Newbie: Running out of population

[javaslinger]

Ok, I'm running out of population. I only have like 3 planets that are habitable enough to sustain a large population. I'm bleeding them dry trying to get the popualation up on other colonies....

What are othere soulutions for this?

Thanks,

Ken

[raynor]

In your current game, unless you are playing an Organic race, your options are pretty limited. I forget if population happiness affects reproduction. Does anyone else remember?

About the only thing you could do is keep shuttling as many colonists as possible to the colony with the best reproduction and then move them back to your other huge colonies.

If you play an Organic race in your next game, you can build some really cool facilities that dramatically improve your population growth. One of them, I think, gives you 40M per planet in the system per turn.

To be honest, though, I rarely pay much attention to my population. I do try to move as many colonists as possible away from my tiny, small, medium and large worlds to my huge worlds where I can get the best production bonus. But I don't even do that very often. It usually doesn't make much difference in games against the AI.

In the settings.txt file, there is a setting which isn't currently implemented that says you have to have a minimum population per facility on each planet. That would really change the game. But for now, except for the population production bonus, there isn't any reason why you can't just colonize a huge world with only 1M colonists and never move any more over there.

[Noble713]

Try to increase your reproduction rate. You can build climate control facilities and move your people there so they breed faster. I think the Organic and Religious techs have facilities that can increase reproduction as well. You really just have to wait.

Most colonies don't need large populations. Generally only colonies with breathable atmosphers and shipyards, lots of mineral production (over 10,000), or lots of research need high pops to boost production. There is little to no point in sending 200M ppl to the tiny world with no atmosphere and a single Intel facility.

[Nitram Draw]

I wish that the minimum population to operate a facility would work. It makes so much sense.
I've made a small work aroud to satisfy my personal taste. I've reduced the population bonus to production and made it less than 100% at certain levels. I don't get 100% production until I get to 999m population. Puts a slight premium on moving population around and gives a reason to increase your reproduction rate.