GalCiv3 Forums
What does population do? What stats does it affect? How does it affect those stats? And where can I find answers to such simple questions? It's not in the "manual", or any other resource I could find.
Thanks in advance!
Population affects production which pretty much affects everything.
Production = 2 * pop ^ 0.7
Your production then is allocated to wealth, manufacturing, and research to set your raw research and manufacturing.
Your raw manufacturing is multiplied by your bonuses.
they say there are no stupid questions so here goes.
What is ^ ? I assume it is a symbol used in place of something not on a standard kb
In the end, high population drives everything from raw production to money and research.
It is a way to show the first value is the base value and the second is the exponent... more or less... 
Also pop affects morale. The more you go over the limit of your morale the lower your morale goes.
Think of your calculated morale as 100%. Each .1 of population over that morale is 1% unhappiness.
Sorry, but I felt a need to point out that 2*pop^0.7 is not the same as what you have written.
That's actually an interesting point. There must be a value at which an extra farm diminishes below the value of an extra factory when calculating the overall manu of a planet. same deal with wealth and research.
anyone worked out roughly what that point is yet?
i think the math is not that simple. you don't just build that extra farm, you may also need an approval building to keep those extra people happy (if they go down to content orr even discontent, you get a % penalty which probably more than counters the bonus production). and you first have to grow to that new pop cap, whereas a new factory is online and fully upgraded in a matter of a few turns.
so far, i usually sticked one farm on each somewhat large planet. with approval passives (tech/starbases/relics/harmony crystals) you can usually cover that extra population without needing approval buildings. once you go over the "happiness cap" you'll need extra approval to keep the extra people productive, so you need basically 2 tiles for each pop increase (farm and entertainment building) which i guess gets weaker and weaker since the formula for production per pop seems to be steep early on and gets flatter the higher you get.
to illustrate the formula a bit, here's some sample numbers (which i find easier to understand than the formula):
5 pop = 6.17 prod; 1.23 prod/pop; 2.23 total prod/pop*
10 pop = 10.02 prod; 1.002 prod/pop; 1.502 total prod/pop
15 pop = 13.31 prod; 0.887 prod/pop; 1.22 total prod/pop
20 pop = 16.3 prod; 0.814 prod/pop; 1.06 total prod/pop
25 pop = 19.04 prod; 0.761 prod/pop; 0.961 total prod/pop
etc.
EDIT: *added another column, including the one per planet colony capital (5 prod)
As Azunai_ says, the math isn't exactly simple for this. You generally have to sacrifice two production buildings per farm, and moreover since population affects production and factories multiply production, you can have multiple points at which it's better to build a (farm + approval structure) than two factories/labs/markets. Additionally, there's a question of time. Farms don't instantly increase your production; you have to build up to it. Thus, in the short term, it will most likely be better to build an output structure than a farm; in the long term, the picture is a little more messy.
At any rate, you can check whether a farm or a factory is better in the long run testing if
(B + 2 * (1 + F + f)^0.7 * (P + p)^0.7) * (1 + M) > (B + 2 * (1 + F)^0.7 * P^0.7) * (1 + M + A)
where B is the flat production of the planet, F is any percentage bonus to food production that the planet has, f is any percentage bonus to food production that adding your farm will add, P is the planet's maximum population without the farm you're considering adding, p is the population you'll get by adding the farm, M is the planet's overall output bonus, and A is the increase in the output bonus you'll get if you build output boosting structures instead of farms and approval structures. Express all percentages as decimals, and note that I'm assuming in the above formula that you add enough morale structures to keep the approval rate constant; if you don't, this gets messier because the approval rate has a modifier to output that stacks multiplicatively with the output bonus from structures/planet abilities/etc, and I believe that the approval modifier is a piecewise linear function defined by a set of points in the XML rather than something easier to work with in the formulas. If the LHS is greater than the RHS, then you're better off with the population in the long run, while if the RHS is greater than the LHS, you're better off with the factories/labs/markets. M can be calculated as
M = [manufacturing fraction] * [manufacturing bonus] + [research fraction] * [research bonus] + [money fraction] * [money bonus]
A further complication is that these points do not remain constant for all farm types, factory types, and total levels to each type of structure.
I personally would suggest not bothering with farms on most planets; at +25% to the desired output type per factory/lab/market and +2 maximum population per farm, you're not going to see any long-term benefit to adding a farm unless you have more than 10 tiles to play with, assuming you need to build 1 approval structure per farm, and you're going to fall behind in the short term by building farms instead of factories/labs/markets (though there could be a condition, say if you're building a purse world with its base production, where you'd have a short-term benefit because the population reaches the base maximum population and then the maximum population with the farm included before you complete all the markets, which means you'd finish the build up period somewhat faster, letting you switch to the chosen output type sooner; I wouldn't concern myself terribly much over this, however).
farms upgrade really aggressively though. Towards the endgame 1 farm is worth over 10 pop. I would generally neglect approval as it can be obtained by other means than buildings. arguably so can pop though - monsantium!
I've generally built farms as I approach the pop cap, then let the planet grow towards the cap again, replacing another building each time. usually running at 100% approval. At some point though this strategy is likely to fall off hugely, to the point its better to let the planet sit at max pop - and I'm curious as what pop this kicks in.
Using solver in excel ignoring dimension ignoring adjacency. You basically need 1 farm per factory. You do have to account for approval and other buildings. For the most part it gets the job done if you don't want to pull a calculator out. Approval buildings get a flat 1 increase per adjacency bonus and farms get .05. So it's actually not 1:1 farm to approval building.
no idea when that infinite growth thing will stop working. the math probably gets really messy once you try to factor in size increments of the planet. that size 10 planet isn't going to stay size 10 for the whole game. chances are it will be in the 20's after the ultimate terraforming is complete. the "perfect balance" will shift not only with tech upgrades to the relevant structures but also with every new tile you get (first gradually, then at the final stage it gets crazy on some planets that can suddenly get 10 or more extra tiles within a few turns of ultra-terraforming). and the perfect blance if different for every planet, since stuff like the size, possible adjacency bonuses, planetary modifiers etc. all have some impact.
probably too complicated to work out a formula for all of that. maybe some rules of thumb for early and mid game, but once you get into the late game stage, all balance goes to hell anyway 
So what does it mean when a bonus tile gives, say, +2 pop for structures built on top of it?
Which is it? Don't build farms on <10 colonies and only in late game, or one per factory, which seems kind of extreme?
It grants +2 levels to population buildings built on the tile. What this means varies depending on what you build on it; the farms in the Terran tech tree grant +0.5 maximum population per level, while the Colonial Hospital line grants +5% growth per level (I think it's 5% anyways; I don't remember off the top of my head).
If monsantium and harmony crystals have an equal chance of appearing (I have no idea whether they do or not), then they basically cancel one another out of the picture. Approval relics and starbases could help, though I'd point out that approval relics grant percentage bonuses to morale, at least last I knew, and the game has taken the approach that percentage morale bonuses are factored in after flat bonuses and penalties, so they're not as useful as they might at first appear.
Furthermore, the fact that farms upgrade aggressively doesn't really help them that much. If you ignore level effects and approval and assume a base maximum population of 5 and a flat production bonus of 5, then:
(tiles available). (optimal number of farms at +2 population/farm), (optimal number of factories at +0.25 multiplier/factory)
(tiles available). (optimal number of farms at +8 population/farm), (optimal number of factories at +0.75 multiplier/factory)
This is more like a 33%/66% split farms and factories than Illauna's 1:1 farms:factories ratio, and it's more or less the same with late game farms + late game factories as for early game farms + early game factories.
Additionally, perhaps you play on different game settings than I do, but in my experience approval relics are too rare to rely on to help with approval rates, and as I dislike stacking starbases I tend not to bother with getting anything approaching the optimal 5 or 12 starbase ring (depending on effect radius), and usually don't bother with getting more than one starbase to cover each world. If you don't ignore morale effects and you don't have the silly +20 morale or whatever it is from having a dozen starbases stacked over your planet, then farms become far, far worse.
cool that's about what my intuition thought. I was working off 25/75 roughly. I think by the time you factor in production bonuses etc this will be true.
generally I use the main landmass for factories, stacking as much adjacency as possible, and remaining landmass for farms, trying to achieve about 25/75. As a very rough approximate.
joeball123 math a pretty serious and accurate... I have not done them as explicit as he and rather used a rough estimation.
The general rule of thumb in most cases are that you use about 40-60% of a planet for supportive infrastructure, slightly less for pure industrial planets. You then dedicate the rest for whatever you want this planet primarily to do.
Supportive infrastructure may be some industry, food, approval, influence, tourism or military. Or some combination of these.
I also find that things also are not so simple in reality. Tile placement, tile bonuses, trade goods, placement of the capital, planet bonuses and the strategical positioning of the planet. Not to mention current empire needs, strategical goals, shipyard sponsoring.
I often don't even upgrade many improvement in the early and mid game until I'm sure the focus if that planet will not change or simply move improvement due to new possibilities from terraforming, this as I move through the Ages of War.
From a strategical point of view some primary and secondary function of worlds is useful. You might want to sacrifice some long term research or wealth production for the ability to produce ships faster during a potential war. This is not completely unreasonable. This is also where worlds with mainly tier one improvements can prove very useful since you can easily make a research colony into a production powerhouse in a few turns and some money in times of war.
[Assuming I am not running any projects].
If one checks the output boxes on the bottom left of the colony screen, you will see the bonuses listed for manufacturing, research, and wealth. Also you will see Raw Manufacturing, Raw Research, and Income in each respective box. (Why the last isn't called Raw Income I don't know). If you take the raw numbers and multiply by 1 plus the bonuses for each output you will get your actual production. Furthermore, wherever you put your cursor on the production wheel, the TOTAL of the three raw productions will be the same, and it will be split according to how you allocate to the three types of output. Easy enough, every time I have checked it is spot on.
So the only real trick is to figure out what the actual "raw production" is. There is a big problem with distinguishing between manufacturing and production, which are quite different. Production is the raw output, manufacturing is how much manufacturing you get. Confusing at best. But not only that, there is such a thing as "Construction". Which is sometimes Production.
Illuana has given a formula based on the entries in the file GalCiv3GlobalDefs, which gives the exponent as 0.7 and the multiplier as 2.
First, the raw production is affected by a multiplier that depends on the approval (the approval to production curve). At 100%, it is +25%, which I mention because that is the example I will show. Other values are listed in the GlobalDefs file. So this multiplier needs to be applied after the above calculation. So at 100% approval I guess that
Production = 1.25 * (2 * pop ^ 0.7 + bonuses to raw production) (FYI, at 50% approval there is no bonus, and below that there is a penalty or negative bonus).
Second, there are various raw production modifiers. For example, a colony capital gives a flat +5 to total production. A Durantium refinery gives a flat +1 to total production. A racial trait, productive, gives a modifier to the raw production, depending on whether you take the first or second choice. A starbase factory at level one gives +1 Construction. And this latter does factor in because if you look at the raw output of a colony and destroy a nearby starbase factory, the raw production will decrease. In my observation it decreased by 1.25 per factory, suggesting it was being multiplied by the approval factor.
For example, from a save game I check a colony that had population of 4.0. It has an approval bonus of 25%, a colony capital bonus of +5, and a Durantium Refinery bonus of +1. (Curious that if I destroy the refinery I lose 1.5 to raw manufacturing instead of 1.25 as expected. Oh well). There are three lvl 1 factory starbases nearby. A racial trait of +1 to production (good question as to whether this gives a +1 to Raw Production as well as +15% to manufacturing...I am thinking it does!) gives a +15% bonus to manufacturing, and it has a reported Raw Manufacturing at 100% manufacturing of 19.1. Question is, how to get from this data to 19.1.
My guess would be 1.25 * (2 * 4^0.7 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 1) = 19.09 That's pretty close. (3 SB factories, a colony capital, a +1 production trait, and a Durantium Refinery). But problem is if I destroy the starbases and the refinery the calculation is now wrong: I get 14.1 instead of 15.3 as shown in game.
My question is whether any of this is correct and my suggestion is that things ought to be labelled much more clearly.
I think it is about time for someone to give the accurate formulas that calculate the Raw Production. Never mind the effect of projects, which is a different can of worms.
FYI the system example:
In terms of when to build farms, I can say that for a Q10 planet with no real research bonuses....if you want to optimize research over 75 turns, the answer is...never. You don't build farms, the most important thing is keeping your approval at 100%.
I made a thread about optimizing a Q10 planet that covers the details.
I do still have to try that for higher end farms and see if it changes, but for a regular farm its not worth it.
But that is only in the short term... I agree that in the short term you are mostly better of with pure enhancement improvement. But games can last many hundreds of turns, even well more than a thousand turns if you don't use that victory condition. After a certain point you will gain allot more from population improvements rather than pure bonus enhancement buildings.
@Bamdorf: i think you got the starbase thing wrong. the pretty sure "1 construction" is the cost of the upgrade (i.e. 1 construction module) - not the yield. there are some higher end modules that require 2 construction points, so it makes sense that the game actually shows how many modules are needed.
the production bonus you see is probably the baseline bonus of the "economy ring" which is 10% bonus to total production. the factory upgrade 8and subsequent upgrades) seem rather lackluster. if i understand it correctly, that 5% bonus is basically the equivalent of a single +1 adjacency bonus to a single building, nothing more. so it's usually a good idea to build several baseline economy bases rather than building only one and wasting constructors on the upgrade modules. the approval mods are decent, the others are weak.
but i may be wrong on that account. not sure if the starbase mfg/res/wealth boni stack additive or multiplicative with planet improvements.
EDIT: judging from your screenshot, it seems to be the case. when you add up all the bonuses and apply the total number to the 19 raw production, you get pretty much exactly the displayed mfg value (with a bit of rounding error). so it's fairly save to skip the starbase factory- that's a +5% additive bonus for anywhere between a 40 and > 100 production investment (depending on how much you pay for the constructor)
Looks like you are right...the econ ring does give 10% production bonus (not manufacturing). And I also miscounted the starbases, as one of them is a military base! Ouch.
That would make my calculation
My guess would be 1.25 * (2 * 4^0.7 + 5 + 1 + 1) * 1.2 where I have dropped the +3 for starbases but added two 10% multiplicative additions, which is a factor of 1.2.
This gives 18.4 which off a bit (19.1 being the raw production stated in game). I get 18.6 if I do the 10%s sequentially (1.1 x 1.1) but that doesn't help much.
Thanks for the catch at least I am a little closer now!
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