Soft population cap during pre-war planet gen?

[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.

[Way2co0l]

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]

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]

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.