Population = Bad?

I did some tests with starting colonies, seeing how much money I could wring out of one planet if I didnt care about research or manufacturung etc. As I understand it, the three buildings that provide money (in one way or another), are farms, entertainment centers, and markets. The markets of course give you a direct boost of taxes, the entertainment centers allow you to raise your taxes, and the farms give you more people to tax. However more people also means less morale, so you could almost view farms as anti-entertainment centers, as they have a net decrease in morale. In my tests (I didnt save it, guess I should have), the farms seemed to hurt the amount I could tax more than they added taxes. This may change later as you get more advanced forms of entertainment centers, and stock exchanges which increase morale, but in the early game more people seems to be bad. Unless people do something for you besides give money? Influence hasn't been a problem for me so far, I assume they also increase the influence generated by a planet? If so is it more than the amount an embassy would add?

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It depends entirely on the situation. The success of the Siege scenario depends on having a relatively high population so yuo can attack and defend your planets. Even against a very high technology enemy, numbers can win the day.

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Attack our own planets???

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When I build a farm, I also build an entertainment center.

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Attack our own planets???

he means attack their planets or planets they take from you, and also defend your own planets

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Your ideal tax-farm should have plenty of farms, Market centeres and about 2-3 morale improvement centers.

Researching the Entertainment branch of the tech tree can help you raise taxes, Natural morale also will do a good job, But for the most enthusiastic earner, Owning 3 fully upgraded Economic and Morale exctraction starbases can be a holy grail, Especially with lots of tax farms to add weight to an economic uplift.

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Like most things, the moderate approach seems to be best. In my opinion and in my experience, late game is the time to grow population, after you have the best entertainment techs (VRC) and you have built some of the moral boosters like FC and HC.

I have no problem building a huge economy with all my HQ planets in the 10-20 billion population range. I usually have one and sometimes two entertainment tiles and never more than 2 farms.

If I need 40-50 billion pop to keep my planets safe from invasion, I am already in deep doodoo in the games I play.

I have not played the scenarios so I can't speak for the strategy required for that situation

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Wouldn't a higher populatoin make better use of your factories?

I thought that production was based on population, not purely on the factories themselves.... would seem a bit strange otherwise

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factories are for industri points only.
Research centers are for research points only.
Population is for taxing (and soldiers) only.

that outta sort that one out

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Enigmatical, in GC1, population effected your production, but not in GC2, it only effects your taxes, and morale.

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Of late, I've been a populist party member, with no tweaks to the base humans. I luv population. Even when I'm not a populist, I tend to grow population as high as I can. I don't have any memorable problems. However, most of my games are on normal and small. My next games are going to try medium/large and challenging.

Note, I have no facts or statistics to support this, just a feeling and playstyle. I just think its best to grow your population as soon as possible. Oh, and at one point, it becomes nearly pointless to raise taxes.
At low tax rates, approval to tax is at -1:1 ratio. At 100%, you'll suffer a 400% approval hit.
At 60%. its about -3:2.

Admittedly, you do get diminishing returns per million as your population grows. Still, I want to control the United Planets. So, more peeps for me.

The only time I raise approval is when I can double my pop-growth at 100% (easy with populists early game), and when I stop growing. I'm a slumlord.

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