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Best Pop Management Thu, 13 December 2007 21:17 Go to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
Lt. Junior Grade

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Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

What's the best way to manage pop for an IT? Run a swarm of freighters around the network in a loop collecting everyone up that's not at 33%? Set the planets all to 400,000 people?

Do it all manually?

Or use some other method?

At one point do you have "enough" people in freighters zipping around the network. When do you put them down? Or are they for rapid colonization or ground combat only?

Do you ever fill up a planet? If so when and why?

I've read about pop management, but once I've colonized everything and I'm sitting around scooping up all my pop, what do I DO with them? Fill my worlds? I doubt it, that'd kill growth. Unless I were IS. So far when I've got nothing left to do I still fill my worlds, or the lesser ones at least.

Any tips on pop management anyone can share for doing with an IT?



Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: Best Pop Management Fri, 14 December 2007 07:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
Commander

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Hi!
Just some general tips about pop management for races with good pop eff (not HP):

Deal Early game keep pop at 25% while you're still building infrastructure on your HW. Export pop over 25% to other close green planets, that are below 100k pop. Fill bigger greens first. Colonize every green planet ASAP with at least ~25k pop. If you don't know your neighbours yet or not well, immediately build a cheap orbital there. If/when you have free resources, research terra-3 and cheap terra-7 techs to make greens better.

Deal When most close greens are at or over 100k pop, let pop on HW (slowly by exporting only 25k pop, or fully) grow to 45%-50% while building more infrastructure. Research cheap terra-11 and more expensive terra-7 techs. Put max-terra 1% on top of the queue on each planet with more than 100 resources, more on planets that will become breeders (80%+ value). Build factories to make more resources on small greens/yellows to terra them faster.

Deal If there aren't any greens, let pop on HW grow to 45%-50% while building more infrastructure. Only then start exporting pop to yellows, but colonize them earlier with ~25k pop and also build a cheap orbital there.

Deal When other breeders hit 25%, start exporting pop from them to smaller greens and yellows. Aim for 100k pop for greens, 75k for yellows. When you hit those numbers everywhere, let pop on breeders grow (slowly by exporting only 25k pop, or fully) to 33% or 45%-50% while building more infrastructure. Research more expensive terra-11, and cheap terra-15. Terraform good planets ASAP (max terra 5%+ on top of the queue).

Deal When your breeders are at 45%, keep exporting pop from them to small greens, that are growing better by terraformig done, but consider backfilling your HW and some mineral-richest breeders to 100% capacity. Do that on the one by one basis - not all at the same time. Keep poor breeders at 45%-50% by lifting pop in freighters until there's no more planets to put pop on. Consider colonizing also all red planets in your space. If there'
...



[Updated on: Fri, 14 December 2007 08:01]

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Re: Best Pop Management Fri, 14 December 2007 10:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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Thank you, that's quite detailed.

It also sounds ubiquitous. Any IT specific adaptations of that?



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Re: Best Pop Management Fri, 14 December 2007 14:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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In retrospect I should have asked, why use the poor breeders to fill up the rest of the worlds. That's the reverse of what I thought should be done.

Care to explain?



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Re: Best Pop Management Fri, 14 December 2007 22:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Soobie

 
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By poor breeders I believe Iztok means low min conc breeders. Not low-hab breeders.

You are not going to be getting good metal out of the ground, so the point of the low min conc breeders is to provide research and an endless supply of pop to export. You can backfill metal to the world when the return freighters come back to pick up the colonists for export again, so you can easily get half decent production out of them without going too nuts on mineral balancing if you so desire (imho). [I'm sure I'll be shot down on that and told that I should go nuts on mineral balancing and have production out of all worlds, but I'm too lazy to do that.]

You eventually fill the good breeders (ie: good min conc) because thats where you get the metal for ship building and the resources to build the ships.

Cheers,
S.

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Re: Best Pop Management Fri, 14 December 2007 22:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LEit is currently offline LEit

 
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You should fill poor hab worlds before filling good hab worlds because pop will grow much faster on the good hab worlds.

For non-IT races, a lot of this has to be tempered with travel time, IOW, you have to consider how long it will take to ship the pop from a breeder to a world. For IT, travel time is not a consideration after you get a gate up, which should be done ASAP, very fast after you're colonizing with 100k pop.



- LEit

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Re: Best Pop Management Sat, 15 December 2007 01:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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Thanks, that makes a lot more sense to me.


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Re: Best Pop Management Tue, 18 December 2007 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
joseph is currently offline joseph

 
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Quote:

what do I DO with them?

Well as mentioned above you should fill your lesser worlds.
But a swift rule of thumb is once all <50% hab worlds have been filled and all >70% hab worlds are at 50% capacity you are done filling worlds!

At this point you want to be doing something new with your surplus pop. I would suggest that with a bunch of worlds as full as yours should be you would have a few assault fleets ready. Each turn gate your surp pop to an assault fleet - use this so that each turn you take a planet you can pop up a gate next turn thus reducing your time to front to 1 year!



Joseph
"Can burn the land and boil the sea. You cant take the Stars from me"

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Re: Best Pop Management Tue, 18 December 2007 11:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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Excellent thought. I'll make sure to implement that in my solo training games.


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Re: Best Pop Management Wed, 19 December 2007 20:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Soobie

 
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Captain Maim wrote on Wed, 19 December 2007 03:22

Excellent thought. I'll make sure to implement that in my solo training games.
Good to know you will only be using these tips in solo training games and not in games against people ...

Cheers
S.

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 01:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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I'm going to use them in real games. I just want to practice them in test beds. I just don't have any games right now that would lend themselves to early pop management. I'm playing a game that's closing on the second century. The galaxy's full and I don't know how to manage my pop in this situation either. I have no enemies anymore and there's no where to go. What should I do in then?


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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 02:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dogthinkers is currently offline Dogthinkers

 
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Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 20 December 2007 17:52

I have no enemies anymore and there's no where to go. What should I do in then?


If there is nowhere to go because you are surround by friends... Then make a new enemy. Hit over head

If there is nowhere to go because you killed everyone... Join another game Laughing

On a more serious note, someone mentioned going attacking once you have filled the poor worlds and are at 50% hold on even the breeders. If I got into this situation in early-mid game I'd be very, very worried. I'd be aiming to attack to get more space to avoid even going past a 25% hold on the breeders, if you are capable of doing so. 50% hold is for when you aren't capable of expanding fast enough, so need to push resources over growth.


[Updated on: Thu, 20 December 2007 02:37]

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 03:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Soobie

 
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Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 20 December 2007 17:22

I'm going to use them in real games. I just want to practice them in test beds. I just don't have any games right now that would lend themselves to early pop management. I'm playing a game that's closing on the second century. The galaxy's full and I don't know how to manage my pop in this situation either. I have no enemies anymore and there's no where to go. What should I do in then?
Take sides. I like Switzerland for the women and the ski slopes, not the neutrality.

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 03:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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Rather than committing myself to certain doom at the hand of a 3 way alliance I'm going to just feed off the number 1 player who quit. Just like everyone else. Smile It's the only non-suicidal thing I can see doing. I know this is a bad practice but I'm just letting my pop free range themselves cause I'm CA and not IT. And I'm here in this thread to learn how best to manage my pop.

I've started practicing the poor breeder thing, it's a really good use of an otherwise unprofitable resource. By the time I finish my acclimation game I should be pretty good at doing all the stuff you guys have suggested. I just want to try it and get it down before I play a live fire game again.



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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 07:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dogthinkers is currently offline Dogthinkers

 
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CA is actaully a good race to practice pop management, since you don't have to consider how the world will go as it terraforms, since it's already terraformed. And if you aren't at war, then you've got all the more time for getting the pop perfect, so you are in a better position when you do fight. So fill those crappy worlds, and get those 90%+ worlds back down to 33% holds if you can.

And get the biggest share of that dropped player Wink


[Updated on: Thu, 20 December 2007 07:53]

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 09:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
vonKreedon is currently offline vonKreedon

 
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Why are people going from 25% to 50% rather than 34%? My experience tells me that I get best raw growth from a 34% hold. I know that actual optimal growth rates is at 25%, but if I'm trying to get best raw pop number then 34% seems to be the break point, so why does this seem to be underused in favor of 25% and 50%?

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 15:03 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iztok is currently offline iztok

 
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Hi!
vonKreedon wrote on Thu, 20 December 2007 15:38

Why are people going from 25% to 50% rather than 34%?

The pop output is about the same, but the resource and mineral outputs are significantly bigger.

BR, Iztok


[Updated on: Thu, 20 December 2007 15:09]

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 18:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Soobie

 
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Speaking from my own limited experience, I find that occassionally a 33%~34% hold doesn't have the resources to build the ship I want in 1 turn whereas, usually, the 42.4%~50% hold will.

Cheers
S.

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Re: Best Pop Management Thu, 20 December 2007 23:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dogthinkers is currently offline Dogthinkers

 
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And... People often do stop at 33%

25%, 33%, 50% are all common holds.

25% = best growth per population (very important hold point!)
33% = best growth per world (also very interesting, where you are planet count constrained)
50% = quite arbitary hold to choose... Half PGR, resulting in same growth as 25%.

EDIT: the 50% is even more random a choice than I thought, it's not even half PGR.


[Updated on: Sun, 23 December 2007 17:57]

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Re: Best Pop Management Fri, 21 December 2007 02:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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I thought 42% was the same as 25% in growth. Or is it the best growth to resource number? The math seems simple with 50% being half PGR and thus the same as 25% hold in growth.


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Re: Best Pop Management Sun, 23 December 2007 17:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dogthinkers is currently offline Dogthinkers

 
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Ahh ok...

Alright, I have NFI why people choose to hold at 50% now...

PGR is at half rate at ~47% capacity.

Growth is at same quantity per year at ~42.3% capacity as it is at 25%.

These are all quite arbitary points to hold at, except the 25% and 33.3% holds, which are at meaningfull points on the curve (max growth per colonist, max growth per world.) Past that, it's just a question of how much growth you are prepared to sacrifice to get more short term resources - hence the trend to sacrificing the growth at the crappy worlds, which keeping the good worlds at low holds.


[Updated on: Sun, 23 December 2007 18:05]

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Re: Best Pop Management Mon, 24 December 2007 13:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LEit is currently offline LEit

 
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50% is much easier to calculate then 42% or 47%.


- LEit

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Re: Best Pop Management Mon, 24 December 2007 14:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Captain Maim is currently offline Captain Maim

 
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I can agree with that. And 50% is the maximum size a planet can get before the growth curve plummets.


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Re: Best Pop Management Tue, 25 December 2007 02:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mlaub is currently offline mlaub

 
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Captain Maim wrote on Mon, 24 December 2007 13:39

I can agree with that. And 50% is the maximum size a planet can get before the growth curve plummets.


It starts slightly before that, ~45% looks closer to the start of the diminishing pop growth.

IMO the easiest number to remember for a OBRM standard race is 500k...which happens to be 45.45% Smile

-Matt




Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.

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-f it pop management Tue, 14 April 2009 09:52 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
DaYng1 is currently offline DaYng1

 
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hi,
let's say you have the standard 1i 19 pgr -f it and you have reasearched all cheap techs and terraformed all yellows. other than jamming all that pop down your opponents throat, what do you do with it?

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