(Correct me if the above assessment is wrong.)
The Stellaris economy could become more interesting if Civilians held a different role, that did not compete with other jobs for the most efficient way to produce the big three but rather complemented them, with the number of Civilians needing to be balanced against the other jobs in accordance with strategic priorities.
There are several potential benefits to changing the Stellaris economy in this fashion:
No more constant unemployment from new pops in the higher strata. If pops with jobs do not spawn new pops, new pops will not be "born into unemployment" in the job strata, and all population growth will happen in the Civilian stratum - where there is no unemployment. (This point is primarily about the player annoyance, but leads into the next two points.)Performance improvement: up to 40% fewer pop groups to manage. If unemployment only happens when jobs are disabled, removed or lost to competition between pops, rather than being a constant state from pop growth, there will be much, much fewer unemployed pop groups for the game to manage. Since these pop groups are usually too small to contribute substantially to gameplay, the performance improvement outweighs whatever the unemployed pop groups might be considered to contribute to gameplay.(The -40% reduction assumes there are up to 8 pop groups per species and ethic: 3 job groups, 3 corresponding unemployment groups, Civilians and Criminals.)(Correct me if I have misunderstood how Unemployed pops are handled; I have not yet played post-4.0 Stellaris.)
Performance improvement: nearly 90% fewer pop groups involved in pop growth. The number of pop growth instances may be cut by as much as 90%, per species template, since pop growth would now only need to be handled for Civilians - not for Criminals, Workers, Unemployed Workers, Specialists, Unemployed Specialists, Elites and Unemployed Elites.(Again, correct me if I have misunderstood how Unemployed pops are handled.)
Civilians become desirable to have, in a strategically balanced amount. Civilians become a necessity, without potentially making any other roles unnecessary. While it is still possible that players may opt to situationally go for either "no Civilians" or "all Civilians", this would either be temporary phases based on temporary strategic considerations, or as planet specialisations where some highly populated "Civilian worlds" provide pop growth to worlds that are specialised in other outputs but lack substantial pop growth of their own.Stellaris becomes more complicated, in a good way. Empires that desire long-term success now need to balance their investments not just between Research, Unity and Alloys, but also Pop Growth. The concept is easy to understand, but the optimal ratios will vary from game to game, and even vary within games from situation to situation.Less linear relationship between pop size and pop growth (historical realism). It would no longer be a foregone conclusion that empires with many pops grow the fastest while empires with few pops grow the slowest. Their choices could lead to different outcomes, with different long-term implications. Small empires might be able to catch up with a big empire that has overextended itself and needs to spend resources on staying on top or keeping its population rich, rather than growing. Ultimately, we would move one step closer to the dynamic human historical experience of different countries and empires waxing and waning, sometimes catching up and overtaking others in relative strength.One more way to grow stronger as a subject / ability to speed-grow younger empires. As a subject, there is less need for managing your own defenses. Now, if a benevolent overlord can be persuaded to provide a trickle of their massive research, you could essentially neglect investments in both Alloys and Research and focus solely on Pop Growth (and Unity). The ability to focus on Pop Growth would overall be a new way for young or weakened empires to catch up to the older, bigger empires. This also adds a new long-term challenge for overlords, as their own pop growth may be outpaced by that of their subjects. They could fight this trend by taxing their subjects more harshly, but that would also make their subjects resent them more.It makes thematic sense that Civilians would determine pop growth. It takes a village to raise a child. The Civilian position covers all of the civilian roles that facilitate the raising and integration of individuals into society, such as childcare, education, elderly care, healthcare, social counseling, criminal care, and other essential jobs not really represented anywhere else in Stellaris - including workforce spent on the parenting task itself. In a science fiction-level society,societal capacity rather than biological capacity determines population growth. The less focused a society is on handling the raising and integration of new individuals, the fewer new individuals it will collectively choose to produce via basic family planning. Andthe Civilian position is uniquely well suited to represent societal capacity for facilitating population growth.It can even be argued that this is basic economics. Raising children does not occur in a vacuum, but requires a lot of work(force). If little workforce is available for the task, the cost of raising children will be higher and fewer children will be produced.Essentially: having Civilians "produce" population growth can be a fundamentally intuitive model.(It might even be argued that this model could be used to reflect the development in the modern world, in a very abstract and simplified manner. The world's population shifts from Civilian roles, including stay-at-home parenting (where else would parenting fit among Stellaris roles?), to producing more of Consumer Goods, Amenities and other things. The jobs created in childcare, elderly care, healthcare, education et cetera are nowhere near the share of the workforce that was previously directed towards managing and facilitating population growth, and population growth plummets. But don't take my word for gospel on this subject.)
What are your thoughts on the subject?
Should Civilians handle population growth, or strongly influence it?
Or do you have another, better idea?
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