Population doesn't seem to matter all that much anymore?

from GalCiv3 Forums

So I'm on my 3rd (real) game since Crusade (first with 2.13) and I’m starting to notice that I’m really not that concerned about Population as much anymore.

 Prior to Crusade, Pop seemed incredibly important since Pop ~ Raw Production. Now, my understanding is that Raw Prod = Square Root of Pop, leading to MUCH smaller increases in Prod as Pop increases. Add to that there seem to be a number of things which directly boost Raw Prod (Wealthy being an easy one). Now that farms are higher up the tech tree (why, I have no idea), I haven’t focused as much on Population and I’m now miles ahead of the AI in production (and nearly everything else) after my previous games of lagging behind while trying to learn the new mechanics.

 Cities take a tile, farms take tiles, and the payoff seems pretty lackluster. If there weren’t other options for increasing Raw Prod, then going with Pop would seem more necessary. But at this point, I’m typically just having the 4 pop on each world with minimal increases needed.

 Anyone else observing the same thing? Or am I missing something else critical in regards to Pop?

26,919 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

No, you're not missing anything.  A colony starts with 4 max population (raw production 2).  If you add a city it boosts max population to 12 (last I looked), raw production 3.46.  Much better to add a couple of factories next to your space elevator.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Pop is good on crappy colonies where you've got a bunch of singles, and you can't boost your science and wealth with space elevators.

 

Outside of wherever your flat boosting structures are placed, your science/wealth output is going to be really crappy unless you have lots of asteroids or get your pop up in the 20-40 range so you actually have some base production to work with.  It may not be a problem in 5 world empires, but if you've got 30, you've got a problem.  A city is adding way more than some crap 15% structure when it's not around a flat increase.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

With Crusade most civs which don't have special traits are bad - mediocre in utilizing certain
game mechanics.

One of them is population growth and it's bonus to raw manufacturing.


TL: DR: My opinion on this

If you don't have the prolific trait you don't need to bother with agriculture (tech + buildings) and cities.
If you do you should heavily invest into population growth.

a discussion related to that:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/1327844097128552768/

with only 0.1 pop/turn population growth for most civs is negligtible in early - mid game.
Only in late game where you have bonus to growth 0.2 - 0.3 pop/turn. But even then
it takes forever to increase population and thus raw manufacturing.

It changes dramatically if you have the Prolific trait. Combined with fertile ability (+40% growth) you
get +0.5 pop/turn on any planet. Thats a 500% increase compared to other civs.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/1/1327844097124119797/


 

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The heck? Prolific give pop growth boost? Why isn't it said so in the description? The amount of important information missing from description is way too much for me to comfortable now. It is just too much.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I actually built hospitals on high pop planets to get them up faster.  So on the plus side, growth boosting buildings are actually useful now to get reasonable population levels, instead of superfluous outside of adjacency bonuses.

 

I think people are somewhat overlooking just how pathetic structure improvement in general is.  Industry is the only place where you can just farm the devil out of planets without building up population because you can throw multiple leveled flat bonuses onto them.  You get a 1% per level increase to income structures with adjacency, on top of their flat percentages.  What few flat bonuses there are are not leveled, leaving you with a solitary research planet and a solitary economy planet, with all the rest being sorely lacking by comparison.  That piddly little increase from population boosting far outweighs the piddly little increase you'd get from two more basic structures that aren't providing adjacency to a leveled flat bonus.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I had two games, both on huge maps with custom civs.
On one I focused heavily on population and on the other I neglected it completely.

Game 1:
Prolific + Slavers, Fertile Ability. By turn 120 I had 60 colonies, 1000 population.
That gave me 1000 social and millitary construction, 800 research and some income.

Every colony had several cities and hospital which quickly filled with population.

Game 2:
Ancient + Engineers, unfertile. By turn 85 I only had 50 colonies, 190 pop.
700 construction ( 50% from home planet), 4000 research.

Never researched food production or pop growth.