I kinda disagree with the idea that population and production don't scale together. They definitely do! Possibly in a better-than-linear way.

Assuming the population lives at a roughly equivalent level of wealth and technological sophistication.

Real world example is Australia and USA. Roughly equivalent standard of living and economies, but much higher USA population = much higher gdp.

Which raises a point - maybe in the population tech tree, or the beaurocracy tech tree, there should be a tech line that improves the current 1/2 exponent of production and population? 

I don't see population having a beneficial effect on manufacturing... even today we are seeing the automation of industry take effect, and there is no reason to think that automation has a cap. Eventually robot factories and robot workers will build virtually everything with a minimal population needed for oversight.

So I think manufacturing should really be independent of a population.

Now economic output, IE, in GC Terms... credits... that makes sense and people here have made good arguments for it. So population should have a significant impact on this. I'm also understanding of research being affected by population, as automating research (with AI presumably) could have more likely limits, or simply be deemed too dangerous by the organic peoples.

Hence, more people = more researchers... especially since very very very few of those people need a job manufacturing anything...

This turned into quite a discussion thread! I hope you all don't mind if I try to rein it in so we can propose something that the developers can use as input for game balance. Here are some of the points raised so far:

• Large population size does not appear to yield a meaningful amount of "raw production".
• Asteroids appear to yield an amount of "raw production" that is much more significant that colony population.
• Q: Should the "raw production" created by population be applied similarly to "ship/social production" as it is to other types of output, such as research and cash income? In other words, should population "raw production" be very significant to research points and cash income, but (conceptually due to automation) be less relevant to ship/social production?
• Q: Should the current game rule that "raw production from population is equal to sqrt(#pop)" scale up somehow later in the game with certain research techs?
• Q: Alternatively, could the "sqrt(#pop)" rule be eliminated and instead allow %Approval to scale "raw production"?
• Q: Do non-bio races have an unfair advantage with respect to population and approval, and thus allow them to get a decent "raw production" by growing population to a huge number?
• Q: Should the ship/social production buildings have more +1 (or +N) buffs, rather than +X% buffs, thus making them less reliant on the base "raw production" number?

My apologies if I missed anything in this list.

First and foremost, this is a game.  I only need enough realism so I'm not constantly suspending my disbelief just to play.  If we're in the year 2017 and we're still using hit points to determine whether a ship is "dead" or not, then I think I can handle whatever population model I'm given.  

One thing we need not to do is swing the pendulum back to how it was in Galciv1.  Back then, planet class and population meant too much, and only the class 12's and up mattered.  A lot of what we're seeing is to make sure we don't go back to that again.  I *DO* like in Galciv1 how new colonies were actually a drain on your economy until you got the new planet up on their feet.  The problem was that class 4's never made you back your investment.  Class 4's need to be valuable, but for different reasons than for class 16's.  Therein lies the reason why I think population should scale linearly for money and influence, but not for other things.  The class 4 has proximity to asteroids (which is reason enough in my book), mining, unique research opportunity, tourism, or military advantage.  And still, 4 population is less valuable than 16, but still better than none at all.  A class 4 has value as an outpost.  A class 16 is a population, financial, governing center.  

There is also this artificial marriage which says that high-class planets have to be these wonderful, population-attracting places, while class 4 is some crappy Mars place; you might as well be living on a starbase.  Not so.  Planet class is the size of the planet, in terms of buildable tiles.  You can have a crappy, large Dune world, with a paradise moon around it where the population is incredibly dense.  A class-4 planet, with two adjacent Paradise tiles and one Planetfall tile.  And population is what it does.

I have been using the raw production = pop ^.75 mod and I would note that the initially you get an extra, small boost (about +1 raw up to 4 pop) which is very helpful in getting started, and the later boost of about pop/2 from about pop 10-24, and slower increases above that. Doesn't seem to unbalance the game, and given that crusade pretty much forces you to grab any planet with a needed resource (read "at least one of each type"), those 8 and under can still build some things in under 20 turns without assistance.

I haven't played as a synthetic, but a pop of 50 adds 18 raw production, so I don't that as too OP for the game as whole. The curve flattens enough that even 100 pop planets would only do an abase of 30 raw production, and by itself, that's not going to get gonna extra citizens in just 10 turns.

It's a mod. I might not suggest that Stardock update this for everyone, but I'm happy to use it.

Where can I find the mod?

um, I haven't put it up on Nexus. Yet. Maybe I should...

I just put up "Population to Raw Production at 0.75 exponent" on nexusmods now- http://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/117/?

Have fun.

Just checked the xml after the new patch. They increased it to 1.

Which version?

2.31.4 had it set to 1.

2.32 opt in 7/26 had it at .5

I updated my mod to handle the second one, as the first deprecates the need for my mod.

Although, I suppose you might still want to leave at only .75, if you want a slightly slower game than a 1:1 ratio would produce...

It was the 2.34.1 version.