NEVER build a farm on a farming bonus tile. Even a +100% tile will push your population to 25 Billion.

Speak for yourself; I nearly always use them, especially the 100% ones, and I'm glad to get them. I don't have any trouble with populations around the 20-billion mark as a rule. But I'm very aggressive about getting morale/economic resources and technologies, and usually run my taxes around 49-59%, bolstered by lots of trade. I'd like the farming tiles left in. No-one's forcing you to use them - they just allow another play style.

to reply# 23 ; I and no good player lets morale drop much: it's just an oddity that morale really drops when the tax rate goes from 80%-81%: usually dropping from 100% morale to 1% morale. So it is sort of strange to actually be able to have more than a 80% tax rate. With that 465% civilization morale bonus I built up by grabbing morale resources, I could actually have had more than 80% tax rate and had a working economy --- After the conquering phase the populations are pretty low and I believe I could have had 44%+ morale with 81% tax rate on planets with less than 12B population, probably could have gone up around 90% tax rate with populations less than 8B. Having said that -- would i do it? -- no way! -- double population growth with 100% morale is just too nice -- i keep tax rate at 80% with 100% morale as much as i can. 1 and better yet 2 morale resourses will usually allow me to have 100% morale and 80% tax rate and populations 8-17B which is just fine for filling up transports for conducting military campaigns and having a good economy with extra income and 100% spending.

I did play a game where i didn't get any morale resources -- if i remember right I just had to live with less than 100% morale and not get the good population growth. This slowed down my ability to fill up transports and conquer planets -- till i was able conquer a morale resource.

The main reason for having populations above 20B would be for game points. Influence is also affected by population so if you are going for an influence victory, population is probably key but that type of game does not interest me much. Maybe trade income would become significant but i've never looked into it. Tax income won't really increase because tiles will have to be converted from stock exchanges to virtual reality centers and farms -- except for an economic capital where it's doubling will make up for that, Also I think one of the super type projects also has an economic effect too.

Wow 40K income from 1 planet would be real cool -- but that is probably as much effort as i put into conquering the first 2 civilizations - which is pretty much a won game. I have an extra 140K income/turn in the game i'm playing with now -- it's a won game, I got 379 planets And 1 opponent left with 8 planets. And i have no trade income to speak of.

I've got a question. I awsume that the devs put in stuff like 300% bonus farm tiles into the game for a question. So why are they such a huge problem? I mean i've been reading the fourm and i see what happens but, what were the devs thinking?

Key point: as troops suck away population, it always benefits in the longer term to have max pop's to prosecute wars.

Keep in mind that most of the posters that are talking about farming bonus tiles also are telling you not to research the farming techs (those that increase your farm output from 4 to 6 to 8 to 10 each).

You can't always avoid aquiring a new tech. Even if you don't research the farming techs or trade for them, you might steal a farming tech from the AI when you invade one of their planets or spy on them.

You can't always avoid aquiring a new tech. Even if you don't research the farming techs or trade for them, you might steal a farming tech from the AI when you invade one of their planets or spy on them.

If this happens, and you don't want to have your farms upgraded, you can go through your planets and take the upgrades off the production "to-do" list. You have to do each farm individually, but you only have to do it once. Yes, on a gigantic galaxy it can be a bit of an effort, but it IS a workaround. If wanted, you can always upgrade them later to the current version.

This works for all of the buildings.

Here's a different take on the matter of population, approval, taxes, and farms in the game. What I have found is that you can use those farm tiles on many planets and push their populations up above 24 billion without your civilization melting down.

A high population and a high economic rating are the basis of a good Metaverse score, so I've recently been working through various methods of achieving them. It can be done if your game and playing style meet a few prerequisites:

1. A relatively stable galactic environment. If you're at war more often than not, you won't be able to spare the time or production capacity to adequately care for a lot of high-population planets. If you love to fight, just build one advanced farm (on a plain tile) and a VR center on each planet above class 5 and forget about the rest.

2. Plan ahead when you're selecting your racial attributes at the beginning of the game. If I'm going to max out my population, I also max out my Morale ability and spread the rest of the points between Population Growth, Economics, and Diplomacy. Trade is also good for this strategy; the Terrans and Korx both have a good default trade ability that doesn't cost any points.

3. You have to be willing to lower your taxes as planetary populations increase. Tax income does not increase on a one-to-one basis with population, so you're not missing out on as much income as you might think. Your early building decisions are the most important thing here (i.e., setting up enough farms and approval buildings ahead of time to keep your population growing steadily), as well as making the most of your trade routes. Building your alignment temple is also important here.

4. Build ALL of the approval-boosting trade goods, and also the aphrodisiac. Grabbing and mining morale resources is good, but you can make do without them.

In my current game, about half of my 80+ planets are fully or partially dedicated to maxing out population. On each of those planets I have four (that's right, just four) VR centers, a stock market, and up to ten advanced farms' worth of buildings. (You can't have more than 100 billion people on a planet.) This is where the farm and approval bonus tiles help. On a class 15+ planet with a couple of bonus tiles, I still have room for a few industrial complexes and a starport. Or some discovery spheres, or at least a couple of extra stock markets.

I've had to lower taxes to 29% to keep all of my planets at or above the 75% approval rating (needed for the first population bonus); however, I am also building either improvements, starships, or both on every single planet (except my class 5 research worlds), and my income is still positive.

This is mainly due to the fact that I found a Class 17 planet early on and decided to make it my primary population planet. I built my Econ and Political capitals there, and all of my freighters start from this planet. Almost all of the freighters go to the Yor capital planet, halfway across the galaxy (152 parsecs). I have built econ starbases every eight parsecs along that trade route and maxed out the trade modules in each one. I could have gone further, into Drengin space, but this way the entire route is located either in my territory or Yor territory, which gives my starbases better survival prospects in the future.

This is probably way too long of a post; if you made it this far, I hope you found it helpful!

I can keep morale above 50% at 80% taxes on a 95-billion-person "hive world" using 9+ VR centers, depending on racial bonuses. Such planets have their uses.

I had a 20-minute analytical tirade here a minute ago, but my browser crashed and I lost it. Bah.   

I have planet with THREE titles with 300% bonus to food, builded 3 last farms, max. pop. was 100 mil, but food production allows 125 p.q. was cca 25 and thios allow to keep all peoples happy.

No. Not only can you send them out from one planet, you can also send them *to* one planet. There's nothing to stop you having all your routes be identical. In fact, if you're confident the route won't get disrupted, it's the best thing to do.

Nope. You can have almost indefinitely much trade revenue with one planet, given time to construct starbases. 11 freighters to that planet, plus a couple dozen economy starbases, makes a lot of income.

The only problem is that the UP might decide to screw you over, though I suppose you can handle that with savescumming.

Thats not population control, thats population reduction.