Colony Growth Question

[bandusdr]

I have recently read several guides (both older and newer) regarding making money for the state. However, nevertheless I still cannot seem to figure out a few things.

The basic idea seems to be to grow a colony so that you have a large, and happy, population to then tax. That seems simple enough.

However, I have a colony that has been at 0% tax for something like 40 years and the population is only at 462 million. The planet is a 100% quality planet. The population growth rate is 8%, however, it still seems it is taking forever for the population to grow. The happiness is +35.

If I turn the tax rate up to 35%, the income is about 3k which doesn't seem like that much.

I just feel like it is taking forever for the population to grow. Am I missing something?

[MatBailie]

My guess is that it may have already reach maximum population (which is determined by the size of the planet/moon). But population do emigrate periodically, bringing it back down slightly and so showing population growth again (instead of "MAX").

What size is the planet/moon? I'll have a look around for the maximum-population-size calculation.


Apparently I'm too new to post links, so I used my favourite search engine with "distant worlds universe population formula"

Plugging your numbers in there, do you have a planet size of about 4.3k? If so, you have already reached max population. If not, I'd love to see a saved game to have a look.

[Bingeling]

Are you sure the planet is 100% quality? 462 million is nothing in DW, something maybe relevant if the quality is like 20-30-40%?

A screenshot of the selection panel with the planet selected could help. Like this one:



(Never mind that planet is still not "mine", there is some more info if you own it).

[bandusdr]

Thank you for the replies! The world is much larger then 4.3k actually. I took a screenshot, per Bingeling's suggestion.

Here it is:






Edit: The growth rate went to 11% and the population went up since my first post as I ended up with a new leader with a bonus to population growth and there was a bit of immigration. 30m people in about 5 years which is the fastest it has grown yet.

[Bingeling]

The colony i fine, it should be very large and profitable once full. I would make a major detour to grab it (in the colonization phase).

Maybe something "fun" with Napoar?
Or maybe you have extermination/resettle policy moving them away?

Check the population policy.

[bandusdr]

Sorry for the confusion. This is my colony; I am playing as the Napoar.

I grabbed it right away when I saw it was 100% quality level. The population started at 30m and has taken nearly 55 years to get to 492m.

[Bingeling]

It is a mod. The Napoar looks like robots. They may have a bad feature causing this.

Are they migrated away? A small population don't breed that many passenger ship loads in a year...

[bandusdr]

I checked and they do not seem to have any "negative" effects related to growth. I have watched and I do not see any emigration occurring.

I'll try to load a vanilla game and see if things seem slow there as well. Thank you for your help!

[Falokis]

The easy way to force population to move is to raise taxes on the homeworld and drop to 0 taxes on new colony. Make the happiness at home about -10 due to taxes and they will flood over to the new world. The new population and high growth rate will increase the population quickly. This is the fastest way I've found to populate new planets. Once you get about a billion on the new world, fix the taxes on the homeworld (maybe lower than before to increase growth to catch up for the loss).

[bandusdr]

I just wanted to check back in here and say I think I may have figured out the problem. My leader had a population growth penalty of -20%. I dismissed him and got one with a 10% bonus instead and at this point I have some planet populations growing at a rate of 19%. So, takeaway here is that I can't forget to check my leader for penalties in the future?

Thanks again all!

[Bingeling]

It helps to know how things are supposed to look, so you look for the cause when something is off. It is a weird situation, and it is easier to cope with them once one knows the game quite well

[Flinkebeinchen]

Usually Passenger ships fetch Migrants to deliver them to a low populated world. Do you have Passenger ships? This works so well you can have massive amounts of people vanish when you have a low quality world, they keep dropping the max amount even is there is no room.

But back to your topic. The formula should be Max pop = 2.5x[(Planet Size/10000)^2]x[(Planet Quality/100)^2]

13.46M
14.80M if native type

[Yank31]

ORIGINAL: Flinkebeinchen

Usually Passenger ships fetch Migrants to deliver them to a low populated world. Do you have Passenger ships? This works so well you can have massive amounts of people vanish when you have a low quality world, they keep dropping the max amount even is there is no room.

But back to your topic. The formula should be Max pop = 2.5x[(Planet Size/10000)^2]x[(Planet Quality/100)^2]

13.46M
14.80M if native type

Sorry to high-jack but do we have a clear understanding of what "native type" includes, regarding this very bonus ? I certainly do not.

For instance : my current race, Paratis, is native of marshey-swamp planets. Now if, on a given marshey-swamp planet, I mix my population with another race that is also native from marshey-swamp, will I still get the +10% bonus ? And if yes, on which kind of population : paratis only, or both?

What if I mix my population with different races, that are not native from marshey, I think I read somewhere that the bonus would still apply if 50% of more of the population is native type. And... if yes, on which kind of population : 50% of paratis only, or everyone?


Well... this is off-topic. But if anyone has a quick answer to throw me, I'd appreciate.

[Apheirox]

I haven't played the Extended mod in years but the Napoar presumably remain unchanged. They have one of - or the - the lowest population growth rates of all factions. With a 12% rate, that planet is going to take a while to grow unless it receives a heavy influx of migrants. The fact that the planet is 100% quality doesn't mean the planet will grow rapidly - in fact, IIRC, planet quality has absolutely no effect on population growth rate.

Another important consideration for colony growth is its location. The 100% quality doesn't help if that planet is very far from your homeworld - the further away, the less likely for migration to happen. Moreover, if the planet is so distant you haven't been able to protect it from pirates properly that will greatly hurt its growth rate as well: Any pirates will scare away passenger ships and if freighters are also not reaching the planet so that it lacks resources and can't reach a high development level that will further stunt growth since low development levels incur a growth penalty.

In short: Just because it's a 100% planet doesn't mean it will grow well - even less so when playing Napoar. High-quality planets aren't necessarily worth colonizing if other factors detract from their value.

Finally, Bandus, your math is simply off and you have the wrong expectations. There is no magic going on. You said it yourself: The population growth rate is 8%, which is terrible... What is 8% of 100M? It's 8! That's over 12 years just to grow 100M. So yes, that planet will indeed take ages to grow on its own. With the Napoar, you are heavily reliant on migration, making colony location a major concern.

[Bingeling]

Barring very nasty corruption, planet quality is the most obvious factor when it comes to "what will be profitable". A 100% colony prospect is worth a detour.

It is true that it may not grow faster, but it will grow into something really valuable.

But as you say, if you can't protect it, having it makes little sense. I am not fond of colonies at the other edge of the galaxy, I like my clean borders.

[Apheirox]

Yet, this is evidently an example of a 100% planet not being worthwhile: He's been paying maintenance costs on that world for 50 years and it's only now starting to be able to turn a profit. Meanwhile, he spent time and money on a colony ship for that world - a colony ship that could have been better used to colonize a lesser, but closer planet that would have grown much faster. End result is in any case that colonizing this world has cost him 50-60K and gained him no direct benefit whatsoever.

In a best case scenario, his colonization of this world denied it to a competitor. Worst case, if he had left it alone somebody else might have colonized it and he could have conquered it to gain a large, developed world, rather than have this useless planet costing him upkeep for half a century. If he were simply playing for highest score/fastest finishing time, it would be much more attractive to have let somebody else grab it, then just take it over later.

All of these considerations just go to show why Distant Worlds is such a fine game, with the wealth of options and strategy to take into account.

[Bingeling]

He had the issue because he had a terrible leader. I have yet to have a leader that stop my colonies from growing, so I figure that was a major instance of bad luck. The higher quality prospects are the best ones even with such a leader, at least if we ignore what else they bring inside the borders due to their presence.

[Apheirox]

No, he had issues because he's playing a very low growth race and colonized a planet that for one reason or another (most likely: too distant from other worlds, both his own and other players') is not receiving immigrants. The -20% penalty on his leader wasn't helping, of course, but that wasn't the main reason why he got such poor results. Even if he'd been playing the Gizureans colonizing this world instead of a closer one was probably still the wrong decision.

Migration is a key factor to making colonization work, fast base growth rate or not. Distant Worlds is hardly a very competitive game, but it's still a good lesson to learn. Which is why this was an interesting thread.

[NephilimNexus]

Little trick: If you're playing Empire and thus have no direct control over private sector ship building, you can still encourage it along certain lines. First, build a bunch of really cheap, disposable Resort bases. Next go into your planner and set Tourism to max priority. You private sector should soon start cranking out passenger ships to meet the new tourism demand. Once you've got enough passenger ships built go and scrap the resort bases, then go back to your planner and make tourism minimum priority.

The passenger ships, having nothing else to do, will then get reassigned to migrant transport duty.

[Flinkebeinchen]

I made a quick spreadsheet with the formula above. Its an openoffice document (.ods). Just enter your Planetsize and Quality and you will get the Max Population.

I often used my calc for that, just after I made this in 10m I wonder why I didn't make that before.. lol