Yah like that.
And I am a History major not a math major so I was pretty proud just do what I did.
I am sure there are better ways to do it and easy ways to diversify it but math isn't my strong point. :P
I actually like the idea of a slowed down start game... and if you thought about it you could easily transport large amounts of pop from the home planet to fill out the basic levels the first few startup colonies without breaking into the production their too much... so not so great a slow down.
Besides I never really have problems with resources in SEIV... and normally my races have 80% to 50% resource harvesting with lowered intel and maybe slightly increased research though I prefer 100% as a base rather than increasing it... otherwise it makes the game too easy.
I would actually really enjoy seeing a population modifier like this... and with the settings file you could make the amounts needed to run each variable and set it to 0 if you didn't like the option. Easy enough.