Naric

Join Date 01/2017

Population

I wanted to get other players opinions and experiences with the population of planets. Playing from a non-silicon and non-synthetic view point, now that raw production is increased by the square root of a population, is it even worth it to have farm and city improvements? For a colony that begins at 4 pop, it is reasonable to raise the pop limit to 25, which only gives 3 more raw production than the 4 pop. To achieve the 25 pop, you need farms, cities, and entertainment to keep the population content. Yes, you can have farms on another planet, but that is still tile space that could go to something else. For me, having three tiles to get a plus 3 raw production seems like a waste when I could boost the planet with other types of improvements.

What are everyone's thoughts and experiences regarding this? Do you actively use cities and farms, or do you forgo them for other improvements?

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

I'm still experimenting with it. For most of my colonies I'm leaving their population at 4 until I can research advanced farming techniques and raise them all to 12. But I think today's 1.2.4 build increases the population cap that cities provide, so it's a whole new ball game.

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I made a similar thread a week or so ago and I think most people agreed that population is clearly much more marginal now. They have increased the capacity of cities from 8 to 16 in the beta patch so that will cut down on the amount of cities needed to hit a significant pop (and hence save farm land too). About the only issue left is Morale and I'm sure that something will be in the works now to compensate.

On the plus side for Population now, you get that full Raw Production applied to EACH function (Social Construction, Military Construction, Research, and Income). In stock GC3, you were really just dividing that larger number (but had the flexibility to push it all to one function or another as you chose). So I don't think the total output has declined too drastically, but the diminishing returns do kick in now (probably for the better).

I'm trying a higher pop game now to see how it feels compared to just keeping the pop at 4 or 9. Hopefully I'll have a better sense later in the game.

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You can also spam a bunch of farms on some worthless 4 and use gobs of food to throw a city or two on every planet that doesn't suck and give huge boosts with single tiles. Your serious tile expenditure is going to be from keeping morale up.

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Intimidation Center covers moral problems. 20% Base then +50% per adjacency level. Hub all 3 culture improvements and a Entertainment center thats 270% bonus just from Intimidation center. Getting 25-30 approval not so hard.

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Wish I knew why Stardock raised the adjacency bonus of intimidation center to that level. Clearly broken, but so far nothing has been done to it yet...

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I'm still fiddling around. I would have said before the initial 2.14 that pop is a much lower priority, mainly due to the tech trees being borked and not having access to the majority of the entertainment tree.

Before the update on the 15th, pop was useful. I haven't played with the new city cap, which could make the pop game a lot more relevant again, but yeah, still very much experimenting with the new mechanics.

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I totally agree with OP. As of 2.21, the equation still sits at:

Raw production = sqrt(Population)

This hits diminishing returns way too fast. Examples:

Three frontier colonies of 4 population each will out-produce, out-research, and out-tax a 25-pop core world easily.
It only takes five frontier colonies of 4 population each to match a 100 population megalopolis.

In the original GC3, both the quality of your colonies and the number of your colonies mattered. Now, the only thing that matters is how many colonies you can pump out.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+231

Population is only one component of raw production. Asteroid mines, techs like planetology, and precursor anomalies can give flat increases to raw production, while ideology and certain improvements can give percentage increases. The emphasis has shifted from population, it's no longer as important as in the base game.

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Quoting corgatag,

reply 7

I totally agree with OP. As of 2.21, the equation still sits at:

Raw production = sqrt(Population)

This hits diminishing returns way too fast. Examples:

Three frontier colonies of 4 population each will out-produce, out-research, and out-tax a 25-pop core world easily.

It only takes five frontier colonies of 4 population each to match a 100 population megalopolis.

In the original GC3, both the quality of your colonies and the number of your colonies mattered. Now, the only thing that matters is how many colonies you can pump out.

This. While I'm glad population as a whole has been nerfed, the system needs a tweak. Perhaps a 2/3 exponent instead of 1/2? That's probably too simplified. I'll leave it to Stardock to find the right balance. The production values for research/manufacturing might require another pass after the change.

Pop should be worth the cost of building the necessary morale buildings and using up those tiles.

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