Unhappiness due to overpopulation is often meant as a mechanic that will promote you to expand, At least in other similar games. If you just let your population grow and grow on a small number of planets early, you will not yet have the tech to keep them happy with their cramped living conditions. So the only way to combat that and remain effective is to expand. 

I would also not be surprised if happiness was a modifier for migration, in which case planets with lots of people would not be favored over the ones with lots of space.  So the way I see it happiness based on population make sense from a mechanical point of view. 

However you are right that it is a bit silly that the other FIDS do not suffer as well, having way too many people would mean a lot of waste due to all sorts of problems... but just to keep it simple.. if people need to live somewhere, there is no room to build factories etc. 

Would be interesting to have population number matter more I think. 

MikeLemmer wrote:

Stalker0 wrote:

But yes, it would be nice if there are techs that allow for increasing of that cap. Could be space stations, or just a special mega city project, or perhaps even a specialization. 

Or the system improvement. As a system levels up, more population is possible.

That's already in the game. The pop cap for each planet increases by 1 per system upgrade.

Bingo. Or three in the Vodyani's case.

Stalker0 wrote:

But yes, it would be nice if there are techs that allow for increasing of that cap. Could be space stations, or just a special mega city project, or perhaps even a specialization. 

Or the system improvement. As a system levels up, more population is possible.

That's already in the game. The pop cap for each planet increases by 1 per system upgrade.

But yes, it would be nice if there are techs that allow for increasing of that cap. Could be space stations, or just a special mega city project, or perhaps even a specialization. 

Or the system improvement. As a system levels up, more population is possible.

Alright, for reference, here's some of the current Food/Happiness mechanics I've seen in my matches:

• Each population consumes 2 food per turn.
• You gain another population for every 300 food you gain. This threshold never increases; doesn't matter if you have 2 pop or 20 pop, the next pop is 300 food.
• Overcrowded penalties begin once a planet is 70% full. They peak at 100% full, which is every available pop slot filled.

Note that every planet you can colonize in Eras I and II has at least 2 food per pop, so even if you don't build any food buildings, they will only starve due to anomaly penalties or blockades. And since population growth sticks at 300 food per pop, the more pop these planets have, the more food they'll grow and the quicker their population increases. It's only once you start colonizing Era 3 planets you have to start worrying about feeding them.

Aiyen wrote:

I elaborated a bit on my point in my previous post! But I can see a bit more is needed, and I just thought of it.. so what the heck! :) 

Any further malus was, if for example you have a planet specialization that allowed you to increase the cap by say 2 more population. What would the downsize be ? It should not just be get two more pop, and all the extra FIDS output that would bring for free.

I can see the problem with such an idea.. either it is irrelevant compared to the others, or it is too OP and will be the default choice. 

At least if it does not bring some sort of negative modifier. But this goes for all sort of specialization options, I do think they should come with downsides.. instead of just a bonus to one thing. I am not fond of the whole.. lets start making more out of the same amount of resources approach. 

I do not see an issue in perhaps having a late game tech which allows you to build something to increase the cap. 

And let us not forget the politics system. It would make all sorts of sense to have a law which can increase population. However if you lack the support to maintain it, you are going to get some nasty overpopulation modifiers. Could of course also make birth control into a law, and you can only control population growth with that law in effect. 

I would see it as extra population slots in exchange for a hefty Overcrowded happiness penalty. Lower the default pop cap of planets and replace the hidden "Overpopulation unhappiness" with this. That way you have less players wondering why their system's happiness is suddenly 30 lower.

Aiyen wrote:

Unhappiness due to overpopulation is often meant as a mechanic that will promote you to expand, At least in other similar games. If you just let your population grow and grow on a small number of planets early, you will not yet have the tech to keep them happy with their cramped living conditions. So the only way to combat that and remain effective is to expand. 

I would also not be surprised if happiness was a modifier for migration, in which case planets with lots of people would not be favored over the ones with lots of space.  So the way I see it happiness based on population make sense from a mechanical point of view. 

However you are right that it is a bit silly that the other FIDS do not suffer as well, having way too many people would mean a lot of waste due to all sorts of problems... but just to keep it simple.. if people need to live somewhere, there is no room to build factories etc. 

Would be interesting to have population number matter more I think. 

But we already have a hard cap on population, plus a malus for expanding outwards. Surely a further penalty still seems unnecessary.

Aiyen wrote:

Unhappiness due to overpopulation is often meant as a mechanic that will promote you to expand, At least in other similar games. If you just let your population grow and grow on a small number of planets early, you will not yet have the tech to keep them happy with their cramped living conditions. So the only way to combat that and remain effective is to expand. 

I would also not be surprised if happiness was a modifier for migration, in which case planets with lots of people would not be favored over the ones with lots of space.  So the way I see it happiness based on population make sense from a mechanical point of view. 

However you are right that it is a bit silly that the other FIDS do not suffer as well, having way too many people would mean a lot of waste due to all sorts of problems... but just to keep it simple.. if people need to live somewhere, there is no room to build factories etc. 

Would be interesting to have population number matter more I think. 

Honestly, easiest way to do that would probably be to have system improvements take up population slots, make players decide how much of their living space they want to give up for various boosts.

...Actually, I really like that idea. It makes deciding which System Improvements to build much tougher than the current "build everything you can without going into debt" tactic. Would need to work out a few snags first, though...

There should be a cap on population since population directly equals FIDS output. 

But yes, it would be nice if there are techs that allow for increasing of that cap. Could be space stations, or just a special mega city project, or perhaps even a specialization. 

Ofc. there should also be a downsize then. 

Another thing we have not considered is how any changes to the current system is going to affect the (inevitable) race that is going to be focused on rapid population growth. 

I really disliked the horatio in the original game because they would always end up being my main opponent on larger maps due to their growth. It got kind of old quick. And this was mainly because of the way FIDS scale with population. 

For cravers it was never really that huge of an issue, since they have a built in limiter on FIDS. Overall I think a similar mechanic needs to be in place when other races reach really high population densities. 

Food is currently the odd man out of Endless Space's resources because it's the only one where producing too much of it is a bad thing

    That is exactly what i think, food is the only resourse that end up penalizing you. 

The main problem with ES2 and food is that there is a CAP on population on planets (while in endless legends i sometimes ended up with cities with 60 population)

A tech in era 4 that would allow for space station building (adding population) or another way of increasing max pop thresold would be great

Romeo wrote:

But why? The system in place is preventing you from stopping that population from growing anyways. If it were a choice, you and I would be of the exact same opinion, but the fact that you can do nothing to prevent people from breeding the planet in to rebellion sometimes is ridiculous.

Well, technically you could stop them from growing... through some rather finicky micromanagement of where the population is, destroying excess food buildings, etc. I doubt the dev's intention is to use food to punish players who don't micromanage, though.

I'm not sure why we're being penalized for doing something anyways. Tech, Dust, Science and Influence are ALL straight positives. There's absolutely no downside to literally any of them. The only thing that gets punished is Food. Which is dumb anyways: If a player has done something successful, they shouldn't be punished in the name of giving others a better chance. Could you imagine if every time you built a ship your opponents got a free ship of their own? It would give them a chance, but it would be frustrating as hell.

You took the words right out of my mouth. Food is currently the odd man out of Endless Space's resources because it's the only one where producing too much of it is a bad thing. Not only that, but the penalty it causes is vague & hidden underneath the Happiness modifiers. If you want excessive production to have a drawback, there's already ways in the game to boost one resource at the expense of another: it's codified under the Senate Laws (for instance, the Industrial law that boosts Dust production at the expense of Happiness). Leave standard food production and population caps w/o any drawbacks, and if the player wants to squeeze in a few extra population slots per planet at the expense of Happiness, have a law that enables them to do so they know what the drawback is and can choose whether to accept the tradeoff.

NOTE: Looking back at previous 4X games I've played, I've realized Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had a similar system: after a city reached X population, extra population started becoming Drones who didn't work and would cause Rebellions. However, in that game I found it manageable because A)there were more options to increase Happiness and reduce Drones, and B) if all else failed, you could negate the Drones by turning part of the population into Specialists, taking a small hit to resource production in the process. My standard procedure was to make temporary Specialists until I could build the Holotheatres and Arenas to reduce the number of Drones.

Aiyen wrote:

Got to say that I do not really agree here. 

Getting more and more population should always mean that you get a penalty to happiness... which ultimately have to be solved by either policy or technology. 

It would be interesting to have options to say a system should no longer grow, so you can control growth. Perhaps limit it to certain political parties or government types. 

As for the "food groups" thing. What you are describing is effectively just a sector based system. While I am in favor of that, then that has more to do to avoid the "silly" over colonization penalty (I know why it is there, but it is not a good solution to that problem). 

I would rather like to see a system where you could decide if you want growth... also as population increase, as well as infrastructure, available food production areas should diminish. IE the more stuff you build, and the more people you get, the less food you will have available for production. 

Also we do have planetary specializations... which are about the only thing that is unique to planets. As well as system specializations. These two combined with some ties to the political system could put in a system so you have to be more careful about how you manage your system. 

For example if you set a planet to be food specialized it could have a modifier that would reduce the max pop by X depending on size. Also it would reduce all other FIDS on the planet. That way you would have to balance your systems way more. 

Ofc. via trade it should be possible to have food supply trains, so you can effectively create food systems that feed most of your other systems. Such a system would make war and other strategic aspects a lot more interesting. 

But why? The system in place is preventing you from stopping that population from growing anyways. If it were a choice, you and I would be of the exact same opinion, but the fact that you can do nothing to prevent people from breeding the planet in to rebellion sometimes is ridiculous.

XDAvenger93 wrote:

let's be honest here: no system where having a high amount of something usefull and good results in a negative will be realistic. It's a rubber band mechanic to prevent snowball effects. Could it be handled better and less obviously? I'd like to think so but I curently don't have an ideea how (though it will be an interesting thinking experiement).

I'm not sure why we're being penalized for doing something anyways. Tech, Dust, Science and Influence are ALL straight positives. There's absolutely no downside to literally any of them. The only thing that gets punished is Food. Which is dumb anyways: If a player has done something successful, they shouldn't be punished in the name of giving others a better chance. Could you imagine if every time you built a ship your opponents got a free ship of their own? It would give them a chance, but it would be frustrating as hell.

But then we are talking about late game technology that will always create snowball effects. Either through dust accumulation, military power etc. But for the early -mid game it should be more of a struggle to balance everything out. 

I have to admit that the victories I enjoyed the least in ES 1 was the dust accumulation one... it would always happen WAY before a tech victory... and a military victory was always a race against this victory condition. In fact all the other conditions where a race against it... 

I normally played without it because it just got boring and it was a nonsensical condition. 

But yeah long story short, I do not mind end game tech which offset the balance and makes it possible to create super systems that will put you on a snow ball to victory. 

Aiyen wrote:

It is all good that you can have a lot of resource A... but it should come at the expense of the others.

Certainly in the early and midgame, yes. But remember we are on a trajectory towards emulating the power of the Endless. So in later eras I hope to see abundances that are not punished. 

Remember Dust Virtualization from ES1? All food surplus converted to industry - I considered it an "endgame accelerator". The opposite of the rubber band anti-snowball measures, instead the sort of thing you appreciate when a game has gone on long enough and it's time to win.

Overpopulation is by definition not going to be a positive. Even in real life over population is a real issue that is making problems.  So it is realistic and not just a rubber band mechanic.  Overcolonization is a rubber band mechanic that is there to prevent snowball effects however. 

But those are two separate issues. 

It is all good that you can have a lot of resource A... but it should come at the expense of the others. It is just realistic. You cannot maximize everything at once.. well you can but it does not offer any interesting mechanics, and certainly removes all choice from the equation. 

I personally thing it would be refreshing to have food production on a newly colonized planet being high.. and then as the planet developers it starts to drop in food production until the point where it simply does not have any. 

This was my initial experience with food and I had a terrible time making enough early game. 

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/21503-the-food-balance-is-all-wrong-oct-13?page=1

let's be honest here: no system where having a high amount of something usefull and good results in a negative will be realistic. It's a rubber band mechanic to prevent snowball effects. Could it be handled better and less obviously? I'd like to think so but I curently don't have an ideea how (though it will be an interesting thinking experiement).

MikeLemmer wrote:

• Excess Food -> More Population + Higher Happiness -> Increased Manpower

Or perhaps more realistically:

Excess Food -> Fatter Population + Higher Happiness -> Reduced Industry

Got to say that I do not really agree here. 

Getting more and more population should always mean that you get a penalty to happiness... which ultimately have to be solved by either policy or technology. 

It would be interesting to have options to say a system should no longer grow, so you can control growth. Perhaps limit it to certain political parties or government types. 

As for the "food groups" thing. What you are describing is effectively just a sector based system. While I am in favor of that, then that has more to do to avoid the "silly" over colonization penalty (I know why it is there, but it is not a good solution to that problem). 

I would rather like to see a system where you could decide if you want growth... also as population increase, as well as infrastructure, available food production areas should diminish. IE the more stuff you build, and the more people you get, the less food you will have available for production. 

Also we do have planetary specializations... which are about the only thing that is unique to planets. As well as system specializations. These two combined with some ties to the political system could put in a system so you have to be more careful about how you manage your system. 

For example if you set a planet to be food specialized it could have a modifier that would reduce the max pop by X depending on size. Also it would reduce all other FIDS on the planet. That way you would have to balance your systems way more. 

Ofc. via trade it should be possible to have food supply trains, so you can effectively create food systems that feed most of your other systems. Such a system would make war and other strategic aspects a lot more interesting. 

Definitely agree that food is way too plentiful right now.  I've yet to reach a situation where a system actually needed food improvements (also most of those improvements are pretty weak).

Your Food Groups idea is interesting.  Although keeping track of your food groups visually might be a bit challenging to get up to Amplitude standards.