Life is cheap!

serpwidgets · #1 April 17th, 2001, 01:09 AM

I've got one planet that is at 33% per year. Using the "rule of 72" that means it's nearly doubling every 2 years. At a "meager" 24% (most of my planets are better than that) it will double every 3 years.

With 4000M population producing over 100 colonists per turn, you can easily fill up another breathable planet in only a year or two. For example, say your homeworld is large, and there's another large breathable in the same system. Once you colonize and have a transport, you can quickly split the population in half between the two and with the magic of compound interest end up with 8000M population by about turn 30 (year 3.0)

That seems a bit fast, especially considering I very rarely have any colonies that aren't maxed out on population within a few turns. If dropping the growth rate isn't a fix, then maybe making the colonists a heavier cargo item as was suggested would help.

I was wondering, too, does a racial reproduction bonus of 10% multiply your rate by 1.1 (10% becomes 11%), or does it add a flat 10% to the rate (10% becomes 20%)

Nitram Draw · #2 April 17th, 2001, 01:09 AM

The reproduction rate seems pretty good to me. What I think would be neat, if possible, is a penalty for overpopulation. If you were within a certain percentage of your max population you would lose production/happiness due to overcrowding.

Oggy ben Doggy · #3 April 16th, 2001, 04:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
The reproduction rate seems pretty good to me. What I think would be neat, if possible, is a penalty for overpopulation. If you were within a certain percentage of your max population you would lose production/happiness due to overcrowding.

I like that idea. It gives you more incentive to expand.

Suicide Junkie · #4 April 16th, 2001, 06:18 PM

quote:
The reproduction rate seems pretty good to me. What I think would be neat, if possible, is a penalty for overpopulation. If you were within a certain percentage of your max population you would lose production/happiness due to overcrowding

Seems to me that would be an incentive to dump people into space.

nerfman · #5 April 16th, 2001, 07:06 PM

A few points here:

1) While maybe not completely realistic, I think the rates of growth allow for noticable expansion during the game while still requiring a player to defend his population base.

2) The amount of people that can be fit into cargo is a bit crazy though. When I can get the entire population of Texas into a single transport ship I think things are getting a bit kooky. I would like to be able to change the amount of people that can be placed on a ship.

3) On a similiar note, I think that colony ships are too easy to build early in the game. Maybe its just my old MOOII days, but starting another major colony should require a little more effort.

4) What would be really cool is if population increase was based on a Malthus curve. Basically it exponentially approached zero at either end of the extreme (no population or max). This makes sense because there is very low birth rates in either case. In the middle region, growth would be at a maximum. This would make population growth a function of current capacity and would require players to try and balance populations out so that they have more "elbow room." Planets that are around 50% full would have the highest growth. Of course the actual rate would be modified by the racial and planet modifiers. In the end though, the player who manages their colonization efforts will get the best growth which makes more sense.

Nitram Draw · #6 April 16th, 2001, 08:14 PM

Maybe you could gain production and lose happiness as your population got closer to max. This way you have something to lose/gain either way.

Urendi Maleldil · #7 April 16th, 2001, 09:20 PM

I think the reproduction rate is fine the way it is, but a slight increase would be better. The thing we need for populations to not be so 'cheap' is to have greater consequences for icing a planet's population. If, for example, we had a Mars colony, and the Martian government decided to dump large ammounts of people into deep space, I'm sure the population of Earth, unless they really hated the Martians for some reason, would become very unhappy with the government of Mars.