What is the in universe reason for pop growth slowing down as more pops are in the empire?

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

Increased (non-specified resource) overhead for a growing empire and demographic transition are probably some of the better in-game explanations.

While demographic transition wouldn't usually apply to gestalt empires, they could still be affected by the increased overhead for attending to a larger populace. Hive minds need to spend more attention dealing with infrastructural needs, and machine intelligences could start facing performance issues, needing to spend more assembly resources maintaining their population.

But why dividing an empire into two empire(like creating a subject) will do something with demographic transition?

Though a bigger empire is not easy to manage, but it is possible. It makes no sense that two empire must be more efficient on pop growth than one empire. I can only see it as a kind of nerf to player empire.
If you guys really want to limit a huge empire, why not make empire sprawl more powerful? It makes more sense, and can do more things.

 

[TrotBot]

But why dividing an empire into two empire(like creating a subject) will do something with demographic transition?

Though a bigger empire is not easy to manage, but it is possible. It makes no sense that two empire must be more efficient on pop growth than one empire. I can only see it as a kind of nerf to player empire.
If you guys really want to limit a huge empire, why not make empire spawn more powerful? It makes more sense, and can do more things.

This is an empire sprawl penalty to some extent. It is effected by sprawl as well as size I believe.

The empire penalty starts slowing you in 2200. Not sure what you are talking about. It's entirely possible to have a thousand pops by 2250 if you are going conquest heavy.

A. I doubt that penalty is doing anything at all in 2200, that's crazy. B. If you have a thousand pops in 2250, while I doubt it, you have clearly hit sprawl and should be punished accordingly till you catch up. Sounds like the anti-snowball mechanic is working as intended.

 

[Less2]

A. I doubt that penalty is doing anything at all in 2200, that's crazy. B. If you have a thousand pops in 2250, while I doubt it, you have clearly hit sprawl and should be punished accordingly till you catch up. Sounds like the anti-snowball mechanic is working as intended.

It's a penalty per pop in your empire. You have pops in your empire at the start of the game. So yes it does something.

No, my sprawl was basically fine.

If you guys really want to limit a huge empire, why not make empire spawn more powerful? It makes more sense, and can do more things.

It's also strange, because if the intent is to promote "tall" play more and stop snowballing conquest, then in fact snowballing conquest with assimilation actually becomes more powerful past a point since you LITERALLY can never grow enough pops peacefully to keep up with someone conquering. It's more like a "no rush xx years" mechanic since early game conquest has very low payoff while your growth is high. But past those years there's basically no reason to found new colonies because they'll never, ever grow, meanwhile old colonies grow like molasses, so the only productive growth is conquest (or I suppose stealing pops and abusing vassals).

 

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

This is an empire sprawl penalty to some extent. It is effected by sprawl as well as size I believe.

Yes, but it is much more efficient than sprawl penalty, since sprawl cap can be increased by pops(more pop, more sprawl and more sprawl cap, it cannot truly limit empire), and easily make game feels bad-for the violent way.

 

[Jaxck]

Also, its worth noting that because pop growth and pop construction are separate buckets to be filled, and both buckets will be constantly increasing in size over time, you will fairly quickly reach a point where either pop growth or pop construction (or both) will never produce a pop again.

e.g. lets say you have +5 pop growth and +2 pop construction. Since each pop increases the pop cost by 0.5, if you reach a point where you are gaining more than 4 pops a month then your pop construction becomes 100% worthless since no planet will ever construct a pop again. This is entirely possible once you start conquering planets with 50+ pops, at that point conquering 1 planet every year will mean that the pop construction "bucket" increases faster than it can be filled (worse with bigger planets, and they get bigger). This is, of course, trivially possible to reach around ~2300 through a variety of methods.

Utterly, utterly awful mechanic. Was any playtesting at all done with it? It's so ridiculously punishing that maybe spamming vassals actually is a good idea despite them being almost worthless.

Well vassal spamming was already the best way to abuse Feds & Sprawl, so it's no surprise that strategy continues to not be designed around well.

 

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

It's also strange, because if the intent is to promote "tall" play more and stop snowballing conquest, then in fact snowballing conquest with assimilation actually becomes more powerful past a point since you LITERALLY can never grow enough pops peacefully to keep up with someone conquering. It's more like a "no rush xx years" mechanic since early game conquest has very low payoff while your growth is high. But past those years there's basically no reason to found new colonies because they'll never, ever grow, meanwhile old colonies grow like molasses, so the only productive growth is conquest (or I suppose stealing pops and abusing vassals).

I suppose they ignore this problem when testing, paradox may not good at conquering, so they didn't keep an eye on the another side of this. At lease it looks like it can stop snowballing.

But I think using vassals is a good point, that give Feudal Society a chance(or just a chance) to be useful.

 

[Less2]

But I think using vassals is a good point, that give Feudal Society a chance(or just a chance) to be useful.

Still don't think feudal society is useful. Letting AIs expand from scratch is a mistake, instead you colonize planets, quickly build up a working base with the right pops and buildings, then release the sector or transfer it to an already existing vassal to grow for 30 years.

 

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

Still don't think feudal society is useful. Letting AIs expand from scratch is a mistake, instead you colonize planets, quickly build up a working base with the right pops and buildings, then release the sector or transfer it to an already existing vassal to grow for 30 years.

Yep, so it is "just a chance".

But in another hand, the more empires, the more influence, the more starbase, if you can bear the low efficient of AI, it can also be a choice.(Still, it has the different strong period compared to the "pop problem" happened, so new mechanism may have no impact on it)

 

[Incompetent]

There isn't a reasonable explanation. It's completely artificial to force a lower pop number in the endgame.

If it were purely to improve late-game performance, the logical thing would be for the cost of each pop to increase according to the number of pops in the *galaxy* (with a much smaller multiplier, of course). That way it would be impossible to game the modifier by releasing vassals and so on and it would guarantee the galaxy doesn't get overpopulated, regardless of how many empires there are.

Instead, the intent seems to be as an anti-snowball mechanic, so a blob empire that already has a ton of pops doesn't just keep passively making more and more pops, whereas an empire that has had a near-death experience (possibly losing its homeworld) can eventually make a comeback. It punishes the "blobs" very unevenly though depending on whether or not they have good ways of taking pops off other empires. For example, a genocidal empire has no hope of keeping pace with the population growth happening outside its borders, so it has to get a move on when it comes to killing the rest of the galaxy, whereas a Driven Assimilator can be more relaxed, as all those new pops will eventually be assimilated anyway.

 

[Maule]

without knowing how many people a single pop represents but at some point you reach a point where you cant grow enough food on the planet to sustain the population so you start to import it, well, importing food for lets say, 3 billion people every day will require an enormous amount of infrastructure both in space and on the planet, so much it would be easier, and cheaper to pay people to leave the planet or put birth restrictions in place like China had in the past. Your empire might have plenty of food but the amount needed for a single planet with an ever growing population would likely be a logistical nightmare.

 

[Baron Jukaga]

modders to the rescue

Steam Workshop::Lifting pop restrictions X

steamcommunity.com

 

[mial42]

If it were purely to improve late-game performance, the logical thing would be for the cost of each pop to increase according to the number of pops in the *galaxy* (with a much smaller multiplier, of course). That way it would be impossible to game the modifier by releasing vassals and so on and it would guarantee the galaxy doesn't get overpopulated, regardless of how many empires there are.

Instead, the intent seems to be as an anti-snowball mechanic, so a blob empire that already has a ton of pops doesn't just keep passively making more and more pops, whereas an empire that has had a near-death experience (possibly losing its homeworld) can eventually make a comeback. It punishes the "blobs" very unevenly though depending on whether or not they have good ways of taking pops off other empires. For example, a genocidal empire has no hope of keeping pace with the population growth happening outside its borders, so it has to get a move on when it comes to killing the rest of the galaxy, whereas a Driven Assimilator can be more relaxed, as all those new pops will eventually be assimilated anyway.

The core issue with the first solution would be that it would *lock snowballs in* so to speak. Once one empire got a population edge, it would be impossible for other empires to catch up. In other words, it would be a pro-snowball mechanic.

The new model is both an anti-snowball mechanic and an anti-lag/micro mechanic.

 

[Less2]

The new model is both an anti-snowball mechanic and an anti-lag/micro mechanic.

It may be intended, but it is not any of these.

If anything it's pro-snowball, conquering empires will never, ever need to fear "tall" empires catching up to them in pops. The only thing it works against is conquering early and then trying to peacefully grow later. But it actually makes conquering stronger in the end, the only thing that can compete is really gamey stuff like intentionally farming AIs for pops and returning planets to them to grow back.

As to lag, the AIs seem to grow just fine. 95% of pops in the universe are going to be under AI control for most of the game, and those AI empires are going to grow fine because most of them stay around 5-10 planets max and therefore don't face substantial penalties. This mechanic doesn't stop AI growth, it just handicaps player growth (including players spamming megastructures).

As to micro, it's even more micro if you want to try and grow effectively despite the penalties.

 

[Vernichtere]

without knowing how many people a single pop represents but at some point you reach a point where you cant grow enough food on the planet to sustain the population so you start to import it, well, importing food for lets say, 3 billion people every day will require an enormous amount of infrastructure both in space and on the planet, so much it would be easier, and cheaper to pay people to leave the planet or put birth restrictions in place like China had in the past. Your empire might have plenty of food but the amount needed for a single planet with an ever growing population would likely be a logistical nightmare.

Its not working like this. It does not matter how the situation is on the planet. Its only empire driven. And its working also other way. There are maybe problems to transport food around. But for some reason a galaxy with 20 empires has less problems to push this food around than a galaxy with only one empire and a common market.

Dont try to find here a story driven logic. There is none.

 

[The Founder]

You pay nothing to acquire planets? What are you talking about?

You colonize planets for:
- Basic Resources
- Strategic Resources
- Population space

You do that with and without this rule. So the growth costs you nothing extra.

The empire penalty starts slowing you in 2200. Not sure what you are talking about. It's entirely possible to have a thousand pops by 2250 if you are going conquest Gheavy.

No it does not.
Year 2271
73 Pops, for 177 Cost/pop
Capitol: 3.0 base Growth (+0.46 from Pops)
Colony 1: 3 base Growth (+1.91 from Pops)
Colony 2: 3 base Growth (-0.77 from Pops) this is a mining world with no district slots left - so it is approaching capacity
Colony 3: 3 base Growth (+1.60 from Pops)
Colony 4: 3 base Growth (+/- 0 from Pops)
Colony 5: 3 base Growth (+/- 0 from Pops) This one is still in teh Ship Shelter phase

The last 3 are not yet fully build up. As the capacity increases, so will the growth rate.

 

[exi123]

No it does not.
Year 2271
73 Pops, for 177 Cost/pop
Capitol: 3.0 base Growth (+0.46 from Pops)
Colony 1: 3 base Growth (+1.91 from Pops)
Colony 2: 3 base Growth (-0.77 from Pops) this is a mining world with no district slots left - so it is approaching capacity
Colony 3: 3 base Growth (+1.60 from Pops)
Colony 4: 3 base Growth (+/- 0 from Pops)
Colony 5: 3 base Growth (+/- 0 from Pops) This one is still in teh Ship Shelter phase

The last 3 are not yet fully build up. As the capacity increases, so will the growth rate.

Do you really think this is fine? Your strongest growth is 4.91 on colony 1, you have a cost of 177 per pop, so you need 36 months to grow one pop on this world. A single district needs 2-3 pops, depending on what it is. This is 6-10 years to fill one single district. You have reached the midgame, the chances are high you are already boxed in, what are you supposed to do now? Wait 2 ingame years to build a new building? Conquer your enemies to get even more slow gameplay? This should be the time where you upgrade buildings, build habitats, start terraforming planets or get migration treaties to settle them. In short, technology pays off and you start to prosper, but i have no pops... I played until 2290 with standard gamerules and 0.5 planets, i just quitted. It was to boring...

Why do we even have auto resettling now? There are actually no pops to use it, and i stil have to resettle robots by myself. I have run an observer to 2450 and looked around: All empires are starving on pops. The whole galaxy is on hold and nothing happens. Remove this value and the it starts to explode... Its just an artificial and lazy break for performance.

 

[The Founder]

Do you really think this is fine? Your strongest growth is 4.91 on colony 1, you have a cost of 177 per pop, so you need 36 months to grow one pop on this world.

You might still be thinking in pre 3.0 population figures. Reducign the overall number by 40% was a stated goal.
And some other planet propably finishes growth before Colony 1 and has no worker slots left, so the next pop comes sooner.

I fully agree the implementation could be better and actually could think up a few:

Another empire growth bellcurve Idea

So I already made one suggestion on how to solve the empire bellcurve better then what we have now (increased cost). But I had another, not nesssearily mutually exclusive idea: The penalty from "High Population"/mostly used capacity should be...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Empire/Species Logistics curve

You currently have a logistics Curve for pop growth on the planet scale. You are trying to make something like that for the overall Population in the empire (using the increasing growth from multiple planets + the increasing cost/pop as the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

But thus far it seems entirely workable for me.

 

[Secret Master]

I'm not even sure how all of these new mechanics work.

For example, do "constructed" POPs (robots, POPs from clone facilities, spawning pools) have their speed adjusted at all by the "Lots of POPs in empire" mechanic?

Another question: The capacity of individual planets is a separate mechanic, right? But in prior versions of Stellaris, housing (or lack thereof) would slow or kill organic POP growth. Hell, I would sometimes tear down housing on some planets to stop POPs from growing sometimes when playing egalitarian. But I see that planets still have the housing-POP mechanic as well as the carrying capacity mechanic. Why have both? Why not just adjust the housing-POP growth mechanic?

Still another question: Is immigration POP growth actually working? And are you killing yourself with immigration "growth" from established planets to new planets once you hit 1600 POPs in the empire?

 

[exi123]

You might still be thinking in pre 3.0 population figures. Reducign the overall number by 40% was a stated goal.
And some other planet propably finishes growth before Colony 1 and has no worker slots left, so the next pop comes sooner.

I fully agree the implementation could be better and actually could think up a few:

Another empire growth bellcurve Idea

So I already made one suggestion on how to solve the empire bellcurve better then what we have now (increased cost). But I had another, not nesssearily mutually exclusive idea: The penalty from "High Population"/mostly used capacity should be...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Empire/Species Logistics curve

You currently have a logistics Curve for pop growth on the planet scale. You are trying to make something like that for the overall Population in the empire (using the increasing growth from multiple planets + the increasing cost/pop as the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

But thus far it seems entirely workable for me.

What i am thinking is how much fun i have to play a strategy game. What is the fun of playing Stellaris? Building up your empire... settling planets, build buildings, build fleets, fight your enemies and conquer them. For many, the BUILDING itself is very very important.

Its not about min/maxing for me, but when i HAVE to play cheesy tactics to outplay a recent change i really lose the joy of playing a game. I know what they wanted to achieve, many pops are a performance nightmare, but for what price? That i sit in the midgame and do absolutely nothing? They could have done this with other mechanics...

And the worst part is: The ai IS NOT ABLE to play these cheesy tactics, while some empires cant manage themselves, some are performing pretty well under 3.0.1, but stop to expand and prosper at all. There is no match to play for me this way, i am sorry.

This is a bad balancing decision and goes fine with the de facto removal of empire sprawl with beaurocrats, the planetary rework, the removal of custom sectors, the removal of more than 10 rare resources, gosh... there is so much.

 

[The Founder]

For example, do "constructed" POPs (robots, POPs from clone facilities, spawning pools) have their speed adjusted at all by the "Lots of POPs in empire" mechanic?

There are two factors here.
1. After a certain number of population, the cost per pop increases. That is based on the total count of pops in the Empire. Biological, Mechanical, even Purgees count.
2. There is the whole capacity mechanic, but that one is limited to each Planet.

That i sit in the midgame and do absolutely nothing?

Personally I start conquering and doing the other usuall midgame stuff by midgame, not wasting time juggling pops.