Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (Full Version)

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Way2co0l -> Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 4:34:40 AM)

So I've gotten it in my head to try one of those megacity ruin worlds I've read about on the forums and after spending the last 4 days trying perhaps a hundred different planet setups and literally thousands upon thousands of rerolls, I've come to discover it's rather limited to what extent you can manage that at this point.

Now, just for the sake of clarity and to head off the obvious comments from people trying to give helpful advice on how to accomplish it, I've spent a great deal of my time this week reading all the forum posts on planet gen and again thousands of rerolls on multiple setups to see for myself (I obviously have no life). I understand the ideal planet setups you should be aiming for, the effect of planet rotation speed on rainfall and the importance of that specific point in particular, and I can say that even a world with 5700mm rainfall with otherwise optimal settings doesn't change anything.

The point is that I've found the most densely populated pre war setup you can reliably get is between 10 and 10.5 billion which seems to act as a soft cap. It's possible with enough rolls or just plain luck to get a little over that, but it's increasingly rare the higher over that point you go. I've managed to hit 12.1 once in my thousands of rolls, and then 11.9 last night but those are outliers and seem to indicate where the hard cap actually is. As a quick addendum to this, I have actually managed over 12 billion a few times outside of this, but only with high 90% agriculture worlds with a minimal number of ruins which has been posted as a potential bug and the lack of ruins defeats the purpose of what I'm after in the first place so I ignore those results for what I'm after here.

I understand that it used to be possible to get worlds with upwards of 20 and even 30 billion people, though that was apparently the result of a bug that's since been patched out but I saw a comment in that thread from Vic where he was intending to patch it back in through more legitimate means but it appears that it's nowhere near those previous numbers.

I also understand that it shouldn't exactly be common to see worlds like that, something else I saw Vic state at one point, but truthfully I'm not sure I agree with that statement. The reason cities like New York get as big as they do is because they can have all their food and goods shipped in from elsewhere. If you were to have a sector or quadrant capital with perhaps dozens of specialized planets to keep it fed and supplied then it's not hard to imagine a world much more heavily populated than our own currently is.

Perhaps with the addition of planet classes and the option of choosing the types of conditions you want your world gen to meet for you, one of those options being for a sparsely populated world, then perhaps an option for a major megacity world to be included as well? The randomness of the game is one of it's drawing points but sometimes you get an itch to play a very specific kind of game and I've now spent the better part of a week and again thousands upon thousands of rerolls trying to get something I like over 12 billion prewar for the ruins but just can't seem to manage one I like. Having a setup option to spare me this tediousness would be a godsend.



bvoid -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 12:42:34 PM)

Look at the number of ruins rather than the pop. There can be huge patches of ruins 20+ hexes across.



Twotribes -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 1:15:47 PM)

try to get the capitol for the quadrant and all the military and of course low agriculture pop. but getting lots of ruins is hit and miss in my experience.



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 2:02:40 PM)

15 billion is around the population capacity of earth. This is derivid from all the Farmland taken together, if we do not use it for inefficient stuff like raising Animals (only 25% the efficiency of growing crops).



newageofpower -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 2:22:21 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

15 billion is around the population capacity of earth. This is derivid from all the Farmland taken together, if we do not use it for inefficient stuff like raising Animals (only 25% the efficiency of growing crops).
100 years ago, it was estimated at 50 billion with grain agriculture.

Today, with the possibility of orbital hydroponics, trillions might be possible, the real issue then becomes disposal of waste heat.



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 2:46:05 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: newageofpower


quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

15 billion is around the population capacity of earth. This is derivid from all the Farmland taken together, if we do not use it for inefficient stuff like raising Animals (only 25% the efficiency of growing crops).
100 years ago, it was estimated at 50 billion with grain agriculture.

Today, with the possibility of orbital hydroponics, trillions might be possible, the real issue then becomes disposal of waste heat.


100 years ago we propably did not know of a few limits of that idea.

And if you need to import food from orbit, you are beyond your carry capacity.



newageofpower -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 5:34:08 PM)

The 50 billion was assuming all arable land converted farmland, instead of limiting yourself to existing farmlands.

Today with GMO crops (far mor efficient) and modern growth methods, hundreds of billions could be fed.



Malagant -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 6:29:36 PM)

quote:

And if you need to import food from orbit, you are beyond your carry capacity.


How many truck points do we need for that?! [:D]



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 8:45:55 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Malagant

quote:

And if you need to import food from orbit, you are beyond your carry capacity.


How many truck points do we need for that?! [:D]

Enough of them to fill Space :)



newageofpower -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 9:24:49 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

And if you need to import food from orbit, you are beyond your carry capacity.
RE: Orbit

Future civilizations may consider a planet's Hill Sphere as part of that planet's resource base as well, just as many countries today are beginning to consider their Oceanic Exclusive Economic Zone part of their nations now..m



Way2co0l -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (4/23/2021 10:37:36 PM)

Yeah I'm aware that you can get big patches of ruins. As I said I get 10+ billion worlds like candy, but there are fast diminishing returns once you hit 10.5. It's possible to go above that, but increasingly more difficult which acts as a soft cap on the number of ruins you're able to generate as well. I've seen what a 12 billion world can look like in the one time I've generated one, and can only go off of other's much older postings about what a 20+ world can look like.

And yes I know about quadrant capital and all that too. When you do get one of the 10+ worlds it almost always has that distinction. But there doesn't seem to be any way to get it above that. It hits that soft cap and then slowly stops from there so the old mega ruins you could find in the game are no longer possible no matter what conditions you manage to roll.

And when it comes to Earth's conceivable max pop, again that's assuming that the Earth itself is responsible for all of it's own food needs. Based on the in game history and the explanation for how planetary economies evolved as specialized worlds reliant on other's for others means capital worlds would not be reliant on their own personal resources to survive. Equations change when you have dozens of planets acting as source worlds supplying all your needed commodities while you focus on bureaucratic and service oriented economies. The logistics of it and resolving bottlenecks around things like waste would be very real limitations but not insurmountable and with enough determination actual Coruscant worlds are likely possible. I'm not actually looking for that though. I just really have my heart set on the world's I've seen done before and sad to see they've been nerfed away. I don't think I have the will to spend another few days trying to roll another 12 billion world. lol. Seems I'll just have to give up on the idea.



LORDPrometheus -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/3/2021 5:06:04 PM)

In 1804 when mankind first passed 1 billion for the first time there was a fear that eventually we would run out of land to farm for our population especially en Europe. By the late 1800s it was feared we would hit this limit at around 3 billion however the advent of modern fertilizer and farming techniques raised this perceived limit to over 5 billion
The advent of GMO crops has raised this yet further into the 15-20 billion range and there is the definite possibility that by focusing on sustainable efficient food sources earth could support upwards of 50 billion humans though it would be a very crowded existence. It is reasonable for an extrasolar colony to reach such a population but only if:

A: the planet has conditions for outdoor agriculture and sufficient nitrogen and phosphorous deposits for fertilizer production.

B: it was given a VERY long time to grow.

In game most worlds seem to have been coniEd between 200 and 2000 years ago with some outliers.

Some math for a pure exponential growth model

Starting pop 10,000
Growth rate = 1.5% average per annum
25 year generation time:
doubling rate is= 46.6 years

By year 1000 population would be: 32,690,173,724

Obviously this was not the case on earth and would not be the case during the early colonization of a new and likely hostile world. Populations would need to be grown in a controlled manner to not exceed the available resources and there would inevitably be war and disease and famine harming numbers over time. The galactic republic was also supposedly a post scarcity economy suggesting a much lower actual growth rate as throughout history the more developed a society the lower the growth rate. A more realistic rate may be as low as 0.25% growth. With that number by year 1000 those 10,000 initial colonists will now number 121,824.

A happy medium of around 1% growth per year yields 220,264,657

TL:DR population dynamics are hard and way conization is likely to be slow and lethal force many



newageofpower -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/3/2021 5:40:46 PM)

> crowded
Bruh, we can squeeze everyone on the planet into Texas and everyone would have a pretty sizable studio room (probably considered cramped for Texans, ofc)



Zanotirn -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/3/2021 8:51:44 PM)

I would take "the more developed a society the lower the growth rate" with a grain of salt. Throughout 20th century growth rate plummeted with the creation of birth control and its gradual introduction into more advanced societies. However presumably in the future its introduction will be complete. The other factor limiting population growth is current cultural expectations in richer countries of what a child has to be provided (adult oversight, toys, quality of food, education, etc.) making children very expensive, combined with the collapse of tradition of grandparents and occasionally neighbours looking after kids (which would otherwise significantly reduce effort needed to raise them). This effect can easily be reversed in a growth-focused colony.

On the food subject, as long as you have hydroponics and abundance of energy (which is both true for GR), the space needed for agriculture can be drastically reduced as you can grow things in many tiers.



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/3/2021 11:43:11 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Zanotirn

I would take "the more developed a society the lower the growth rate" with a grain of salt. Throughout 20th century growth rate plummeted with the creation of birth control and its gradual introduction into more advanced societies. However presumably in the future its introduction will be complete. The other factor limiting population growth is current cultural expectations in richer countries of what a child has to be provided (adult oversight, toys, quality of food, education, etc.) making children very expensive, combined with the collapse of tradition of grandparents and occasionally neighbours looking after kids (which would otherwise significantly reduce effort needed to raise them). This effect can easily be reversed in a growth-focused colony.

On the food subject, as long as you have hydroponics and abundance of energy (which is both true for GR), the space needed for agriculture can be drastically reduced as you can grow things in many tiers.

Reducing birthrates is not a cultural thing. It is a natural development of a society getting more developed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348



Zanotirn -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/4/2021 1:17:13 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd


quote:

ORIGINAL: Zanotirn

I would take "the more developed a society the lower the growth rate" with a grain of salt. Throughout 20th century growth rate plummeted with the creation of birth control and its gradual introduction into more advanced societies. However presumably in the future its introduction will be complete. The other factor limiting population growth is current cultural expectations in richer countries of what a child has to be provided (adult oversight, toys, quality of food, education, etc.) making children very expensive, combined with the collapse of tradition of grandparents and occasionally neighbours looking after kids (which would otherwise significantly reduce effort needed to raise them). This effect can easily be reversed in a growth-focused colony.

On the food subject, as long as you have hydroponics and abundance of energy (which is both true for GR), the space needed for agriculture can be drastically reduced as you can grow things in many tiers.

Reducing birthrates is not a cultural thing. It is a natural development of a society getting more developed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348



Looking at various examples, there is a general trend of falling birth rates (consistent with spread of family planning), but otherwise there's too many exceptions to the "development level" theory. E.g.
- if a country "regressed" in development you'd expect the birth rate to increase then. But this generally did not happen. Russia in the immediate aftermath of 1991 experienced a birth rate fall, but on the other hand it's one of a handful of countries that experienced a recent period of significant birth rise - but that was during the early 2000s period when its economy was growing and it was catching up in infrastructure and integrating culturally and economically.
- Cuba birth rate plummeted after revolution and never recovered - while per "development level" theory you'd expect it to be largely cut off from the global trends and stay in the mid-20th century level. Ditto for Iran after its revolution.
- Generally more successful and still improving European states tend to be the ones that had some degree of population growth increase (if mild one) post 2000 - e.g. Germany and Czech Republic.
- On the other hand Afghanistan experienced a sharp birth rate decline after US invasion - its development growth was very modest, but its consistent with the spread of birth control post Sharia
- Israel keeps a high birth rate despite being one of the most developed countries
- The birth rate drop after development of contraceptive pills in some developed countries was very sharp, not really corresponding to a more gradual increase in development level. E.g. Canada went from average 3.8 children in 1960 to 1.7 in 1980. Germany had a growing birth rate in mid-20 century but then it went from 2.5 in 1965 to 1.45 in 1975. USA went from 3.6 in 1960 to 1.7 in 1975


If you look at the rates e.g. here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_recent_value_desc=true
they largely fit a combination of two factors:

1) Family planning (first widespread abortions, later contraception) starts spreading at a certain level of development unless prevented by strong cultural/religious factors. However at some point it's largely complete and the birth rate drop from it stops.
2) In countries where the amount of children largely corresponds to what people want (i.e. with widespread birth control) birth rate mainly depends on whether people believe they can afford more children or not.



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/4/2021 10:11:49 AM)

quote:

- if a country "regressed" in development you'd expect the birth rate to increase then. But this generally did not happen. Russia in the immediate aftermath of 1991 experienced a birth rate fall, but on the other hand it's one of a handful of countries that experienced a recent period of significant birth rise - but that was during the early 2000s period when its economy was growing and it was catching up in infrastructure and integrating culturally and economically.
- Cuba birth rate plummeted after revolution and never recovered - while per "development level" theory you'd expect it to be largely cut off from the global trends and stay in the mid-20th century level. Ditto for Iran after its revolution.
- Generally more successful and still improving European states tend to be the ones that had some degree of population growth increase (if mild one) post 2000 - e.g. Germany and Czech Republic.
- On the other hand Afghanistan experienced a sharp birth rate decline after US invasion - its development growth was very modest, but its consistent with the spread of birth control post Sharia
- Israel keeps a high birth rate despite being one of the most developed countries
- The birth rate drop after development of contraceptive pills in some developed countries was very sharp, not really corresponding to a more gradual increase in development level. E.g. Canada went from average 3.8 children in 1960 to 1.7 in 1980. Germany had a growing birth rate in mid-20 century but then it went from 2.5 in 1965 to 1.45 in 1975. USA went from 3.6 in 1960 to 1.7 in 1975

Sub replacement fertility and the democraphic transition are a fact, on par with the theory of gravity.
Though Net Reproduction Rate better accounts for mortality (and hopefully emigration).

You are totally ignoring the factor of how much room is there for people:
If your economy is crashing, there would be nothing for your children to work at to feed themself. The room is limited, birthrates will decline faster.
Isreal has many kids, because they are severely underpopulated for their size. And most of the people that are born, are emigrating into other countries.

Germany was explained in the video. This is a lag from a baby boomer generation still having kids. As a german not having kids, I can confirm you it is indeed a thing.
The baby pills were merely a means of birthcontrol. The alternative included condoms and abstinency.
Note that this lag might be unwanted. For example China:
The land was going through about 500 years of socio-technological development in 50 years.
The expected lag from from the old generation still thinking "need a big family, most will die" would have caused a problematic population spike.
The one child policy was meerely there to accelerate the transition from pre to post development birthrates.



Way2co0l -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/4/2021 7:54:31 PM)

Ok but we're also ignoring the effect of frontierism has on birth rates and how larger families with less stringent child labor laws allows for more productivity, safety, and prosperity. There are a lot of reasons for declines in Earth birth rates and the simplest of them is simply the fact that there are no real desirable untamed frontiers to expand into. When there's room to grow and families are incentized to have more kids for their own survival, they tend to do exactly that. And of course we're ignoring the effect of migration from already densely populated core worlds. Their birth rates would be lower and yet still account for a much larger number of people and leads to millions of new immigrants. When you combine both factors it's not at all unreasonable to see population growth that is beyond the scope of what you'd find on Earth within the current situations we find ourselves subjected to.



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/4/2021 9:13:37 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Way2co0l

Ok but we're also ignoring the effect of frontierism has on birth rates and how larger families with less stringent child labor laws allows for more productivity, safety, and prosperity. There are a lot of reasons for declines in Earth birth rates and the simplest of them is simply the fact that there are no real desirable untamed frontiers to expand into. When there's room to grow and families are incentized to have more kids for their own survival, they tend to do exactly that. And of course we're ignoring the effect of migration from already densely populated core worlds. Their birth rates would be lower and yet still account for a much larger number of people and leads to millions of new immigrants. When you combine both factors it's not at all unreasonable to see population growth that is beyond the scope of what you'd find on Earth within the current situations we find ourselves subjected to.

That argument is exactly the one I wanted to make and why the 50 Billion figure is unlikely in SE:
There is literally a thousand other worlds to move too, rather then staying on that hive world.



Way2co0l -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/4/2021 9:21:26 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
That argument is exactly the one I wanted to make and why the 50 Billion figure is unlikely in SE:
There is literally a thousand other worlds to move too, rather then staying on that hive world.

And that's fair to an extent, but larger hive worlds become them for a reason. There's less risk of lawlessness, better access to healthcare and luxuries, generally cushier jobs where you're not toiling in the fields all day to make a living... That and a lot of people born in these population hotboxes simply can't afford to leave as easily as others. Yes, there are a lot of worlds for people to go to, but there are also magnet worlds which grow faster and larger than others. Think of the colonial era on Earth. Colonies were established in both the states and Canada as well as many other places obviously, and yet population distribution was widely different between the Canadian, American, French and Spanish possessions. The 13 colony region though already the more densely populated one continued to attract more migrants than the less populated areas available, even when they were within a relative distance to one another.

I never said the larger hive worlds would be highly likely, only that they would be conceivably possible and should probably happen every now and then.



scottrossi -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/5/2021 1:52:04 AM)

it's been a long time since i've rolled a megacity world because i don't like how hard it makes the economy in the early game, but IIRC, they used to get up into the tens of billions. i seem to recall 17 billion as the highest i've ever seen. i spent a few days over the summer just rolling worlds to see what was possible. i just spent about 30 mins rerolling essentially a garden siwa world, and i didn't roll higher then 7 billion, so i'm wondering if the cap was lowered. still tons of ruins, although not quite the map covering ecumenopolis' from the past patches.



Way2co0l -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/5/2021 2:34:29 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: scottrossi

it's been a long time since i've rolled a megacity world because i don't like how hard it makes the economy in the early game, but IIRC, they used to get up into the tens of billions. i seem to recall 17 billion as the highest i've ever seen. i spent a few days over the summer just rolling worlds to see what was possible. i just spent about 30 mins rerolling essentially a garden siwa world, and i didn't roll higher then 7 billion, so i'm wondering if the cap was lowered. still tons of ruins, although not quite the map covering ecumenopolis' from the past patches.

I know up to 12 bil is still possible by experience but very hard. 10 bil is easy on large world.



Zanotirn -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/5/2021 9:07:07 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
Sub replacement fertility and the democraphic transition are a fact, on par with the theory of gravity.
Though Net Reproduction Rate better accounts for mortality (and hopefully emigration).

You are totally ignoring the factor of how much room is there for people:
If your economy is crashing, there would be nothing for your children to work at to feed themself. The room is limited, birthrates will decline faster.
Isreal has many kids, because they are severely underpopulated for their size. And most of the people that are born, are emigrating into other countries.

Germany was explained in the video. This is a lag from a baby boomer generation still having kids. As a german not having kids, I can confirm you it is indeed a thing.
The baby pills were merely a means of birthcontrol. The alternative included condoms and abstinency.
Note that this lag might be unwanted. For example China:
The land was going through about 500 years of socio-technological development in 50 years.
The expected lag from from the old generation still thinking "need a big family, most will die" would have caused a problematic population spike.
The one child policy was meerely there to accelerate the transition from pre to post development birthrates.





Note that I don't dispute the basic fact of demographic transition. It's more the details of specific mechanisms of why it occurs. To draw a parallel, it's generally true that more serious disease leads to higher body temperature in humans. However understanding the specific mechanism why it happens (generic immune system reaction) allows to understand exceptions (e.g. diseases that compromise immune system or fly under its radar do not have this effect while acute autoimmune disorders do). Similarly while it's generally true that earth societies experienced dropping death and birth rates as they developed, it doesn't mean that this is directly tied to the development level (in fact the data does not qute support this) and that it would still be true in a developed society thousands of years in the future. Its much realistic that this demographic effect is tied to more specific mechanisms accompanying development in modern period - which generally shows a mortality decrease throughout last centuries accompanied sometimes by a minor birth rate decrease, but a sharp birth rate decrease only in 20th century, often closely following introduction or development of birth control - in that case a future colonial society can still easily have high R if it arranges in a way that reduces the cost of having children (and/or increases the cost of not having them via taxes) despite having ubiquitous birth control.

On specific points - Israel has a population density of 400 people/km2. Compare e.g. to Germany with 240 people/km2 (there is some ambiguity in which territory should be counted, but it doesn't change the general order)
Germany population drop beginning in 60s was not unique - multiple more developed countries' birthrate halved in the decade or two following introduction of easy female birth control. While earlier more accurate data is more scarce, there was apparently a similar effect when early in 20th century abortions became more reliable and thus an option for non-desperate women.Also my point on the importance of how many children a family can afford is basically another way of wording "how much room there is for people" (scarce resources increase in price, although an economic contraction is not quite "room").



zgrssd -> RE: Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen? (5/5/2021 9:27:21 AM)

quote:

Note that I don't dispute the basic fact of demographic transition.

Note that I do not dispute there are multiple factors. Only that it is a cultural thing.

Cultural things do not get developed independantly by every single country on the planet.



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