The problem with the pops mechanics

[HFY]

Can you please explain why cities make robots break down? Or why biotropies fail to breed (and cannot be encouraged to)? Or why the obvious matrix reference is deadly but only in a city?

I don't think I said either of those things.

Robots don't have the same natural growth problems that bio-pops do. I haven't played individual robots enough to have a strong opinion about them yet. I do think Synth Ascension has an absurdly high assembly cap which mainly compensates the required growth scaling, and we might be able to reduce it if the scaling is removed, but otherwise I haven't said much about robots in the discussion about natural pop growth.


Bio Trophies are animals in captivity. You might remember that breeding animals in captivity has run into some issues in real life:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/breeding-pandas-insanely-hard-1-180956401/

Should a zoo in a giant factory have the same captive breeding output as a free-range safari enclosure on a thriving nature preserve? Seems like the two situations aren't identical, but how different are they? I haven't really talked about that yet.

You're getting angry at me for things I didn't say. That's unjustified.

I love relentless industrialists, it's a very flavorful civic. Lots of thematic directions you can take with it, too. Did you know that you can prevent the tombworldification with a policy? Or that with a different one you can mitigate the pop growth penalty?

Well yes, that's why I preface the tombification with "if you make the correct choices". My point is that you can intentionally create a planet which is blatantly bad for your pops. This is not an accident, it's the design of the civic, and the player's own choices.

You made the claim that an Ecumenopolis is intentionally engineered therefore it should promote growth. This is a bad argument because we see an even more extreme case where an intentional engineering decision can do the opposite.

I also like Relentless Industrialists. That's how I know about the choices. But the point here is that you made a bad argument, and this is one counter-example.

Why are city planets the sole purvew of dystopias, apparently? Could there not be some kind of urbanism policy?

It would be cool to add a healthy Eco-menopolis which gives inferior industrial output but does promote growth.

There could be some kind of urbanism policy. But the planetary cities like Trantor or Coruscant don't grow their own food, and do import pops from fringe worlds. That's the central trope. People immigrate to the big cities for jobs. (Or are bought as slaves after winning a pod race.)

The core mechanics should have a focused, specialized industrial Ecumenopolis as one anchored endpoint. It should produce the most alloys, but need support from other colonies or other empires -- both importing resources, and migrating pops. There should be several different ways to mitigate that, but you can't have everything too easily. The most productive colony type should require the most external support to function.

 

[Beauty Nova]

I misinterpreted "consumes pops" too broadly, it would seem. Apologies.

We have very different views about what living in a rogue servitor empire is like, as well, but I'm just not going to try to argue specific thematics anymore. There's always going to be these core mismatches of expectations and when mechanics come in some ludonarrative dissonance is inevitable.

I will only say that ecus can in fact grow their own food through hydroponics or livestock. I don't want city planets hard locked to one thematic interpretation. If I need to sacrifice the production bonuses somehow to escape that, either through a policy or a civic or something, I will take that option and be happy with it. It's why I said nothing about this applying to habitats, you gave a thematic escape hatch with void dwellers and voidborne. It's a commitment you make to make it work, it's not overly restrictive, and it makes sense.

 

[Thiend]

I talked about a bunch of ways a Tall empire could compensate without the need for rural worlds -- good relations + open borders for immigration, raiding bombardment, clone vats, new vassal pop-tithes, new kinds of espionage -- plus there would be a use for some currently-ignored Stellaris mechanics like Thrall Worlds.

I am once again asking why you think Clone Vats help tall empires compensate for lower base growth when wide empires can also build them, and can build more of them. Even if they were uncapped, wide empires would have more space for them. This simply is not a way that tall empires compensate for lower growth, it would help their growth compared to now but as it would help wide proportionately more exactly like their growth does it would not help at all.

Every single solution you have offered besides that one amounts to "play xenophile, collect pops from others" which is too restrictive thematically, too dependent on neighbors, absolutely screws over xenophobe, and isn't significantly different from how it plays out now, with extra steps. More ways of getting pops from others isn't a solution to the problem that tall empires don't have enough internal growth.

Oh, and Thrall Worlds I guess, which depend on slavery and aren't a solution either for that reason. I suppose you could mean removing the slave focus of them for growth, but that's just canonizing breeder worlds again and doesn't help tall because wide would do it too with more of them.

 

[HFY]

I am once again asking why you think Clone Vats help tall empires compensate for lower base growth when wide empires can also build them, and can build more of them.

Me: "There should be pop sources and pop sinks."

BN: "But I want only one Ecumenopolis, why do you hate me personally?"

Me: "Even with just one Ecu, you can compensate for the pop growth penalty with a bunch of different mechanics, including Clone Vats."

Thiend: "But wide empires can also use Clone Vats, checkmate atheists!"


C'mon, man, that's not what "compensate" meant in that discussion. Yes, a wide empire can grow more pops (using a lot of rural worlds with Clone Vats on every one) but they pay sprawl for that decision. Going tall means you get less sprawl, which means faster research. So that's what tech-rush builds prefer, and that includes me when I tech-rush. That should remain a viable option. And there should be more different ways to support that tight, low-sprawl build.

We were clearly talking about compensating for my new proposed penalty on natural pop growth for specialist colonies in "tall" empires which currently don't have any Workers.

Clone Vats are one possible way to compensate for that.

This simply is not a way that tall empires compensate for lower growth, it would help their growth compared to now

Yeah and that's the point. Compared to now, it would be better.

but as it would help wide proportionately more exactly like their growth does it would not help at all.

Wide should have their own problems, like tech rate and unity. They can't spam specialists to compensate for sprawl without facing the exact same growth rate problem as we've been talking about for "tall".

Every single solution you have offered besides that one amounts to "play xenophile, collect pops from others" which is too restrictive thematically

So wait, you saw me type "Thrall worlds export enslaved natives" and you think you're seeing only Xenophile builds?

You see me talking about Raiding Bombardment and you think that's exclusive to playing Xenophile?

Brother, what the hell?

 

[Beauty Nova]

BN: "But I want only one Ecumenopolis, why do you hate me personally?"

Where did I say this?

 

[HFY]

Where did I say this?

That's the feeling I get thematically from your early posts, condensed.

 

[Beauty Nova]

That's the feeling I get thematically from your early posts, condensed.

I am unsure how you got that impression, but it is inaccurate. I even said at one point I enjoy making every planet an ecu and trying different methods to make that happen/work. I do the same thing with gaia, machine, hive, habitats, etc. in different circumstances.

 

[HFY]

I am unsure how you got that impression, but it is inaccurate. I even said at one point I enjoy making every planet an ecu and trying different methods to make that happen/work. I do the same thing with gaia, machine, hive, habitats, etc. in different circumstances.

It looks like you're changing argument tactics and trying to hold me to technical accuracy.

It's tempting to try to score points by turning that technical accuracy against you, but I'm not here to score points, I'm here to talk about a real problem in Stellaris and propose a way to solve it.


EDIT: to expand on that a bit, right now Stellaris feels too "solved" for me.

Making all my colonies into Ecus sounds like a fun challenge, but that should be difficult, and right now it's trivial. I like challenges. I like finding ways to overcome challenges. I'm playing this game with the intent to be challenged and right now it's not doing that job for me.

Making all my colonies into Ecus should be difficult. Overcoming that difficulty is the part of the fun I expect from playing the game.

Right now it's trivially easy and I don't like that.

 

[Ikael]

The system proposed by HFY is quite interesting (and realistic too!); but I am not sure that it would be fun to play (I really dont vibe with needing to go wide to feed my tall worlds with rural towns).

I still think that the main problem with pop growth would be solved with a hard-ass per planet por cap; tile-style; paired with a hefty bonus to pop efficiency; and huge divergences in pop capacity between planets.

So the game can be all about pops; as it was originally intended; instead of being about pop growth as it is now.

Problem is; that would require a ton of economic adjustments. So it can get out of scope really fast; I am afraid.

 

[mrt1212]

No comment on the rest of that rant? I'll just grant you that point even if I disagree still.

I do not use breeder worlds and do not want to be forced to. Of the solutions you offered only clone vats (and I assume roboticists) fit with how I play the game, and I'm not exactly eager to open the cans of worms buffing or handing those out more generally would open.

The thing that gets me after all this time is that the game is pretty adamant that not only should you have decent enough pop growth/assembly on your own in one slot on the colony screen, you should have a second or third source of pops on top of that. Or you're kind of a slow in the ecosystem.

Two growth slots at once, kidnapping, buying slaves, conquering->resettling are most obvious examples, and hilariously immigration pull isn't one - because Immigration is still only giving you one inflection with a boost. Plus all but one of the of the above are almost immediate 'transfers' where you still have to do something to initiate the transfer, but you're not waiting around for a bar to fill about it. Bar Virtuality's twist on the whole affair with pops, some empire specs are going to struggle to fill the max potential on colonies over time if they can't find that 2nd and 3rd transfer source or aren't allowed it.

FWIW, I am giving a really goofy playthrough to Big Ecus supported by mining Habs, and I can't figure out how an Egal Peacenik would ever fill them to their max potential ahead of Crisis just relying on immigration. I completely filled one out of 3 by 2350 hammering the hell out of the slave market, a big kidnapping caper, maximizing immigration pull, and building Versabots. How would an Egal Peacenik actually get it done if not building bots or Genetics for the cloning vats and still be behind where I am? Ecus shouldn't be deceptive like that, should they? Best Piece if you aren't an Egal that has 2 methods to fill the cityplanet with bodies.

 

[Cry_Havok]

I still think that the main problem with pop growth would be solved with a hard-ass per planet por cap; tile-style; paired with a hefty bonus to pop efficiency; and huge divergences in pop capacity between planets.

Getting away from pop caps is the one good that came from the end of the tile system. With the Tiles planets became full too fast (particularly if Xenophile). This meant you could easily end up with situations where you physically couldn't take in refugees, or do events that gave new and interesting pop types (subettarean refugees, galactic nomads,, the undergound vault. Later additions like Nivlaks, Artist pops, caravanneer pops, Azizians would stop working right as well).

 

[HFY]

The system proposed by HFY is quite interesting (and realistic too!); but I am not sure that it would be fun to play (I really dont vibe with needing to go wide to feed my tall worlds with rural towns).

It would need tuning to be fun.

For example, if you're boxed in with 6 planets total, maybe you turn one of them into an Industrial colony and grow on the other 4 + capital until the industrial colony is at 75% full (or some benchmark number), then transform one of your 4 rural worlds into a second Industrial World. The 2nd one might fill a bit more slowly, but it wouldn't need to wait for the 3 sources to self-populate -- they should be mature Rural worlds at that point -- and it would have a decent population thanks to its own growth.

And so on, converting rural into city (research or industrial) until you reach equilibrium or get another source of pops which doesn't need natural growth.

I still think that the main problem with pop growth would be solved with a hard-ass per planet por cap; tile-style; paired with a hefty bonus to pop efficiency; and huge divergences in pop capacity between planets.

Tiles had a number of benefits, but I would want an updated 2025 version with more features if they came back to Stellaris.

1.9 tiles would not be sufficient for 2024 Stellaris.

Later additions like Nivlaks, Artist pops, caravanneer pops, Azizians would stop working right as well).

Haven't seen those buggers yet this year.

 

[Cry_Havok]

View attachment 1175557

Haven't seen those buggers yet this year.

I haven't seen them in literally years. I think I have only seen them twice ever. They're one of those thing like Paridaya and Grand Herald that went from way too common to "might as well not be in the game"

 

[Holiness]

I just hope something is done. It jusy doesn't make since to me why my main species decides to stop having kids because of new neighbors?

 

[Beauty Nova]

It looks like you're changing argument tactics and trying to hold me to technical accuracy.

It's tempting to try to score points by turning that technical accuracy against you, but I'm not here to score points, I'm here to talk about a real problem in Stellaris and propose a way to solve it.

I was just correcting your impression? I've given up on whatever argument we're having here. I was never wanting just one ecumenopolis and was always arguing from the perspective of the omni-ecu build being impossible.

But believe whatever you want I guess.

 

[HFY]

I've given up on whatever argument we're having here

From my side, we're not really having an argument.

I'm posting an idea about changing population growth, and you're leaping to conclusions about things which I mostly haven't talked about yet, and then making accusations at me about your unjustified conclusions.

It's been very frustrating, and I guess part of that is because you've abandoned the idea of reaching agreement.

I was never wanting just one ecumenopolis

You never said what you did want, just that you demand having all the same colony type (all Ecumenoplois, all Gaia, etc.).

That didn't sound like a realistic way to play, unless you're doing an oddball challenge mode -- which might be fun -- but oddball challenge modes cannot be used as the basis for mainstream game design.

Sorry if I came off as condescending about that, but I don't think it's a reasonable starting point for game design, so I did make fun of it a bit.

 

[Normannus]

I suspect the objection is just that it's a different game i.e. "I like Stellaris, please don't delete Stellaris and replace it with something else."

I think this is an interesting system, but it's clearly very different from the current game.

And it basically murders tall, as it currently exists: if your main growth comes from unurbanized areas, then wide empires will have another axis of advantage, because they can set aside more planets for rural growth. It's just recreating breeder worlds, with a different name. Tall empires won't have the planets to set aside for growth.

You could fix these, but the game tall plays, currently, is eliminating workers in favor of efficient specialists. You would have to change a lot to make that not a dead end path (if growth came only/primarily from worker worlds), so it's a substantial rework of the economy.

I don’t think it would eliminate tall play- it would make you more reliant on immigration pacts.
Industrial worlds would have a malus to pop growth, but a heavy bonus to migration attraction, especially with open jobs, whereas rural planets would have low base migration attraction (it’s very rare for people to leave the city to be farmers, without a collapse of some kind that is destroying urbanization). A tall empire would get migration pacts with other empires and become a major target for immigration. This would make them the super multicultural center that these kinds of areas usually are, while their wider neighbors are dependent on base pop growth. You could even have a war goal to force allowed migration, or have it so that the default is with some migration allowed, a migration pact makes migration as easy as within an empire, and only an embargo prevents immigration between you entirely. For IRL comparison, the default would be the normal state between nations today, a migration pact would be something like the EU allowing freedom of movement between member states, and an embargo is a closing of the borders.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Immigration pacts giving net growth is an artifact of the AI being bad at building jobs. In a well managed empire, there is no migration, so you cannot attract migrants from other empires without incompetence in the empire you attract them from. e.g. 70 stability and a bit of free housing prevents all emigration until you have 2-3 unemployed pops stacked up on the same planet.

The system could be revised so that's not the case, but unless the growth is appearing from nowhere, any net growth toward your tall empire must come at some other player's expense. So any net benefit will be the result of some other player's mistake. Or, as you proposed, war.

---

I guess my main objection is that I dislike all the other alternative means of getting pops that were proposed, or at least I would dislike if they were mandatory: I don't always like being a slaver empire kidnapping people with raiding fleets. I don't always like depending on other player's incompetence (both in bad empire management and signing a pact when they know they have unemployment problems) for pops, and being a nation of refugees/immigrants (with the natives living mostly on reservations). I don't always like having to subjugate my neighbors, then fill them with recruitment stations.

I've played all those empires, and enjoyed them, but I don't want those few specific narratives to be all there ever is for someone who wants to play tall.

I especially don't like that the options for empire management become "go wide and grow primarily by conquering other people's pops, or go tall and still grow primarily by importing other people's pops." It makes everything zero sum, and also makes it impossible to just have e.g. a happy plantoid empire that grows all its own pops without conquest, slavery, etc. unless they conquer for more planets and displace the original inhabitants, or something equally dark, like Necrophage.

tl;dr: It's "you're not allowed to grow your own pops unless you're wide". That you can steal other's pops (through various means) doesn't change that very much.

 

[HFY]

Immigration pacts giving net growth is an artifact of the AI being bad at building jobs. In a well managed empire, there is no migration, so you cannot attract migrants from other empires without incompetence in the empire you attract them from. e.g. 70 stability and a bit of free housing prevents all emigration until you have 2-3 unemployed pops stacked up on the same planet.

Auto-Migration is a core feature in 3.x and it relies on unemployment.

I think your judgement about incompetence would have been correct for 2.x but I think it's not accurate to the current game. Right now, a competent empire uses unemployment to get free internal migration.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Auto migration takes an average of 10 months. If emigration push is not higher than pull until you have 2 unemployed pops, then you won't have any net push unless your pops are unemployed for 20+ months, or 100+ months for mid/late game empires. And that's assuming you don't need 3 to get net push.

In order to get net push with just 1 unemployed pop, you need to have close to zero extra housing and close to 50 stability. At least, past the earliest phase of the game where the 100 push distributed by new colonies is significant (as it's not diluted among 20+ colonies, yet).

It's also significantly better to relocate manually, once you get a few productivity boosts. But that's tedious enough that I wouldn't call not doing it "incompetent".