Why do planets build pops? Why don't pops build pops?

[Dementor4]

This is perhaps the most counter-intuitive part of the game, and where the simulation parts hardest from reality. Each pop, if properly fed and housed, should generate its own offspring. Limiting pop growth to one at a time per planet makes no sense.

It warps the meta towards the current "grab every planet you can regardless of quality" because your growth is limited to one pop per planet. In reality, 20 billion people on one really nice planet would reproduce faster than 1 billion people on twenty crappy planets. But in stellaris that's the furthest thing from the truth.

 

[Methone]

You'd expect to see this in real life, too. And to some extent you do; the global population goes up, last I checked, by something like 100,000 a day, ten times what it's thought was humanity's entire population around 75k years ago.

But there's also some nations on Earth - I don't care enough to look up which at this very second - with high populations but low population growths. Whatever psychological and socialogical and economic factors cause this, I understand, is a matter of debate, but this phenomenon has occurred. At the very least, you don't have couples often having 12 kids to work on the farm before the age of 30!

So... you can actually very much make the argument that no, you wouldn't expect this.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Pops are a massive abstraction. There's no way they're a uniform progression where pop1 from a colony ship is the same as one of the pops you have on a planet at game start for example.

It's also debatable that a really nice (but quite full) planet will have higher total population growth when compared to the sa me number of people on mediocre, but largely empty planets - there's a good chance that the mostly empty planets will have higher birth rates just because there is more opportunities for the children to get land and space of their own, and have less competition for available resources.

 

[RoverStorm]

In real life (forgive me, I heard invoking real life can get you temp banned from this forum, but it feels appropriate), Humanity's growth has slowed down quite dramatically lately. It's believed humans will "cap out" at about 10 billion on Earth. What we saw in history was the invention of modern medicine had a hilariously massive effect on humanity's growth, and then higher education (and a more taboo topic) brings down the growth rate substantially.

ten times what it's thought was humanity's entire population around 75k years ago.

EDIT: WRONG! Thank you for checking that, I was mis-remembering a statistic. There is about 15 dead people for every living human currently.

Back in 1968, it was twice that, at 30 dead people for every living one.

But there's also some nations on Earth - I don't care enough to look up which at this very second - with high populations but low population growths.

Japan, Germany, and China are extremely high on that list. I think Japan is the highest at a pathetic 1.6 children for every potential pair of adults (EDIT: yeah 1.6 back in 2011, it went down again to 1.5). China realized they completely shot themselves in the foot with their 1 child policy, and they're predicting massive population loss in the upcoming generations as consequence.

Each pop, if properly fed and housed, should generate its own offspring.

Yeah you would think that, but that doesn't seem to be accurate in modern day anymore.

I think the devs believe it would be a headache trying to balance "super slow growth, then suddenly population explosion! now super slow again". And what about different species? What if YOUR species only breeds once every 20 years because they live until they're God-damn 150?

Actually by that account why doesn't increased lifespan dramatically increase birthrates? "Not being able to have kids past a certain age" is actually unique to humans, three sets of whales, real life hive-species like bees, and laboratory animals (which don't count obviously). Humans only have a 30 year-ish window to have kids; you're telling me a species that matures at the same rate but can have kids over a 130 year window doesn't have four times the birth-rate?

I guess what I'm trying to say is: it's just simpler to balance a consistent growth rate. There's no "population capacity" in stellaris planets like Earth's "ten billion humans" limit, so how do you program "exponential growth until 95% of the way to this point"?

Technically you get a pseudo version of this in that new colonies, with their tiny number of peeps, reproduce much slower than planets with lots more peeps. This is fixed as soon as you re-settle enough pops.

 

[beckermt]

At the moment the following sentence is true: All humans currently alive outnumber ALL dead humans from history combined. How's that for insane population?

This seems implausible. Do you have a citation?

Edit: Ah, it is, in fact, false. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579

 

[Iosue Yu]

Senseless things like settling the Arctics for their baby production and then resettling pops back to Europe is a thing to be addressed.

But as of now, we don't have a good model to model after regarding actual population growth.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Because balance.

 

[schedim]

This seems implausible. Do you have a citation?

Edit: Ah, it is, in fact, false. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579

Yep, the bitch all people working with flow models meet, a low could either mean a low production OR a high turnover. The difference between these two states are for modeling purposes insanely important. Although the current pop model is a bit clunky, any other, more fine grained model need model tuning and testing hardly worth the effort. If they do it, I would like it, but I know what could go wrong.

(Speaking from experience of 15 years of modeling biological systems)

 

[Arutar]

This is perhaps the most counter-intuitive part of the game, and where the simulation parts hardest from reality. Each pop, if properly fed and housed, should generate its own offspring.

I agree it is "counterintuitive". However each pop producing a new pop is exponential growth (because more pops would means more growth and more growth means more pops, etc.), which in terms of balance is simply game breaking.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for a growth model which is rooted in reality, but this one I feel is simply unavoidable because of playabiltly of the game.

 

[Badesumofu]

At the moment the following sentence is true: All humans currently alive outnumber ALL dead humans from history combined. How's that for insane population?

Not even remotely close to true.

 

[Mastikator]

Consider that it takes 18-24 years to grow and raise and teach a person to be employable.
Consider that seniors can not do certain jobs past a certain age.
Consider that changing job takes 2-8 years depending on the job.

Any kind of "let's be realistic about pop growth" discussion should not ignore that. Just because a new pop is born doesn't mean it's immediately useful to society. With a growth rate of 3 per month you get a new pop every 33 months, 3 years.

Population age is not even modeled in the game so we're VERY far from realism.

 

[zukodark]

What if they made pop growth empire wide? It could be (base growth)+(0.3*pops) or something, with the growth distributed across your planets based on free jobs, free housing, etc. In fact I'd cap it based on these conditions, so overpopulated empires wastes a good bit of growth. The base growth could either be static or increased slightly for each planet you colonize.

 

[Iosue Yu]

I agree it is "counterintuitive". However each pop producing a new pop is exponential growth (because more pops would means more growth and more growth means more pops, etc.), which in terms of balance is simply game breaking.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for a growth model which is rooted in reality, but this one I feel is simply unavoidable because of playabiltly of the game.

Exponential growth isn't a problem if it is capped at a maximum.

I would say that we may plot growth dependant on existing number right from the start of the planet, and only grow until at a point, say 15 Pops, then it starts capping at a constant growth.

And it will already be better than settling in the Arctics and resettle back to Europe just because Arctics produces babies.

And how slow would a new colony be? A new colony is supposed to be slow. Migration should be the main source of growth there. Egalitarians, no problem. Authoritarians can have power to "push" or "pull" by decisions for a system of Migration Control, instead of just locking out. Or, there can be a setting to specify which Species (or sub-Species) are allowed to get to that new planet by Authority. Or simply that they should just pay up for resettlement. Or, even, just get a discount for resettling Pops to a new planet (because people are volunteering).

 

[Zergor]

A solution that would be possible to avoid balance problem would be a mix:

An exponential growth in the sense that each pop contribute to the overall growth.
A malus to growth for each pop depending on the number of pop compared to the planet's size (or a value derived from it).

This would make population grow faster and faster then slow down and stabilize like humanity is doing.
Also because this is a malus , each bonus would push the pop threshold before stabilization further, making gene clinic and the like more useful.
This will also make species grow a bit more realistically compared to each other: species that grow faster will outnumber the others eventually except if the others have a very good headstart (more pops). Note that at some points only fast growing pops will grow because only them can beat the malus.

This idea would have a big micro advantage : Pops should not overcrowd planets and require management. This would not remove the option of microing them though: if you move a pop, growth will restart.

 

[beckermt]

A solution that would be possible to avoid balance problem would be a mix:

An exponential growth in the sense that each pop contribute to the overall growth.
A malus to growth for each pop depending on the number of pop compared to the planet's size (or a value derived from it).

This would make population grow faster and faster then slow down and stabilize like humanity is doing.
Also because this is a malus , each bonus would push the pop threshold before stabilization further, making gene clinic and the like more useful.
This will also make species grow a bit more realistically compared to each other: species that grow faster will outnumber the others eventually except if the others have a very good headstart (more pops). Note that at some points only fast growing pops will grow because only them can beat the malus.

This idea would have a big micro advantage : Pops should not overcrowd planets and require management. This would not remove the option of microing them though: if you move a pop, growth will restart.

I like this idea.

 

[RoverStorm]

Not even remotely close to true.

Ok let me correct myself: Although there is some serious confusion about exactly how many humans have existed due to other human-like species such as neanderthals messing with exact understandings of human presence and numbers; yes current estimates put the number of dead humans from history at 107 billion.

What I was mis-remembering was a prediction that such a statement was to be true within a certain amount of time. Back in 1968, there was only 3.7 billion humans, and there was 30 dead humans for every 1 living human. Nowadays that ratio has been chopped in half, to 15 dead people for every living human, and there was a prediction I read about that suspected humanity may soon reach the point the living outnumber the dead.

Obviously my original post more or less disproved that. Unless, of course, we start colonizing other worlds...

EDIT: Holy Hell, the average life expectancy was 12 or less for most of history, that is really sad.

 

[beckermt]

EDIT: Holy Hell, the average life expectancy was 12 or less for most of history, that is really sad.

This is mostly because of infant mortality. It's not like people are dropping dead at 18 from hypercancer 100,000 years ago. Also, it IS sad.

 

[RoverStorm]

A solution that would be possible to avoid balance problem would be a mix:

An exponential growth in the sense that each pop contribute to the overall growth.
A malus to growth for each pop depending on the number of pop compared to the planet's size (or a value derived from it).

This would make population grow faster and faster then slow down and stabilize like humanity is doing.
Also because this is a malus , each bonus would push the pop threshold before stabilization further, making gene clinic and the like more useful.
This will also make species grow a bit more realistically compared to each other: species that grow faster will outnumber the others eventually except if the others have a very good headstart (more pops). Note that at some points only fast growing pops will grow because only them can beat the malus.

This idea would have a big micro advantage : Pops should not overcrowd planets and require management. This would not remove the option of microing them though: if you move a pop, growth will restart.

Not a bad idea, but the wrench in the system is we don't know how humanity continues to grow in developed countries. At the moment, most developed countries have birthrates lower than the amount needed to maintain their population. Even the US has dropped birth rates considerably; a few years ago it was at 2.1 (needed to maintain population), now it's at 1.8.

Actually on that note, I found a LOT of articles saying that apparently the US has an interesting issue in that one political party has significantly larger birth-rate than the other. Couldn't find much on other countries, anyone know how true that is elsewhere?

This is mostly because of infant mortality. It's not like people are dropping dead at 18 from hypercancer 100,000 years ago. Also, it IS sad.

Yeah that's why I said it was sad!

 

[Zergor]

Not a bad idea, but the wrench in the system is we don't know how humanity continues to grow in developed countries. At the moment, most developed countries have birthrates lower than the amount needed to maintain their population. Even the US has dropped birth rates considerably; a few years ago it was at 2.1 (needed to maintain population), now it's at 1.8.

And here is where fiction has to part with reality.
Developped country indeed rely on immigration to sustain their pop level.

But having negative growth would feel bad in stellaris and not work well with the system. That's why the growth should IMO stop magically at exactly 2.0 (meaning a growth of 0 in the system).
It's a bit the same as my choice of the planet size as the limiting factor of the growth. In reality the factor is just when the shift happen.
In Stellaris civs already start as spacefaring and so should have already relatively low growth for the entire planet.
But having people breed like rabbits on a newly colonized planet and magically slow because they become aware of the space limit is better for the game mechanic.

 

[durbal]

The decision to make pop growth per-planet is indeed a very weird one. It's a vestige of the tile system.

It's especially strange considering one of the prime drivers of colonization of other worlds should be overpopulation on one planet (and the lack of resources required to sustain that population), and it should be a considerable upfront expense as it would be in reality. Instead it's done willy-nilly for economic gain rather than as a necessity at an economic loss as it would almost assuredly be in reality.

It's a very missed opportunity, to be sure. Hopefully it's high up on their list of new features to implement once they fix 2.2.x.