Population Units Question

[Darknotez]

In Distant Worlds you know the exact population number on your planets(from 1Million to the tens of billions). Now in Stellaris, we have population units that occupy squares on a planet in order to build/produce stuff.

So I was wondering what the number of people in a population unit is because knowing how much population you have on a specific place really gives me a lot of immersion.

Thank you for reading.

 

[beckermt]

My understanding is that there are no plans to quantify how many sentients make up a Pop.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

That screenshot was disappointing. To clarify, I've never wanted a facsimile of V2 where every [adult male] person is modeled individually, which only works in V2 because that's a very tightly controlled game played over a tightly controlled 100-year span. But having only abstract "population unit" numbers shrinks the scope of the game and makes my empire feel smaller—I want to rule billions of people, not thousands of pops.

 

[Darknotez]

That really blows I feel more attached to my empire when I know how many peoples I have on my worlds.

Like, 30.000.000 people have departed on their first journey to Mars, to found the first Human Outpost on a new world! Glorious moment indeed!

Stuff like that!

 

[RoboticManiac]

My understanding is that there are no plans to quantify how many sentients make up a Pop.

Source?

It'd be quite horrible if you're correct, as it would mean the loss of no small amount of immersion.

 

[beckermt]

Source?

It'd be quite horrible if you're correct, as it would mean the loss of no small amount of immersion.

My source is simply all the DDs, game previews, and articles we've seen. It has not been explicitly denied, howver there has been absolutely no mentioned of actual population numbers. There is a picture though of a Pop's size and growth.

Consider the following, for those of you who are sad about this: What validity does an absolute population number have when dealing with alien species? A colony of ants could be considered 1 being, but there are thousands of individual actors. Dolphins, crows, and gorillas live in smaller groups than we do, who's to say that if they became sentient, they wouldn't maintan a smaller group structure than humans.

Consider additionally food and space requirements. If your aliens are massive, maybe you just can't support many of them, so 100 centipeople (from Klagnon 5) take the same resources as 1000 humans.

Absolute population numbers make zero sense for Stellaris. They would be a farce.

 

[RoboticManiac]

My source is simply all the DDs, game previews, and articles we've seen. It has not been explicitly denied, howver there has been absolutely no mentioned of actual population numbers. There is a picture though of a Pop's size and growth.

Consider the following, for those of you who are sad about this: What validity does an absolute population number have when dealing with alien species? A colony of ants could be considered 1 being, but there are thousands of individual actors. Dolphins, crows, and gorillas live in smaller groups than we do, who's to say that if they became sentient, they wouldn't maintan a smaller group structure than humans.

Consider additionally food and space requirements. If your aliens are massive, maybe you just can't support many of them, so 100 centipeople (from Klagnon 5) take the same resources as 1000 humans.

Absolute population numbers make zero sense for Stellaris. They would be a farce.

I can understand the reasoning, however- let's say that pirates have kidnapped and enslaved one 'unit' of humans after yet another raid in a backwater system.

How many people is that? One hundred? One thousand? A million? Billion?

Or what if a population 'unit' is destroyed in the midst of civil disorder? Are we meant to think that a billion humans were killed by the constabulary and military as they tried to restore order?

Just a simple slider at the start to represent how much one 'person' of your species is worth in terms of resources and production would do fine. It wouldn't even have to effect gameplay. The squares(?) on a planet are still worked by one unit but the 'planetary summary screen' could go into detail explaining 'Earth is a gargantuan ecumenopolis covered by a single planet wide city which rises miles into the air. 75 Billion humans call it home, along with 50 billion Sleezenaks.'

Let's say one billion humans serves as the baseline for a single unit. Let's also say that the Sleezenaks are extremely small creatures, as such, they both consume and produce less than the standard- One human is 'worth' ten Sleezenaks. So Earth is inhabited by 75 human 'units' and 5 Sleezenak 'units'.

As an added benefit, some additional flavour text could be added to our planetary summary screen- Earth was recently suffering from mass riots in our game and is ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship, additionally the population is growing at nearly the maximum biological rate set. So we could also add 'Earth is also the homeworld of the human species. The populace, discontent with its ruling government has seen a surge in violence and civil disobedience. Rumours surround the sudden disappearance of the organisers for an upcoming riot in one of the commercial hubs. Entirely new blocks of cities are constructed on a daily basis to support the ever growing population'

 

[beckermt]

I really only see population numbers, if they're going to be interesting, leading to issues.

In your case, the Sleezenaks are a minority of the population, but if they convince just 1/6 of the humans to vote with them on an issue, they have the majority! (or at least exactly 50%). However with Pops, the need to convince approximately half of the human Pops (less 2 or 3), meaning the Sleezenaks have effectively no political power.
But... don't 50 billion Sleezenaks deserve more of a say than just 5 Pops worth? Are they not just as sapient as humans? (let's assume xenophilic empire 'cause reasons)

If you're mixing the systems, you run into weird problems like this. Either you count each individual and balance them against each other or you just have Pops and be done with it.

As for your last paragraph, I don't see how population numbers impact that delightful flavor text, seeing as how there aren't any.

 

[kreissig]

I can understand the reasoning, however- let's say that pirates have kidnapped and enslaved one 'unit' of humans after yet another raid in a backwater system.

How many people is that? One hundred? One thousand? A million? Billion?

Or what if a population 'unit' is destroyed in the midst of civil disorder? Are we meant to think that a billion humans were killed by the constabulary and military as they tried to restore order?

Just a simple slider at the start to represent how much one 'person' of your species is worth in terms of resources and production would do fine. It wouldn't even have to effect gameplay. The squares(?) on a planet are still worked by one unit but the 'planetary summary screen' could go into detail explaining 'Earth is a gargantuan ecumenopolis covered by a single planet wide city which rises miles into the air. 75 Billion humans call it home, along with 50 billion Sleezenaks.'

Let's say one billion humans serves as the baseline for a single unit. Let's also say that the Sleezenaks are extremely small creatures, as such, they both consume and produce less than the standard- One human is 'worth' ten Sleezenaks. So Earth is inhabited by 75 human 'units' and 5 Sleezenak 'units'.

As an added benefit, some additional flavour text could be added to our planetary summary screen- Earth was recently suffering from mass riots in our game and is ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship, additionally the population is growing at nearly the maximum biological rate set. So we could also add 'Earth is also the homeworld of the human species. The populace, discontent with its ruling government has seen a surge in violence and civil disobedience. Rumours surround the sudden disappearance of the organisers for an upcoming riot in one of the commercial hubs. Entirely new blocks of cities are constructed on a daily basis to support the ever growing population'

It could be that they will break the POP numbers into decimals, albeit behind the scene. If you watch the Polygon video closely, you will notice that the player built two Corvettes that eliminated his +2 energy production....or did it? The maintenance cost for each Corvette was - I think - 0.57 energy per month. So...not quite 2. But you will notice that once they are built, the top left displays 0-107 or there about. After two months it shows 0-108. So, behind the scenes it is calculating the decimals. The POP mechanic could also work this way....maybe??

 

[Bergest]

Well it would be really sad if there were no real numbers. I love the POP System but we also should have a concrete number of citizens etc. even if it has no effects except of immersion. Exterminatus is only half the fun if you kill just 5 POP units instead of 200 million Xenos !

 

[CptWilly]

There are two clear ways that come to mind (though there are probably others not immediately occurring to me) where having "real" population figures for pops would be immersion-breaking and create unrealistic scenarios unless a specific mechanic were built around handling it.

The first would be the size of colonial expeditions. Say each pop is considered to be a fixed size of 500 million people (so as to allow for realistic human populations into the billions on planets like Earth). That means the smallest initial outpost you could have on some distant world would be a massive 500 million people large. You'd expect most colonies to begin with a few thousand at most. Sending 10,000 people to another world would be a huge undertaking. Sending almost twice the population of the United States on a single colony ship is absurd.

One solution to the problem above is to assign POPs variable rather than fixed population values, so one POP on Earth might be 500 million, but a POP on your new colony world might be 10,000 (or 10,472 for that matter) people. POPs could experience organic growth to their number over time, splitting and creating new POP units as they reach certain sizes based on a variety of factors like the total planetary population, number of other POPs already present, and the impact of planetary biome and species traits on population density.

This, however, would bring us to the second unrealistic outcome. We know a pop working a tile generates resources based on the tile's resources and the tile's building. So a POP working a tile with a basic power plant on a tile with an energy bonus would generate say 3 energy/month (all numbers painstakingly extracted from where the sun don't shine just for sake of discussion). This would seem to be the case regardless of the size of the POP itself. Leaving us with the preposterous situation that worlds with a few hundred thousand people could be just as productive as worlds with populations in the billions. Even moreso, that two tiles on the same planet might produce exactly the same resource value despite one being worked bu 15,000 people and the other by 500,000,000.

The way around that of course is a much more complex model of production and economic activity (something like the way RGOs and factories worked in Vicky that accounts for population size, but we already know that that is well outside the scope of anything they intend for Stellaris.

tl;dr - Just slapping a population value on each pop yields its own immersion-breaking issues.

 

[Jak9090]

oh god i hope they include this, it will make or break the immersion for me and many others i am sure, what is a space 4x game without population representation?
for that matter, just think if in victoria 2 you were playing austria and veinna has 8 german pops, 2 hungarian and 1 bohemian, itd just be bland and boring.

 

[beckermt]

Well it would be really sad if there were no real numbers. I love the POP System but we also should have a concrete number of citizens etc. even if it has no effects except of immersion.

It will have no effect except breaking immersion. That's win for basically no one.

tl;dr - Just slapping a population value on each pop yields its own immersion-breaking issues.

This is accurate.

oh god i hope they include this, it will make or break the immersion for me and many others i am sure, what is a space 4x game without population representation?
for that matter, just think if in victoria 2 you were playing austria and veinna has 8 german pops, 2 hungarian and 1 bohemian, itd just be bland and boring.

Again, let Victoria be its own game. If they decided to implement Stellaris Pops into Victoria, I officially give you sanction to complain.
In EU3 there were Pop numbers. They were irrelevant and having several 999,999 cities in 1550 was just silly.
They were removed in EU4 and the game certainly did not suffer for it.

 

[Kimberly]

I think the interests of immersion and gameplay can be balanced here. A formula that calculates planetary population using POPs, the planet's suitability for habitation and its level of development, plus a scaling factor for the species, would allow for a reasonable figure to be provided as a statistic. But it's still the POPs that matter for gameplay.

 

[Kapi96]

If there's no actual population numbers that would just be a huge disappointment for me. Love seeing the actual population of my in game empires.

 

[aruon]

Absolute population numbers make zero sense for Stellaris. They would be a farce.

Again, let Victoria be its own game. If they decided to implement Stellaris Pops into Victoria, I officially give you sanction to complain.
In EU3 there were Pop numbers. They were irrelevant and having several 999,999 cities in 1550 was just silly.
They were removed in EU4 and the game certainly did not suffer for it.

how and proof?

stellaris isn't a Sins of a Solar Empire knock-off where population can be an abstracted number because it doesn't fit the truncated gameplay, quite the opposite. stellaris is a 4XGSG (AKA not 4XRTS) that is meant to be played out over centuries and probably millennia. a game where the long term development is the primary goal and your civilizations' expansion into the galaxy and survival is the penultimate goal. 2m, 815.7k pop on the interstellar equivalent of a Mississippi backwater included.

also, you do realize that stellaris incorporates elements from all 4 core PDS games right? there are loads of features we already know about which could be written off as "unnecessary and derivative just because". fleshed out planets, ground warfare, actual characters, animated portraits, ship designer...

2nd also, the reason why EU4 didn't retain pops beyond a provincial culture and tax factors was because they fit the gameplay (and pops weren't well implemented anyway), which culture and tax rates did so much better. this is why HOI will have pops for the first time with HOI 4- but they will be a focal point from which the upper limits of a nations' entire military structure derives itself from. now if EU3 or 4 had population totals but actually coupled them to many relevant game features, who's to say they wouldn't have done better than EU4s' current system?

so no, it's abstracted pseudo-numbers that tell you nothing that makes a lick of sense that is what makes no sense. and it wouldn't be a farce either- it'd be a joke. (and before the immersion train rolls in- i'm not even talking about immersion, which TBH i really don't care much for if it impedes gameplay.) is earths' population 200/250? or 7000m? spoiler alert: it's 7000 million. hell this is even backed up by how pops already have the V2 system of simulating societies and their ethos.

 

[PMLF]

Not perfect but could do population units like those of Civilization, with pop units having levels (1, 2, 3, etc..) and each level representing a different amount of people.

Ex: Level 1 = 15k people
Level 2 = 1 million people
Level 3 = 10 million people
...
Level 10 = 500 million people
etc...

Certain tiles would allow population growth only until a certain level, so a POP in a desert tile wouldn't grow beyond level 2, for example.

 

[Milten]

Hmph, I agree with both sides apparently. It makes more sense in terms of production to tie it to POPs, so 100 Kashals, 1000 Humans and 10 000 Sleezenaks would produce and consume same amount of resources. However the fact that 1 human and 1 Sleezenak could have have the same right to vote, would be an interesting challenge for xenophylic democracies.
This issue also could be solved by indirect democracy, this way Kashals, Humans and Sleezenaks living each in their own province would get the same amount of representatives.
Anyway I've never seen passion for overcomplexity from PD, so it's not gonna happen.

 

[Jak9090]

still hope this happens