What does my population want?

Primarily, although not exclusively, they want two things:

1) Low taxes.
2) Lots of space.

That is, the higher your tax rate and the more people you have on a planet, the less happy the people are. After that come all the various morale-adjusting buildings/resources/starbases/technologies/trade goods.

It's a good idea to keep in mind that farms - which increase the population ceiling on a planet - indirectly make people unhappier (because of that whole more-people-means-less-happy thing). So don't build them until your planet is nearly full and, when you reach that point, check the morale before you build the farm. If it's already getting low, hold off on building the farm until you've done something to improve morale (such as built an Entertainment Center or captured a morale resource).

- Ash

What's the population? Once you get up towards 20b or higher it gets *very* hard to please them simply due to the incredible overcrowding.

Not sure about TA yet, but in DA that area between 16 and 20 billion the morale starts dropping like a rock. Above 20 billion a falling rock couldn't even keep up with the rate the morale drops . Good thing is if you can get enough good bonuses to push past 25 Bil. with acceptable happiness it doesn't drop any further and you can push on to 100 bil. if you have enough room for all the farms.

Hi!

You may find the wiki article on approval usefull.

BR, Iztok

Hmmm, you have any exact numbers for that?

morale bonus + improvement f.e.

Hmm. Sociological perspective. Any sane population will learn to regulate their numbers. With high infant mortality, families would as a matter of course have 4+ children. As infant mortality drops, so does average family size. However, there are always some people that think they were placed on the planet expressly to "go forth and multiply." IF the society has a mechanism to deal with such people, the continuing rise in population CAN be nullified. (In fact, there would be a distinct danger of negative population growth.) The obvious solution is to ship such people off to other planets where population increase is desireable.

In game mechanics, population WILL continue to increase until the cap is hit. Our only remedy is to build Colony ships and mass ship large numbers of people to frontier worlds. But any well-developed society would have an extensive system of population mobility already in place. Instead of shifting a block of population all at once to planet Hicksville, there _should_ be an assumed bleed off of population pressure as citizens move themselves to somewhere with more elbow room, but with all the comforts of home already in place. That is, a planet with 16+ billion citizens would have a continuous flow of civilian traffic to planets with 8-12 billion citizens. And that traffic would be something that the citizens did for themselves -- NOT the government.

So, my perspective is that when a planet hits its population limit, there should NOT be any negative Morale modifiers. And if anything, the surplus population growth should be given the the surrounding planets that have not as yet hit their population limit.

["Ah, but what happens when EVERY planet in the Empire is at its population limit?" Well, what's happening in China on that score?]

Not sure exactly what numbers your looking for. My morale bonuses vary from game to game and I just usually use a couple of "rules" as such to decide which planets get 20B(2 Adv. Farms/2 VRCs)or 13B (1 Adv. Farm/ no VRCs). Of course I am still talking about as they apply to DL and DA. Everything's a little different in TA .

I sometimes have a 3 farm planet or contemplate using the % food magigger. So some of them are not happy - how much is it really going to effect you?

Having an odd 30 billion population planet in an empire of 400 billion or so is going to have very little effect on your overall approval if the rest of the planets are sitting on average 80-90% (for example)

What you will want to avoid is the planet going into negative population growth because there isnt any room for anybody to bend over to pick up the newborns that are then trampled.

The benefit here is getting a great deal more out of your economy buildings - personally I find it appropriate that the best stock market worlds are populated by the depressed and unhappy

I am reminded of Larry Niven's books, "The Mote In God's Eye" and "The Gripping Hand."

IF a society can NOT damp down its citizens' drive to procreate in ever increasing numbers, the day will abruptly come when the stocks of necessary resources are insufficient to meet the demand adequately. When that translates into large scale die-off from starvation and inadequate health care, the Have-Nots WILL rise up and take from the Haves. The resulting population reduction (French Revolution, Russian Oktober Revolution) will cause something of a calming effect as the survivors work out a stop-gap political solution that may or may not reconfigure the system to function more effectively.

HOWEVER, we are dealing with interstellar societies. Whatever interstellar government is in control will NOT condone something that disruptive. (Either because of the general citizenry's willingness to help out on the premise that, "We're all in this together," or because of the government's concern that such disorder may spread to other planets in the empire. The upshot of that is that _something_ would be worked out to compensate for that planet having hit its population cap. And that something has very limited possibilities:
1) Shifting population to less crowded areas (other planets).
2) Draconian birth control (serious drop in Morale).
3) Tech improvement that either expands resources or distributes resources more efficiently.
4) Shipping in additional resources to alleviate the effects of "not enough to go around". (Which is a VERY temporary measure, as the population would then expand to where even that amount becomes insufficient.)

My bet is on severe birth control, but developed in such a way that citizens _want_ to have fewer offspring.

High pop. Keep them happy with women and beer.

Thanks for reminding me about Mote. I read that years ago and remember being blown away - I want to read it again now

Also, on the issue you brought up Captain Patch, I would not entirely discount education of the population and a responsible cultural development to work within the limits of a planets resources.

Are we not in the grip of working through these issues as a species? No doubt it will take something like permanent damage to planet earth and billions of deaths, but as a species we do tend to learn from such events (all the while with intellectuals wringing their hands and yelling 'I told you so!' at the top of their voices - not that i'm knocking intellectuals, far from it in fact).

I know the inner cynic will tend to discount this optimistic view (and heaven help us when billions of deaths is the 'optimistic view') but any in depth review of human history will notice our ability for an enducated majority to become a powerful force for reform in the face of a great deal of suffering.

Eg: Slavery, The Womens Rights Movement, Racial Issues, The Democratic Process (still a work in progress here too - couldnt resist the cheap shot), Science etc

Apologies for my rambling if it is recieved as such - English Lit major

Edit: I just realised 'Science' from my list may not make immediate sense - think of where we would be without it. I guess in a sense I'm implying ignorance causes suffering: eg medicine, not having enough Discovery Spheres and falling behind on tech, deciding against lead pipe plumbing (sorry Romans).