Is remnants origin pop growth bugged or am I missing something?

[Calvax]

I started a new game in 4.0.21 with the remnants origin. My pop growth has consistently shown in the high double digits, but I'm not getting those pops. It's pretty early and this is my capital so it's not people migrating in. Am I missing something?

 

[Nithralder]

Since the launch of the 4.0 update, I've noticed a persistent and frustrating issue regarding pop growth and job distribution, particularly affecting the Worker strata. After multiple playthroughs post-update, a consistent pattern has emerged: every planet eventually ends up fully staffed with Specialists, while Worker jobs remain vacant indefinitely.


The current pop growth algorithm appears to heavily prioritize Specialist-class pops, resulting in a situation where the most fundamental labor force—Miners, Technicians, Farmers—simply doesn't grow or gets promoted instantly, leaving vital economic sectors understaffed or outright collapsed.


This isn't just a minor balance issue; it's an immersion-breaking gameplay flaw. In any functioning society, you don't get a surplus of engineers and researchers with no one to grow food or generate power. The game currently simulates a dystopia where infrastructure should grind to a halt due to lack of essential workers—but mechanically, it just keeps limping along.


The system needs an urgent rebalancing. Whether it's through tweaks to the pop growth weighting, job prioritization mechanics, or promotion thresholds, the current model is untenable and undermines the strategic core of colony development.


A bit off topic but if you look at another game World of Warcraft most people who are playing now are playing on Classic Servers. Paradox basically did the same thing here with Stellaris where a "Stellaris Classic" (3.14) is just a superior version of the game. To release an update in such a broken state is flat out appalling. I didn't pay money to Beta Test something for the next 3 years. If they want to make massive sweeping changes they should go through an extensive testing process.

They promised performance updates with 4.0. The Performance is the same if not worse than it was before. I suspect they based their improved performance metrics by using Console Commands and spawning in a Galaxy with a Broken Non Functional AI and saw superior performance instead of actually playing through the game.

 

[VexacionRT]

Looks like you cleared the sprawling slums blocker that gives you 100 pops.

Unfortunately that screen shows you raw population changes, not just from pop growth, and it's on the player to sort out. I think it's also bugged and shows you info from 2 months back(?). Not sure if that last part was fixed

 

[Red Death]

Yes, the current population change unfortunately often seems inaccurate.

Since the launch of the 4.0 update, I've noticed a persistent and frustrating issue regarding pop growth and job distribution, particularly affecting the Worker strata. After multiple playthroughs post-update, a consistent pattern has emerged: every planet eventually ends up fully staffed with Specialists, while Worker jobs remain vacant indefinitely.


The current pop growth algorithm appears to heavily prioritize Specialist-class pops, resulting in a situation where the most fundamental labor force—Miners, Technicians, Farmers—simply doesn't grow or gets promoted instantly, leaving vital economic sectors understaffed or outright collapsed.

This is not new to 4.0. Throughout the entire game from the moment different strata were first introduced, pops always promote to the highest strata jobs available.

The only things that's new is that pops of a strata grow new pops of the same strata, but that's not much of a factor.

It's also not related to OP's problem.

 

[Calvax]

Looks like you cleared the sprawling slums blocker that gives you 100 pops.

Unfortunately that screen shows you raw population changes, not just from pop growth, and it's on the player to sort out. I think it's also bugged and shows you info from 2 months back(?). Not sure if that last part was fixed

I cleared that quite a while ago and this high number has persisted across years. Here's a screenshot from a year later. Anecdotally something feels wrong with the growth of this empire, it's proceeding at a snail's pace compared to other empires I've played.

 

[Olterin]

Hmm, the raw population number as indicated on the left has gone from 4.3k to 4.6k between those two screenshots, seems like you had the growth? Bear in mind this also includes pops resettling back to the homeworld from your colonies, as the only other way to account for ~300 growth in 12 months with a natural growth rate of 5 would be, maybe, an extreme RNG outlier result.

 

[Ion_492]

I cleared that quite a while ago and this high number has persisted across years. Here's a screenshot from a year later. Anecdotally something feels wrong with the growth of this empire, it's proceeding at a snail's pace compared to other empires I've played.

I've noticed that the green number doesn't actually show the total pop growth, but rather something like pop promotion+pop growth. Did you recently complete any construction before you took those pics, because I think that could explain it.

 

[Nakkivene]

The only things that's new is that pops of a strata grow new pops of the same strata, but that's not much of a factor.

That's actually highly funny. No more king jobs so all the princes and princesses get sent to the coal mines.