Yes what is a singularity but one entity? Turning into one neuron in a collective brain is a pathetic purposeless existence with a void of time to kill until the universe ends.

I think the matrix is a good example how it should work, because programs were uploaded into bodies to actually live and could also be freed. Even Neos soul was the same "the one" reincarnated over the previous matrixes and reinserted each time. Oh and the programs loved and did stuff! That is a Sovereign existence.

DARCA.

What about the simultaneity of space civilisations?

my bad, double post

The core of this argument is that manufacturing should not be tied to directly tied to population.  The rest, military, economic, research, and influence, should be directly tied to population because in those areas human has a greater role than machines.

The issues with this as far as game play is concerned can be overcome.  First, population caps should not be tied to how much food can be produced but on type and size of planet, type of government and environmental policy.  Can the planet support life?  If yes, large max population cap.  Does the planet have large land masses?  If yes, increase the population cap.  Does your government maximize the lives of the population?  If yes, increase the population cap.  Does your government care about preserving wilderness?  If yes, lower the population cap.  This also means large landmasses on non-biotic woulds can be made into forge worlds but conversely if your government cares about preserving wilderness it also caps your manufacturing on that world.

So a government that packs people on planets and doesn't preserve the bioshpere would have high population but low morale but can keep up in research and influence just by population but government that encourage people to have personal space and parks and wilderness preserves are happier and are produce better research and influence with smaller populations.  This can also have the added benefit of removing farms from the game so you are not wasting space on your planets building them and researching as many techs for them as mostly they are filler anyway.  Who likes building farms and incremental farm tech?  Drop them and give me an interesting choice.

I'm not a programmer but these changes should allow, with some tweaking, to make the game fun and a bit more based on reality but also balanced.  Which I for one would like in the game

Am I crazy?  I don't think so.  I have reason and logic behind my thinking that farms and most of the farming tech is poor game design.  Honestly the tile systems is bad mechanic too.  

So let's look at why you want to keep farms in the game and as they are.  Currently farms provide higher population and population drives everything.  In my last game, which was about a month ago, to have a planet be really worth colonizing it had to have at least a population of 20 billion, that's not hard on a class 10 to 12 planet even early game but you are using a partial hex ring to get that most of the time, 1/3 to 1/4 of the planet is devoted simply to increasing the planet's population to useful levels.  How is that fun?

Cropland in the US is about 1/5 of total use but food is a major US export, we feed a large portion of the world with a small fraction of the total land area of the world.  To me its insane that a more advanced space faring civilization has to double or triple the amount of land needed to feed its population.  

Now let's consider what I'm proposing.  I will use Earth as an example, class 10 and home world.  Earth should start with a population cap of 20 billion and the remaining food production techs just increase the population cap but don't require buildings.  Growth rate should not be static either, it should be based on a few variables, like current pop, max pop, and planetary wealth, when there is a lot of empty space people have more kids and low wealth rates tend to mean more kits too but when a society becomes wealthy the growth rate drops to equilibrium or lower.   The tile system is an abstraction already and never fully covers a planet, so why does so much area have to be devoted to that when food production generally requires space but only a few people, so why can't it be where your specialized manufacturing and research isn't?  

By the time your ready to send your first interstellar craft most heavy industry should be in orbit anyway.  By that point you're not using the mineral wealth of the planet but the asteroids mineral wealth and you only drop the stuff that's needed on the planet not send everything and send it back up at a high energy penalty.  The problem with all that for the game is its overly complex so we build on the planet.  Not arguing that, while I would like orbital manufacturing I'll concede the point for ease of game creation.  What I will not concede is the need for the tile system, its too restrictive.  Your industry is mostly in orbit, abstracted to being on the ground for ease of play and game creation but that also means that you have more space to build it.  

I don't actually have the details of a better system that shows the player what they have created but still even with the adjacency and tile bonuses the tile system is a bad one.  Why can't I find the space on the surface or in orbit to build all of my toys?  Honestly I'd be happier with a list and some sort of "you have this much space to build all of your toys, optimize it how you like" system.

Quoting peregrine23,

reply 37

Quoting kestlstw,

reply 36

Cropland in the US is about 1/5 of total use but food

Farms aren't just cropland, and 51% of the land base of the US is used for agriculture.

I stand corrected, although following the link its the same data I used. I just didn't include all grassland, pasture land and range land and whatever the 6% additional you included, I didn't spend the time to find the break out of of much of the grassland, pasture land and range land is pasture and range that should be included.

Why is building farms any less fun then building factories and laboratories?

These kinds of arguments are why arguing realism for a game is just not productive. The tile system is a simple abstraction of how to exploit any planet's limited resources. It allows fun gameplay because it is clear, easy to manipulate, and with the addition of adjacency and tile bonuses, produces interesting strategic choices. You keep saying that building farms isn't fun. It isn't building farms that's fun, its making decisions with limited resources. Do you want to raise your population cap, or increase the productivity of the population that is there? I think that is a much more interesting decision then weather to specialize in manufacturing, research, or wealth.