You can slow down population snowballing without changing the Growth Cap.


All you need to do is make each subsequent unit of population consume a greater share of food:

  • 1 pop = 6 consumption
  • 2 pop = 13 consumption (6 + 7)
  • 3 pop = 21 consumption (6 + 7 + 8)
  • 4 pop = 30 consumption (6+ 7 + 8 + 9)
  • 5 pop = 40 consumption (6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10)
  • 10 pop = 105 consumption (6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15)
  • 20 pop = 310 consumption 
  • 30 pop = 615 consumption

etc. etc. etc. something, something, calculus


This would essentially make it require quite a bit of food tech/hero skill investment and population micromanagement to cap those high population systems. A few things to note:

  1. Riftborn Pop build-to-spaceport spam would need to be addressed (it already does imho).
  2. The numbers would likely need to be tweaked to balance with food production. Mine were only intended to demonstrate the increasing ratio of consumption:population.
  3. Super Biofuel would need to be balanced (I would suggest lowering the tech tier so it becomes something useable in mid-game with a lesser investment cost and lesser industry gain due to the consumption rework).
  4. Very low food quantities in the - or + should be ignored within a certain margin (maybe + or - P where [P = Population/2] so a system with 30 pop would neglect any food within the +15 to-15 range ... explain it away with "seasonal variance" or "general waste" for + or "rationing" for -) to avoid the current +1 pop, -1 pop, +1 pop, -1 pop back and forth when gaining a pop puts you in the negative, then losing a pop puts you in the positive again, which tends to happen from time to time (and it is annoying).

I would love to hear some ideas on this proposal.