Multi-Species Empires kind of broken now for pop growth...

[Wolfgang I]

So how many pops minimum per planet do we want for optimal growth now?

My Fanatic Purifier Evolutionary Predator empire has 65 planets and 90% of them only have about 200-500 pops each. Despite having around +150% pop growth, cloning vats and both variants of budding I'm only getting like +2 pop growth per month per planet. It kinda sucks.

You need a lot of spare housing and at least 1000 pops for decent pop growth in single species empires I think. I have only played one game though.

If you employ all of your spare civilians on your homeworld even your first colonies take ages to mature.

A player can work around that but the AI suffers a lot from it.

I overtook the other empires on GA with all advanced start empires with ease on my first try and not having good pop growth on most colonies until I figured out the problem.

 

[-Marauder-]

You need a lot of spare housing and at least 1000 pops for decent pop growth in single species empires I think. I have only played one game though.

If you employ all of your spare civilians on your homeworld even your first colonies take ages to mature.

A player can work around that but the AI suffers a lot from it.

I overtook the other empires on GA with all advanced start empires with ease on my first try and not having good pop growth on most colonies until I figured out the problem.

Pop growth right now is, messed up beyond belief. The bottom needs to be lowered, a lot. As it currently does a ton of damage to anyone not gaming the system. The top growth might need to be improved for single species empires, and lowered for multi species empires.

 

[Revengeance_oov]

I think the fix isn't to split growth across all species, but to actually calculate it independently for each species. I assume the reason the calculation is so janky right now has to do with how "planet capacity" is calculated. It uses the number of pops on the planet which means growth of one species does not reduce capacity for other species. With xeno-compatibility, the problem seems to be that all species' numbers are added together, rather than averaged, so the growth becomes (locally) exponential with number of species. Just a failure to make a good population model. (FWIW a "good" population model would probably also entail implementing the competitive exclusion principle, meaning that once a planet's growth starts hitting penalties from excess population, the more productive pops should start replacing less productive ones.)

 

[Red Death]

Pop growth right now is, messed up beyond belief. The bottom needs to be lowered, a lot. As it currently does a ton of damage to anyone not gaming the system. The top growth might need to be improved for single species empires, and lowered for multi species empires.

The bottom? You mean the absolute floor? Can it go any lower than it already is? Or you mean how quickly the growth scales up? that's kind of inherent in logistic growth equations I suppose.

But. I maintain there is an easy solution:

Lower the overall growth rate constant and remove the cap on the monthly growth.

That should also let single species grow faster and not give the advantage to multi-species planets.

 

[mergele]

The floor is perfectly fine imo and I quite enjoy it. Makes it much more interesting a decision when and how fast go go for additional colonies as now theres actually some notable setback now that they leech pop from the main world that would be more productive there for a while.

 

[SpardaSon21]

PDX really hates Xenophobes I guess.

I think they've taken that "Every Stellaris Run in a Nutshell" video very personally.

 

[Dementor4]

So, the way I'm seeing it is like...

Early on your multi-species colonies have INFERIOR growth because each pop-group is much lower on the logistic curve so they all get a collective penalty to growth worse than what a single-species colony would have had.

Later on your multi-species colonies have SUPERIOR growth, once each pop-group is high enough on the logistic curve such that each one gets a buff, and after the point that a single-species colony would have hit the growth ceiling.


Since Stellaris is a snowball game, having inferior growth early is a significant penalty. Having superior growth later is also a strong benefit, but I don't know if they balance out or not.

I don't think that superior late-colony growth is inherently unbalanced. We need more numbers.

Which is why I noted that Xeno-Compatibility is a part of the build, which totally flips the early game "penalty" in its head.,

 

[HFY]

Which is why I noted that Xeno-Compatibility is a part of the build, which totally flips the early game "penalty" in its head.,

Ah yeah that's fair.

It's nice that Xeno-Combatibility is worth taking and doesn't break the species tab anymore, but maybe it could use a balance pass.