Can terms like a few and a lot be quantified to give us a rule of thumb, or is there a ratio between population and capacity of a planet to target?
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Different approach: if your game setting for "Logistic Growth Ceiling" is the default value for 4.0 (i.e. x5), then what you want to see in the pop growth tooltip is "Base Growth: 1.0 (+4.00 from pops)". When a new colony stops saying 1+4, you want to be adding cities, clearing blockers, adding luxury apartments or even destroying resource districts to get back to 1+4.
Edit: hmm, the tooltips in my game save disagree with this advice. I'm seeing high Base Growth in my crowded homeworld but low Base Growth in my colonies. Drat, do I need to devote more time to making charts? I will say, the theory in that reddit post says you want to pay attention to the real capacity, not the tooltip's capacity. Having a lot of that compared to your pops will make them grow more.
Last edited:
- 2
I'm pretty sure growth is per pop group, not per species. That's why the growth values fluctuate so much and can drop to zero. If you have a single pop group with 3.5 growth, then you get a 50% chance of 3 and a 50% chance of 4 growth. But if that growth is split between seven different pop groups (different ethics and strata) with 0.5 growth each, then each one has a 50% chance of 0 growth and a 50% chance of 1 growth, giving you a variance of anywhere from 0 growth to 7 in a single month if you get lucky or unlucky on the RNG.
So, the fewer pop groups your pops are concentrated into (eg, for a biological hive), the more consistent your growth should be.
Note that none of the above applies to machine assembly.
- 2
Read this last night. Very thorough and understandable explanation. My hats off to this person and the folks on the discord that helped put it together.
Edit to add the link
https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/s/xjWIokDWCY
Last edited:
- 1
= Method
Load Control group's save, i.e. no blockers cleared, no districts built on Earth, Archives is kept.
Take Expansion tradition, pick Colonisation Fever (but no further traditions), do Superior Colonies council agenda.
Survey a continental planet (90% habitability: humans are Adaptable), send colony ship there, `fast_forward 500` (the `populate` command froze my game), save game when colony is set up.
Start counting months from 2206.01.06 when the colony came online.
== No Resettlement, No Construction
Build nothing on either planet: homeworld and colony make no districts, no buildings. No new jobs on the colony beyond the starting 200.
Ok, this was a useful experiment. Civilian positions don't count as jobs when pops consider immigration. Civilians aren't going to spend their own money to travel to another planet just to do the same kind of civilian jobs, they want government-associated jobs if they're going to make that move. Also good to see it takes about a year for 100 pops to naturally immigrate (at least for UNE humans with Nomadic).
== No Resettlement, Colony Construction
Load save, this time build 3 resource districts (mining, generator, agriculture) on the colony. Still no new districts on Earth. Natural build times, no console command.
Nothing out of the ordinary, when there's more jobs to fill, more pops migrate to the colony. With more living room, the total population of this 2-planet empire is better off than the undeveloped colony.
Also worth noting: Earth had 5400 pops at the start of this save, which from my OP is around what they had by that save's date. Starting a new colony is still conjuring pops out of thin air, just that the Expansion tradition no longer has an option to conjure twice as many in a new colony.
=== Resettle, No Construction
Load save, change law to allow resettlement, move 900 civilian pops from Earth to colony. As before, no construction on either colony or Earth.
For total population, it's better to have done the resettlement even if there's no immigration than to slowly wait for pops to naturally migrate. Plotting the change in total population per month:
Each dataset's mean is also drawn as a horizontal line.
Now, how useful is the in-game tooltip? Below I've plotted (for the colony) the "estimated growth change" shown in the management tab above all pop groups, i.e. the predicted total change:
In the Natural Immigration case, the estimates don't track immigration at all. In the Seeded Resettlement case where there is no immigration, the estimate is a reasonable prediction for how the RNG will do. Here's the same graph for Earth's tooltips:
Here, the Seeded Resettlement case has the tooltip frequently underestimating how many pops will grow from the RNG.
= Conclusions
I see nothing that refutes the prevailing theory. In realistic gameplay, you'd be building a luxury apartment for the initial amenity boost on new colonies and you'd be building some resource districts so you'll easily have enough capacity and jobs to not be throttled on those factors. It's the raw pop numbers that matter most in a new colony.
According to the theory, if you have a planet at say, 2400 population, you want 7200 real capacity to get a solid base growth rate of 1+3 (as the tooltip will say). That means 4800 to cover with unused housing and unused district slots. An unused district slot is worth 400 houses in real capacity (assuming a standard planet). So 12 unused + city districts and aiming for 2400 population is a good rule of thumb to aim for.
If you have a 4000 population planet, you want 8000 real capacity for the same 1+3 base growth rate. That's 10 unused city districts, not much different from the 2400 pop case. So the "12 unused + city districts" (or 8 if you have a luxury apartment) is a simple number to aim for.
Now what does the theory say about wide, thinly populated planets vs tall ones? At the same real capacity, a 300 pop planet has base growth 1-0.28=0.72, a 600 pop planet has base growth 1+0.38 while the 2400 pop planet has 1+3. 8*0.72 > 4 so technically having those 2400 pops spread across 8 planets is better than as 1, but this is impractical in the earlygame: better to have tall planets with medical workers benefiting more pops than building medical facilities 8 times and dedicating so many more workers for the same growth bonus. It's another matter when you have robot assembly and clone vats online but the start should be tall planets, not wide. Whether your borders should be wide is another topic entirely, this is just about how many planets to rush colonising in the earlygame.
Load Control group's save, i.e. no blockers cleared, no districts built on Earth, Archives is kept.
Take Expansion tradition, pick Colonisation Fever (but no further traditions), do Superior Colonies council agenda.
Survey a continental planet (90% habitability: humans are Adaptable), send colony ship there, `fast_forward 500` (the `populate` command froze my game), save game when colony is set up.
Start counting months from 2206.01.06 when the colony came online.
== No Resettlement, No Construction
Build nothing on either planet: homeworld and colony make no districts, no buildings. No new jobs on the colony beyond the starting 200.
Ok, this was a useful experiment. Civilian positions don't count as jobs when pops consider immigration. Civilians aren't going to spend their own money to travel to another planet just to do the same kind of civilian jobs, they want government-associated jobs if they're going to make that move. Also good to see it takes about a year for 100 pops to naturally immigrate (at least for UNE humans with Nomadic).
== No Resettlement, Colony Construction
Load save, this time build 3 resource districts (mining, generator, agriculture) on the colony. Still no new districts on Earth. Natural build times, no console command.
Nothing out of the ordinary, when there's more jobs to fill, more pops migrate to the colony. With more living room, the total population of this 2-planet empire is better off than the undeveloped colony.
Also worth noting: Earth had 5400 pops at the start of this save, which from my OP is around what they had by that save's date. Starting a new colony is still conjuring pops out of thin air, just that the Expansion tradition no longer has an option to conjure twice as many in a new colony.
=== Resettle, No Construction
Load save, change law to allow resettlement, move 900 civilian pops from Earth to colony. As before, no construction on either colony or Earth.
For total population, it's better to have done the resettlement even if there's no immigration than to slowly wait for pops to naturally migrate. Plotting the change in total population per month:
Each dataset's mean is also drawn as a horizontal line.
Now, how useful is the in-game tooltip? Below I've plotted (for the colony) the "estimated growth change" shown in the management tab above all pop groups, i.e. the predicted total change:
In the Natural Immigration case, the estimates don't track immigration at all. In the Seeded Resettlement case where there is no immigration, the estimate is a reasonable prediction for how the RNG will do. Here's the same graph for Earth's tooltips:
Here, the Seeded Resettlement case has the tooltip frequently underestimating how many pops will grow from the RNG.
= Conclusions
I see nothing that refutes the prevailing theory. In realistic gameplay, you'd be building a luxury apartment for the initial amenity boost on new colonies and you'd be building some resource districts so you'll easily have enough capacity and jobs to not be throttled on those factors. It's the raw pop numbers that matter most in a new colony.
According to the theory, if you have a planet at say, 2400 population, you want 7200 real capacity to get a solid base growth rate of 1+3 (as the tooltip will say). That means 4800 to cover with unused housing and unused district slots. An unused district slot is worth 400 houses in real capacity (assuming a standard planet). So 12 unused + city districts and aiming for 2400 population is a good rule of thumb to aim for.
If you have a 4000 population planet, you want 8000 real capacity for the same 1+3 base growth rate. That's 10 unused city districts, not much different from the 2400 pop case. So the "12 unused + city districts" (or 8 if you have a luxury apartment) is a simple number to aim for.
Now what does the theory say about wide, thinly populated planets vs tall ones? At the same real capacity, a 300 pop planet has base growth 1-0.28=0.72, a 600 pop planet has base growth 1+0.38 while the 2400 pop planet has 1+3. 8*0.72 > 4 so technically having those 2400 pops spread across 8 planets is better than as 1, but this is impractical in the earlygame: better to have tall planets with medical workers benefiting more pops than building medical facilities 8 times and dedicating so many more workers for the same growth bonus. It's another matter when you have robot assembly and clone vats online but the start should be tall planets, not wide. Whether your borders should be wide is another topic entirely, this is just about how many planets to rush colonising in the earlygame.
Attachments
- 2
1. Broadly speaking, you dont need to build housing building.. especiallyz if you have a lot of city disctricts (example: your capital)
2. On a newish colony with 1000 pops, you need at least 1000 unused housing so migration-wise ita a good target. Also, at 1000 pops it will never breed like rabbits.
3. For 5k pops you can check this chart.you need about 8334 housing for 5k pops, to get max bonus growth.
Tldr: for best results, just make sure you have at least 3k pops, preferably 4k.
Then, just hover the growth tooltip of single species stratum group and check if your bonus growth is 1+4, if its less, build more housing/city disctricts.
No need to stress over the math too much.
Note: aside from having enough housing for max bonus growth, there is also surplus om relation to migration. So on planets that are breeding.. but you want to auto migrate the pops, you dont want too much surplus housing.
Attachments
Last edited:
On default settings:
1. On default setting: you want to aim for 1+4 growth rate
2.
Theoretically, 2400 pops needs 14+k housing to reach 1+4, but since its below 3k, you will most likely not reach 1+4, cause of low pop penalties
3.
On a 4k pop planet you need 8334 or so, to get the max 1+4 growth.
4. The tall vs wide pops growth question.. depends on build and playstyle, but if your doing pop assembly, like thru robots, wide will grow faster, but the cost to maintain and build 8 colonies at once with such low pops, would be quite hard.
Last edited:
- 1
The easy way, is just hover tooltip check if you are at 1+4, if not, get your more gousing thrubcity districts, housing reducction or other means except resources districts.
Your low base growth from colonies is probably from the below 3k pop growth "penalty".
(To be more accurate, your not getting max bonus growth from pop size, which caps at about 3k)
(To be more accurate, your not getting max bonus growth from pop size, which caps at about 3k)
N
Not dis-agreeing, but i would like to mention that growth is not distributed evenly unless you take the xeno compatibility ascention perk.
Not dis-agreeing, but i would like to mention that growth is not distributed evenly unless you take the xeno compatibility ascention perk.
Uhhhhh even if all the pop groups belong to the same species? I haven't really even looked at multi-species empires yet.
I dont have access to the game now and not another week, but i presume growth is weighted more to the bigger pop groups
Oh, yes, it's definitely proportional to the number of pops in the group. But I just assume that rather than a total amount of species growth on the planet that's being divvied up between pop groups, it's more like each pop group has a completely separate growth calculation for itself based on the size of the pop group and the growth traits of the species.
My understanding is that, there is a base/bonus pop growth ( this is the 1+4) this is then distributed to the different pop groups and then inidividual modifiers of each pop group is applied. Hence, when you hover each pop group the could be different modifiers.
.png){kind=avatar}
Given performance for the patch is 25-30% worse than prior. So far none of the changes have positively impacted performance at all. In fact they managed to not only make it much worse, the removal of trade routes and their calculations made things better, so they lost that win too in the process, somehow.
- 1