Ways to reduce housing needs

[TheGrouch91]

Hello there,

so since I am apparently incapable of googling things that are only a little more complicated than cat pics quick question: Do you guys know of any more ways to reduce the needed housing for pops?

I'm asking because I was kind of surprised about how good that modifier actually is. Mainly due to the fact that almost all modifiers in this game are additive. Which means diminishing returns on positive modifiers and... demolishing returns (what's the opposite of diminishing returns?!) for negative modifiers. Anyway in my current inward perfectionist/agrarian idyll run I'm using a mix of:
- Adaptability 10%
- Byzantine Bureaucracy 10%
- Communal 10%

Which is, because of aforementioned effect, more like 40something percent more possible pops on any planet. Goal was to to make your planets as efficient as possible and expand your economy that way since you can't really get any new worlds once you're boxed in.

 

[pryr]

Add slavery to the list.

 

[TheGrouch91]

Right, that does reduce it too. It's a bit wonky to get it working though. Also you can't really enslave all of your pops. Which is a shame really...

 

[Mastikator]

Open the alien box and take the red serum for an additional -5% housing.

 

[Alli Baba]

If you take biological ascension you can also add the "fertile" trait, which gives another 10% bonus on housing needs. And if you open the alien box(from the anomaly event) and choose the red serum your species gets another 5% housing resduction.

 

[pryr]

Right, that does reduce it too. It's a bit wonky to get it working though. Also you can't really enslave all of your pops. Which is a shame really...

Effect on saved housing is great anyway.

 

[Sirbab]

Robots in servitude take an incredibly low amount of housing, so that's food for thought.

 

[Snoipah]

Byzantine Bureaucracy and Communal are must-have things at this point.

 

[TheGrouch91]

Alright, thanks guys. So from what I've gathered here 40% is reliably achievable. (not counting the anomaly) Slaves or robots are of course great too.

The 40% already means 66,7% more pops on every planet. That's pretty massive.

 

[Sirbab]

Alright, thanks guys. So from what I've gathered here 40% is reliably achievable. (not counting the anomaly) Slaves or robots are of course great too.

The 40% already means 66,7% more pops on every planet. That's pretty massive.

While you can get that many more pops on a planet, there are cases where it's impossible to give them all jobs, especially on large planets like ringworlds. Just keep that in mind, and realize you may need to go to social welfare or utopian abundance if you don't want to deal with rampant unemployment maluses.

 

[TheGrouch91]

While you can get that many more pops on a planet, there are cases where it's impossible to give them all jobs, especially on large planets like ringworlds. Just keep that in mind, and realize you may need to go to social welfare or utopian abundance if you don't want to deal with rampant unemployment maluses.

Tbh I've never had any issues with unemployment with my current set. With Mastery of Nature, Adaptability and Prosperity you get quite a few more districts on even tiny planets.

That was btw my whole idea. turn everything into Gaia worlds with extra districts so that even small planets become very productive. Working out really nicely so far. Constant 50%-120% bonuses to productions is really nice.

 

[Less2]

Byzantine Bureaucracy and Communal are must-have things at this point.

Have to disagree. You don't really need housing bonuses until the mid to late game, because you can always build districts ahead of time up to your cap or use unneeded building slots for luxury housing. Slavery and Robots are an excellent stopgap measure. Byzantine Bureaucracy in particular prevents the usage of Aristrocratic Elite (free +10 stability and a further +5 from a decent building). Communal is fine as a later-game modification to add in, but not terribly worth starting with.

 

[TheGrouch91]

Have to disagree. You don't really need housing bonuses until the mid to late game, because you can always build districts ahead of time up to your cap or use unneeded building slots for luxury housing. Slavery and Robots are an excellent stopgap measure. Byzantine Bureaucracy in particular prevents the usage of Aristrocratic Elite (free +10 stability and a further +5 from a decent building). Communal is fine as a later-game modification to add in, but not terribly worth starting with.

If you don't need the stability then aristocrats don't do anything for you. With agrarian idyll you pretty much always have max pop happiness from amenities plus the stability from being pacifist. In my run I went for aristocrats first only to realize that everyone is so fucking happy that my stability is at 95% anyway so I swapped to byzantine. If you go the slaves routes I agree, aristocrats are really powerful.

But yes, generally housing becomes an issue later in the game so you don't need it at the start. It still allows to you save a few district slots as just spamming districts will raise your admin requirement unnecessarily.

 

[Tyro]

Servants use less housing. Shared Burden has a hidden bonus (i.e. not in the tooltip) that changes Luxury Residences (3 housing, 5 amenities) to Communal Housing (5 housing, 3 amenities), and the upgrades scale similarly.

 

[TheGrouch91]

Huh, good to know. Can't really take shared burden anymore but that's a neat little feature.

 

[Tyro]

Huh, good to know. Can't really take shared burden anymore but that's a neat little feature.

Not a fan of fanatic egalitarianism and its locking out of corporate authority?

 

[Bankipriel]

Robots in servitude take an incredibly low amount of housing, so that's food for thought.

Yes. Amidst all of the forum flurry about how "terrible" robots are, I haven't seen much acknowledgement of how powerful their low housing cost is. The fact that full resource districts with robots provide 1/2 of their housing (or more) to organic pops really increases the power of rural planets. I'm inclined to try a game with "techno-plants," using agrarian idyll and mechanist to see how far a "no"-cities build can be leveraged. Too bad we don't have biological ships yet that use food for upkeep.

 

[Less2]

Yes. Amidst all of the forum flurry about how "terrible" robots are, I haven't seen much acknowledgement of how powerful their low housing cost is. The fact that full resource districts with robots provide 1/2 of their housing (or more) to organic pops really increases the power of rural planets. I'm inclined to try a game with "techno-plants," using agrarian idyll and mechanist to see how far a "no"-cities build can be leveraged. Too bad we don't have biological ships yet that use food for upkeep.

You don't get that housing with machine empires, only normal empires with enslaved robots. Machine empires are the weak ones with really poor initial growth potential, building robots as a normal empire for cheap additional growth that easily pays itself off isn't terrible at all. Though again, housing is mostly a late-game payoff. If you start with Mechanist you're doing it for building pops ASAP, not housing.

 

[AmpsterMan]

Yes. Amidst all of the forum flurry about how "terrible" robots are, I haven't seen much acknowledgement of how powerful their low housing cost is. The fact that full resource districts with robots provide 1/2 of their housing (or more) to organic pops really increases the power of rural planets. I'm inclined to try a game with "techno-plants," using agrarian idyll and mechanist to see how far a "no"-cities build can be leveraged. Too bad we don't have biological ships yet that use food for upkeep.

Lol yeah, Robots are super powerful, to the point that I think every empire should have a robot plant on each planet! They are especially useful on your rural worlds, as you said. Robot building tends to be my first building on most planets.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

You don't get that housing with machine empires, only normal empires with enslaved robots. Machine empires are the weak ones with really poor initial growth potential,

Of course, if they did give ME's the robot housing cost, that would play into the "slower growth but more efficient" niche they are supposed to have.