Population Growth needs to be increased/population carrying capacity.

[Malorn0]

So, I play on slow development, which means I spend a long time at the lower end of the tech tree. This means no super tech robots, and in general often less mechanized war is involved.

And I have to tell you, population growth does not keep up. I was fighting a war with another major of roughly similar population, a war I finally won, but it left us both badly dented. No nukes were involved, and no city actually suffered any mass death events. The loss of population was purely from combat losses. This is realistic, but what isn't realistic was that our populations could not recover. I managed an extended period of peace after this war, but the resulting high civ levels left me with barely any growth across my large population. I had 9 zones each with more than 100,000 people each, and often total natural growth was barely over 1000 each turn. That's barely more than a single cloning center, which I did not have any of this time. From a realism perspective, populations often bounce back after a war which leads into a well-supplied peace.

Now I get it, population should not be an infinite resource, but at the same time, it should not be an inescapable bottleneck. So let's look at solutions.

First off, I think we need more bounce-back in population, that does not rely on very specific artifacts. Natural growth is the obvious source, but I think that can used in a more interesting way. Already the primary limitation of population is the food source, but it acts as a hard limit and is rarely important since the entire land can be covered in dome farms if necessary. Let's add something a bit more interesting which adds a bit of bounceback. My thought is that we take all the controlled territory, and adjust each hex based on a terrain modifier (deserts, ice, mountains being bad, whereas green areas are good, coastline good, etc.) This would result in a 'carrying capacity' number which roughly represents how much population you can easily support in nice places to live. The further under that number you go, you gain a bonus to percent population growth representing having many 'frontiers' which are pleasant and available. After you reach that number a penalty is increasingly applied showing a reversed effect. Radiation would obviously make that terrain modifier very bad, of course.

This means that nicer land is more valuable, and also makes even empty land have a base value worth fighting over. It will also 'catch up' nations that have fallen behind in population, while preventing insane population growth past all limits. The overall system is very simple, producing an easily accessible number. The effect should not be overwhelming, but just a consistent trend. I also strong suggest it counts all soldiers in your units as well, which means there are practical limits to armies.

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Now to the persuasive section. This would be a good change, since insane population growth is already possible, but is based on cloning facilities, etc. This would balance it out a bit more, and improve the 'empire' part of the game. It also is a good change because it would make every single hex have a small inherent value which isn't related to anything but the base terrain, making interesting choices and planets. Basing on terrain would also produce natural outcomes where vast desert planets would simply never reach the same populations as verdant ocean worlds. This makes the games on such worlds even more different, with one having large populations to throw at each other, whereas the other may see much smaller scale battles.

It would also help deal with the severe downsides of starting near non-conventional minors which lack cities, since that often leaves one with a massive population gap compared to nations which had minors with cities. At least this way the land would be valuable for future growth, assuming you could survive long enough. Adding in radiation also makes end-game more interesting, making cleanup more important and contributing to the changes if nukes are used on a wide scale, all populations having less ability to recover as a result.