Problems with population growth?

from Stardock Forums
OK, as I'm ramping up my play into the more difficult levels, a problem that was only an annoyance before is now a major issue. I can't seem to keep pace with the breeding habits of the other races.

Taking a look at the mini-map, the other races balloon in population compared to my apparently family-planning-conscious citizens. Even using precious racial picks on population growth doesn't seem to help much. I could understand this if it was restricted to the minor races - after all, they don't build a lot of colony ships, so their people just sit there and, ahem, do what comes naturally - but even the majors leave me in the dust.

And another fun bit - when I conquer an alien world, those 500 million soldiers or so that are left to settle it apparently have brought along a LOT of camp followers, as the population skyrockets, sometimes leaving my original colonies behind!

Is there a magical "bell curve" for population growth that I haven't discovered yet? Is "population" - EVEN AS SHOWN ON THE MINI-MAP - actually the number of taxpayers, so that I could boost my population by slashing taxes and encouraging people to file an IRS return? Is there a need to use colony ships and transports to "bus" people around to maximize growing potential? Do humans simply choose to breed only on quality 30+ planets?!?

Or has someone sabotaged the colony ships of my United Nations of Earth so that they introduce a contraceptive into the water supply during colonization? Anybody have any ideas?
325 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Pop growth is determined primarly from morale. Morale
is determined primarly from tax rate and morale bonuses.

You want to keep your morale above 80% and approach
100% if you really want to super charge your pop
growth.

As for pop growth compared to AI's, as you get higher
it will get more difficult to keep up. Pop growth is
one of the AI's strong points, luckly it has many
weaker points.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
That would explain it - my lower-quality worlds have a lower morale, and the conquered worlds have a PQ similar to the best in my empire, i.e. high morale.

I guess I'll have to pass on colonizing near-habitable worlds around lousy stars, and choke for a few turns on lower taxes. :sniff!:
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The rate of pop growth isnt of a universal quality.

Having low quality worlds does not slow the pop growth
on your better worlds, it only slows the growth on that
planet. Hence having low quality worlds does not hurt
in fact, even a poor worlds pop growth will help, just
not as much.

Your problem is that you probably build to many social
projects that do not increase morale or pq. I almost
always build habitat, soil and entertainment as my
first 3 projects. And after those 3, I still build
the other morale improvements at a much higher rate
then anything else.

I often build fusion power plants on my systems, but
only on my best systems do I build any other production
boosters.

Lowering tax rate will also help but I would suggest
you keep colonizing anything that is near habitable
just put a smaller population on them.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the tip. I've been prioritizing soil enhancement and hab improvement as my 1st two projects on each planet, and then looking on to production, econ and ship enhancers. Probably should worry more about keeping the people happy.

That's what I get for using MOO as my planetary management benchmark - "if they're not revolting, they're happy enough."
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
More specifically, population growth is double at 100% morale, normal at 54-99% morale, and either zero or negative below 54 morale, on a per-planet basis. So, you want a 98%+ approval rating to max your pop. growth if you can survive the near-term costs of such a low tax rate.

What I like to do is make sure my lowest-morale couple planets are one growth-class lower than everyone else, so their overpopulation doesn't worsen so much. If I'm keeping most of my empire at 100% for max growth, I usually have a couple of tail-ends at 90-99% or lower. If I'm just going for normal growth, I set my taxes so that the lowest-morale planet that I want growing is at 54-50%, and the rest are below 54, so they don't get any further crowding.

You just have to be aware of the cost in population growth of setting a high tax rate.

-EtherMage


~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Low tax rate? I can generally maintain an 80% morale
with 50% tax rate on masochistic, on crippling I can
maintain 95% morale for almost the entire game at
50% tax rate and 100% spending rate with 30% of my
economy still in excessive of spending.