4.0.* Auto Migration - Analysis

[LayZboy]

Aside from possible bugs and some missing UI informations, I guess it is hard to find a suitable base migration value.

If it is too high, there is no necessity for the player to invest in multipliers to increase this value by techs, buildings, traditions, etc. (PS.: The Advisor veteran trait "Frontier Spirit" got buffed with +% automatic settlement chance too). It also devalues manual resettlement and its connected traditions and species trait (costs, policies and its implications).

If the the base is too low, even empires with low pop growth will eventually run into the problem of stacking civilians and any way to increase it might not even counter it.

Assuming it is working correctly, it should be possible to stack multipliers ontop of base migration high enough to be sufficient even for egalitarian clone empires, even if it costs you some effort.

No-one actually wants to invest in those modifiers though, they just make anything associated with them be weaker. Changing them into something more worthwhile would be a better solution.

In the mean-time, egalitarians get screwed over even more, since it's -20% happiness if you turn on re-settlement to actually make this supposed new growth system work in the first place.

 

[Zaacplot300]

Maybe by design the only pops that migrate will be civilians? That means any other strata will either wait for jobs or demote over time to civilians and then leave.

For some reason changing the base auto-resettle value in the defines file from 10to 25 made most of them start migrating. Though now that civilians exist, I am wondering why unemployed pops need to exist in the state they're in. Currently their main purpose is to crowd up the sidebar with the yellow unemployed briefcases since due to how pop growth works now, every planet with elite or specialist jobs will keep spawning unemployed pops of those strata.

 

[Drullo321]

No-one actually wants to invest in those modifiers though, they just make anything associated with them be weaker. Changing them into something more worthwhile would be a better solution.

In the mean-time, egalitarians get screwed over even more, since it's -20% happiness if you turn on re-settlement to actually make this supposed new growth system work in the first place.

I totally agree that egalitarians shouldn't be screwed over by forcing them to change their migration policy.
I also neither think nor say that the current base value of 10 migration is good or bad, it may be a little bit low, experience will tell.

However if you go for heavy (or even heaviest) pop growth (clones) and also be egalitarian, it could be expected that the player invest into +% auto migration value by whatever means they have access to. If that isn't enough, then surely the values have to be adjusted. But just to expect everything to work out by default when going egalitarian clones and not to worry about an abundance of civilians is a bit foolish.

 

[LayZboy]

For some reason changing the base auto-resettle value in the defines file from 10to 25 made most of them start migrating. Though now that civilians exist, I am wondering why unemployed pops need to exist in the state they're in. Currently their main purpose is to crowd up the sidebar with the yellow unemployed briefcases since due to how pop growth works now, every planet with elite or specialist jobs will keep spawning unemployed pops of those strata.

Originally it was to make people losing their jobs not want to demote themselves from a ruler to a lowly toiler in the mines, Which is a nice themeing thing to have for individual empires. It also gave gestalts instant demotion becuase they are drones and don't care.

They never bothered fixing the bug where sometimes a new pop will just displace a ruler or specialist for no reason, despite them being identical, so now we just get random rulers and specialist unemployed for no reason.

 

[Zaacplot300]

Originally it was to make people losing their jobs not want to demote themselves from a ruler to a lowly toiler in the mines, Which is a nice themeing thing to have for individual empires. It also gave gestalts instant demotion becuase they are drones and don't care.

They never bothered fixing the bug where sometimes a new pop will just displace a ruler or specialist for no reason, despite them being identical, so now we just get random rulers and specialist unemployed for no reason.

My initial assumption was that pop groups of a given strata would spawn pops of their own respective strata, thus meaning that say, elite pops would create more elites that exist uselessly until they demote. So its slightly better to hear that this is the result of a bug, but not much if it still exists and hasn't been fixed

 

[Red Death]

My initial assumption was that pop groups of a given strata would spawn pops of their own respective strata, thus meaning that say, elite pops would create more elites that exist uselessly until they demote.

I am pretty sure this is correct, the Devs have said so.

 

[WJJellO]

The choice to make international migration only function through your capital effectively means that it doesn't work unless your empire shares common habitability with the other empire. This... kind of defeats much of the benefit of migration treaties (using xenos to populate worlds for which your founding species has poor habitability). If you pick the Gaia/Relic world start, then I guess it works well enough because everyone has high habitability on those.

I feel like many of the other issues surrounding migration (i.e. "the base rate is too low") would not be issues if this were not the case.

 

[Zaacplot300]

I feel like many of the other issues surrounding migration (i.e. "the base rate is too low") would not be issues if this were not the case.

Ostensibly, the minimum habitability needed to make a planet a valid migration destination is 20%. II seems to work for planets in the same empire . . . at least in the first 10-20 years. Then migration to pretty much anywhere seems to drop off hard and most planets start developing infestations of unemployed elites and specialists

 

[Ilab]

Not sure I understood something. Is the 10 limit for each planet or empire wide? I mean, every month 10 civilians will move to each valid planet, or only a total of 10 per month can move?

 

[Sgt. Sodium]

Not sure I understood something. Is the 10 limit for each planet or empire wide? I mean, every month 10 civilians will move to each valid planet, or only a total of 10 per month can move?

I believe up to 10 pops will move from a given planet to another planet (assuming no modifiers, like transit hubs)

So if you have 5 planets with lots of civilians and colonize a sixth, and create lots of jobs, up to 50 pops could migrate (10 from each existing planet) to the new one.

Transit hubs, if build in the system with 1 of those worlds, would raise the rates for those planets, so in this case 1 with transit hubs and 4 without would give 60 migrants per month (10*2 from the world with a hub, 10 from the other worlds, each.)

At least that's my understanding.

 

[Eladrin]

I recall this discussion in one of the Dev diary threads. For performance reasons, pops in your empire only consider migrating to your planets or capitals of migration treaty signees. After they arrive at a capital, they are supposed to do a second hop to get to your good (for them) planets. Given this thread's investigation, seems that second hop is throttled badly.

While originally we were considering making external migration a two-hop process through the capital, we found that adding the migration targets directly had minimal impact so they'll go straight there. Migration targets in other empires have a reduced weight when selecting which migration target the pop will move to.

To be a valid migration destination for a pop, the target planet must:

• The target planet must have free housing.
• The target planet must not be currently colonizing.
• The target planet must have vacant workspaces capable of being worked by this pop.
• The target planet must have less than 10 devastation.
• The target planet must not have Stellar Culture Shock or be a Doomsday planet or Synaptic Lathe.
• The target planet must have habitability of 20% or higher.
• The species must be able to live on the target planet.
  • Example: No meat pops on a machine world unless they're cyborgs in an Assimilator or Mechromancy empire.
• Moving to the target planet must provide equal or better species rights for the migrating pop.
  • This is currently stricter than I'd like, and I plan on doing a pass on this in the future.

Maybe by design the only pops that migrate will be civilians? That means any other strata will either wait for jobs or demote over time to civilians and then leave.

Yes, only unemployed pops or civilians (or maintenance drones) will migrate.

The requirements here include:

• The host planet does not have Stellar Culture Shock.
• The host planet was not colonized within the last 60 years months.
• The host planet has 100 or more pops.
• The host planet is owned by a normal empire or an awakened fallen empire.
• The pop is unemployed, a civilian, or a maintenance drone.
• The pop is not being assimilated.
• The pop is not virtual and in a machine empire.
• The pop is not enslaved or an enslaved robot (unless you have the slave processing building or a transit hub).

I totally agree that egalitarians shouldn't be screwed over by forcing them to change their migration policy.

We're going to add +100% Automatic Resettlement to the Resettlement Prohibited policy.

Edit: 60 months, not years!

 

[Red Death]

Is there any kind of system to prioritise pops with higher habitability moving to a particular planet over pops with low habitability?

Because it would seem that this:

The target planet must have habitability of 20% or higher.

In combination with this:

Yes, only unemployed pops or civilians (or maintenance drones) will migrate.

Would lead to large numbers of pops moving to, and then forever getting stuck on, planets where they have terrible habitability issues. And to be honest, that is what I am observing.

It could work a bit better if pops with better habitability push the ones with bad habitability out of their jobs (and eventually down to civilians) whenever possible, but that also isn't something I have seen happen.

• The pop is not enslaved or an enslaved robot (unless you have the slave processing building or a transit hub).

This is not new, but it is just a straight negative. Do you think slaves are still so powerful they need this as a downside?

 

[Zaacplot300]

While originally we were considering making external migration a two-hop process through the capital, we found that adding the migration targets directly had minimal impact so they'll go straight there. Migration targets in other empires have a reduced weight when selecting which migration target the pop will move to.

To be a valid migration destination for a pop, the target planet must:

• The target planet must have free housing.
• The target planet must not be currently colonizing.
• The target planet must have vacant workspaces capable of being worked by this pop.
• The target planet must have less than 10 devastation.
• The target planet must not have Stellar Culture Shock or be a Doomsday planet or Synaptic Lathe.
• The target planet must have habitability of 20% or higher.
• The species must be able to live on the target planet.
  • Example: No meat pops on a machine world unless they're cyborgs in an Assimilator or Mechromancy empire.
• Moving to the target planet must provide equal or better species rights for the migrating pop.
  • This is currently stricter than I'd like, and I plan on doing a pass on this in the future.

Yes, only unemployed pops or civilians (or maintenance drones) will migrate.

The requirements here include:

• The host planet does not have Stellar Culture Shock.
• The host planet was not colonized within the last 60 years months.
• The host planet has 100 or more pops.
• The host planet is owned by a normal empire or an awakened fallen empire.
• The pop is unemployed, a civilian, or a maintenance drone.
• The pop is not being assimilated.
• The pop is not virtual and in a machine empire.
• The pop is not enslaved or an enslaved robot (unless you have the slave processing building or a transit hub).

We're going to add +100% Automatic Resettlement to the Resettlement Prohibited policy.

Edit: 60 months, not years!

On a similar note, wouldn’t it make sense to add +/- Automatic Resettlement % chance to the Nomadic and Sedentary traits? Nomadic is fairly pointless in its current state while Sedentary is effectively a free trait point if you don’t care about manual resettlement

 

[Sgt. Sodium]

We're going to add +100% Automatic Resettlement to the Resettlement Prohibited policy.

You mean to say that *not* prohibiting resettlement will raise the chance by +100%?
I'm not sure I understand - does that basically mean that you wouldn't ever need Transit Hubs unless the growth rate of a given planet was greater than 20 pops per month?
Because otherwise resettlement would be banned, and the rate would be zero.

I like the idea of the base rate being higher to avoid some awkwardness for fast growing empires (like some of my hive mind builds that have pushed that 10 pop/month cap very early in the game), but I hope there are some long term plans to revisit the way the migration system works in general so there can be some more nuance here than "are you growing faster than the migration rate, or not?".

I kinda like the idea that your infrastructure/resources could be insufficient in some way to carry pops off world, leading to overpopulation being a problem you have to address - if the initial rate is too high, this would never be a problem. At least for most empires?
Maybe adding some sort of trade costs to migrating pops between worlds? (I'm not at all sure that's the best solution here - I'm just saying the first thing that comes to mind that would cause the player to have to 'manage' the infrastructure/resources tied to mass migration / colonization. I guess passive migration being free is a benefit for Egalitarians, vs. Authoritarians that already have to pay to move pops? Idk... feels like it could use more depth in the future.)

 

[Eladrin]

On a similar note, wouldn’t it make sense to add +/- Automatic Resettlement % chance to the Nomadic and Sedentary traits? Nomadic is fairly pointless in its current state while Sedentary is effectively a free trait point if you don’t care about manual resettlement

For performance reasons, we don't pick the migrating pops until later on in the process. I have ideas on how to integrate the traits if I rework parts of it though.

You mean to say that *not* prohibiting resettlement will raise the chance by +100%?
I'm not sure I understand - does that basically mean that you wouldn't ever need Transit Hubs unless the growth rate of a given planet was greater than 20 pops per month?
Because otherwise resettlement would be banned, and the rate would be zero.

If manual resettlement is banned in your empire, more automatic resettlement will happen to compensate. It's still useful to build infrastructure to increase it further, so you can have more than 20 move per month.

This is not new, but it is just a straight negative. Do you think slaves are still so powerful they need this as a downside?

It's largely a thematic restriction rather than a balance related one.

 

[Darkrenown]

[*]The target planet must have habitability of 20% or higher.

Is there any scaling based on habitability or is an otherwise similar planet equally appearing if it's 100% habitability or 20% habitability? Because it really makes no sense anyone willingly moves to a 20% hellworld for them when there's a paradise world with the same jobs, plus mechanically their output is terrible there. I am constantly manually moving Ocean preference xenos off of my desert homeworld and onto my gaia and relic worlds which also have tons of housing and jobs, where you'd really think they'd choose to go to on their own.

 

[Red Earth]

The nomadic trait sticks out as not used properly. It only reduces the cost of manual resettling. If you're egalitarian and don't have forced resettling then your nomadic pops are in no way better at distributing themselves.

 

[Calvax]

While originally we were considering making external migration a two-hop process through the capital, we found that adding the migration targets directly had minimal impact so they'll go straight there. Migration targets in other empires have a reduced weight when selecting which migration target the pop will move to.

To be a valid migration destination for a pop, the target planet must:

This all sounds great. Do you have any UI plans wrt migration? It would be good to see a breakdown when we hover over a planet view for where pops are migrating too and from. It would also be nice to have empire population back on the main task bar so we can hover over it and see a breakdown of growth and migration in and out (along with targets empires).

 

[Ilab]

I believe up to 10 pops will move from a given planet to another planet (assuming no modifiers, like transit hubs)

So if you have 5 planets with lots of civilians and colonize a sixth, and create lots of jobs, up to 50 pops could migrate (10 from each existing planet) to the new one.

Transit hubs, if build in the system with 1 of those worlds, would raise the rates for those planets, so in this case 1 with transit hubs and 4 without would give 60 migrants per month (10*2 from the world with a hub, 10 from the other worlds, each.)

At least that's my understanding.

I see, I hope it is as you say, and thus per planet, otherwise it is indeed extremely low. I do think that with 10 is ok, at least I like it that way, makes it so those techs and buildings have a decent use instead of being pretty much skippable.

 

[Ilab]

This is not new, but it is just a straight negative. Do you think slaves are still so powerful they need this as a downside?

I think that this makes sense and is actually useful to some extent. Slaves should not migrate to other empires (they are not free!). And while bad for our own empires, it does make sense thematically as they are not free.

If it gets changed though, at least they should retain the not migration part to other nations, I do not want my slaves packing up and leaving, specially because by being slaves they will have equivalent or better living standards everywhere except when being purged.

EDIT: typo.