NEVER build a farm on a farming bonus tile. Even a +100% tile will push your population to 25 Billion. Farming bonus tiles in this game are red herrings. They should just remove them from the game altogether.

Only if you build the highest output farm. I avoid researching or trading the later farm techs until very late in the game. I avoid the 300% farm bonus; it should be removed from the game.

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.

but i'm curius what's with that 1%, do they love to pay taxes?!

They'll the GalHaliburton shareholders ;o)

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.

Sadly, that's 4K not 40K for the superplanet (before stockmarkets). You could probably get it somewhere near 10K with a suitably high class planet, economy bonuses, stockmarkets and great trade routes, but nowhere near 40K. The main problem is you'll need an average of at least 100% starbase bonus all along the route before it becomes financially more worthwhile to build extra farms as opposed to stockmarkets, and that requirement gets more severe the higher your racial economy bonus.

As you say, the amount of resources it requires to get the thing set up is probably enough to win you the game if spent elsewhere! I might do it once just for fun, but won't be making a habit of it!

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?

I cann't speak for the the devs but the farm bonus tiles really shouldn't be that big a problem and i use em. I just put extra population on transports whenever a planets morale falls below 100%. Even if a planets morale falls below 40% and population growth stops because of low morale -- so what? -- that's the only penalty for low morale that i know of. Of course I've not actually ever had that happen, but really what is the big problem? Is it just a matter of being too busy with other production products to not be able to put that extra population on transports and just not like the planets morale going that low just because...?

If one does want to spend the time to get a huge population on a planet -- those farm bonus tiles are great. The 300% bonus tiles are even nice for the guys that only do 1 farm tech upgrade -- only need 1 farm to get pop max up to 29B vs 17B with a 100% bonus tile -- and having populations up to 20-21B without any morale buildings except stock exchanges is quite frequent.

Bottom line is -- you don't like farm bonus tiles -- don't use em for farms. But they are usefull to some of us at least sometimes.

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

Replying to #31:

I can't answer that, as my first exposure to the game is 1.2. I presume they were struggling with game balance issues related to large populations. And believe me, I'm looking very hard for a reason to boost planet populations in this game... I just haven't found a good enough reason yet.

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). I find that approach lacking, for three reasons:

1) If you use a 100% farming tile, you'll have 13 billion on a planet. Research even one tech, and that's now 17. Not so bad in itself, but what about all those other planets that DON'T have farm bonus tiles? Are you building 2 farms on them? It seems to me, that in this game, homogenous population sizes are to your advantage, as you can control your tax rate much easier. When you have a bunch of planets at 17, and the rest at 13, you're losing out on the money you'll generate on the 13Billion population planets. So, you're costing yourself either money, or tiles. I then pose the question: If you say the farm bonus tiles aren't useless, you ARE then saying the farming techs ARE useless, yes? Either way, something's useless in the game.

2) Again, regarding transports, why not just build 1 transport each on a bunch of planets? First off, you'll produce them faster (more planets making transports simultaneously). Secondly, your population will recover faster (again, more planets growing population back simultaneously). If you're having a problem generating troops, consider manufacturing transports on these worlds every time they cap out on population, even if you're not at war. Then, when you do go to fight, you'll have an armada of troops at your disposal.

3) Regarding morale, it IS significant when you start growing large populations on some of your planets, as you will either have to suffer a morale hit on those planets, or drop your tax rate. Dropping your tax rate costs you money, and suffering the morale hit does nothing but make it more difficult to win your elections at the higher forms of government. And if you're running on the borderline of winning elections, watch what happens if you lose a morale galactic resource. There goes your economy, because then you'll HAVE to drop your taxes to avoid losing an election.

I have yet to see any decent reason, that doesn't cost you in either tiles, or in tax revenue, to put more than 1 farm on a planet.

I might consider, at some point, trying out a mod that does nothing other than make basic farms produce 2 food instead of 4, with the techs making them go from 2 to 3 to 4 to 5, instead of 4 to 6 to 8 to 10. It will require using more tiles for food overall, but you'll also have much more control over your populations, and you can go back to being happy when you find at least a 100% farming bonus tile.

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.

I might hav missed it, but I think no one mentioned the Political Capital. a measureable increase in morale for a large planet (and some influence).

I use the farming tiles often on larger planets. add in lots of morale related boni, and a tax rate of 50-68 and I'm fine.

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.

Ok so low morale might lose you an election and you lose the political party bonus -- big deal. Personally i don't think 1 or 2 planets that fall to 40% morale and stop growing population would cost me an election but even if they did a higher tax rate is probably more important than the political party bonus. And if I don't have the time to put that extra population on transports, I got bigger problems going on.

Personally i think the farm techs, farm bonus tiles, and farms are just fine game elements as is. They require a player to make a few interesting choices but aren't all that complicated. The current game system also allows for a few different strategies to work just fine which i think is good -- wouldn't you just hate it if there was only really one way to do it( hats off to the Devs on this one IMO ).

It would be nice if they had a way to remove tile upgrades by type for all your planets at once. I have to remove them a lot and it is irritating.

Also the game feature of having to build the highest tech building is one i do not particularily care for. I don't do any spying till I finish colonizing and building my basic factories, basic labs and market centers because if i get an upgrade to one of them and have to build the higher tech buildings, I find it very very difficult to have a 100% spending economy.

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'm hardly an expert on the game, but I think a discussion of population should not focus only on taxes vs morale.

Population also give you influence, which increases income from tourism. I don't have a good feel for how much income one gets through tourism for a given population/influence, but whatever the amount it should be factored into the equation.

Influence also gets you votes in the UP, which can be very powerful.

Does anyone stay in Empire to avoid the need to keep approval above 50%? It seems that if you had a really high population you might make more money with high taxes at say 40% approval then in a Republic with lower taxes at 60% approval.

There is no penalty until you get down around 30% (I think) at which point population shrinks.

Which brings me the the last benefit of high pop, it's like banking money. If you need to, you can jack taxes up and let approval come down really low, and your pop will shrink and approval slowly go up. once you've made enough money you can lower taxes again and let population grow. This can help get through crises.

Just don't try that before an election, wait until right after so you can have the most turns at low approval.

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.   

How much does that make you? I was thinking about this the other day and if I did the calculations right, I think this is the one and only situation where it's *economically* better to have a massive population than a "one farm, stockmarkets" setup.

There are, of course, other reasons for high populations.

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.

and all of my freighters start from this planet. Almost all of the freighters go to the Yor capital planet

???

I believe that each trade route has to have a unique start/end point - in other words no duplicate routes.

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.

Huh - will have to try that - guess I was assuming the restriction was brought over from GC1.   

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.

i don't keep them happy, between wars, slave trade, and other interesting things, I support population control- 1 family 1 child policy.

Thats not population control, thats population reduction.

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.

almost 100 billion? shit thats one freaking crowded planet, make that a 30 something class planet, completely urbanize it and you'll have Coruscant.