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I'm still fairly new, but I've played a few full games at this point, all of them pre-warp with Humans and with very little automation. For a change of pace, I decided to make my new game "Classic Era" with a random race and ended up with the Ugnari. I'm only a couple years in, but it seems like population growth is working entirely differently and I don't understand why. In my previous games, I could keep taxes at 0% and get 10+% growth on a world with a compatible population. But right now I've got homeworld taxes at 5% (+28 happy faces) and I'm getting 1% growth on 10b population. I've still got a couple more strategic resources to secure, but there are no messages in the colony screen about strategic shortages, so I assume the colony is still working happily off of its original stockpile. I've got a couple of luxuries, about the same number as I had in my pre-warp games at a comparable point. I know the Ugnari have slow growth, but 10% vs 1% seems quite extreme.

Does anyone have any insight as to what's happening here? Thanks.

edit: I should probably mention that I'm playing with Icemania's AI mod on Hard, though I don't think that should make a difference here.

I double the mod matters, it could be that difficulty affects reproduction rate, but "Hard" is not that high.

In the Icemania mod I have lying around here (1.05) I find in the race files:

Humans: 1.18 reproduction rate
Ugnari: 1.14 reproduction rate

That is quite a bit lower.

If you look at your colony details (colony screen), you should see what resources they want. From the race file they don't have anything special reproduction rate resource, though.

I guess development level matters too, check that yours is 100 (or 105 with resource bonus). Having less than 10 luxuries available do probably hurt.

As for tax, 0% is better than 5%, but not that much better.

Check your leader and colony governor. They may carry negative bonuses to reproduction rate, I believe. It could of course happen that you always had a positive bonus as human, but that is hard to test in hindsight.

As for what I remember, without 0 tax 3% seems a "normal" reproduction rate of a random race.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

That is quite a bit lower.

Sure, but not by an order of magnitude, right?

If you look at your colony details (colony screen), you should see what resources they want.

There's nothing in the colony screen about missing resources.

I guess development level matters too, check that yours is 100 (or 105 with resource bonus).

How exactly do you check the development level? I've just been looking at the happiness modifier, but that's not really a direct measurement. Is there a number in a screen somewhere that indicates this?

My homeworld suddenly jumped to 5.5% growth, but I'm not sure what triggered it. Maybe that I just settled a colony with Carbon Fibre, which I was previously lacking?

Building a mine on a colony does not matter in any case, having the resource in store is what matters. And if you "just settled" there has been no time to bring resources to the growth colony in question.

Development level also run under the name of culture. It is visible in the selection panel with colony selected as a musical note. And it is quite obvious in the colony list. Usual values are 100 (10 resources). 105 (they also have their racial bonus resource), 135 (in addition they got an ultra rare in store). And bonus to development level from a ruin on the colony is on top.

They seem to need some population to reach 100.



The C value. Capital is 105, the two others struggle, a lot. It could influence population growth, I am not quite sure.

I believe it is also one of the axis in the blue dot square shown on colonies when zoomed out. One axis is population, the other is development level. A large (5x5) square - a fully developed, large colony.

You're right that many factors affect population growth, but tax rate and happiness are high on the list.

Population growth can also be influenced by:
- race
- government system
- planetary governor's abilities
- access to luxuries
- construction of wonders
- construction of facilities that improve happiness

Yes, many of these things indirectly impact population growth by changing happiness.
I think immigration may also be a factor, but I don't know a way to measure its impact.

Take a look at all these factors, perhaps you'll spot something.

Thanks guys. The growth seems to have increased to what I'd expect now, but I didn't make a save file at the time so it's hard to check what went wrong. I'm guessing development level had something to do with it, or maybe there were resource shortages I overlooked. I had seen the culture number before, but didn't realize it was the same as development.

Low pop growth percentage seems to appear sometimes when population reaches somewhere around half of max pop. It doesn't happen every game, and it doesn't seem to matter if you have resources, culture, or whatever. After a few billion growth it goes away. Why this happens sometimes, who knows.