Population Growth Strategies in 3.0
An awful lot is being said about the merits of the new pop growth system, perhaps a bit prematurely. One of the fun parts of a new patch is trying to work out the new meta. Here are a list of strategies/considerations I've seen suggested or tried myself. I'd be really interested to hear others' thoughts.
There are two major parts to the population growth system: planet capacity and empire capacity.
Planet capacity control
Planet capacity can be increased by the player. Planet capacity = housing + unblocked districts. The idea is that each normal, built resource district gives +2 housing, so +2 capacity, and each unbuilt, unblocked district gives <2 capacity. The amount of capacity that unbuilt, unblocked districts gives depends on the planet class - it's almost 2 for Gaia planets, and much lower for Tomb Worlds. But generally, the idea is that as you build districts, capacity increases.
Growth sweet spot: You get the maximum modifier to base growth (x2) only when you have >64 capacity, and >32 population. So you should aim to get some 'mediumly developed' planets into this sweet spot as quickly as possible. At that point, you can develop them further, or leave them at that size, exporting pops to other worlds.
Core worlds: It's now more important than ever to try to get maximum efficiency out of the pops you have. So it could well be worth dedicating some high habitability, high efficiency core worlds to specific specialisations, and focus on growing these, while leaving your other worlds at 32 pop.
Rim worlds: It might be worth leaving a few low (<10) population worlds undeveloped while you grow your other worlds, if you don't think it's worth getting them into the sweet spot, since you don't get penalties for growth at very low population levels. I think this would generally only be relevant if you find yourself with a very large number of colonisation opportunities early on (such that you don't have enough minerals to develop all planets).
Empire capacity loopholes
Empire capacity can't be increased by the player. It slows your population growth as your empire population increases - for example, when you have 200 pops, it slows your pop growth to half of what it would otherwise be.
As empire capacity is out of your control, you can't manage it - you can only try to find loopholes.
Invest more in space stations: While it's harder to grow your planets, non-pop incomes are more important than ever.
Steal pops: Whether from civic or ascension perk (Nihilistic Acquisition), stealing pops is now more important.
Buy pops: The slave market is far more important than it used to be.
Immigration: Standard immigration (migration treaties) don't actually escape empire capacity, as immigration effects are mediated by empire capacity. However, welcoming refugees may be very useful in 3.X.
Vassals: Vassals have their own separate empire capacities.
Conquest: The age old tactic, more relevant than ever.
Posted Apr 17, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC · edited
The planetary capacity system is great, it makes sense and nobody really finds it objectionable.
The empire capacity, on the other hand, is arbitrary, unintuitive, mathematically nonsensical, and the only way to play it is to exploit loopholes. It's a bad system.
Yeah, first game out of my normal umodded new to the DLC game I will add a mod to remove empire capacity. It's nonesense and just bad.
I thought the intention was just to reduce the overall number of pops, not limit pops per empire. This is the wrong way to do it.
What's the right way to reduce the overall number of pops if not limiting pops per empire?
If the goal is to reduce end-game pop-caused lag, then a better solution would be to cap the maximum number of housing slots on the galaxy map. At the moment there is no limit to how many housing slots can exist on the map due to megastructures and habitats, so pops can grow perpetually provided you are able to span habitats everywhere. Cap the number of habitats to one per system, or get rid of them entirely. Get rid of housing-specific buildings and districts. You now have a cap on the number of pops the galaxy can support, and players now have to figure out how to deal with overpopulated planets again, but without nonsensical growth curves. Sure, your pops can grow at a stupidly high rate, but with nowhere to live they're not reproducing.
'If the goal is to reduce end-game pop-caused lag'
It wasn't. I think they mentioned it once, then never again, and started talking about econ balance as the reason. And this 'solution' doesn't actually stop the lag; since pop-dropping is the meta now, and the only way to grow pop now, people are doing it in extreme-- instead of 3 or 4, I've seen streams where people are doing 15 to 20 to make up the difference-- and that results in roughly the same or more population than pre 3.0 . Which means more lag.
There's mods that address this problem effecitvely, if PDX wanted to actually fix it, they could have just gotten or copied the code; instead they nerfed pop-growth into the ground and didn't fix the underlying problem.
Rebalance the game around lower populations. A planet is generally considered "full" by player standards when there is no more available building/district slots, and no more available jobs. That fact is independent of the number of building/district/jobs in general. If it currently takes 100-200 jobs (ballparking) to "fill" a planet, adjust the numbers until it takes half that. Hell, if you go back to the original vision of the game, you couldn't have more than 25 pops on a planet. The tile system might not have been the one they wanted, but it certainly didn't have the end-game lag of the current one.
Yeah, I agree. Changing how the economy works and limiting planets is likely the way to go. I remember disliking the change over to districts and such back in the day. Too much planet micro all of a sudden. Building queues were sweet. So if they can remedy the issues with districts, while avoiding the stuff they didn't like with tiles, that could be the way to go.
Slow down the base rate. Perhaps instead of slowing down the rate per empire, slow it doesnt, per pecentage of uncolonized planets. There shouldn't be a flat cap on how large any empire is allowed to be. That's against the entire point of playing a game like this.
But the point of the change is limiting end game pop numbers to reduce lag. Your suggestion wouldn't do that.
Just use Colossuses more. If the amount of pops is the problem then just glass every inhabited planet in the galaxy that isn't your own. Or better yet uncap the amount of colossuses people can build and Make it so that the pop growth penalty applies galactic wide rather than just per empire. That should hopefully incentivize people to get on with cleansing the xenos filth of life
Suuuuuuure is! Very very bad system.
I think it's a little early to conclude - the empire capacity system might feel better if tweaked.
That said, I completely agree that mechanics should have thematic, in-universe explanations, and I really don't like the fact that empire capacity lacks that entirely. I'd prefer if they just increased the impact of pops on sprawl, for example - that at least has an in-universe explanation.
'The planetary capacity system is great, it makes sense and nobody really finds it objectionable.'
Habitats and low cap worlds; Housing means absolutely nothing now and is 100% irrelevant in the new patch. You can fill a planet/hab with nothing but house domes, and it won't effect your capacity, so your growth there stops entirely. Which also means Shared Burdens has no use outside of roleplay.
That's probably because the capacity of a place isn't a function of the number of physical houses currently constructed. Although the lack of physical houses would definitely be felt, an superabundance of unoccupied houses does not produce the opposite effect, as China has found out.
That's the point though. Previously, low cap worlds and habs only had the issue of limited housing, which is why City districts were a thing. Once you run out of housing, you run out of building.
Now, housing will never be an issue. You will always have 100% housing vs your capacity, and seeing as you can't out grow capacity like you could housing, you end up with an entire class of building being pointless, City units being only used for building slots, and habs that are permanently locked out of growth.
The AI isn't using loopholes, so why do you feel the need to do it?
If you're not playing multiplayer you're playing against the endgame crisis.
Normal AI empires are just bystanders like Tea Gardner in Yu-Gi-Oh!. They do absolutely nothing in terms of trying to win the game.
Colossus weapons have nothing on this level of burn
Most players are the same, some weaker than grand admiral AI. (maybe even most?)
If it's multiplayer, play with a rulesets.
You already know what the issues are, so it shouldn't be an issue.
The AI absolutely will use this loophole, I've seen the AI divide itself into multiple subpolities even before this was a thing, and they're certainly going to keep doing it.