire above with 20% specialist bonus would apply to converting minerals into consumer goods and again when converting consumer goods into unity. If you also take planetary specialization into account, you can also gain reductions to job upkeep costs so that less minerals are needed for the consumer goods and less consumer goods are need for the unity. This is also why the idea that hive and machine empires are "more efficient" than regular empires is a fallacy. Regular empires can achieve a massively more efficient economy than either hive or machine empires.
Alternatively, the Machine goes Unyielding- like all good gestalts should- and uses build slots for military bases +3 pop-free unity while working resource district jobs.
There's no reason a regular or hive empire wouldn't take this tradition tree so would also have access to this method of unity production.
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