How do you decline rivals population?

[daynb]

I have my federation with all the communities, I am growing my own colony, now over 350, and doing all the requests to grow theirs. I had theirs at 860 and it went up to 930 after 4 more hours of play it hasn't budged. I have taken care of all the red zones and continue to take out encampments and wandering rivals. It still hasn't budged. What am I missing? I almost have the bunker completed.

 

[matti_ifs]

Hello! Could you post a screenshot of the Federation screen with all the society statuses and population?

 

[daynb]

Their population was at 860 but grew to 930, I haven't been able to get their population back down it just stayed there. I haven't played since though. Besides continuing growing our population is there any other way to decrease theirs. I am guessing the red zones on the world map doesn't matter as I cleared the last of them out it made no changes to the population, I have also been going after all their roaming bandits. Is it just keep growing populations? I didn't notice if any of the other towns lost citizens when they population of the Rivals increased. I have only really been watching their population. Sin town is the only one I still have buildings to do for (3 slots left to fill) and I still make sure to send specialists when the others request it. EDITED TO ADD this is day 278 in game. I found an earlier save added picture below

 

[Troyen]

I had the same question. The rival's population slowly grew over time (I assume it's time-based as they never gained any colony influence) and then froze at whatever value they had when I formed the federation and has stayed there ever since (It's been at least 80 days for me). I've also completely cleared out my world map of bandits.

 

[daynb]

this was when it was their population was lower day 241 in game. (I found a user report save I did awhile ago over issues of healing colonists, it fixed itself with a restart) It looks like everyone's population grew as well as theirs, I am including below my last play-through tonight, which is 52 days later in game from this one. I also finished the bunker and can see no way to get any further with defeating the Rival :/ not sure what else to do if they will increase in population like the colonies do, they went up another 10. Kind of sucks. They went up 10 and I went up over 400 and it barely budged the line. (this is compared to the picture in my previous comment.

 

[matti_ifs]

Rival population grows over time, but never fully goes away. You don't have to worry about it once you've reached majority to federate, though, as they can no longer hinder you progress. You can of course continue to raise the population within allied societies, but the change to this view is mostly cosmetic.

 

[daynb]

So what I am getting is there is no actually stopping them or "winning" this scenario. They will continue to take over my outposts on a regular basis and the allied people still need us to send them a specialist on a regular basis to stop the rivals/animals or to teach, as that is what is happening now. Okay I will just end this play through as I have the bunker built and the rest will just get repetitive and not actually mean/do anything.

 

[matti_ifs]

True, they'll still arrive on some occasions, and once you've federated and built the Doomsday Bunker, you've effectively won (congratulations!) and the main content is now over. You can, of course, tweak your colony, upgrade everything, go for a population record and more loose goals. As a side note, we've identified a late-game situation with the outpost raiders where they spawn too often, and are doing a fix for it. This should alleviate the issue where your outposts are constantly under attack.