Hi!
Why should developers explain their design decision? If they start with that, they'll just be explaining all the time all the micro-decisions instead producing next patch.

BR, Iztok

3 hours to "return realism"

2 months to return balance.

An extremly small minority of the population is smart enough to do any research at all.
Robots (meaning mechanical devices that can perform preprogrammed physical tasks) are mainly used for production.
Therefore, population won't make any noticable difference to either production or research.

Oh, but then again why taxes are the square root of the population? Sure taxes have to pay for them, but square root is pretty harsh. A morale equation has it raised to .75 instead of .5(which is square root). It would make more sense to have it raised to a number closer to one. Or offer a good explanation.

What does population have to do with research and production?

In the real world, factories and research labs are what matter. Having lots of people means next to nothing without the fascilities.  The people provide the money, what you do with that money depends on you.

At some point in the game, you will have enough money. The financial struggle will be over, and you will be swimming in cash. You will be able to buy anything you want.

Increasing the tax income will only make that happen sooner, reducing the value of money.

Well if you think about it , the 1.5 billion is amount of people paying taxes. I seem to recall reading that in one of those pop up dialogs in game. So children would not be in the equations.

Pull your head out of your ass and think about why they've limited it to the square route.

1. It's lesser then the linear route i.e. 1 pop pt = $1 10 pop pts = $10.
2. It's easier for keeping an economy in balance using the sliders
3. It keeps the AI more competitive cause nothing you can do can instantly shift the economic power in your favor overnight or over the course of even a game year.

If they'd gone linear games would be much shorter plus you and the AI would be able to build and expand much faster with fewer resources, not just at the beginning but using the mutiplier of the money available after the initial expansion. If none of that made sense think about this...

Assume an attrition rate of 1:10 between force A:B respectively. Lets say force A has 10 units and force B 100. And they both build at the same rate of 2 per turn which could represent the square route function. If both engage each other in lets say 1 battle per period A loses 1 units, and then B loses 10. Since A replenishes 2 each turn and loses at a 10% of B's attrition rate then A will eventually win. B meanwhile loses 10 on the first turn has 90 left builds 2, then 92 92/10 9.2 losses 84 84 +2 86 see how b is losing units faster while A is gaining units. same thing with the money.

Using the square is more of an advantage for the little guy then the big guy then linear which keeps the games in check. instead of bitching about design decision ask for more content

A. Better Espionage/Sabotage
B. Tactical Battles
C. Multiplayer

Frogboy, hi, is there any way you know of in the game to work against the enemy stealing tech (like putting more spying money on them). Also after advanced, does putting more money into spying actually do anything? I've had people say with no money they've still stolen tech.

Also, Japan has a high population density, but they are rich. China is making some good strides, too.

You can not expect a computer game like this to be realistic to a such degree. The economy is balanced in the game and that's what counts.

If you start to think about it, you'll find countless things that are not realistic. Why banks increase the amount of taxes, shouldn't it be a corporate tax for banks and a personal tax for people? actually.. why do I have to build the banks, where is the private sector? where's crowding out effect of high public spending? why do I need labs to research things like trade or alliances? ... it's just a game!

I was going to say Monaco, but then I remembered that they don't have income taxes at all...

Meklar - and what I said is accurate: Higher populations should do not translate even linearly into higher tax income.

We have our own world to use as an example.