Will POPs be a quantified population, or abstracted points?

[Velorian]

I'm hoping for a more in depth pop system were planets have actual population numbers. More leaning towards vic 2.

Well those features can be combined. It probably means that each tile (like a vic2 province) has a population consisting of a number of pops which each has an amount of people.

So the planet has a combined population number, and if you care you can probably view continental population numbers as well. Maybe.

 

[Kadanz]

Well those features can be combined. It probably means that each tile (like a vic2 province) has a population consisting of a number of pops which each has an amount of people.

So the planet has a combined population number, and if you care you can probably view continental population numbers as well. Maybe.

Sounds like a good system. It's one of the dev diaries I'm anticipating the most atm.

 

[aitaituo]

Well those features can be combined. It probably means that each tile (like a vic2 province) has a population consisting of a number of pops which each has an amount of people.

So the planet has a combined population number, and if you care you can probably view continental population numbers as well. Maybe.

This is something like what I'm hoping for. Simpler than Vicky 2, but not some totally abstract gamey system.

 

[beckermt]

I strongly suspect a system like Civ or Endless Space, where each planet has a small integer Pop number, which only very abstractly represents actual people.

I am also in support of such a system. "Real" population numbers in a space game do nothing for me.

 

[Velorian]

I strongly suspect a system like Civ or Endless Space, where each planet has a small integer Pop number, which only very abstractly represents actual people.

I am also in support of such a system. "Real" population numbers in a space game do nothing for me.

Well detail does mean something to me, even if abstracted numbers are usually fine. It just seems like a wasted opportunity now that they are actually bothering with creating actual pops alá Vic2.

So I'd be negatively surprised if the population of a planet reads "21" or something. It also creates issues with new colonies starting with a whole "population unit" which on the homeworld represents millions.

 

[aruon]

what velorian said. stellaris will deal with billions and potentially 1+ trillion (5+ trillion in a star wars mod) people. not giving a approximate but solid number kinda defeats the purpose.

 

[PG908]

Honestly, despite the older engine, Victoria 2 runs quite well with thousands of provinces and dozens of pops in each. The said, the pops are basically a spreadsheet of data and the game code makes changes (interactions, the thing that resembles trade, etc) happen based upon the data (plus a few other things that aren't directly attached to the pops). How well the game runs depends both on how complex the decisions are, and how many pops there are. I, for one, would be happy to sacrifice so many pops for better interactions between them, namely a decent trade system.

I wouldn't be surprised if some things are only calculated on one tick per day while the others are used to better scale battles. Shorter term event chains could also be calculated with the shorter ticks rather than the daily ticks. I'm no programmer, though, so I don't know if that would actually make it run more efficiently since it would then use two processes of ticking for events.

 

[Demonsul]

There probably aren't going to be as many different kinds of pops since I doubt social class will be as important in this game. The actual statistic representing the number of people in each pop is probably relatively minor compared to that, so I highly doubt there will be technical issues with representing population with an actual headcount. (No offense to multi-headed species or those without a defined head, of course.)

 

[ParadiseCity]

If the pops are a abstracted number, it will destroy any immersion I will have for the game and I will probably not buy it.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Victoria actually needed those POP sizes, because it used it to represent all sorts of minorities (in Vicky 2, at least) and had to mesh everything with a fairly granular representation of industrial production. Trying to get those numbers looking right across a multitude of species (what's a "proper" max. POP size for space-cockroaches? What about space-elephants?) would just be a waste of time. To track pop growth, just allow modifiers on POPs and attach some kind of growth tokens to them - once enough tokens are accumulated, they split. I'm much more interested in these POPs acting cohesively politically and culturally than meaningless bean-counting.

 

[Ashantai]

The only problem is one of scale. However they do pops a small colony will take a very long time to get large. It’s the same problem as EU3 had with population sizes; large places naturally get bigger quickly, whilst small ones take forever to move anywhere.



There’s also the issue that Earth, if divided into blocks of 1 million would have about 7000 POPs at this current time. That’s a lot to potentially deal with.



Now take Coruscant in a theoretical Star Wars mod…it would have 1 million pops for one planet. I’m not sure how well the game would be at handling that, especially if there are several such worlds.

 

[Velorian]

Victoria actually needed those POP sizes, because it used it to represent all sorts of minorities (in Vicky 2, at least) and had to mesh everything with a fairly granular representation of industrial production. Trying to get those numbers looking right across a multitude of species (what's a "proper" max. POP size for space-cockroaches? What about space-elephants?) would just be a waste of time. To track pop growth, just allow modifiers on POPs and attach some kind of growth tokens to them - once enough tokens are accumulated, they split. I'm much more interested in these POPs acting cohesively politically and culturally than meaningless bean-counting.

Ironically I think the solution of having them split would make the system far more demanding on the processor than if they were divided into pops of varying sizes so some Earth pops could be a hundred million while others just a few. What matters is solely the amount of pop units, not how many is in it.

I get that you don't care about the exact number, but can't you just ignore it?

 

[Alexander Seil]

Ironically I think the solution of having them split would make the system far more demanding on the processor than if they were divided into pops of varying sizes so some Earth pops could be a hundred million while others just a few. What matters is solely the amount of pop units, not how many is in it.

So, the game runs an extra growth check event for a few thousand POPs. This isn't CK2, there aren't 50,000 plotting AI's to take care of.

There’s also the issue that Earth, if divided into blocks of 1 million would have about 7000 POPs at this current time. That’s a lot to potentially deal with.

I don't see much of a problem with considering a POP to be 100,000 millions or even larger. Once you solve the problem of actually sending a giant colonization spaceship to a different star and landing all your baggage through a thick atmosphere, it seems carrying a building-sized pod with frozen bodies shouldn't be much of a technical challenge.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/03/7-3-billion-people-one-building.html

EDIT: You could also institute different POP sizes, size taking only a few values, if you really wanted tiny colonies to be represented. My point is that the granularity of Vicky's POPs is utterly unnecessary, because there is no demand for goods, class conversion or mostly-there-for-flavor minorities to deal with.

 

[aruon]

The only problem is one of scale. However they do pops a small colony will take a very long time to get large. It’s the same problem as EU3 had with population sizes; large places naturally get bigger quickly, whilst small ones take forever to move anywhere.

colony ships. nuff said. bring prospective colonists to the new world, go back, rinse and repeat.

So, the game runs an extra growth check event for a few thousand POPs. This isn't CK2, there aren't 50,000 plotting AI's to take care of.

I don't see much of a problem with considering a POP to be 100,000 millions or even larger. Once you solve the problem of actually sending a giant colonization spaceship to a different star and landing all your baggage through a thick atmosphere, it seems carrying a building-sized pod with frozen bodies shouldn't be much of a technical challenge.

not just that, once you have a self-sustainable population (say 100k inhabitants), it's reasonable to expect that the population would dramatically increase with programs, incentives, and a general sense of safety regarding the expiring of the frontier mystique. after that point colony ships would become less of a priorty as conventional immigration becomes established.

 

[Zarine]

I hope it will be a bit like Vicky in the following way:
1 race on the planet = 1 pop
pop has its size, its ethos (issues), maybe a revolt risk and that's about it.

Clean and easy.
No "promotion", no specific consumption (wouldn't mind some consumption) would make it not CPU heavy.

 

[Thure]

I hope it will be a bit like Vicky in the following way:
1 race on the planet = 1 pop
pop has its size, its ethos (issues), maybe a revolt risk and that's about it.

Clean and easy.
No "promotion", no specific consumption (wouldn't mind some consumption) would make it not CPU heavy.

I think there should be a little bit more. Not as detailed as Victoria... but the game shouldn't put upper class and the lower class into the same pop. They would have different reasons to revolt.

 

[Krajzen]

I'd prefer abstracted points because it's damn near impossible to put 'immersive' and 'making sense' population numbers in a video strategy games.

GalCiv2 was counting population in hundreds of millions and billions and the end result was horrible because it led to complete nonsenses
*The simplest most primitive smallest colonising ship containts FIVE HUNDRED MILIONS OF COLONISTS which means at week 0 AD 2200 Mars has population 0 and week later it has a population of 500mln
*Generally the time scale of galciv2 made absolutely no sense because each turn of the game was one week, the game lasted like a few years and during those few years population of a given civilisation was rising from 6 billions to 100 billions.
*The simplest most primitive smallest invasion transport containts FIVE HUNDRED MILIONS OF SOLDIERS

etc... I greatly prefer abstracted points over such 'immersion'

Civilization 5 was better but still silly as hell. City population was counted from 1 to 1+n but 'immersion' required it to somehow translated into quantified population on a statistics screen, and the results were:
*Due to city pop statistics rising non linearly (city with pop 1 is 1000 citizens, pop 2 is 6000, pop 3 21 000 etc) an empire with six 30 citizens' cities was counted as having dozens of times smaller population than an empire of three 60 citizens cities, generally all numbers were messed up
*Anyway it all felt weird because even the greatest empires on the greatest maps in the most advanced era had never more than a few dozens of milions of inhabitants (total population of huge earth maps in civ5 hovered around, I don't know, 200 milion instead of 7 bilion?) yet another failure of 'realism'.

EU3 had quantified city population and the results were completely idiotic with random cities in the middle of the steppes could have 999 999 population with every city in the radius of 1000km having population 1000.

And in Stellaris we are not even talking about real history - we are talking about unimaginable far future and unimaginable alien species with a different physiology and reproduction rates. Good luck!

 

[Thure]

I'd prefer abstracted points because it's damn near impossible to put 'immersive' and 'making sense' population numbers in a video strategy games.

GalCiv2 was counting population in hundreds of millions and billions and the end result was horrible because it led to complete nonsenses
*The simplest most primitive smallest colonising ship containts FIVE HUNDRED MILIONS OF COLONISTS which means at week 0 AD 2200 Mars has population 0 and week later it has a population of 500mln
*Generally the time scale of galciv2 made absolutely no sense because each turn of the game was one week, the game lasted like a few years and during those few years population of a given civilisation was rising from 6 billions to 100 billions.
*The simplest most primitive smallest invasion transport containts FIVE HUNDRED MILIONS OF SOLDIERS

etc... I greatly prefer abstracted points over such 'immersion'

Civilization 5 was better but still silly as hell. City population was counted from 1 to 1+n but 'immersion' required it to somehow translated into quantified population on a statistics screen, and the results were:
*Due to city pop statistics rising non linearly (city with pop 1 is 1000 citizens, pop 2 is 6000, pop 3 21 000 etc) an empire with six 30 citizens' cities was counted as having dozens of times smaller population than an empire of three 60 citizens cities, generally all numbers were messed up
*Anyway it all felt weird because even the greatest empires on the greatest maps in the most advanced era had never more than a few dozens of milions of inhabitants (total population of huge earth maps in civ5 hovered around, I don't know, 200 milion instead of 7 bilion?) yet another failure of 'realism'.

EU3 had quantified city population and the results were completely idiotic with random cities in the middle of the steppes could have 999 999 population with every city in the radius of 1000km having population 1000.

And in Stellaris we are not even talking about real history - we are talking about unimaginable far future and unimaginable alien species with a different physiology and reproduction rates. Good luck!

Do you ever play Victoria? The population system in Victoria was very well. EU3 population was only bad because it wasn't emulated well. It were just numbers without real mechanics.

 

[steve.bd]

I hope that POPS will be represented with real numbers like in Victoria.
Maybe there will be less detailed divisions in pops, something like:

- Upper class
- Medium Class
- Lower Class

Combined with:
- Military
- Politic
- Scientific
- Religious

Combined also with other categories:
- Political ideas
- Religion (?)
- other things related to game mechanics that we don't know at the moment.

This can represent 12 base classes multiplied by how many "other categories" will be in the game. This can give a good representation of a "space empire population" with enough differentiation on each planet but who knows. Maybe devs have devised something completing new and different from Victoria.

Anyway, i don't get why so many people are scared by big numbers.
Just declare the number variables big enough and everything will be alright

popNum number(1024);

 

[Velorian]

GalCiv2 was counting population in hundreds of millions and billions and the end result was horrible because it led to complete nonsenses

Galciv2 used ridiculous numbers and fantasy growth. To call that immersion is a joke, it's what I view as severely abstracted. The number was just stuffed on at the end without care for what would actually make sense.

Same thing with civilization, it was just a guestimate population, basically severely abstracted..

From a logical point of view a viable planet with 100 million is capable of harnessing much of the planetary resources and make a much larger impact on the economy than if Earth grew from 10 billion to 10.1 billion. That's a mechanic which would reduce the need for ridiculous growth levels like what GalCiv used.

Also a mechanic that should NOT be in place is for growth to be directly related to food production. Yes, lack of food would reduce it (maybe, it could also increase it like in some developing countries). Yes, a large surplus of food might increase it, but once you have a decent percentage more than you need anything more is just a luxury, food does not make babies!

The Vic2 system led to fairly logical growth and plausible numbers. Doing it basically like that, but without some of the unnecessary details (purchases and such) would be best.