[dogscoff]

Hmmm. OK.

What I've been calling the natural growth rate is the standard amount of new population you would expect to get from a planet with only one race on it. It is calculated by multiplying the existing population by the "growth rate" figure, as visible on the planet info screen. (There may be a third variable in there, I can't remember.)

In all cases, the natural growth rate is applied to the *sum* of all populations on the planet, and the new population is split in species across all the races present.

However, each race present must get at least one million of it's kind added in every population increase. If the natural growth rate is not enough to accomodate this, extra population is added above the natural rate, leading to an abnormally high reproduction rate and an exploit.

Some examples:

Let's say that in all of these examples there is a 20% reproduction rate after all modifiers have been applied, so a 100 million population planet would expect to get an extra 20 million people.

Example 1:
You have 1 million phong all on their own on the planet. By rights, you should only get 1m x 20%= 0.2m extra population, but the game can’t handle fractions and you get 1m extra. That means your reproduction rate has been artificially bumped up to 100% for that turn!

Example 2:
You have 100 million terrans and 100 million phong. The game adds them together to get 200 million, and sees that you are entitled to 20%=40 million new people. You get 20 million new phong and 20 million new terrans.

Example 3:
You have 100 million terrans, 100 million phong and 50 million Vikings. This time you should get 50 million. I’m pretty sure this will be divided up in the correct ratio, 20m phong, 20m terran and 10m viking.

Example 4:
You have 99 million Vikings and 1 million phong. In theory, you should get 19.8m vikings and 0.2m phong. The important thing is that the total is still 20m. The game will not exceed 20m in this case, because it can just give you a million phong and 19 million vikings. The ratio is out but the 20% overall rate is maintained.

Example 5:
You have 2 million Vikings, one million phong, one million terrans. You should get just 0.75 new population, but the game wants you to have one of each of these species, so you get 3 million new poulation. Your effective reproduction rate has been artificially forced up to 75%!

[ March 25, 2003, 15:43: Message edited by: dogscoff ]